Diary of a nofap streak - Day 20: The Heat

There are times on this journey when the energy gets overwhelmingly strong. It feels incredibly good, but at the same time, you're very much overpowered and can do nothing but surrender.

A good thing it's a saturday and I don't have to go to work.

I can totally imagine a situation where I would wank off just to get rid of the heat. Just so I could get some work done.

It's very blissful. Remember my older solemn tantric oath: Give in to it. Feel it through and through. Surrender to it. Own it. Make it mine, or rather make me its. Give in. And just like that, the angst and the anxiety vanish, and it is all good.

There is no need to fight it. There is no need to do anything but accept. This is what is, right now.

It is quite unspeakable. It's like my body is filled with pleasure and lust, desire and satisfaction rolled up into one. It's a tingling and a heat and a little dizziness. It starts from the spine, spreads through my belly and chest, into my arms and legs, even the head.

I revel in the knowledge that there is no supernatural. Imagining this to be an entity of its own, with a will separate from my own, doing stuff to me that I cannot control, and potentially will never stop, would be quite unsettling.

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Reddit thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/Joyful_Chastity/comments/huosv1/getting_back_into_chastity/

Just some ideas for fun experiments

When it comes to tantra and kundalini yoga, I want to encourage a spirit of fearless experimentation, because I think there is absolutely nothing to fear, as long as you apply some common sense.

Once you are free from the irresistable urge to ejaculate, here are some fun things you might do. They all feel a bit different, and they all feel very good, and I find it interesting to simply note the differences.

• Edge a few times
• Not edge at all
• Practice in different positions
• Be loud, or be quiet
• Engage your thighs: Vibrate or pulse, clench and relax in varying rhythms
• Visualize different colors up or down your spine
• Visualize those colors not necessarily just up or down your spine, but drive it anywhere you want
• Up on the inhale, down on the exhale, or the other way around
• Draw long breaths, or short ones, or even pant
• Let go, and just feel
• Hold your breath, then let go and feel
• Stroke yourself, or don't stroke yourself

I'm sure there's lots of other stuff.

Also, let me add that, even though I obviously write from a male perspective, I do not at all endorse the view that semen is somehow special, contains the most qi, or anything like that. I just have no clue how tantra for women works, that's all.

Tantra Goddessses, Sacred Rituals, And USPs

Once you delve into twitter and friends, when searching for tantra-related information on the web, you're about to dive into a world of hyperbole, self-proclaimed experts and sex-work sold off as healing.

Lots and lots of "goddesses" abound in that world. So many of them, I keep worrying they might step onto each other's soil and spoil it. After all, they all wanna make a buck out of their worshippers' needs, don't they? Well, I guess there are enough needy clients out there, so probably there is no scarcity here.

Their massages are "sacred rituals", their services are "ceremonies", and they themselves are "goddesses" or "healers".

Are you trying to pull my leg?

Don't get me wrong. I'm not opposed to sexual services. Nor do I have an issue with some fancy role-playing. And also, just to make it abundantly clear, am I not an advocate of "authentic tantra". I think it's just another way to oppress people.

None of that... What I am opposed to is dishonesty and misrepresentation. And that's what's going on here, in my very humble opinion.

For example, someone out there keeps advertising "verified healers & certified tantrikas". (I'm not singling them out as the bad guys - there are a gazillion sites like that out there, this is just one example that I happened to happen upon.) Their website looks suspiciously like the ads placed by brothels, what with skantily clad goddesses and all...

But who knows... so I searched that site for information on their verification & certification process. Needless to say, I didn't find any. To my surprise, I did actually get an answer on twitter. The site administrator claimed that they know some Tantra teachers, and they check the advertisers' credentials with them. - I was also informed that they needed to have extensive background in sacred sexual healing. But then again, it was important to point out that this doesn't have anything to do with being a "valid tantra practitioner"...

Now, this gives me all kinds of headaches from all the scratching. On the one hand, this is more than I anticipated. On the other hand, it just leads to more questions: What is those reputable teachers' process of certification? How can being certified have nothing to do with being valid in one's line of work? How does one check that extensive background?

In other words, how can we even devise criteria for who is an actual, certified, valid tantra practitioner, and who is not? From my own personal biases, I reject the concept of chakras, I cringe at the mention of lingams and yonis - and still, I feel that I do have some experience with tantric breathing techniques, and that I have thought and felt and experienced my way around full-body orgasms through several years, to a degree that I think many "professional tantrikas" lack. Then again, I don't have a lot of formal training. So, would I get through the certification process, or not? (Okay, I'm a guy, and they probably don't take those anyway, but you get the point.)

It strikes me as very odd that a tantric massage is a "ceremony", sexual services are "sacred", the practitioners are "goddesses" - and yet they are "certified and verified". How on earth does one verify a goddess?

