Monk Mode Celibacy

[TrainedLogosmotion]

This is a tough battle, in some ways harder than marriage or being an actual monk.

Many of us want chaste, trad wives. I don't think God will reward us with one without any concrete, properly directed efforts on our part to become 'clean'.

Not saying that's the only reason to do this of course, but I'm just highlighting one of the more common yearnings.

Some things that have helped me commit to monk mode celibacy, which I would like to share with you, and I think are helpful:

- Attend liturgy every single Sunday. No excuses. Also go to other events held at the church outside of Sundays. Stay for every single coffee hour/meal and make an effort to make these people your new family. Share phone numbers.

- Commit to daily prayer once in the morning and once at night at the very minimum. Use a prayer book first and if you feel your prayer arise, do extra private prayers also. This is absolutely essential in keeping you aligned. When lustful thoughts hit you, say the Jesus prayer over them. Make the sign of the cross.

- Keep icons all over your home so they are watching you wherever you are in the house. Keep them in your pocket, in your car, etc. Let Christ and His Saints always be at the forefront of your mind. Remember, they are watching, and rooting for you.

- Either get a dumb dinosaur phone or an app like MinimalistPhone to dumb down your phone. Use a porn blocker like BulldogBlocker. Try to limit your phone and internet usage as much as possible. We have to protect our eyes.

- Quit drinking alcohol. It's a known trigger for our lusts, and for many of us it has a direct correlation with our full-fledged fornicating days - it was the fuel. Don't even go to bars, or even events, where heavy drinking is involved, even if this means ghosting family members on holidays. Go to the church instead. You have a Christian family. We all came from Adam and Eve. Look to verses like Matt 12:48. God is first.

- Make new friends. Be manly about cutting ties with those connected to your 'old man'. Don't be beta about this. Women have a much tougher time letting go of historical friends. As men we cannot do this, we need to block certain people and move on.

- Be careful what music, movies, and TV you watch. This needs a complete overhaul. All of these can be triggers for our lusts. They have a spiritual effect on our minds and can lead us astray. A lot of it is specifically designed to trigger your lust like certain rap/pop music, soft core sex scenes, and commercials.

- Don't overeat. Get your diet under control. Fast. Falling to gluttony is the first line of defense that allows the evil one to attack you further. Keep this in check. Don't eat to the point of becoming bloated.

- Stay out of gyms. Staring at hot girls in yoga pants after lifting weights and pumping up your T is going to make your hormones go wild. You can work out at home or in nature. This is almost as bad as staring at girls shaking butts in the club, but for me it's even worse of a trigger.

- When you do see a woman that's very sexy, do your best to not even look at her. Don't look at her butt. Consider it a win every time you don't feed into her ego or let satan use her as a conduit to attack you further.

- If you fall, don't turn from God. Pray immediately. Repent immediately. Don't let it fester. This is when you should be attacking it the most when it's showing its head. Fighting it at these times with prayer/repentance will weaken its effect on you greatly.

- Confess to your priest. And not only him, but also to your brothers in your parish in person. Let go of your pride and shame. Tell them about your struggle. This not only blesses you but it blesses them as well.

These are just some things that help me. I will say I'm doing a very good job compared to my old self. All of this really does help immensely.

For all of you other Orthodox men doing monk mode celibacy in the world, what has helped you?

 

[analyst_green]

I'm trying most of these things myself as well, I think this is a good program overall. Committing to a minimum of 100 Jesus prayer repetitions each night has really helped keep the mind focused and in check throughout the next day.

The only caveats I would mention concern fasting and the gym. Taking on more fasting than you can handle can actually backfire and cause you to act out in other ways. But certainly at least giving up on meat for a while is very helpful.

I actually think the gym helps me transmute the sexual energy. If I don't lift heavy weights, I start to feel the tension build up. It can be hard resisting looking at the women there, but honestly not much harder than resisting opening a porn site when I'm on my computer. The benefits of the gym outweigh the risks. Hiking in the woods has also been great. It helps put our mind on God's created world, unfiltered by man.

I would also add get up out of bed as soon as you wake up if you can't sleep anymore. The lustful thoughts are strongest when I awake, if I lie there and let them fester it gets worse. But by getting up and getting my day started, their hold on me weakens.

 

[Iacobus]

Good tips. I am blessed to have a nice gym nearby that rarely has any thots in yoga pants around. I also find that one of my biggest triggers is boredom. Keeping your days busy is a great way to avoid temptation although I still struggle with this.

