Wet Dreams

Am I dreaming? You're 15 and you're going to stop wet dreams? Without lots of healthy, friendly contact with the opposite sex, too, probably, right? I think that might be like a girl deciding she's going to stop her periods. The Daoists had exercises for both, by the way, but I think their culture was very different, too.

I'm not sure your goal is especially realistic on a planet that is quivering with extreme sexual stimulation: today's ads, the way your classmates dress, the TV shows, the movies. It's a lot for a hunter-gatherer brain.

You would certainly have your work cut out for you! Maybe you should just make your goal to avoid porn and porn-style sexual fantasies. If you do that, you'll already be way ahead of the pack! Just to enhance your sex education, here's an article on why Internet porn is far more drug-like than good old masturbation to orgasm on occasion. http://www.helium.com/items/1655168-understanding-and-explaining-the-ris... You may also find tantra teacher Barry Long's thoughts of interest: http://www.reuniting.info/resources/porn_masturbation_addiction/barry_lo... The goal is to make sure that someday, sex with a partner is a genuinely intimate and fulfilling experience.

Wet dreams are involuntary. Some people find that more time spent with friends and family, exercise, avoiding bingeing on high-glucose foods, avoiding spicy foods, and eating lots of healthy food reduce them, so you *could* experiment with those things, or read more on the Web. But I would let go of the goal of "stopping wet dreams." Be content with any progress...or even no progress at all for now. Your body is "test driving" some circuits it hopes you will use to make babies as soon as possible. (Not recommended, by they way! ) It'll settle down in time.

Probably the men on this forum will have more useful things to say than I do, but those are my thoughts. To summarize: Stay off the porn. Realize that masturbation is a two-edged sword. It relieves you in the short-term, but can make frustration even more intense over the following days. And let the wet dreams do their thing. Be glad your body is healthy and normal.

By the way, welcome! I'll enable you to blog if you like.

Are you sure you are 15 :). You seem to be way ahead of me already. I am not sure how I would have reacted at your age. I am sure it would have been about the same though. By the time I was your age I was lost in my addiction already. I did not have any trouble with wet dreams.
Well now that I have tried stopping I have awoke many times very close. Even tonight it happened. My case now may be different then yours though. At your age it is probable a normal reaction the body is developing like Marnia says. In my case I have been over stimulating for so long my body is trying to compensate. It is trying to get that burst/fix it wants/needs. This process has become very difficult for me. Lots of pain and self doubt. I am getting through it though.

Thanks for posting.

I am glad you are here. You are way ahead of most guys your age in that you now know what is going on. You know how to avoid some of this stuff. As Marnia says though at your age your body is probably having normal reactions that can not be controlled that well. I also agree with her to enjoy having a healthy body and reaction.

I wish I had found a site like this when I were your age. Although I probably would not have looked for it. That is why I say you are way ahead of me at your age. You have come looking for the right help at the right time.

I just want to say please stay away from porn. I know how tempting it is. Trust me I really do. I still fight its lures now. Let your body do its on experimenting. I do not see how you can stop it from developing :). Again the only thing really is to stay away from porn or anything else that couple over stimulate.

If you have any question I am sure I and others can try and answer them or help in some way.

I hope this was helpful. I am having a good day today besides the headache so It should be about as clear as I get :) .

Thanks
please continue to read and write here.
be safe

It's fun having you visit. Since I wrote that earlier post, I thought of two more points you might find useful...or not.

A former sweetheart of mine, who was pretty together sexually...that is, not "repressed," and fully present during lovemaking, told me that when he was your age he figured out that masturbation to orgasm was such an intense experience that he thought it best to "ration" himself. I think he decided on a schedule of every two weeks...but I can't remember. My point is that if you stick to a reasonable schedule, you have a way to discourage yourself from falling into the otherwise natural escalation that tends to occur (because the neurochemical drop afterward can make you even more frustrated).

