Thoughts on NOFAP?

[Xenophon]

Sorry, but NOFAP sounds like some activist organization. As in, "NOFAP protesters today clashed with Antifa activists in the latest in a series of increasingly violent confrontations..."

 

[Wintruz]

Specifically personal experience as I am not too interested in scientific (edit: or philosophical) guesswork found in many studies.

I've done:

• complete no sex/fap
• no fap but having sexual intercourse with strangers
• no fap, no sex with strangers, but sex with partner
• fap + sex with strangers
• fap + sex with partner
• only fap max once a day
• excessive fap (1-3 times a day)

I've tried all of these for at least a period of 3 months at a stretch.

With the exception of excessive fap, which was a bit draining and demotivating... I didn't notice ANY significant differences between all the other categories.

In essence NOFAP is a religious incursion into areas of interest to very online, young, Western men/boys. It's packaged in a way that's designed for maximum accessibility to that targeted demographic (memes, gamer language, etc.). Whatever their claims, its proponents aren't concerned with the spiritual empowerment of men or an increase in testosterone. They're concerned with pleasing YHVH. Because neuroses around sex has been such a storied aspect of our species' traumatic evolutionary history, they don't have to work hard to revive a (thankfully) dying out, yet pernicious sense that men are doing something wrong. Actually I think that is a sense that assails men generally, let alone sexually. This is not to say that a life compelled by pornography is a good idea. There are many reasons why directing sexual energies into encounters with others or into genuine self-exploration (something which pornography counters) gives us more strength.

I'm a bi Leo who works mostly with the Vampyric current; to say that sensuality is important to me would be an understatement. However, I have come to appreciate balance in these things. Purity has pleasures of its own. I have also learnt that a high sex drive is an incredibly valuable source of naturally reoccurring energy. There's nothing wrong with using that in the way that comes naturally but so too can it be transmuted into energy for self-cultivation and the evolution of consciousness. Based on my experience, I'd say that to have a wide array of tools in the bag is the best approach. Have the strength of Will to abstain when needed/desired, learn the skill of having orgasms without ejaculation (see Chia and Arava's The Multi-Orgasmic Man) and have the lack of hang ups to really let go/let your mind be blown when that feels right too.

 

[Malebolgia]

I've been celibate for a couple of years now and while i have seen the spiritual benefits, sometimes i feel like i want to off myself due to the misery that it brings.

 

[Robert Ramsay]

NOFAP? Lol no.

Putting aside the fact that it's associated with those Proud Boy nutters who got fooled into eating raw onions to "boost their testosterone"...


No. Just no.

 

[Xenophon]

NOFAP? Lol no.

Putting aside the fact that it's associated with those Proud Boy nutters who got fooled into eating raw onions to "boost their testosterone"...


No. Just no.

That's where the magick comes in. Any guy who munches raw onions has to use the sexomancy to hook up. 'Specially now that he's got excess testosterone coursing through him like vril through a a Bull(wer) Lytton.

 

[Yazata]

nutters

You mean no-nutters

 

[Aeternus]

Honestly, all this NoFap stuff seems BS to me to say the least.

I mean, to those who like NNN and NoFap or find NoFap as cure for pornography addiction, then sure, go for it.

On the other hand, still, the accent NoFap puts on NoFapping is exaggerated at times.

And honestly, when you talk NoFap then be sure to find channels like FarFromWeak and also which are scamming people with buying masculinity courses. It's all plastered on YouTube and YouTube doesn't do a thing about it.

No channels are banned, and their BS advice regarding NoFap and pornography continues.

But overall NoFap is good, especially since for those who have pornography addictions, to work better on getting more motivated to quit the addiction

 

[stratamaster78]

Magick reasons aside it is not healthy for Men’s prostate to go excessive amounts of time without clearing things out.

Dead serious you can develop serious health issues from it.

Like most things moderation is the way to go.

 

[Xenophon]

Magick reasons aside it is not healthy for Men’s prostate to go excessive amounts of time without clearing things out.

Dead serious you can develop serious health issues from it.

Like most things moderation is the way to go.

