u/Idonthaveareditaccou

Venerable Anigha and Venerable Medhini, and any other monastics that see this post: Please have pity on me and teach me out of sympathy. I know this is a long post, please forgive me for that, I deemed it necessary from my point of view.

I’ve joined the confession discord with a similar name. My intention with this long post is to be understood, so that I can be guided, not to build a narrative.

Let me start by saying that I am skilled at ignoring and covering up feelings of shame and other strong emotions. I built up this skill as a child. As a kid, I was always curious, and probed different religions. Christianity was put on a pedestal and I had high hopes for the first preacher I met and my first church service, and I left dissapointed and misunderstood. Throughout my troubled years I attached myself from person to person seeking someone that was wise and could help me with my home life. I discovered flawed people. I overlooked my own flaws.

As a young adult I cut off my parents and pursued sensuality. With each passing moment I got better at covering up my shame and went deeper into the pit. I slept with 100+ women, some of whom were married. I coerced, I cheated, I lied, I stole, I spat in the face of god. I emotionally abused everyone I knew. I fantasized about murdering those I disliked or who threatened my existence. I cultivated such an ill will that I considered murder a viable option. I hated, I laughed in the faces of those who suffered, and I cultivated such pride and conceit that I literally thought I was immortal. At one point, I consumed alcohol and/or weed from the moment I woke up to the moment I slept. I did many other repulsive things that I will not mention here. I was horrible, I was a beast. In short, I was consumate in worldly wrong view. I was bound for hell.

One night I made my Ex cry. I made her feel small, emotionally abused her, and spewed hate at her and indulged in mental hate. When I had gotten my fill of hate, she wanted to be close by touching me, and I pushed her away because her pitiful behavior made me even angrier because it touched my compassion. I emotionally kicked her while she was down. In short, I was torn inside, and that’s how I lived. Pushing down compassion and leaning into pride and cruelty because I was weak and unvirtuous. I was a fool.

That night I got high. For the first time in a long time I was unable to cover up my shame and guilt. My past flashed before my eyes more rapidly than I could manage to cover up any feeling. I was quickly overwhelmed and fell into a panic attack. I felt like I was dying, and if I had had a gun, I would have shot myself to end it. My head was spinning and I was fully confined within my experience, with no escape and I faced all of the things that I had been avoiding. I felt powerless.

In that moment, I had no choice but to let go of my control and management. I let go and I felt the giant mountain of shame that I had been hiding the entire time, without as much tension. I was confronted with my entire past, and it was an earth shattering experience.

Simultaneously, the realization came to me: I could be better. In that very instant, my fever broke, and I felt cool. At the same time came a relief and a sense of urgency that up to that point I had only felt in regard to sensuality.

I had a high level of awareness before, but it was always directed at getting my way. After this experience, it was all directed at my flaws. Needless to say, I struggled with suicidality and planned my own death in order to escape the consequences of my actions. The experience I had didn’t make it any easier to do what had to be done, it just highlighted my work. I struggled with depression and suicidality for a couple of years.

I slowly started addressing my problems. Before, If someone cut me off in traffic, I would imagine pulling them out and shooting them in the head. I started by letting myself indulge in that up to the point of pulling them out, but then I would purposefully miss their head in my imagination. Or shoot them in the leg. Then I only allowed myself to imagine beating them up. So gradually I restrained myself in that way. I did the same with suicidality, and my many other problems. I CRAWLED out of the pit. And then I faced ego, and anger at other people not doing the same for themselves. Why can’t they see their own flaws the way I see mine? That built up my self importance quite a bit. It was a difficult time in my life and still is in my impatience with others.

I faced my shame as I built up the strength to. If I couldn’t face something, I skipped it, knowing I would come back to it. Because of that, some of the things I faced, by the time I got to them, they didn’t feel as horrible to face as before. Other things, I faced with great difficulty.

I went from not being able to even think about any part of my childhood, and having memory loss on account of that, to being able to think about it all.

I went from anger at my parents, to understanding my own role in the abuse and neglect. I went from hating them to feeling pity for them. I went from anger to remorse to being unmoved by that remorse. I accepted my role in every dynamic I had ever had, and I saw the things that were out of my control.

