Controlled by pornography
QUESTION: Masters, pornography has destroyed my ability to find a loving relationship. My whole being has always been devoted to addressing injustice in a harmonious way. I tried praying and managed to stop for five months. But in that time I surrendered completely realizing that justice was administered by God only. I lost all drive and felt everything was worthless. Obviously what I was missing was love, but now I doubt whether I even know what that is. I have returned to pornography to ease the despair, but this is not what I really want. Can you help? ~Anonymous, UK
ANSWER: Let’s get the bullshit out of the way and take a good look at your situation. You put your proclivity down to injustice, and to what did you surrender during the five months you had control of yourself? You certainly seem to function only in fear and the lack of love of self. Let’s break down what you have said.
You have devoted yourself to “addressing injustice in a harmonious way.” The concept of judgment is a product of the human ego that assigns a degree of rightness or wrongness to every act that takes place in physical form. To address injustice you have to step in and be judge and jury over everything you see. That is to say, you and you alone can determine what is right and wrong for other people. This is an impossible activity because everybody has freedom to do what they choose. Unless you have the consent of each person, you cannot change their actions. You have therefore been fooling yourself that you have had an effect on “injustice”—whatever that is, anyway. That will make you feel worthless.
“Surrendered completely” to what? Did you accept the knowledge that you couldn’t affect things, as discussed above? Your ideas about God (a judgmental force outside of yourself) are important only for their influence over whatever freedom of choice you accept as having in your lifetime. To take charge of your life, look at yourself and get rid of even the tiniest degree of judgment. Instead, start evaluating the world around you. Start accepting responsibility for your own actions. Someone outside of you cannot make choices for you that will feel good to you.
What should you evaluate? Decide whether you like what you are doing or not. Don’t spend any time at all thinking about what anyone else thinks of your activities. You are the only important person in your life. How you feel and think about your life determines the quality of your life. Pornography is a lesson with which you have chosen to deal.
Love is first accepting yourself exactly as you are—not necessarily liking everything you do but accepting your desire to do it. Then love is using your freedom of choice to change your behavior into something that feels appropriate for you, or accepting that you do not wish to change. Don’t blame your lack of making your own decisions on some outside source not causing you to change. Only you control you.