A quick Google search tells you all you need to know about our society and it’s love affair with sex. Despite religious traditions having taught the dangers of unrestrained sexuality for millennia, all you find in the first page of results are articles and essays extolling the virtues of sex and masturbation.
Having been raised in this culture, I blindly assumed that this was correct. For years I viewed regular sex and masturbation as healthy and natural. It was only after I began to seriously practice and learn the Dhamma that I began to call such a way of thinking into question.
Today, I am a little over 40 days without having intentionally “spilled my seed” (I prefer to use euphemism, kill me if you must) and I feel a strength of will and a freedom I have not known before. I no longer linger about waiting for scraps to be thrown to me and I can imagine a life free of the servitude to my sexual desires. So much is sacrificed on the altar of list and so little gained in exchange.
All of this is to say that I am now weary of ruining my streak as I fear the psychological damage it may do. I need to be strong to deal with the vicissitudes of life and gratifying lust seems to me to be the worst thing I could do.
Cattāri Brahmavihārā 
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