Regular confession is really key too. Personally there's only so many times I can go back to my priest with such a humiliating sin.

 

[TrainedLogosmotion]

I'm trying most of these things myself as well, I think this is a good program overall. Committing to a minimum of 100 Jesus prayer repetitions each night has really helped keep the mind focused and in check throughout the next day.

The only caveats I would mention concern fasting and the gym. Taking on more fasting than you can handle can actually backfire and cause you to act out in other ways. But certainly at least giving up on meat for a while is very helpful.

I actually think the gym helps me transmute the sexual energy. If I don't lift heavy weights, I start to feel the tension build up. It can be hard resisting looking at the women there, but honestly not much harder than resisting opening a porn site when I'm on my computer. The benefits of the gym outweigh the risks. Hiking in the woods has also been great. It helps put our mind on God's created world, unfiltered by man.

I would also add get up out of bed as soon as you wake up if you can't sleep anymore. The lustful thoughts are strongest when I awake, if I lie there and let them fester it gets worse. But by getting up and getting my day started, their hold on me weakens.

100 a day is a good rule. My priest gave me a rule when I started as a catechuman that was very simple: go around the prayer rope once in the morning and once at night. Mine has 100 beads on it.

I certainly think the gym can be beneficial if we can keep our lust under control. I found that it was too much for me. Young college girls in yoga pants doing yoga, squats, etc was just a huge trigger. I prefer low stress activities like paddleboarding in nature because it reminds me of God's beautiful creation and I feel closer to Him. I'm also extremely sensitive to music and I cannot bear the music played at gyms. There's also the mirrors. It triggers my pride and vanity.

Fasting is definitely harder if you're doing weight training or high stress cardio and need to replenish. My priest told me to fast Wednesday and Fridays throughout the year from meat as a baseline, and he said to increase that to stricter levels in a reasonable manner. For example if you're going to liturgy and feeling dizzy and you cannot focus on hymns or pray, then your fasting has become false humility and a detriment to your spiritual growth. The hard core monk fast is an ideal, even to the point of some only surviving on the eucharist, however these are not feats intended for us laymen.

My overall fasting consists of eating one main meal a day. So basically intermittent fasting. I drink coffee in the morning, have a large midday meal around 3pm, and then maybe a light snack like fruit or nuts within the fasting window at various times. I try not to eat past sundown as it disrupts my sleep.

I like your point about getting up immediately and not lying in bed. It's easier for demons to assault us when we are in and out of sleep and experiencing urinary or T erections. Once we are able to say the Jesus prayer/call out to Jesus even when asleep, dreaming, or lucid, then I think we are at a much higher level.

 

[TrainedLogosmotion]

Good tips. I am blessed to have a nice gym nearby that rarely has any thots in yoga pants around. I also find that one of my biggest triggers is boredom. Keeping your days busy is a great way to avoid temptation although I still struggle with this.

Regular confession is really key too. Personally there's only so many times I can go back to my priest with such a humiliating sin.

Sounds like a good gym. Very true about boredom. That can be a quick trigger. Also stress.

 

[scorpion]

In regard to sexual transmutation, it's very helpful to have a highly engaging creative project to be working on. Whether art, music, writing, building things, coding, etc... something where you apply your intelligence, creativity and effort to make something that didn't previously exist. This is essentially an act of creation, and therefore utilizes the same sexual energy that drives us toward the creation of new life. And being an act of creation, it also brings us closer to God, the ultimate creator of all things.

If you are a single chaste man and not living in a monastery environment, this is really the best way to keep lust at bay: work tirelessly toward creating something and thereby harness and transmute your sex drive for a more noble purpose.

 

[Get2choppaaa]

In regard to sexual transmutation, it's very helpful to have a highly engaging creative project to be working on. Whether art, music, writing, building things, coding, etc... something where you apply your intelligence, creativity and effort to make something that didn't previously exist. This is essentially an act of creation, and therefore utilizes the same sexual energy that drives us toward the creation of new life. And being an act of creation, it also brings us closer to God, the ultimate creator of all things.

If you are a single chaste man and not living in a monastery environment, this is really the best way to keep lust at bay: work tirelessly toward creating something and thereby harness and transmute your sex drive for a more noble purpose.

Correct me if I'm wrong...I believe there was something to this with Isaac Newton.

