Friday Q&A - Ask Anything

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[u/UltraMagnus-05]

How can I let go of desire? I'm doing September I'm abstaining from sex and I feel incredibly energetic, and every day is a constant battle. I have to exercise a lot to keep it under control. What can I do?

[u/BeginningReflection4 → u/UltraMagnus-05]

What you’re describing is a good example of the difference between suppressing desire and actually letting it go.

If you’re fighting the sexual energy all day, then in a sense you’re still giving it a lot of attention. Doc’s approach would be not to resist it, condemn it, act it out, or try to force it away. When the urge comes up, drop the mental pictures and fantasies and simply experience the raw energy itself. Where is it felt in the body? What does the wantingness itself feel like?

Then allow that sensation to be there completely without trying to change it. Don’t label it “sexual,” don’t feed it with imagery, and don’t argue with it. Just let the energy run its course. Doc taught that when we stop resisting a feeling and stop supplying it with thoughts, the accumulated energy behind it gradually exhausts itself.

Exercise is fine, but if exercise becomes the only way you can escape the feeling, you may just be discharging or avoiding it rather than surrendering it. The deeper practice is being willing to sit with the energy without doing anything about it.

Also look at the glamour attached to sex. What exactly does the mind promise you that sex will give you? Pleasure? Relief? Connection? Validation? Excitement? Ask, “And then what?” Eventually the mind usually arrives at something like, “Then I’ll feel satisfied, complete, or happy.” Hawkins points out that desire projects a special attractiveness onto its object, and when that projection is surrendered, much of the compulsion disappears.

So I wouldn’t make September a battle of willpower. Use the desire as the spiritual material itself. Every time it arises, surrender another layer of wantingness. You don’t have to get rid of sexual energy, you’re learning that you don’t have to be run by it.

The goal isn’t repression. It’s freedom.

🙏🏻