There’s a common narrative – a fantasy even – shared by many of those who set forth to put pornography behind them. It’s a struggle.

Man defying the Beast, often with little more than clenched fists.

Porn is not an addiction known for its high rates of long-term recovery, and what if the answer isn’t to fight harder?

I had a porn addiction that lasted for over a decade. I was blessed in that it never impacted my life too dramatically. And it did affect my life, draining my energy and worsening sexual trauma.

I’ve practiced semen retention for several years, and I thought porn was behind me because in practice I didn’t look at porn. And the truth is, the fear of having a slip or relapse impacted everything from my relationship with technology to what I put in my body.

My sexual energy was to be treated like wildfire, rather than life-giving fire.

An ascetic in most senses of the word, I was behaving as though I were an addict who couldn’t be trusted.

And then one day I had a relapse, it was the second in as many years, and it lasted nearly a week.

This relapse was different than my first, I was about a month and a half into a ‘dark night of the soul.’ I felt betrayed by my body, my beliefs, and my conception of God… and I was just so tired.

“Fuck everything,” I thought, and surrendered to the darkness.

I’d spent the last few years living what I thought was a virtuous life, and at the end of the day, porn was still there taunting me – despite all my hard work – as I hurt in ways that I didn’t know were possible.

My relationship with porn changed after that.

The withdrawals hit me like a car crash.

And they were so easy to endure.

I didn’t go back to my old techniques or habits. No blockers, (people who aren’t addicts don’t need them, I thought) no diet, very little sexual kung-fu. (And not for that purpose.)

Easiest 90-day reboot ever, and of course, still counting. (Though who’s counting?) And let me tell you, that ‘dark night of the soul’ still continued for a few more months… and got worse.

Surrender and Letting Go of Attachment

Many who are trying to quit pornography are doing so for the wrong reasons. Often, they’ve allowed the addiction to get so bad that they can no longer ignore the negative impact it is having on their love/sex/work/family/social life.

As I said, I never let it get that bad – from the word ‘go’ my addiction was compartmentalized and progressively shrunk – but my attempts to shed the final vestiges of pornography from my life were frustrated by the fear of relapse and thus to a degree my own sexuality, as well as an attachment to experiencing so-called higher sexual experiences.

Fear, desperation, and attachment are poor instigators of change.

So is shame, if that’s your deal.

When operating from such places you are unable to allow yourself to do what is necessary to change… which is to let it all go.

There is an old story about a murderer who comes to a Sage for advice.

“Help! I’ve tried everything and I can’t stop killing people!”

Rather than condemning the man, or telling him to fight his urges, the Sage instructs the murderer to be really present the next time his violent fury arises, to fully face his brutality.

The murderer leaves, probably confused; but he takes the Sage’s advice to heart.

Upon his return, the Sage asked, “Well?”

“I don’t want to kill anyone anymore.”

And he didn’t.

Setting aside any outrage we might have towards the Sage’s controversial embrace of Wu Wei, what the Sage knew is that what we resist persists.

In Taoism, water is venerated as a model of Virtue.

Water takes the path of least resistance, and incidentally, that is one of the primary exoteric takeaways from that spiritual framework.

When you are acting from a place of resistance, you are working against laws far greater than yourself. We as men can resist for a time… but no man may rise above the law.

The law is no respecter of persons.

However, in that place of surrender, that place of fully facing what is happening, a change can be stirred in you, and what was the path of least resistance can change.

As I’ve previously mentioned I’ve practiced semen retention for many years and have thought myself clear of porn for nearly two years of that.

And all of that time I was still an addict, as illustrated by my behavior no matter how many days clean I had wracked up.

It was only with that final relapse, where I surrendered and it was just me and the porn. No judgment, zero fucks given, that I recognized-

Fuck everyone and everything else, no part of me wants this.

And I knew what I really wanted.

That might sound silly, if you are here you probably think you don’t want porn. But that’s likely not true or you would have quit on your own already.

You hate the consequences years of porn use is having on your life.

Perhaps you fear it or fear hurting your partner.

Maybe you want something that lies on the other side of it.

Whatever it is, you may recognize something is off, but the siren’s call still eats away at the edges of your mind.

Fighting against nature is a fool’s errand.

And ceding the definition of what is natural to those who allow themselves to be swayed by unconscious experience or ego-gratifying stories (on all sides) is equally as foolish.

I don’t have to resist the occasional impulse to carve myself with a knife.

For others, we’ve invented padded rooms.