I'm right now struggling to write an article for PT called "The Wrong Masturbation Adivice?" and I really feel your post is part of what I've been "waiting" for. Right now, therapists are giving out very incomplete advice on this subject. They're (rightfully) trying to avoid the perils of sexual repression, which *can* make sex "forbidden" and therefore drug-like in its effect on the brain. But as I see it, there is little difference between the damage from that "drug trip," and the one that intense Internet porn can evoke because it's such a superstimulant. And therapists aren't warning about it much at all...because they're so busy trying to assure people that masturbation is "normal." Well it is. But it can also easily become compulsive, which never serves the person who gets caught, and can make him/her seek more and more extreme stimulation.

It all comes down to the neurochemical effects to a large degree, and I don't think the psychologists have recognized that widely yet.

The other thing I want to mention is that having a girlfriend can help with balance. Holding hands, adoring someone, and hanging out together is very soothing for pair-bonder brains like ours, even when intercourse isn't an option just yet. Our culture has forgotten that of late.

Looking forward to your further insights! I'll make suer you're enabled to start a blog in case you take a notion to.

wants to see your picture. *chuckle* He won't believe you're 15 until he sees your face. He says he couldn't even make a sentence at that age...and you're as eloquent as a sage.

I told him it's probably due to your careful management of sexual energy.

This came from a young man in Europe, and I share it with his permission. Since he talks about the effects of masturbation, I decided to stick it in this thread. He really gets to the core of the matter: how the way we use our sexual energy can tamper with our perception...and therefore with our choices, our ability to socialize, stay in love, etc. This is what I try to share in Cupid's Poisoned Arrow.

In short, the questions of "Is masturbation/orgasm normal?" and "Is it "healthy?" are valid questions, but they don't get at its psychological (and indirectly, its physical) effects when we overdo it. (And some of us are so sensitive that we notice the effects without going near the usual "excess" marks.)

Marnia,

Thank you very much for all the links and the book. Regarding your theory “Too much sexual stimulation causes habituation between partners (as with the monkeys above) because less and less dopamine is released. And *orgasm* triggers the lower (and lower) dopamine with each copulation.”

I am not fully satisfied with this theory. I have read the research abstracts, but I think they will not really convince people. And they miss the most obvious. It is very simple. In an earlier email you told me that the subtle energy theory was more accurate than the neurochemical theory. I will tell now my story why I think the subtle energy is key. I know it was I who was specifically asked about the research, and that you already know very well about this subtle energy yourself and you have probably heard many stories like mine. However I still want to tell you my story.

When I restrain myself for a couple of weeks, I can feel a kind of energy building up at the bottom of my spine. When I have an orgasm it seems like this energy is released. When I have orgasm again and again, my worldview becomes different. I have less energy to do things, less confidence; I am less energetic and so forth. This discharge is really a discharge.

But when I build up my energy, I can really feel it building up. I can feel this energy present most of the time. When I need it, I can use it, also in sports. However, after three weeks or so, I feel like I need to have a discharge, because I am too full with this energy. Often a wet dream happens then and I feel release.

In fact, it seems my consciousness is influenced by it. It seems like my semen is my consciousness a little bit. Saints say that everything is conscious. Semen is part conscious too! When I release it, it seems my presence has gone away a lot. I have become little and a kind of shadow. In China by the way, sex addicts are called ghosts, which is a way to describe it I guess.

Also if a girl is in love with a man she wants to have the man actually in her, what happens when she receives the seed because the man’s consciousness goes also actually in her. The woman feels great after this happens as you can see here : http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/2067223.stm

However I know now that the prana (kind of electric energy) which is saved by this is really the life force and you save it by restraining. If you can save it, you can later "manipulate it as well" So this is what the yogis do. They restrain themselves sexually and after a few weeks when there is a lot of energy at the base of the spine, they meditate and then the energy moves to higher chakras. They bathe in this orgasmic energy (I have meditated a lot as well). It is pure bliss, your whole body becomes an erection and orgasmic. Besides in this way the energy is saved. Your charkas become open, your dreams will become lucid and you will be in orgasmic love all the time. People will be attracted to you a lot and you will have immediate good connections with people. You can feel energy flowing through your body, your brain will work very fast and you can feel a lot of this electric energy in your body.

