I wrote this on my personal journal, but I thought others in this part of the forum may value it as well. Enjoy... -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I've been facing my resistance and working like a beast! Its starting slow, but I'm patiently gaining momentum and becoming master of myself in ever greater degrees. Last night, as if out of nowhere I got hit by a surge of emotions and thoughts that were disempowering and depressing to say the least. Some of the darkest pornographic images began flashing in my mind... urges that I can't explain came back to the fore. I began to loath myself. In the face of that down moment, I sought strength, I sought truth and I found it in the mighty works of my all-time favourite, Master James Allen. I realised how, for most of my childhood all I did was think pornographic and lustful thoughts. There was a stage in my early youth, I must've been 13/14/15 where I'd come home everyday and would watch porn pretty much the whole afternoon. Then I'd go out and skate, smoke some cigarettes and some weed then come home and watch more porn. Really - that was my life. You see, it's so easy to get caught up in a victim mentality. "Oh woe is me - I am psychologically messed up, my self-esteem is in tatters, my thoughts are screwed". But truth is, for over 14 years of my life I engrained, in my own brain, at my own will all these thoughts in me by reinforcing them through daily through PMO. I let my own resistance kick my ass daily and I was happy to remain a slave. And as it is in real life, a slave will earn a slave's wages. So I decided to go deeper into the thoughts feelings and emotions, not to blindly repress them and run from them, but to comprehend them, to know them and to understand them so that I can be free of them. A passage of how to go about this by James Allen came to mind, it states: It is this knowledge of the Perfect Law working through and above all things; of the Perfect Justice operating in and adjusting all human affairs, that enables the good man to love his enemies, and to rise above all hatred, resentment, and complaining; for he knows that only his own can come to him, and that, though he be surrounded by persecutors, his enemies are but the blind instruments of a faultless retribution; and so he blames them not, but calmly receives his accounts, and patiently pays his moral debts. But this is not all; he does not merely pay his debts; he takes care not to contract any further debts. He watches himself and makes his deeds faultless. While paying off evil accounts, he is laying up good accounts. By putting an end to his own sin, he is bringing evil and suffering to an end. My persecutors were my own memories, the images that I had stored up over the years thinking I was doing myself a pleasureable favour each time I PMO'd. Now I press on, patiently accepting that I cannot expect to have perfectly balanced mind when I subjected it to years of PMO, drug and substance abuse. I cannot expect to have perfect body either for this is the law, we all reap what we sow sooner or later. So what then is the best option - to wallow in my misery? No Fapstronauts, the best option is to accept the results of my former deeds, but each and every day to work on myself, to alter my brain structure, to purify my thoughts, to hit the gym and reconfigure my body and to patiently wait for the day that this hell I call my former life, will exist no more. Until then, patient, calm, poised and courageous - I face my own resistance! More Fire!
