Starting over, Sept 8th 2013.

Re: Keeping it real.

Glad to hear ya rocked out hard, Zed...nothing like a good gig to get the juices flowing. 8)

 

Re: Keeping it real.

This was SO powerful I just HAD to thank you for it!

Keep On, Mon!

 

Re: Keeping it real.

Ha! - thanks fcj, I hear you mate, it's very true. I didn't sleep much as I had been so pulverised by the music, but it was balanced out yesterday ok.

Guy - glad it hit a chord my friend!

JDoe - I can't put into words how extreme they are my man - it's a shame you just missed them play over there in Feb. It was the most intensely challenging 2.5 hours of non-stop catharsis, incantatory repetition and dark, dark noise that just filled the room/me up with light. Spoke with Gira briefily after the gig and he was a true gentleman. Amazing. When they hit the first chord you could feel the entire crowd buckle and almost fall back with the volume and noise of it - proper insane physical battering! I'm still buzzing.

Anyway...

All is well on Day 15, having a great weekend so far and got a lot more to look forward to. Porn isn't even near the horizon.

I've drunk a little too much coffee and am quite mental, but in a good way.

 

Re: Keeping it real.

Wow, what a magnificent weekend. Had a great new friend come and stay at mine for a few days and we had a real blast, and had a whole load of friends old and new round all day yesterday, sitting round chatting, laughing, getting real deep in great conversation, playing music, grazing all day on a big old spread... wonderful time. It was everything that is important in my life.

And yet... I found myself surfing a bit when I went to bed, looking through some tumblr sites that I often check out for inspiration for my various creative projects and allowed myself a swerve onto an erotica tumblr site via a beautiful artistic image of a nude - erotica's not porn right?... That's the story that flipped into my pea-brain as I found myself beginning to scroll through, almost believing that this really was a different thing to porn, until I just snapped out of it and shut it down. Woke up feeling a bit wrong this morning, but I'm not resetting as it was a very short foray - I just need to work on the time-lag between veering in this direction and actually facing up to what is really going on, as well as just simply recognising when I'm moving in to trick myself into thinking what I'm doing is ok.

The availability and ubiquitousness of these images will never go away, so the only thing option is to adjust my approach. I went to a wonderful painting exhibition last week, of visceral depictions of war, landscapes and social underclasses of the time, and right at the end there was a gorgeous painting of two women, one clothed and the other nude, the nude one with the most beautiful form, and once again there were the old feelings of lizard-brain excitement arising, like Pavlov's dog, that I'm so used to. I'm not going to avoid nude art as I love it, and it was interesting standing there feeling it all out and appreciating what I was seeing - the truthful and delicate depiction of a female human being, glowing with pathos and calm beauty, whilst also noticing this fucking maniac inside switch into an automatic mode of scrabbling about making little plans of how to get more of the same later on for a wank.

There's so much work to do with this yet, but there's a lot of work to do with everything in life so bring it on please and thank you.

 

Re: Keeping it real.

Keeping on keeping on here, all well and good, lots of pulls to use the porn, lots of decisions not to do so.

Yoga is just getting better and better, and helps me keep on track with this here business and so much else. I'm having an operation on my leg in a couple of weeks which will mean no yoga for a couple of months, which I'm gutted, and anxious, about, but I'm planning on working around it to the best of my abilities and will aim for more mediation I guess.

I'm noticing a recent swelling of goodwill in my life, from me to others and others to me in equal measure, and my usually sociable and friendly nature is blooming into something new, attracting great new friends, connecting more with strangers in the day-to-day, being more outspoken and generally being more confident and lighter - I think it has a fair bit to do with not having the weight of a secret addiction hanging off me, and much to do with all that is coming through from the yoga. My real nature, which has always been quite apparent but a little kept under wraps, is starting to properly emerge into the world and it feels great.

I'm doing a 2 minute headstand every day at the end of yoga now, followed by a supplication to balance the posture, and in this pose quietly feeling gratitude for everything I have, head to the floor. It's a magical little practice, and it keeps me on track in the daytime when I'm tempted to just piss on my own chips with old habits.

 

Re: Keeping it real.

Very positive report. You're giving encouragement to us all. Keep on going.

 

Re: Keeping it real.

Hi Zed,

Sorry that the operation will affect your yoga. Sounds like meditation and other activity might fill in? Can you do upper body type activity?

About the goodwill... yes it is great. I walk into places and people just spontaneously talk to me... they open up and smile and just talk. I think we give off very strange energy when mired in pornography use and compulsive masturbation. Hormones messed up and weird signals... also we must carry a lot of latent shame that people notice...

You are 20% of the way to your goal. What can I or anyone else here do to help you make it Zed? Any ideas on what would help this time?

 

Re: Keeping it real.

