Chastity Office 153

“If we habitually wear an aloof, unapproachable expression, we will not be approached.”

Days of Healing, Days of Joy, month of May

When I was 13 years old I met an utterly brilliant woman who was my mother’s college professor and who taught not only my mother, but the very famous southern writer, Flannery O’Connor.

What I noticed about her was that she listened very intently, but her face was utterly expressionless. I adopted that facial posture all my life.

When I was 21 years old, and met the most brilliant musician of the 20th century, John Cage, he had the same exact emotionless expression, as he listened. So, this reinforced my facial decision.

But…what I did not know about either of these two people at the time was that they had both been profoundly affected by alcoholism.

As DOH, DOJ says, if you “Look unapproachable… You will not be approached”… And pretty much no one has approached me in the last 55 years.

But, I have started chanting my new bottom line “No sex except to create children “ in my head as I run, and it is utterly shocking how complete strangers, mostly women, in a major city, smile at me.

Who knew?

Chastity Office 154

“We ask God for inspiration, an intuitive thought or a decision.”

Big Book p. 86

I have a friend who has to make a very important decision on whether to have his daughter start taking medication or to spend a great deal of money and move her to another school.

He is having some challenges with food currently that make the clarity that he needs to make these important decisions, more elusive. More directly: Food addiction cuts you off from God.

Gandhi has taught us the managing your food will help lower your lust, but the equation also works in the opposite direction: managing your lust directly affects your tendency towards gluttony.

If that is true, and it is, then if I were to elect a temporary period of chastity it would have positive effects on my food.

That is what I suggested to my friend…so that he might obtain “ an intuitive thought or a decision” as it applies to his daughter’s health.

My friend is a sexually sober man and is very moderate in his married sexual practice: Once a month, maybe twice, if it’s his birthday or Father’s Day (Ask any married man about this phenomenon).

If you’ve just met someone you’re in love with, you can have sex seven times a day. I certainly did that five years ago when I first met my wife, but once a month is a fairly self-restrained practice. That being the case, the sacrifice would be quite minimal, comparatively, to obtain the clarity needed to help his daughter.

This man’s religion is opposed to Chastity , but I pointed out that with food choices he disregards his religion in favor of his health and I asked him to consider doing that here.

Also, you don’t want to just fall into Chastity.

If you do, you only get 2% of the benefits.

Sex addiction is 98% mental. To really receive 100% of the benefits you have to make up your mind.

I’ve asked this man to consciously choose to be chaste…just for a finite period.

Why?…Because this man really loves his daughter 

Steve D.

Chastity Office 155

I had a guy call me complaining about his wife.

He said “She never says a kind word to me. She never thanks me for anything I do and…she has “let herself go”.

Whenever I get calls like that I remember what Socrates said about his wife Xanthippe “If you get a good wife you’ll be happy. If you get a bad one… You’ll become a philosopher”.

To the complaint “She has let herself go” which meant to him “eating all the time and not working out", again I remember what Socrates said:

“As to Chastity or marriage, choose whichever you will… You will be sure to be repent”…

I told him that if his wife didn’t have the self-respect to take care of herself, there was absolutely nothing he could do, but he also had a choice.

At a certain point, the unhappiness caused by the unmet pleasures of sex are outweighed by the gifts of Chastity which are: clarity, intuition, personal power in relationships and social resilience…and you can always choose that.

He didn’t like that solution.

As to his wife never being kind or thankful. Yep, that’s pretty much being a Xanthippe, but to quote Socrates one last time “to ride a difficult horse makes you a better rider”.

It’s all about choices and attitude…

Chastity Office 156

Sex is not a need. It is an instinct.

Eating is a need.

If I surrender all sex, love, romance and relationship, just for a day, it’s amazing how simple my real needs become.

Essentially I need to feel loved and like I belong and also I need to feel esteemed by others to be happy.

That’s pretty much it…but I don’t know that until I surrender all sex…first

 

Chastity Office 157

It’s always been interesting to me that when Adam and Eve sinned the first thing they noticed wasn’t that the husband forgot to take out the trash or that the woman didn’t put back the husband’s tools.

It wasn’t the husband forgetting an anniversary or the the woman leaving her hair all over the bathroom floor.

It wasn’t the husband hustling to get the woman out of the house on time or the woman claiming she knew which way True North was.

It was sexual shame…that’s the very first recorded consequence of sin…and it’s been downhill ever since.

Fortunately Chastity makes the playing ground even again. There’s no sexual shame anymore…and you can even rethink the Apple decision 

Chastity Office 158

Here’s a gloomy Office:

When I am sick I cling to my chastity with all  my might.

You have got to wonder why there are minor discomforts like colds and flu in the world.

I think it’s to gently remind us that old age and death are on their way and to be grateful for what we have, today…now.

At times like that, it’s supremely comforting to be able to access your soul, instantly. 

Recovery can do that for you…if you follow where it logically leads.

Merry Christmas 2022…

Chastity Office 159

Noah got naked drunk. Ham looked at him and Noah put a curse on him forever. This is the first known recorded case of Objectifying.

Noah built a boat one and a half football fields long in his backyard.

Now, aside from the fact that no one in a city could afford the property taxes on that size plot of land, he would have had the Department of Public Works on his back about the noise, before he could have completed framing the first door.

He brought two of every living creature inside?

Have you ever seen a child chase a bird?

What do you think the chances are of catching two?

Impossible job descriptions or not, if Ham had been chaste…things would be different.