Chastity Office 9
December 6, 2021
Day #33 in chastity.
I am loving this chastity period:
The obsession with food has been lifted.
…up at 4:00am instead of noon. Going to bed at 10:00pm instead of 1:00am
Practicing 3.75 hours a day
Writing, arranging, studying, rehearsing, performing, producing and teaching music for hours and hours, each day.
Raised my teaching and producing rates 20%.
I asked my wife how she would feel about, when we decide to end this chastity period, that we have a three day plan to re-enter active sexuality.
I don’t want to frivolously end this period in a teenage fit of passion. It has already been too painful, too costly, emotionally, to just casually toss it away. That’s what I used to do…have sex without giving it a second thought.
My wife is one in a million…no a billion.
Chastity is King…
Chastity Office 10
Ellen Bass, in the Courage to Heal, says that the whole book is about "Improving self-esteem".
If it is true that chosen chastity improves self-esteem more than any other activity, then chosen chastity would help survivors improve their self-esteem more than any other activity.
That is my experience.
It is also my experience that the part of me that esteems myself is also the same part that intrigues, objectifies and fantasizes. And I can't do both things with that same part.
Therefore, lust (through intrigue, objectification, and fantasy) destroys my high self-esteem.
Chastity Office 11
The first time I saw porn I was 12 years old and was digging around the loft of our rented barn to lift a bale of hay where one of the neighborhood boys had stashed a copy of Playboy.
I had never seen anything like that. The pictures were so glossy, the women were so naked and the poses on various automobiles were confusingly ludicrous.
The next day I looked again and it was gone.
Strangely, I would not see porn again for ten years until I was a messenger at a surgical hospital.
It transfixed me, and I wouldn’t see it again for yet another 10 years, when my first wife would give me a VHS video cassette copy of three porn films that she had had copied, by her sister’s husband, as a Christmas present.
I used it for maybe a year and a half...By that time I could overlook the stupidity of the content of porn as an actual film.
All this was before the internet...Then I got into sex addiction recovery.
The truth is that I did not need images to stimulate me. I had a lurid, vivid, creative imagination.
But, I was stone-cold addicted to masturbation.
I did it every day, not long, ten minutes or so.
But it felt violent, vicious, ripping and tearing through my boundaries, extinguishing my self-esteem, self-drop-kicking myself into two days of depression...every single time.
Nothing beat me so bad in my life like masturbation...except drinking.
Chastity Office 12
When in conflict, a really good prayer is “In chastity lies the protection of the body, the mind and the soul”.
I feel protected when I hear that prayer, like when I hear “You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies”, or, “Your rod and your staff they comfort me”.
Of course, I have to practice chastity for the prayer to mean anything to me.
While in conflict, my need for safety, my need for love-and-belonging and my need for esteem-of-others is not met by the other person, because they are too busy protecting themselves.
To make up for that deficit of love from the other person, I can love myself...by choosing finite chastity.
Seems like a small price to pay...for emotional safety.
Chastity Office 13
What would I do differently if I accepted a vow of chastity, just for today, starting today?
I would:
Practice breath prayer
Discipline my mind to choose a positive attitude
Do more exercise
Make sure my food was as clean as I could make it
Create amateur art as a creative "outer circle"
Transmute all the energy of intrigue, objectification and fantasy...to prayer.
And go to PrayerCall a lot
Chastity Office 14
Finding my soul in chastity
Lord, help me to feel my soul...
Socrates and Plato both believed that the soul was housed about the solar plexus.
If that is true, I will breathe in deeply and repeatedly, and try to locate my soul within me.
Lord, help me to feel my soul..
When I want to eat something I'm not supposed to eat...help me feel my soul within me.
When I want to drink something I'm not supposed to drink...help me feel my soul within me.
When I start to reach for 'sex, love, romance, or relationship', unhealthily...help me feel my soul within me.
"The kingdom of God is within" says the gospel of Luke
If my soul is not the kingdom of God…Then what is?
Lord, help me, just for today, to feel my soul...Amen
Chastity Office 15
Chastity is my personal highest spiritual goal today.
I have an attitude of gratitude around chastity.
I am humbly grateful to have received this gift.
I am grateful to have the wisdom to be alone.
I am grateful I no longer feel lonely or needy around being alone.
I am grateful to have developed the skills of being with myself.
I believe I am the very best I can be when I choose chastity.
When I empty my mind and body of lust, I become open to being filled with love...