Sense Restraint - please help me...
When I practice sense restraint, I eventually reach a point where I begin to lose sleep by completely being incapable of finishing my sleep cycles. (I start the practice of sense restraint with the attitude that I will NEVER give in to sensuality again. No escape hatch for the mind to endure with the knowledge that there is a way out).
It’s like this energy builds up in the body and I’m faced with an unbelievable amount of restlessness prior to sleeping. I get somatic symptoms such as jaw pain, nerve pain in my temporal, a “Crazy” stimulated feeling in my eyes. Enduring this long enough I’m able to fall asleep, but I end up waking up at 2-3AM with the inability to fall back asleep.
The issue I’m having is - when I don’t get sleep, I am a COMPLETELY different human being. I’ve made so much progress as through training I no longer engage in certain behaviors like alcohol or junk food even during states where I get no sleep. However, one thing that I am still struggling with is masturbating during these times. It is because I crave relief it gives me from this pressure and a lot of times cannot handle the thought of not getting any sleep again - because it affects everything the next day. It’s not like I’m running on 1 hour of less sleep, but I cannot function on literally 3-4 hours of sleep for multiple days. There have been cases - weeks.
Is no sleep a period I have to be willing to go through, or is this an indication of my current threshold in the practice of sense restraint? Perhaps my threshhold or symptoms could mean that I'm not practicing it correctly?