Didn't he have a whole bit about lot letting his sexual energy be diverted from his math/inventions or something to that effect? (Or did I get this totally wrong and he was a pervert... 50/50 shot here )

 

[Lawrence87]

A good piece of advice I received:

When you see a beautiful woman and are tempted to look at her lustfully, say a prayer for her. It is unlikely that she has anyone praying for her, especially not anyone Orthodox.

This way we can turn our base impulses into something good for ourselves and for the person we are inclined to lust after.

I also think when we inevitably fall in maintaining our chastity it is important to use it to repent deeply. There can be intense guilt that goes along with masturbation, but I think God permits these falls as long as we are of the mindset that the worst thing we do is jerk off. It is actually a symptom of deeper spiritual wounds that we need to look at. That is not to downplay it either, but for example, when I have fallen in this regard my inclination is to feel terrible about it whereas if I insult someone, or swear at someone in selfish anger I barely feel any guilt whatsoever. As long as that state of imbalance remains, God will keep bringing us to acknowledge the one thing we do feel particularly guilty over.

 

[BrotherAugustine]

In the book “The Watchful Mind,” the anonymous author encourages the readers to use physical beauty as a springboard for your mind: when you see a beautiful face and it begins to stir up passion, meditate on how much more beautiful everyone in Heaven will be. The radiant glory of those in the Kingdom will surpass any base beauty you see on Earth, and since you will perceive it noetically it will not trigger any concupiscence.

 

[Lawrence87]

Declining an impulse is actually a skill that we can train ourselves in.

We should of course not train ourselves in this by putting ourselves in high risk situations where sexual temptation is involved. However one can decide for example to abstain from food for a time and decide during that time to go to the supermarket to buy non food items whilst resisting the urge to buy a snack. This is sufficiently low stakes and would develop self denial.

Another example would be cold showers. Consciously focusing on developing the ability to say no when your body is telling you to switch it off or turn the heat up.

The key component for abstaining from masturbation is being able to deny a strong bodily impulse. There can be a sense when we fail at this to feel like the urges are just too strong, because we fall into them despite our better wishes and judgement. The fact is, and I say this as much to myself as to anyone else, the urges are not too strong, we are just too weak. But therein lies the hope. In the church various Saints are often referred to as "Spiritual Athletes" and this is very apt, because like sports athletes, they arrived at excellence through training. And we can do many things to train ourselves in self denial

 

[Blade Runner]

In the book “The Watchful Mind,” the anonymous author encourages the readers to use physical beauty as a springboard for your mind: when you see a beautiful face and it begins to stir up passion, meditate on how much more beautiful everyone in Heaven will be. The radiant glory of those in the Kingdom will surpass any base beauty you see on Earth, and since you will perceive it noetically it will not trigger any concupiscence.

The rigors and monotony of life are stumbling blocks to keep this mindful and sharp attitude or mentality. Thanks for the post though, as this is a very important exercise that is accurate, and our hope as this age passes.

 

[KulturedKaveman]

If you want my two cents - you maintain celibacy by trying to break your celibacy. Most women who’d be down for a hook up are so arrogant and boring you go… “wait, why am I doing this again?” I guess that’s one benefit of the age we live in.

I seriously believe most fornication happens for validation. Never mind pleasure or love. It’s to look good in the eyes of our friends, both men and women. Once you see it you won’t be able to unsee it.

My point: I’ve been thinking about the whole “black pill / incel” thing and it’s like “what do you want?” Sad reality is for any guy with all American big ones in their pocket, it doesn’t have to be that way. Netherlands and Thailand exist. It’s not the pleasure or experience people are after. It’s the validation and having your brahs slap you in the back. The feeling of being chosen for men. For women it’s about having the hottest commodity to show off to your friends. Sex has devolved into consumerism. May the lord have mercy.

 

[Lawrence87]

If you want my two cents - you maintain celibacy by trying to break your celibacy. Most women who’d be down for a hook up are so arrogant and boring you go… “wait, why am I doing this again?” I guess that’s one benefit of the age we live in.

Forgive me for saying it, but this is terrible advice.

The way to maintain chastity is to avoid situations that might tempt you to fornicate. To pray that God protects you from such temptations and grants you strength. To read the Holy Fathers and how they advise us to struggle against lust and try to put this in action. To attend church regularly and partake of Holy Communion and Confession. None of the Church Fathers suggest that we become chaste by trying to hook up with people in order to realise how empty it is.