This progress took constant sitting with my feelings and facing my internal shame. Not a day went by where I didn’t do any inner confrontation. Slowly but surely it got easier, and feelings of shame became less intense. I undid a whole heap of internal lies I had been telling myself, excuses I gave. I watched my intentions like a hawk, and the only way I knew how to not let my anxiety get the better of me was by becoming more virtuous.

I started to see how circumstantial my entire existence was. Why was I born here, now, a person? I dove into history, reading about old kings and peasants and warriors and slaves and read about events with a newfound perspective. I grew disenchanted.

As the years went on I had basically been cured of all my problems. I was a miracle in a worldly sense. I could be trusted by people and people generally thought I was alright… But I had a recognition that I was still inclined towards ill will and greed endless desire and I wanted to go deep and address that. I wanted to be pure. I saw how much I still lied in my mind and to other people and I didn’t want to be anything but perfect.

I didn’t want to ever hurt anyone again!

Then I discovered self help podcasts, which didn’t seem to me to do the job. I spent countless hours reading, listening to videos, and all that, and figured out that I should move to a different teaching.

Then I discovered Buddhism. I read the suttas, and am now still an avid reader of the suttas. During that time I jumped from teacher to teacher because I would listen to their videos for hours and hours and at some point something that the teacher would say or do would contradict the Buddhas teaching in a pretty obvious way that I couldn’t justify as my own ignorance. For example, one monk encouraged euthanasia.

I found Hillside Hermitage but Ajahn Nyanamoli Thera made me insecure. I also had a hope for some mystical experience from meditation and that meditation would magically cure the part of me that I knew lurked underneath and also do the hard work for me as far as celibacy goes.

I tried meditation for a couple of months. Meditation didn’t seem to work for me, and the problems I had didn’t have a satisfying answer. Meditation didn’t seem to address the things that I knew needed fixing, and I didn’t see how they could! So I went to a meditation lineage within Theravada that heavily emphasized Metta. That didn’t work, and I asked a monk in that lineage about erasing the hate in my heart and that ill will impeded my progress and seemed like a wall that I couldn’t tackle directly. He didn’t understand. He said to start with sending metta to myself. That didn’t work. He said to start with someone I love. That didn’t work. I thought I was broken, until I remembered that the Buddha even trained a serial killer to Arahanthood. So I knew I had to keep looking, and that this wasn’t the path.