However, then you get a wet dream... You can feel everything flowing out of your body... You won't feel any energy in your body anymore, no more bliss.. No more psychic perceptions, no more feeling of orgasmic bliss. It's gone, wasted. You feel like your period of abstention was a kind of dream. You don't believe in spirituality very much anymore.

And if you are sex addict, wow, then life becomes hard.. I know it. When I was 13 and a half (in the second year of high school) I began to masturbate a lot! Before I was a very popular guy, a lot of girls liked me and I had nice friends, almost no problems with schoolwork and I had high grades. I never had much depression, regret, fear or sorrows. Girls seemed to me like nice, beautiful, attractive girls, but not to be feared. However, I became a sex addict in the second year of high school.

Now, girls became arrogant, I was fearful of them. Schoolwork became hard ,and I just passed over to the next grade. I liked less to hang out with friends. What could I do with them? I sensed egoism in them and lust/greed in them.

I preferred girls, but now they were so hard to get... I experienced many problems and sorrows as well.. In fact one girl (who was mad at me in the previous grade became my foremost enemy in the next grade). I did not wanted to go to school; she was bullying me. For the first time I thought, "shit I have to go for 1/2 year to school with her! How can I survive?" Suicide came up as a subtle thought (of course I was not going to do that). What a weird thought, considering life was so blissful in the previous year.

I never figured out why I lost my popularity and so forth in such a short time… I struggled with all these kinds of problems and I handled them over time. I ignored girls, I began working hard at school to get average grades. I'd escape into trance during computer games.

I realized this could not be all of life, so I began thinking. I admitted I had never been in such a bad way in my whole life. My youth was very good and my life at primary school and the first year were very good. This was a hell compared with that.

I decided to do a lot of sports to get my confidence back.. It helped a little, because if you work yourself “to death” in sports, you can ‘relax’ somewhat afterwards. (I have read somewhere that oxytocin is in this way also provided to the body) However, I still felt this was not the highest I could achieve.

I began looking on the internet how to pick up a girl. Some kind of professional "girl pick up" service said you needed to restrain yourself to make some hormones which could help you during your quest. I did it. It helped, a lot.

I fell madly in love with a girl and I remember lying in the grass in the sun (after 3 weeks sexual abstention), kissing in the sun and being MADLY in love, etcetera.

However, afterwards I began masturbating because I had to do boring homework and didn’t want to think about my girlfriend all the time. I lost my ‘love’. The next time I met with her it was boring. The lovework was boring as well. No bliss, no love. Only a little lust.. No deep conversations.. No warmth.. I could not ‘feel’ into her. I sensed her to be egoistic and selfish.

I wanted to have her eagerly sex with me, because I became such a feelingless person and needy. Some subtle examples which indicated my downfall were imprinted in my memory: 1) She had a little rat for which she cared very well. It was always sweet to see her caring for the rat. I felt the love between us three when I was restrained. But after I began to masturbate, I ‘accidently’ dropped the rat from a table. (And later on I began to read about rat experiments, lol!)

2) Another example: she had a kind of accident with a car, but I couldn’t really show that I felt sorry for her.. I couldn’t provide her with this deep love connection..

I began experimenting with this myself and it seemed that sexual restraint was necessary for love with a girl. However, I could not find anything on the internet. I tried to tell it to her to save my relation, but it was too late. We broke up soon afterwards…

Later on, I discovered www.celibacy.info, on which a link was provided to your website as well. Do you know his book, his work? This is great for your research as well! Bliss of the celibate gives a lot of proof for the advantages for sexual abstention! I began meditating and so forth.

I think this information is really true and people really need to hear about this, because LOVE is what everyone wants and this is what gives you access to LOVE. However, it is hard to get people interested in it. They look on the web and see that sex doesn’t hurt you at all, but is actually good for you. (The more the better) This is what confused me as well when I was experimenting with it. Luckily, all the saints know the Truth.