I mean... yeah, I get it. We surround sexual services with a nice clean layer of "spirituality" to make it all a bit more reputable. That's how capitalism works. In most western countries, practitioners cannot openly offer sexual services, so they made the best of it, and created a USP out of the psychological, spiritual, non-sexual parts. It's extremely clever... and extremely dishonest.

By doing so, those people play into the common sexual inhibition, prudishness and bigotry, instead of working against them. They cash in on people's incompetence at expressing their sexual urges, instead of working to shake it. They alleviate the pain, but they avoid addressing the underlying issue. All while posing to do "healing", meditation, "energy work", etc.

It is saddening at the very least, and quickly turns to sickening and revolting after a while. If this is shakti at work, then I don't want to be your shiva. I do not dance with you, sorry. Your dance is too macabre for me.

If tantra is in any way a "spiritual" endeavor (I have my problems with that word, but I hope it is sufficiently clear what I'm aiming at here), then it should lead to more clarity, more openness, more honesty. And then the "teachers", "healers" and "goddesses" who make an earthly appearance to guide us to the light should themselves be the pinnacles of honesty.

But then they cannot sell off a sexual massage as a "sacred healing ceremony".

Kundalini Danger - The REAL Dangers Of Tantra

I knew a woman, and we got intimate, and at some point I suggested that she try out a little tantric breathing.

It took her about 30 seconds to break off the experiment in alarm.

What was going wrong?

Well, you should probably know that this woman had suffered through some severe trauma. And while, in theory, I knew that tantra might wake up buried emotions, at that point I just didn't think about that, or didn't quite realize the connection with the situation at hand, and suggested it anyway. Luckily for the both of us, this woman has put lots of time and energy into her therapy, and - partly as a result of that, partly because this is just how awesome she is - she is reflected and mature enough to know what is good for her, and what is not.

So, this stirring of arbitrary emotions without any controlling instance, without a carefully set-up safe environment, definitely counts as a danger to me. What if this hadn't happened with a woman in her mid-30s, but with an insecure twen suffering from bipolar disorder? What if it hadn't happened at home, but in a tantra course, with some "instructor" pushing people into the exercises? Stuff like that falls under the category of a psychotherapeutic intervention, and stuff like that is definitely not to be fooled around with.

In short, tantric breathing can trigger re-traumatization in victims of childhood abuse, people who suffer from PTSD, torture victims, etc. If this is your history, you'd better consult with a trained professional before venturing into tantra.

The other real danger I see is that a so-called "kundalini awakening" seems to sometimes trigger a state similar to perpetual arousal syndrome. From what I know, this is quite rare, so it won't keep me from venturing further on this path. One thing I shall say is that there were a few moments when I was a bit afraid of what might happen if the state of arousal wouldn't wane off by itself. If having a few orgasms doesn't get you off your arousal, then what are you supposed to do? That doesn't sound like a healthy thing to me at all. But as I said, I figure the chances of that are actually extremely slim, so I see no real issue.

Interestingly, some of the symptoms seem to be consistent with what some fundamentalist christians describe as the result of the demonic influence that they see behind said "kundalini awakenings".

If you'd like to learn more, the following article relates a personal experience with that issue - it completely turned the lady in question off sex for several years:

http://www.salon.com/2013/03/17/my_tantric_awakening_turned_me_off_sex/

Falling in love with a tantrika

I think that most people who decide to receive a professional tantric massage might end up being rather surprised by some of its effects.

The thing has a tendency to stir up strong emotions.

I mean, really REALLY big feelings. As in, while I'm laying there, there's always a point where I'm completely overwhelmed with love. Where I want to tell her how much I'm in love with her, how beautiful she is, and so on.

Of course, I know that the feeling goes away after the session, and I know that it is not "real", in the sense that I'm not really in love with my tantrika. We respect each other, I rather like her (though I often disagree and have a hard time not rolling my eyes when she starts about energetic esoteric teachings), and we have lots of fun, before and after and during the session. (Though that last one's a totally different kind of fun.)

Anyway.

I can totally see how this may overwhelm and even overtrain some clients. Especially if they're lonely. Especially if they're somewhat socially awkward. Even more so if they really have no idea what tantra is all about. So I guess... quite a lot of the clients of such an establishment, actually.

So I guess that the practitioners often receive all kinds of fantastic offers. Some of which may be tempting. (Quoth my tantrika: "You never start a relationship with a client. It can't work out." Intelligent woman, she is!)

Basically, there's a guy who receives heaven from your touch, and who is probably prepared to give a lot for having this all for himself... in terms of money, but also of affection, devotion, time... I imagine that it must be extremely tempting to go on a power trip on one of those offers.

So I've started to write a story where that's exactly what happens. Where a woman is given the opportunity to work as a tantric masseuse, and that woman is way too young and naive (and, at that point, disappointed by men) to resist this sort of temptation, so she does go on this power trip, and it does not end well.

I think that this is highly realistic, and I'm pretty certain it has happened before. Not even necessarily with tantrikas...