 

[KulturedKaveman]

Forgive me for saying it, but this is terrible advice.

The way to maintain chastity is to avoid situations that might tempt you to fornicate. To pray that God protects you from such temptations and grants you strength. To read the Holy Fathers and how they advise us to struggle against lust and try to put this in action. To attend church regularly and partake of Holy Communion and Confession. None of the Church Fathers suggest that we become chaste by trying to hook up with people in order to realise how empty it is.

You’re forgiven haha. I guess I’m just jaded and realizing the futility of it all. It’s a hard medicine to take. And when you see the consumerism aspect it gets very dark.

 

[Lawrence87]

You’re forgiven haha. I guess I’m just jaded and realizing the futility of it all. It’s a hard medicine to take. And when you see the consumerism aspect it gets very dark.

I'm not disputing that aspect of what you said. Just the idea of trying to maintain celebacy by trying break it.

You are absolutely right in the rest of what you said. Sex is an empty thing these days, most people do it for self validation and gratification. Especially for attractive women, you can use an app to have sex with a different man every night in the same way you might use an app to order food. We are being pushed towards a world where people cooming is the highest ideal.

 

[TrainedLogosmotion]

Today at the Theophany the priest blessed the bottles of Holy Water. The windows were radiating with Light when he was doing the prayers. It was something I'd never seen happen in our church before. I took a bottle of Holy Water home and sprinkled in on my bed and said some prayers. Here is why:

I'm finding that, despite my progress in remaining celibate and eliminating porn usage/masturbation, demonic lust attacks are happening when I'm in sleep paralysis, i.e. nocturnal emissions AKA wet dreams. It's my current Achilles heel.

There's a rhythmic cycle to them. The passion/lust is certainly burning inside of me and it rears its head about after about a month of abstaining. I notice also before these attacks that I will be giving permission for this to arise through my staring, thoughts, touching during the day.

I do believe marriage would dim this fire, but there may be times even in marriage that this may arise, so it's not only for guys in monk mode to understand this. For example, maybe our wife is sick, away, or unable to be intimate for some reason. In this case, we still need to be in control. It's a battle worth recognizing and winning.

When this demonic attack happens, I've been able to conquer it before through prayers/calling out to Christ when I become lucid enough in the dream or I can break out of the sleep paralysis, but sometimes the demonic force overpowers me and it just happens so fast - within a couple seconds it seems like there's an immediate erection and then ejaculation follows and I have only seconds to respond, even frustratingly realizing only once I'm mid ejaculation and cannot reverse it.

The most recent one, before it happened, I was in sleep paralysis and I had this feeling that something evil was closing in on me. I actually had the instinct to reach for my gun, thinking it was someone breaking in my home, but I couldn't move, and of course I didn't realize I was dreaming at the time or that this was a supernatural evil. Then I went under the spell and it was too late for me to realize what had happened. Frustrating.

What usually follows this ominous presence for me is a demon masquerading as a beautiful woman, or once I'm lured in, even someone that would be extremely embarrassing or shameful for me to lust over, and obviously in actuality/reality do not, like a grandmother, but it's the demon using this to trick me with attraction and/or drag me further into a pit of shame. There have been times when I called out to Christ, became lucid, and I saw the mask come off and it shows its hideous, terrifying true face and I awake from the 'nightmare'.

The good thing is that I've got this all much more under control. I used to be fighting against fornication, porn, or other types of masturbation, but now it's these nocturnal fights when I'm most vulnerable. This seems sort of like a boss level.

Some things that help me are to remember and remind myself that there may be an ominous/evil presence that precedes this trick/masquerade, and to try to call out to Christ/pray, even if asleep, to practice the Jesus prayer and sign of cross internally before bed or when conscious during the day, so it becomes a lucidity tool. There won't be much time to reverse it if you take the bait.

Another thing that helps is to try to recognize if the demonic figure changes to something really outlandish like a grandmother or someone like this, because that should be an obvious sign that it's not of your own doing - it's trying to make you disgusted with yourself. Then you can snap out of the spell.

Find out what your cycle or rhythm is. When you feel yourself really burning with passion and lust, how long is that into your abstaining? Is it a month? A week? It's important to try and know around when so we can be especially on guard at this time and prepare ourselves for this battle.