I have stopped with meditating for a while because I think it hurts my eyesight and makes me really disinterested in material things. You just want to be in the bliss and go further in it the whole day. I feel satisfied enough with restraining and trying to help people learn about these truths for this moment. My personal solution is to encourage some kind of scientific research about this.

However, you say it is very hard to measure dopamine and so forth in the brain. Thus, maybe it is better to do some kind of well-being experiment with people who abstain/meditate and so forth. Can’t we just do some kind of experiment with couples and see if their love life improves? Or measure memoryor sport performance of people who abstain? Or IQ or attraction for the opposite sex?

This could be cheap research and I want to help with it. I have contacted many people in institutes here in the Netherlands, but no-one seems to be interested. I usually send them some kind of letter like this and then I never hear from them again, lol!

Or maybe we could contact some Saints who have meditated a lot and try measure some things in them? Do you have read Autobiography of a yogi by the way? I am kind of desperate to find someone who can help me with the research or the other way around, because I have already spent so much time in it, I think it is very useful for people and it is hard to do alone.

Kind regards,
X

______

Hi X,
Thanks for sharing your story. I wish you would post t on the forum (I can change your user name if you like first). Now to the important bits of your story.

Amazing! I agree that the science lags FAR behind where it needs to. We are not satisfied with the research either. But here's the reason: About half a century ago psychiatrists/psychologists declared sex-without-orgasm to be a "paraphilia" (sexual disorder). When I asked psychologists in USA and England about doing the kinds of experiments you suggest, they said, "Such experiments will not get past our ethics committees, because they won't permit us to ask people to engage in paraphilias."

So mankind has firmly tied its hands for the moment. None of the research you propose can be done. Even masturbation is believed to be so "healthy" that abstinence presents a grave danger. *rolls eyes* That doesn't mean our efforts (and yours) are wasted. By pointing to the clues we do, we can perhaps encourage psychologists to redefine their "disorders" and take an objective look.

For me, it's evident that, as my husband says, we have more gears than "neutral" and "fifth." In other words, we don't have to opt for dangerous sexual repression in order to steer for a healthy middle ground where masturbation is concerned. And I find it quite exciting that there's hidden potential for increased awareness here, too. Wow! I'd love to live in a world of supermen (and superwomen).

It is so important for people to understand the power of sex to shift our perception...in really major ways. Those shifts cause us to make choices, which are affecting (infecting? ) the entire planet. More important, we could be having a very *positive* effect on each other and the planet by understanding this simple reality about the connection between orgasm and clouded perception -- instead of hiding ourselves from the truth.

I have a question. My understanding is that the way around the recurring wetdream problem is to have a partner and practice gentle intercourse (or other bonding behaviors). Have you experimented with this approach? I think many people are just like you. They can't just stop orgasm indefinitely on their own. (I couldn't. Even with a partner it still sometimes happens. On the other hand, recovering porn addicts often do best by stopping completely as best they can for a month or two.)

My point is that *with* a partner, sidestepping orgasm becomes a lot easier. This may be the secret of sacred sexuality. It enables us to retain our equilibrium and spiritual clarity...with the help of a loving mate to balance us. It's an alternative to the yogi path.

Yes, I have read Autobiography of a Yogi and cried all the way through. It was so moving. However, my inner guidance insists that the path I'm here to learn about is the relationship spiritual path...because it can help mankind the most right now. Who knows? I do know that yogis can be quite selfish and egotistical, and that devotees tend not to see themselves as equal to their teachers in the larger sense. The relationship path, on the other hand, can only work between equals, and as you see the Divine in each other (due to clearer percpetion), you understand that you are seeing a mirror of your own divinity. This seems to me the value of the relationship path. However, I am not enlightened.

As you will see in my book, I've tried to weave the science we have (limited as it is) with traditions from all over the world in which people had discovered what you have discovered. I hope that will help researchers to start asking better questions. And meanwhile, readers can begin to make their own experiments.