Staring into the Void Within

For me, pornography was a way of filling the void caused by a feeling of separation from love.

Some might call it god.

I don’t know what your void is… you might not either. We often mistake symptoms for problems, self-knowledge can take a lifetime, perhaps many lifetimes.

And, surrender and being present with the moment can peel back the mask.

I’ve heard of people turning to Jesus and instantly being cured of their addiction.

That never worked for me, at least not in the way popularized by Big Christian Incorporated.

An internal void cannot be filled by something external, divine or not.

And the esoterica embedded within the literature of all faiths point to the same thing. The great I AM is inside of you. You are the placebo. The rest of it is window dressing.

You are whole.

You are complete.

There is no void to fill.

For me, spiritual life has been one of remembering and forgetting, and than remembering again. It is easy to forget when all of your senses are screaming, your past haunts you, and the world is reflecting to you that you’re not enough.

Crom created you whole and gave you everything you need from birth.

We walk by faith, not by sight. If your eyes should offend you, gouge them out.

Fill the void with compassion and self-love.

Even if this all sounds like bullshit to you – you’ve got your convictions about how things are supposed to be after all – to do anything else only feeds the wound that manifests as an addiction.

And I recognize that that is hard, the hardest thing in the world in fact.

We are taught from childhood that love is conditional, and we internalize it as truth.

Even our Gods – reflections of us – are too often conditional.

I come from the ‘self-esteem generation’, perhaps the worst reputed generation after the ‘Boomers despite our vaunted self-love that curiously manifests as self-absorption and narcissism.

“I can’t love myself,” I used to tell my therapist. “I’ll turn out like the rest of them.”

Actual self-love is born from a place that exists apart from stories, a place of not needing external validation.

You might ask, “Well how the fuck do you suggest I find that place?”

I don’t know.

Or rather, some things must be lived before the truth can be recognized.

And you can start with faking it.

Would someone who loves themselves make the choices you make? Would they think the thoughts you choose to think? Would they settle for the things you settle for?

The next time you find yourself thinking poisonously towards another, choose to think instead that you love yourself.

All is Vibration

Having spent so long being very present with porn addiction I developed a sixth sense about it. I knew well ahead of time if on any given day I was going to face temptation.

It was like the taste of the colors in the air was different.

Nicola Tesla said, “If you want to understand the world, consider it in terms of energy, frequency, and vibration.”

Porn is a vibration.

I have never been tempted to try heroin.

99% of the time the blunt gets passed to me, I let it pass on by.

Many start their recovery journey after having accidentally quit porn for a time. They may go on vacation for two weeks, the lack of stress prevents the need to self-medicate, and from what is learned from that space a desire to change is stirred.

For myself, whenever I was in a romantic relationship, porn would seem to take the season off of its own accord. Sexual or not, serious or not, for the most part.

What is happening here is that we, ignorant of the rules of this collective full-loot, rogue-like, PvPvE survival game we’re all playing, temporarily rise above the vibration of porn.

Temptation thus, passes beneath our notice.

The Hermetic Principle of Rhythm – to over-simplify, what goes up must come down – ensures that so long as we remain unconscious in how we deal with the world, such escapes are temporary.

Thankfully, the higher laws offer the secret to bypassing the lower laws.

The Principle of Correspondence – popularized in the culture as ‘as above, so below’ – offers an easy check-mate.

What separates the version of you that is a porn addict from the version of you that is not, is identity. How we view ourselves is how we tend to manifest… and what we tend to manifest.

The first thing a porn addict goes to when he feels stress or separation is too-often porn… because that is what a porn addict does.

For someone else, it could be any number of things, and such things are automatic.

I am not a porn addict.

­My libido is red hot and I haven’t released in several months.

I’m feeling stressed for reasons that aren’t so important, part of my current vibration is that I go to sugar when feeling this particular stress.

There is an older version of me out in the quantum field craving porn right now, if not consuming it. (The me from six months ago used porn blockers for such moments of weakness.)

I’m eating raisins. It’s not even a willpower check.

When you were ten years old you (hopefully) weren’t going to porn when you were stressed, and it wasn’t simply because you were unaware of it or had an undeveloped sexual system yet.

What we embody internally has a habit of finding us externally.

I didn’t start looking at porn until my early twenties, and I had unmonitored access to a gaming computer with internet in my bedroom from the age of fourteen.

I’m not bragging in these statements, I am pointing out that it is no hard thing to not look at pornography – regardless of your history with it – when you know the rules of the game.