There's a pattern to this stuff. I believe we can memorize this line of attack and preemptively counter it to our spiritual advantage. I don't have a full grasp of this yet. It's an ongoing battle. But I am certainly starting to understand it more, as I did with the fornication/porn/masturbation previously.

And I understand some in the 'no fap sphere' will claim these aren't 'relapses' and that they are just the body's way of 'clearing' old sperm or whatever. I don't really buy that because for me when it happens it's pretty much always a demonic nightmare/deception situation, and it shows a lack of higher level discernment on my part. It shows I've got work to do.

I have experienced this physical 'clearing', which may indeed be a necessary physical process, but it's been almost like a small dab of precum/urine and is definitely not an entire load of ejaculate + full blown orgasm. That's different and I would agree that it's not anything to worry about.

However, I disagree that the full blown orgasm/entire load of ejaculate scenario is totally out of our control. We feed it and we can stop it. It's a sign that we are still sick with lust/passion in unhealthy/sinful ways and can commit to further purification.

Anyone else have these demonic attacks coupled with nocturnal emissions/wet dreams?

 

[KomnenAl]

And I understand some on the 'no fap sphere' will claim these aren't 'relapses' and that they are just the body's way of 'clearing' old sperm or whatever. I don't really buy that because for me when it happens it's always a horrifying demonic nightmare situation.

I have experienced this physical 'clearing', which may indeed be a necessary physical process, but it's been almost like a small dab of precum/urine and is definitely not an entire load of ejaculate + full blown orgasm. That's different and I would agree that it's not anything to worry about.

However, I disagree that the full blown orgasm/entire load of ejaculate scenario is totally out of our control. We feed it and we can stop it. It's a sign that we are still sick with lust/passion in unhealthy/sinful ways and can commit to further purification.

Anyone else have these demonic attacks coupled with nocturnal emissions/wet dreams?

Yes. When I was on a 4 year streak, I was fighting the same battle (before I relapsed).
I agree with your conlcusions, especially that shifting to outlandish, disgusting and blasphemus apparitions is a give away.
I hadn't pinpoint exactly the frequency of it, but it seems about a month or so between episodes. And it would happen 2-3 nights in a row. Then a month of relative peace.
I didn't have sleep paralysis though during these nightmares.

Ironically, after a relapse last year, these dreams have dissapeared. As long as we fall victim to pron, there is no need for them to attack us in our sleep. Their minions got the job done in real life.

 

[TrainedLogosmotion]

Ironically, after a relapse last year, these dreams have dissapeared. As long as we fall victim to pron, there is no need for them to attack us in our sleep. Their minions got the job done in real life.

Very insightful. I've had the same experience. So while I disagree that they aren't relapses, it's important to understand that sometimes these are signs of spiritual progress, even though they are still an issue in and of themselves.

And here is another distinction:

I talked about this on the old forum but I also had sleep paralysis/demonic attacks where I was literally thrown off my bed. This wasn't even a succubus situation, it was just when I was so deep in a pit in real life with hookers, drugs, alcohol, that I guess it was like the demons gloating and trying to push me over the edge mentally and spiritually.

In this case the clear difference was no masquerading and no tricks - it was just full blown fear and paranoia. Utterly terrifying. If that happens, you know you are really approaching hell. If there is poltergeist without deception I feel that this is extremely dangerous.

I'm not trying to say these are the rule for everyone. We have to use discernment based on our own spiritual states. I think there are some themes, but there is certainly some speculation and probably incorrect assessments I'm making.

 

[KomnenAl]

Certainly, there is guilt involved, but it's not on the same level as masturbation.
From what I've read in the Fathers, it certainly is something to confess to our priest, but the penance for it is only 1 day of abstinance from the Communion Cup (this is also in Leviticus 15:16).

 

[TrainedLogosmotion]

I would also add get up out of bed as soon as you wake up if you can't sleep anymore. The lustful thoughts are strongest when I awake, if I lie there and let them fester it gets worse. But by getting up and getting my day started, their hold on me weakens.

Examples:

Sleep paralysis happens when we are half awake half asleep, and we are more likely to fall into this state when we lie in bed too long, sleep excessively, etc.

So in some ways the line of attack could be our sloth opening up doors to lust demons. I don't know exactly how to articulate that but I think that makes sense.

Drunkenness from alcohol causes people to overlseep and it prevents getting into deep REM sleep, therefore leaving us more susceptible to these half awake states which can lead to sleep paralysis + demonic lust attack + 'wet dream'.