Dudes of a certain age accountability support

Hey y'all, I found something wonderful that may be helpful to many--it has been to me!

I've been listening to this (it's also available on Audible):
http://www.soundstrue.com/store/healing-the-core-wound-of-unworthiness.html

 

Thank-you so much for your wise and heartful response, Kennedy Lightning. There is so much in it to ponder and contemplate. I had the opportunity to touch base with my spiritual mentor yesterday, a very awake and open-hearted teacher. You captured wonderfully much of what he wanted to say to me. What stays with me about that conversation is this: Not only is this addiction NOT some especially heinous and shameful pattern of behavior, it is perfect classroom within which to study the principles of Liberation. For 45 years I have struggled against it as some nemesis or enemy, instead of seeing it as the opportunity to study the mind and its tendency to create illusion and suffering. We are given our life experiences to learn and grow, it is all about consciousness waking up to its true nature. It is not about how many days I've managed to avoid looking at porn, but how many moments I've been in "contact with the felt reality of the present moment" to quote you, my friend.

My teacher challenged me to embrace my addiction -- not lose myself in it. He challenged me to use it to do a deep study into human consciousness, how the mind creates its own reality and suffers within it. This is what all minds do in their own way, not just those addicted to porn. I'm thinking of starting a new thread called, "Inquiry into the porn addicted mind" as a means of fulfilling his challenge, and providing those of us with the deep yearning to awaken the opportunity to share, and to learn to use our addiction to serve that aspiration -- to be a doorway into deeper self understanding and Self-realization. I'm wondering if you would join me in that thread -- I find that your insights inspire my own.

By the way, Adyashanti is one of my favorite spiritual teachers as well. I have been privileged to sit at his feet in retreat, and remember that experience as a real hight light on this path. Thank-you for mentioning your connection to his teachings. I'm delighted to have found someone with whose heart I resonate. I know that there are many others on this site with the same deep yearnings to wake up from the dream. I love how you talk about relapse in the light of celebrating the waking up from being unconscious rather than being critical of yourself for slipping again. Let's stay in touch. Let me know what you think about the new thread. Peace.

 

This looks great! I'm downloading it right now. . . Thanks for the referral!

 

@Taodude -- <3 <3 <3

yes! inquiry into the porn addicted mind. sounds like a great place to journal our dances with vulnerability

i've struggled with this for a long time, too. so many years of self-doubt. shame, self-avoidance, so many conditioned social masks. it gets exhausting to suppress the full exuberant experience of this grand kaleidoscopic feelingscape! loving and forgiving myself deeply and unconditionally has been huge.

peace! <3

 

Well said! So let's stop that energy drain. Bring on the real bliss!!

 

Happy to be PM free today. I feel grateful to be free of the impulses to pour my energies out into illusion, grateful to be enjoying the day with my wife.

I've been really trying to watch my mind since my last relapse. I want to explore what is really going on. What am I really pursuing when I act out. My mind is screaming out for pictures of women, but the pictures are just shapes and patterns comprised of pixels. There are no real humans here, there is no real interaction here. The women don't know that I am looking; whoever and where ever they are, they have no regard for me or my needs. The whole thing is made up in this mind. Do you know what I mean? This mind projects meaning out on a two dimensional collection of pixels, and then pursues that picture as though it is inherently need-meeting. But it's not! There is nothing there, no interaction taking place, no one caring about me and my needs. It is all mind -- the entire party, the players, the shapes and images, what they mean, the supposed interaction, the whole thing is made up by my mind. So why do I pursue it as though there were something life and death here, something that I need here that I simply will not survive unless I get it? It's a joke, a cruel joke, and this mind is the creator and sustainer of the whole thing. And the sad part is, the mind doesn't even know that. It just engages in the drama as though there really is some inherent value to the pictures, some real answer and response to my need.

It's been interesting now that I've been confronting what is going on under the surface, it has taken the edge off of the craving. The emotions under the craving are still present: sadness, loneliness, emptiness, but I'm not so likely to turn to images because I'm seeing that there isn't really anything there to turn to. It is like Todo has pulled the curtain back on the one running the whole porn show, and it is just some needy, young part of myself that has been hurt and abandoned (decades ago) and has gotten stuck in this pattern or trying to lessen the pain by creating this huge illusion.

Well, I'm tired of the illusion, tired of being led around by this ring through my nose (or balls). I want to see through it, and today I'm willing to feel whatever I must feel to disempower the bullshit.

 

Sitting here at my computer with a choice. Search for stimulating imagery to satisfy some craving within, or find a deeper satisfaction by feeling in to what is just under the craving, a longing for a more meaningful and authentic life, free of battling compulsions, a passionate, fulfilling life from which one need not escape. I will never find that life pissing my energies away in front of meaningless and distracting images, lost in illusion. It is time to choose the road less traveled.

 

Thanks for the reinforcement. Regular meditation practice is huge.