Then I swallowed my pride and listened to Ajahn Nyanamoli Thera again. I have since watched nearly all of the videos, some a few times. Needless to say, I am eternally grateful to him and to the Noble Sangha!

~~~

Now it’s 2026 and I’ve been in a relationship with my girlfriend for 3 years. Previously, my longest relationship was like 2-3 months. It has been a little over a year since I discovered Hillside.

My relationship is, in a worldly sense, perfect. I am honest with my girlfriend in a way that I could never have been honest in the past. She knows about my past sexual desires, current craving toward infidelity, and a lot of my past. She knows about most of the things that I am most shameful about. She knows that I want to pursue the Dhamma. We share a perfect relationship and I had to have the strength to shatter that image and tell her that I will one day fully pursue the Dhamma. In the past I would have just run, and I’ve faced many hard things in that manner.

I minored in anatomy, which gave me the opportunity to sit with cadavers for a few semesters. I even dissected one fully over the course of several months. During that time, I would sit with death to the best of my ability.

Throughout all this, it seemed like such an easy choice to stop masturbating, go celibate, etc, but I always put renunciation off for a later time. But I did so with full awareness and I contemplated the danger of the mistake that I was making. I contemplate the fact that I wasn’t guaranteed the next in-breath, let alone the next few years of my life. This near constant contemplation and awareness is pushing me towards completing the goal in this very lifetime. Previously, I thought “if I can just attain stream entry, I’lll be an arahant in 7 lifetimes, so I can go back to sensuality for the rest of this life afterwards.” Now I think “there is work to be done, and it has to be done in this lifetime.”

Nowadays I train every day, but have recognized the necessity of going “all in,” starting with the precepts. I have decided to take on the 5 precepts, then go on to 8 when I am established in the 5. I don’t want to go too fast out of negligence and overconfidence. I’ve given up my future goals of becoming a doctor, and am working jobs that I would have found to be beneath me many years ago.

I put off renunciation because I have debt and a partner that needs me right now, and I used that to justify being in a sexual relationship and indulging in sensuality, because I’m at least a little bit afraid of being alone and I’m weak.

That is the state of affairs and is representative of the tremendous difference in the way I exist now vs before.

I’m 31 fyi. Veteran, started college late, graduated last spring, and was going to go to medical school but am not doing that any longer. I’m planning to work, pay off my debt, train gradually, and attain arahantship in this very life.

~~

The problem:

I went cold turkey on weed and alcohol, which wasn’t really difficult at all.

I stopped masturbating a couple of weeks ago and I am temporarily celibate until I am established in never masturbating or watching porn again. I contemplate the gratification and the drawbacks daily. I’m taking it on as a practice for eternity, and I reflect on that daily. Even when I look at other women and indulge in lustful thinking, I do that within the container of “this will not lead to masturbation.”

I have not decided to be fully celibate yet. Last Sunday my girlfriend sent me a message that was lust inducing (not her intention) and I decided to masturbate and stopped halfway through, which was easy. I confessed to her and the discord server.

Over the last few days I’ve been amazed by how I went from masturbating up to 6 times a day to being able to sit with the desire of masturbation and not do anything with it. I mean I was deployed once as an Airman, and I jacked off in a porta-potty in a desert that was ~110 degrees at that time…. And now, after decades of masturbating non-stop, I’m just able to maintain it so easily? (Yes, I’m taking it on as a practice for life, and I reflect on that daily.)

This got me thinking that maybe I’m suppressing things and not patiently enduring. In some ways, I’ve skipped steps in the gradual training. For example, I’ve trained my mind a little when I’m not even consumate in virtue by bodily action. So I’m afraid that I’m not sitting with the pressures on the right level and am instead just suppressing them by trying to “unabsorb,” because every time that I do that, the pressure decreases and I don’t feel as much of an urgency.

In my doubt, last night, I decided to see what it would feel like to have that pressure endure. So I thought up some lustful images, and started masturbating to the point where I was close to ejaculation, and I had to absorb myself in the fantasies to keep going. I stopped and observed what would happen in my mind. There was an urge to keep going, and as soon as I stopped willfully ignoring it, it stopped pressuring me. I went to bed without trouble.

I am still pressured by certain things, like a sense of right and wrong and pressure to “set people straight.” But even things like engaging in arguments just feels like so much more of a choice now. It feels as though I could just decide to not engage in unwholesome behavior, and I would be able to sustain that. And that feels unsettling because I shouldn’t be able to, unless I am suppressing on some level.

~~

I suppose I have written enough for anyone to engage in questions with me.

I want to keep the 5 precepts but I want to be sure that I’m not suppressing anything and that I’m enduring things rightly. I intend to then move to the 8 precepts, and then 10. I fully intend to ordain or simplify my life to the extent that I can dedicate my lay life to practice…. I just don’t want to fully dive into this journey and then realize 20 years from now that I’ve missed a key subtlety due to some subtle management that I’m doing.

I feel like by tackling all of my problems the way I have, I fear I have numbed myself.

I think about renunciation daily, and have had an experience in the recent past that I have the urge to label second Jhana. I constantly have Dhamma as a background context, and essentially choose to give in to hindrances and feel shame around it when I do. I am allowing the shame to endure and am reflecting on shame frequently. I reflect on what I perceive to be the drawbacks of householder life constantly, and have been for a couple of years now… although in recent months this has made the urgency to renounce completely feel more salient.

It seems like things have come to a head where I have to take the precepts seriously to practice, and this is making it easier to. I am worried about that.

I know that more restraint and more precepts will uncover more pressure… but I want to face that pressure rightly. Its almost like now that I’ve decided to stop certain actions and when I contemplate the eternity of it all and face those feelings.. it just makes each step feel easier. I’m afraid that I’m relying on the “finality” of my choices to make it easier. I notice that my brain does certain things to make certain feelings easier to bear, one of which is lie.

I also notice that if I unabsorb myself from the pressure of something, then it gets easier, then I realize it gets easier, and so I try to absorb myself a little more just so that I’m feeling it and not running away. All of this happens fast.

I really do appreciate any and all interaction! I would love it if other monastics or those who are consumate in virtue chime in.
Thank you!