To release or not to release
Men carry the seeds of humanity. How much energy does each sperm hold? I don’t know, but considering its the seed of life I’m going to say a fucking ton (how is that for scientific measurement?).
Every time we ejaculate we release our energy and if we shift our mindset and see ourselves as primarily energetic beings as oppose to physical beings then we can begin to experience and understand the plus and minus of masturbation.
A few points from my own experience:
Personally, I carried guilt and shame around the act of masturbation (A result of eastern upbringing in a western world). Every time I pleasured myself the weight of guilt and shame would way me down so much the next day that I fell into a mini depressive state.
Simultaneously, I was energetically exhausting myself because each time I masturbate there is enormous release of energy which takes a day or two to recover (for some it could take weeks).
We can't talk about masturbation without bringing in the world of pornography and it's excessive consumption due to accessibility and quality. We men are programming our brains, especially our youth in a way that is unhealthy for men and results in physical, emotional and energetic abuse towards women.
Here is the thing, my experience with porn wasn’t all bad. Yes, it wired my brain in some unhealthy ways (fortunately I don’t have an addictive personality and I consciously controlled consumption) but in some ways it taught me how to have sex. How and where else would I have learned? It’s not like we received a penis manual in public or islamic school (I know, shocking, no penis manuals in religious school). We inherited a very powerful tool that came with zero instructions.
I cannot speak for everyone, I will only share what I have experienced and practiced, both my experience with pornography and masturbation, the last three years of no porn and aside from a three to five times (only once this year), no masturbation. Yes, only three to fives times since January 1, 2015.
Don’t worry, nobody has been harmed in this longitudinal study.
If you want to try not masturbating, I would check out the Tim Ferries challenge from a few years ago called NOBNOM. No masturbation or booze for 30 days but sex is permitted. Obviously no porn unless you like torturing yourself.
https://tim.blog/2014/07/30/nobnom-no-booze-no-masturbating/
Also, here is a link to Daosit sexual practices (closet thing you will ever find to a penis manual) which teaches you how to move the energy in your pelvic floor. It's only beneficial to NOT masturbate if you learn to distribute and move the retained energy thorough your entire being.
http://www.stic.gov.et/documents/36836/106070/%5BMantak_Chia%2C_Michael_Winn%5D_Taoist_Secrets_of_Love%28BookFi.org%29.pdf/47388dc9-f4da-0444-57b7-8d0a5483b0a2?version=1.0
As a man, if you are living in a major city like Toronto or New York then withholding from masturbating without alternative ways of moving your energy can lead to negative effects unless you have a sexual partner(s) where you can share this energy.
The question that I get is, why do you not get tired after sex but tired after masturbation? The reason according to Daoists and Ayurvedic texts that I've read is that women have unlimited yin energy which replenishes our energy and balances it out after we release.
This brings to surface another idea that I have been developing an awareness and deeper understanding around. On the surface men seem to want to fuck everything and are fascinated by a women's physical body. However, what I believe we are actually thirsting for when we go deeper is a women's yin energy to balance our yang energy.
Why are we so focused on the physical? Well, this is where porn but equally the mainstream media come into play. We have put an incredible amount of importance and emphasis on the female’s physical body. Just stand in line at any pharmacy store and check out the magazines by the checkout counter.
After three years of almost no masturbation or pornography here are the shifts and benefits.
Actually, before I go into the benefits there are three reasons that I am able to live like this:
I have been with incredible lovers that have similar sex drives.
Practicing yoga and meditation helps move and distribute my energy throughout my entire being. I have recently dived into kundalini yoga which helps move the energy from the pelvic floor and up the spine.
Learning and working towards mastering daoist sexual practices which I am far from mastering makes me a better lover and helps for the times I am single.
Benefits to retaining the seed and not watching pornography or consuming any or very little mainstream media:
Relationships with women will evolve from a predominantly physical connection to a more energetic connection.
Appreciate for women's physical bodies but you will desire women that you connect with energetically which is much fewer and no longer will suffer from what Barry Schwartz’s calls the Paradox of Choice.
The ability to retain your seed means retaining your energy. Retaining energy means functioning at a higher vibration. When we begin functioning at a higher vibration we attract different types of lovers, friends and also aligned life opportunities. We begin playing in a higher vibrational playground (when you begin playing in this higher vibrational playground, its very difficult to go back).
Alcohol, drugs and unhealthy food are counter intuitive to the preservation of this seed so desire to alter your state of mind will lessen over time.
Preserving energy results in a man who is confident from the inside out, something that consciously and subconsciously every women desires.
Your energy can be felt and witnessed externally which attracts the people and circumstances that are aligned with your deeper being.
Respect and see women in a much more loving way and not just as the opppsite sex that you want to fuck (consuming pornography wires the brain to desire an unhealthy amount of women).
Incredible intimacy with your partners. When the root of a connection begins with our energetic being, making love takes on an entirely new level of intimacy.
Your dating life and connection with real women as oppose to dating your laptop, leads to more intimacy, a more fulfilled life and decrease loneliness.
There is a drawback however when you cut out porn and decrease/stop masturbating.
Your right hand will lose it’s best friend. It’s sad, but I promise, it’s fucking worth it.
You will experience more intimacy in your relationships and not just romantically.
You will connect more deeply with your Self
You will create space in your brain to think about something other then imagining where you want to stick your penis which leads to a 1000% increase in productivity.
Perhaps this is not even a conversation about masturbation.
To remain stuck on the idea whether masturbation for men is good for us or not is to remain stuck on the physical, on the surface level.
Perhaps the questions we should be asking is are we ready to begin connecting more deeply with our energetic bodies and if we are, then is retaining the seed of life which holds an abundance of universal energy, an abundance of our energy and furthermore in order to reconnect to our spiritual being, the only way to do that is to go through our energetic being.
Can we by bypass the physical and energetic being and go straight to the spiritual? Yes, but the outcome ain’t pretty. The result will likely be a disconnect from some of the most amazing aspects of being human.
If we begin to look at it as three stages, physical, energetic and spiritual then we learn that we have an enormous amount of autonomy over our own being, we can now become our own scientists simply because of all the tools that are available to us and thanks to the evolution of all three areas we no longer have to look to any one religion to access and understand our full Self, a Self where all three stages are crucial to our own evolution as well as that of humanity as a whole.
It's just a thought. Perhaps I've lost my marbles or perhaps I've found them:-). Time will tell all. All I request is that you play with your Self in a different more evolved way, in a more conscious way that benefits you at a deeper level and makes you a more evolved and balanced human being.
I want to end on this note. The road to syncing the physical, energetic and spiritual body I believe is the ultimate goal of humanity. We are overly obsessed with the physical being, some with the energetic and others with the spiritual. However, our evolution of being, conscious evolution of humanity is moving towards a collective synchronicity.