There are cleanings besides the Rite of the Right Hand, no? Reference the story of Onan and why YHWH smote him. (Gen 38:9) I mean, why does the U.S. Navy have a contingent of Marines on every vessel? Because sheep would be too obvious. Am I right?

 

[stratamaster78]

There are cleanings besides the Rite of the Right Hand, no? Reference the story of Onan and why YHWH smote him. (Gen 38:9) I mean, why does the U.S. Navy have a contingent of Marines on every vessel? Because sheep would be too obvious. Am I right?

I don’t know about all that.

But doing it yourself is what you have immediate control over.

 

[BragR]

I completed a 90-day streak of no fap.

 

[KjEno186]

I'm not one to claim that there is only one right way, so take this bit of information as yet another opinion.

From New Pathways in Psychology: Maslow and the Post-Freudian Revolution by Colin Wilson...

I was lecturing to Maslow’s class at Brandeis University in early 1967. I was speaking about the peculiar power of the human imagination. I can imagine trapping my thumb in the door, and wince as if I had actually done it. I can go to see a film, and come out of the cinema feeling as if I have been on a long journey. Even so, it must be admitted that imagination only provides a dim carbon copy of the original experience. I may try to recall a particularly happy day, and even re-experience some of its pleasures; but compared to the original experience, it is like paste jewellery compared to the real thing. The hero of Barbusse’s novel Hell, trying to recall the experience of watching a woman undress, admits: ‘These words are all dead. They leave untouched, powerless to affect it, the intensity of what was’. Proust, tasting a madeleine dipped in tea, recalls with sudden intensity the reality of his childhood: but that is a fluke. He cannot do it by an ordinary act of imagination.​

​

Yet the matter of sex appears to be an exception to this rule. A man can conjure up some imaginary scene with a girl undressing, and he responds physically as if there were a girl undressing in the room: his imagination can even carry him to the point of a sexual climax. In this one respect, man has completely surpassed the animals: here is a case where the mental ‘act’ needs no object . . .​

​

At this point, Maslow interrupted me to point out that this is not quite true; monkeys often masturbate. I asked him if he had ever seen a monkey masturbating in total isolation, without the stimulus of a female monkey anywhere in the vicinity. He thought for a moment, then said he hadn’t.​

​

Even if he had, it would not have basically affected my point. If monkeys can do problems for fun, perhaps they have more imagination than we give them credit for. But the interesting point is that in the matter of sex, man can achieve repeatedly what Proust achieved momentarily tasting the madeleine: a physical response as if to reality. Absurd as it sounds, masturbation is one of the highest faculties mankind has yet achieved. But its importance is in what it presages: that one day, the imagination will be able to achieve this result in all fields. If all perception is ‘intentional’, due to a ‘reaching out’, a ‘focusing’, on the part of the perceiver, then it ought to be possible to reconstruct any reality by making the necessary effort of focusing. We have only been kept from this recognition by the old, false theory of ‘passive perception’.​

​

Now let's contrast this idea with one found in The Rise of the New Puritans by Noah Rothman...

Around the turn of the seventeenth century, the austere preacher John “Decalogue” Dod elaborated on some of the beliefs that contributed to Puritanism’s prudish reputation. As his nickname suggests, Dod’s sermons tended to focus on the Ten Commandments. He specialized in teasing out the penumbra of meaning within them that only the keenest of trained eyes could discern. One seemingly straightforward commandment, “Thou shalt not commit adultery,” was to Dod a deep well from which a shrewd biblical scholar could draw whatever he wanted.​

​

In Dod’s estimation, the Seventh Commandment implicitly forbade almost anything that could conceivably lead to temptation. It disallowed “wantonness” that might encourage carousing. It precluded most dancing, “because the action is nothing but a profession of an unchaste heart.” Indeed, the “unchaste touches and gesticulations” encouraged by the act of mixed-gender dancing struck one heir to Dod’s maximalism, Increase Mather, as having a “palpable tendency toward evil” due entirely to the impure thoughts stimulated by the act.​