Choose to vibrate at the frequency of your desired state of being.

This starts with diet – what you choose to consume, what you choose to think and focus on – and is solidified at the level of a change in identity.

More on Vibration and Shifting Your Identity

It is easy to say, “High vibes only, bro! High vibes only.”

I have at different times in my life made a choice to change my vibration/identity and everything just fell into place. Pornography is not the worst addiction I’ve overcome nor were any identities I had tied to it the most integral to my self-concept – and lived experience – that I have shed.

It has just been one that has held a lot of resistance.

Shifting your vibration and changing your identity really is as simple as honing your focus.

Internalize the idea that your focus is a superpower.

And be sure that your desire and your focus are in alignment.

An example from my own life – I am at the moment very neutral to inverted rows… but there was a time that I hated them.

They’re at the end of my workout.

Somatically I don’t really get them, I feel awkward with my tight hamstrings and feet on a chair. They don’t give the satisfaction of a pull-up or a push-up.

And I tell myself that I love them while I am doing them.

I used to be the kind of person who would exercise and hate every second of it.

I would think in my head, “I hate this!”

What I wanted was to be physically potent, but what I focused on was how much I hated the process. Naturally, I never got anywhere with that attitude despite all the effort I put into going to the gym at various points in my life.

Now I love the process and everything else has followed, including identity.

Of course, there has to be some level of trust within yourself for ‘denying reality’ to work. Start with focusing on what is believable, the things you do enjoy, and the successes you have had.

And, all of these concepts are interconnected.

Surrender – accept – reality as it is, though you walk through the valley of the shadow of death.

Redirect your focus and you shall fear no evil.

The rest will come.

Practical Tips… and Why They Fall Short

It is within my awareness that everything I’ve said may sound esoteric, and even ‘woo.’

I also appreciate that if you are here because your girl gave you an ultimatum… you feel as though you can’t afford to surrender. A slip could be the worst thing to happen to you!

There are loads of practical tips I could give you, born from experience, that will help you in your ‘struggle’ against pornography. Embodying them consistently will lead to some level of success.

• Download Porn Blockers for your devices.
• Be present in your life so that you can identify triggers and break patterns.
• Not counting days.
• Store electronic devices outside of your bedroom.
• Avoid the soft-core content that saturates all of social media-
• Actually, just quit social media.
• Guard your thoughts.
• Meditate.
• Practice water fasting routinely.
• Give up animal proteins and fats.
• Become conscious of the ‘food-sex cycle.’
• Take cold showers.
• Go to the gym or otherwise be physical.
• Do push-ups when you have urges. If you still have urges do more push-ups.
• Explore non-ejaculatory sex.
• Develop Tantric, Kundalini, or Daoist sexual and breathwork practices.
• Cultivate ambition and have shit going on in your life to redirect your sexual energy.
• I’ve never had a support group or an accountability partner but I am sure that helps.
• … Smash your smartphone with a hammer because your romantic relationship is quote, “99% over,” you’re about to move into your car, you’re in between jobs, and you’ll be damned if you will relapse on top of all that…

Such things have their place, even above and beyond addiction, and in this context, they only serve to treat symptoms. (Aside from, perhaps, Sacred Sexuality practices, but they too, require you to surrender to be most effective.)

We wrestle not against flesh and blood but powers and principalities.

That is to say, demons, the root of your physical experience lies beyond sight.

You can spend your entire life playing whack-a-mole with temptation, or you could unplug the machine and play something else entirely.

Parting Thoughts

In my life, a pattern that has repeated is that I do everything the hardest way possible, and through sheer exhaustion of all other options, stumble into troves of pearls.

I cured my porn addiction by accident… after ‘giving up.’ In this moment, I still don’t know how much I care. (And, if it’s all the same-)

And with these three pillars – surrender, facing the void, and an identity shift – I am able to post-hoc make sense of what happened, and maintain my new state of Being. (Focus/Vibration.)

We are told that life is a struggle, that things worth doing are hard.

… and that’s not what the mystics said.

“My yoke is easy, my burden is light.” ~ Matthew 11:30

“The softest thing in the world
Rides roughshod over the strongest.
No-thing enters no-space.
This teaches me the benefit of no-action.” ~ Lao Tzu

While this next quote is of a different flavor, it keeps the trinity going:

“The punishment of desire is the agony of unfulfillment.” ~ Hermes Trismegistus

And that still goes for noble desires.