Diary of a nofap streak - Day 18: When desire hits...

...give in to it!

Good thing I'm staying home today, for the most part (we're visiting friends tonight, first time since c* - haven't seen them in over 6 months).

Here's the challenge: When the urge comes, give in to it. Absolutely, deeply, completely hand yourself over.

The catch? Don't jerk off. Don't even touch yourself. Breathe deep. Inhale horniness, exhale pure lust.

Jerking off is not giving in to the urge. Jerking off is the opposite. Jerking off is an attempt to end the urge, scratch it away like an itch.

But a self-respecting itch doesn't end there. It is stronger than you, and much more intelligent! It comes back with a vengeance. Fighting it does not work. What works (I hope) is completely accepting it, stepping deep into the fire, clothing myself with it, transforming unbearable yearning into satisfaction and delight merely by realizing that that is its real nature.

I think that this might be the actual hidden wisdom of tantra: that lust, desire, and rejection can be used as pathways to insight - as opposed to the consensus buddhist view *), which sees them as mere obstacles. That ultimate satisfaction is a seed buried within desire itself, not achieved through fulfilment, but found through acceptance, by looking close enough.

I had a very bad night. Didn't get to sleep, then woke from a nightmare, then woke up at 3am and couldn't get back to sleep. Looking forward to that construction work, yay! But, maybe right because I'm so bleary-eyed, I'm also on the verge of orgasm without even doing anything. So this may turn out to be the day I end the streak just so I can get some sleep - or, it ends up the day on which I discover something completely new and sensational... of which you, my dear reader - if you indeed exist - would get to read tomorrow.

We'll see. Oh, we shall see!

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*) term shamelessly stolen from David Chapman

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

Dream Symbols

For almost 20 years now, I have kept a dream journal. Somewhat sporadically, and I lost it all about halfway through, but I guess I can rightfully claim to have more of an overview of my dreams than most people I know.

For much of that time, I tried to decipher them, to find some kind of meaning, symbolism or the like, inside them. I even kept lists of "symbols" to be able to do a little bit of statistics on them.

Ultimately, what I came up with was precious little. Nothing, really, that I wouldn't have come up simply by looking over my journal once in a while.

For quite a few years, I kept dreaming about elevators that failed in all kinds of dangerous ways. I also dreamed a lot about public transport crafts. Invariably, those drove around the whole town in all the wrong directions, and I never reached my goal. This was a time when I was rather insecure and pretty depressed, so it made sense.

I dreamed a few times about an ex girlfriend, where the breakup had been rather dramatic. Understandable.

And a few years later, at a new job that made me the most money I had ever earned, I dreamed about very big and respectable houses, such as museums and the like.

When I was out of a job or concerned about my professional future, I tended to dream about my very first profession (as a bookseller).

I had the usual dreams about flying, which were fun, and very few, but rather intense, nightmares.

A few times, I dreamed about uncanny twins, and it seemed to coincide with upcoming big decisions.

People from my past and present show up in my dreams, of course, and there seem to be certain (very odd) rules.  For example, I never dream about my current girlfriend, I often find myself with an anonymous "group of friends", etc.

And that's about it. It's not an awful lot, certainly no prophecies or clairvoyance. No out-of-body experience or astral projection. In all those years, despite some efforts, I had exactly one lucid dream, and one that was somewhat semi-lucid. I was never able to find any "special" meaning. My dreams never told me anything I didn't already know. They never offer any guidance or insight or spiritual experience.

So, my conclusion is that there is nothing to dream symbols, and there is nothing supernatural going on in dreams. Dreams can be fun, they're certainly interesting, but they have no meaning.

Most probably, they are just a way for the brain to reorganize its internals.

It's a bit sad, perhaps, but that's how it is.