​

But that’s not all. Dod believed that the Seventh Commandment also tacitly objected to theatrical performances, “which serve for nothing but to nourish filthiness.” It proscribed indolence, including everything from “lazing in bed” to “vain sports,” and it vetoed all but the most productive carnal pursuits. “The Seventh Commandment,” Michael Winship observed, “forbade not only adultery, but any kind of non-marital sex, including masturbation, sodomy, and bestiality. Even thinking about illicit sex, Dod warned, was ‘hateful to God.’”​

​

The point of Rothman's book is really a critique of the 'Progressive Left', which he points out has assumed many of the worst characteristics of the 'Fundamentalist Right'. (But that would be a discussion for another thread!) Of course, the No-Fap movement should not necessarily be Puritanical as long as its adherents don't engage in the 'meddlesomeness' so common among religious zealots:

This book is about those very people: the busybodies, the hecklers, the moralizers, the meddlers, and the zealots. It’s a book about a particular human trait, one that waxes at certain periods in history and wanes in others, but that is always with us. That is, our hostility toward the [supposedly] aberrant and our instinctive desire to impose consistency on our surroundings.​

​

...

H. L. Mencken famously defined puritanism as “the haunting fear that someone, somewhere may be happy.” It’s a contemptuous line, but one that contains a grain of truth about any philosophy with utopian designs. The perfect is often the enemy of the good, as the saying goes. It should be added that the pursuit of the perfect is also the enemy of joy. - The Rise of the New Puritans, Noah Rothman​

 

[Robert Ramsay]

I prefer Ambrose Bierce's definition: "A Puritan is someone who gets a guilty pleasure out of denying themselves something."

And also the oldest joke I know that is still funny: "The Puritans were against sex standing up, because they feared it might lead to dancing."

 

[Xenophon]

I prefer Ambrose Bierce's definition: "A Puritan is someone who gets a guilty pleasure out of denying themselves something."

And also the oldest joke I know that is still funny: "The Puritans were against sex standing up, because they feared it might lead to dancing."

This kind of puts the old Billy Idol song, "Dancin' With Myself," into a new light, no?

 

[pixel_fortune]

It seems to me like the analogue is fasting and sleep deprivation.

Sleep is good for you, food is good for you. Neither should be pathologised.

But there is value in seeing what the experience of controlled deprivation is like.

Fasting and sleep deprivation can have magical effects so maybe orgasm deprivation can too, just not like, superpowers

I also think that... it's generally an empowering thing to know what you can and can't go without, and what the experience of going without is like. People [in rich countries] with no magical leanings whatsoever would still benefit from doing a 24-hour fast at least once, just to get to know their body better, to learn the different between real and hungry and the body's random cravings

So I think most people should try NOFAP at least once, for whatever duration counts as "longer than you would ever normally go without" but not make it a whole lifestyle - the equivalent of the 24 hour food fast

 

[Xenophon]

It seems to me like the analogue is fasting and sleep deprivation.

Sleep is good for you, food is good for you. Neither should be pathologised.

But there is value in seeing what the experience of controlled deprivation is like.

Fasting and sleep deprivation can have magical effects so maybe orgasm deprivation can too, just not like, superpowers

I also think that... it's generally an empowering thing to know what you can and can't go without, and what the experience of going without is like. People [in rich countries] with no magical leanings whatsoever would still benefit from doing a 24-hour fast at least once, just to get to know their body better, to learn the different between real and hungry and the body's random cravings

So I think most people should try NOFAP at least once, for whatever duration counts as "longer than you would ever normally go without" but not make it a whole lifestyle - the equivalent of the 24 hour food fast

I agree it's a fine thing to know what one can do without. (Still I keep remembering the "Seinfeld" episode devoted to 90's nofap, before it grew up and got itself an upper-case acronym.)

 

[Jackson]

I find it mildly tiring in my middle years.

 

[Xenophon]

I find it mildly tiring in my middle years.

NOFAP is a drain? Or...you know...the other? Never mind. I don't need an answer I decided.

 

[Jackson]

NOFAP is a drain? Or...you know...the other? Never mind. I don't need an answer I decided.

ackhually, I think it works in either direction

 

[Xenophon]

"Drained if you do; drained if you don't," as it were.