The real issue isn't "Is orgasm normal? Or healthy?" It's "Does orgasm impact our ability to perceive clearly, our spiritual awareness, our ability to love, our ability to connect with others, the "colors" in our world, our psychological health, etc, etc.?"

The answer is "Yes, it does." It's actually like a fairytale spell in a way. Eerie. But unless people make the kinds of experiments you and I have, they never see it. Life just gets grayer and less satisfying, and they pursue their "pleasures" more and more...not realizing that they are *desensitizing* themselves and suffering unnecessarily. Or that they have the power to reverse the situation. They're so fearful of "repressing" themselves, that they are really making their lives miserable. There's such a thing as voluntary, reasonable self-control. But we seem to have forgotten that on this planet for the moment. My theory is that we slip into excess because we don't understand how the reward circuitry of the brain can easily escalate The Urge...to the point of harming out outlook.

By the way, I don't believe the "semen is consciousness" theory. It just *feels* like that due to the neurochemical changes after orgasm. I say that because women experience this drop, too. I did not ever feel like attracting semen into my body did anything for me, although there was definitely some kind of energy exchange in orgasm itself. I think some women may feel a reward because biology wants us to seek fertilization.

About research, I do have some ideas for how the benefits could be shown, and maybe the time will arrive sooner than we think. It only takes a few courageous psychologists willing to set aside their texts and test the theory for themselves. Here are some of my thoughts from another post: I think balance, and loving connection that promotes balance, are huge. They're just hard to measure because double-blind studies aren't easy to organize. For example, I don't think meaningful experiments could be done on sex without orgasm unless those abstaining had read something like the material on this site. Without a new goal, sex without orgasm would just create unhealthy stress and resentment. So who can design a suitable study? My thought is that couples who want to experiment could be compared with those who don't, using blister tests that show how fast the body heals. Something along these lines: http://www.reuniting.info/science/healing_and_marital_conflict

Thanks for your letter. Let's make sure this exchange is not hidden here in our correspondence boxes.
Warm regards,
Marnia

that that is *exactly* what he said when I told him about the picture? Apparently evil minds run in the same channel.

You are very perceptive. The search for "Mr. or Ms Right" is *not* encouraged on this site. In my experience, "how" is more important than "who." However, I also believe that when we keep our perception clear, we have a much better chance of partnering in a way that enhances both lives.

Strangely, matching resumes doesn't necessarily lead to ideal mating. Sometimes complementary mates who are quite different are better for both than carbon copies. Gary and I laugh that I'm the stick of dynamite that moves his butt, and he's the one who holds onto my kite string so I stay a bit grounded.

Do you have experience with meditation and chakras, or do you mean you mistrust the concept intellectually?

No matter what your current physical age may be your mental and spiritual age is way beyond that :).

"Second, thanks for the interesting read, I do not believe in the whole concept of chakras and meditation."

I thought this way not too long ago. I am still a little doubtful for some reason. I have had some major shifts to my reality though.

Just want to say I enjoy reading your post. I still do not believe you are 15 :) .

Meditation can seem like nothingness but there has been a steady supply of good research done by Harvard Medical school under Dr Herbert Benson since the 1970's that testifies to its mental and physical health benefits. see the link: http://www.mbmi.org/home/ . His best selling book The Relaxation Response is good too but the YouTube videos available at the link are a good start. I teach it to grad students at a top UK university because it helps so much with putting some order into the chaos that our minds and its many distractions are prone to. It helps me enormously too in all kinds of ways.Sacred sexual practices are a form of sexual meditation, with the added the benefit of the synergy of two minds focused on the same end, all being well. :)

Good to have you aboard!

Thanks for sharing it. I think you're onto something very important when it comes to maximizing the pleasure in our lives. We have these simple things (food, people, nature) all around us...totally undervalued because we've let our reward centers run away with us.

I've been through similar experiences with food as well, yet I mostly stick in the 'always full' stage. Interesting that it's the same mechanism at work.

time_for_change