Hi Zed,

I read your last posts and recognized my own thought processes in there. What you call you "pea brain", I call my bonobo chimp brain. It is surprisingly good at deceiving my so called "rational" brain. I am in no position to offer advice, as my counter will indicate, but my thoughts are with you for your operation and I wish you a speedy recovery.

Bodhi

 

Re: Keeping it real.

Thanks Bodhi, I appreciate your thoughts.

fcj - thank you so much for that simple question of how you can help me, it really touched me and is the answer in itself. I'm very glad to have the company of men like yourself here. Your innate goodness comes through very clearly from your posts, and is seen and appreciated. Love and respect to you mate.

allpoots, your use of the word 'encouragement' is very timely. I had a long conversation with a friend about the word 'encourage' a couple of nights ago, and it is a word I'm taking on as a kind of personal motto now - to engender courage in myself and others, and to seek to foster momentum towards what is wholesome and nurturing in myself and those I come into contact with in whatever way. Been some big shifts going on around here lately.

 

Re: Keeping it real.

Thanks for that. It's great motivation. I'm looking forward to experiencing that. Almost everyone with long term abstinence has mentioned it at some time or other.

 

Re: Keeping it real.

Makes total sense. This is so great to hear Z. Your eloquence and humor, I'm sure will draw many people as you become more free.

 

Re: Keeping it real.

I mentioned elsewhere that I've noticed myself making and maintaining eye contact much more. And not consciously, I just notice during or after. I'm also noticing how long other people maintain eye contact if you do so. I'm realizing that I may have come off as weird before by not doing so. I think small things like these add to others wanting to be around you, and a smile like laughter is infectious and makes others want to be around you. Such small things that can really start to change the way you experience the world.

The most interesting thing to me is that it's like my mind/body wants to make the eye contact. It's not conscious. Pretty sure my eye contact prior to No PMO would have just been creepy if I maintained it!

Anyways, glad to hear things are going strong.

 

Re: Keeping it real.

Yeah it's a big thing, allowing oneself to be really present in the presence of others. My friends would describe me as a confident, self-contained person I think, yet in my inner world it has been the case that there's often been a certain kind of squirming and desire to make myself scarce when I've been really seen by someone, or if I feel they're really taking interest, and this is now changing significantly into my meeting them with genuine, non-manufactured joy and mutual interest. Some of it is the no-pmo lifestyle, some of it is my deepening connection with life through yoga and the other various stuff I'm doing and reading at the moment. My friendship circles are shifting too, accommodating newer people who I am able to connect with on a deep level, and releasing older ties that are no longer serving either myself or the other, and simultaneously encouraging a deepening with older friends who I have always wanted a more substantial relationship with.

Once I found a buzzard that had been shot in the wing, and my then girlfriend and I took it to a vet, and for the drive there the buzzard and I were looking into each other's eyes, just a foot or so apart. He was completely pure, free and wild, there was no recoiling or shiftiness, no shame, no fear (once he'd ascertained I wasn't going to kill him) - just purity and clarity and space, unencumbered by self-consciousness. He was a true example of his species, perfect and final and fully inhabiting his own true nature. I'll never forget his eyes. I think we can embody this depth of being in ourselves with enough work and love, with the bonus of being self-aware and therefore having the capacity to give to others from this place too.

Chopping away the extraneous bullshit that has cluttered my life is the priority for me at the moment. Pmo is certainly one of the grossest and least subtle of the blocks to really living the life I want to live, and dropping that is making so much more room for the right doors to open into where I want to be. Alongside and part of this is to clear out the physical and mental blocks I've been living with in my life, through yoga, therapy and meditation, keeping healthy, keeping true to my word, staying present, and laughing at the divine absurdity of it all this whole while.

 

Re: Keeping it real.

Love it mate...absolutely beautiful. I feel like we're walking alngside one another when I read your words. It brings up real emotion for me.

Big love bro. 8)

 

Re: Keeping it real.

It's wonderful how a lot of people here don't just quit pmo but change their entire life as it seems. You're on your way to becoming a better person indeed Zed.

I had a similar experience as you with that bird. It's so tragic to have a wounded animal look at you and you look directly into his soul.

 

Re: Keeping it real.

Great post Zed. Thanks for taking the time to write it. Beautifully done.

 

Re: Keeping it real.

Indeed.

 

Re: Keeping it real.

Z. This seems to be the high ground that many of eventually find ourselves. I am there and I can't go back! It seems it takes getting to know our self-sabotaging quick fixes and rejecting them, in order to know who we really want to be. I find it a liberating place to be in spite of all the effort.

 

Re: Keeping it real.

YES!!!

 

Re: Keeping it real.

How's he hanging today Z.? Still laughing at the divine absurdity of it all?