About Pornography

“Arousal is at the origin of life. All beginnings are fantasies. Maybe, sexual fantasies. Am I saying that the world begins in pornography?”

James Hillman:  Pink madness

I'm about to say some things here that people aren't quite used to hearing about the explosive topic of pornography.

Creativity Theft

One major problem I see with porn is that it suppresses natural creative imagination. The brain receives ready-made templates that tell it: 'This is how it should look.' Or: "This is how people behave in sex." These fake templates are deeply ingrained in consciousness, especially if exposed to them at a time when the brain is still forming. 

If porn weren't available, the sexual drive, which by its fundamental nature is one with our creative force, would have found personal, creative ways to channel this energy. Your sexual fantasies would, at least, be yours. They would have a unique, creative signature. You would discover new worlds arising from the combination of your sexuality with your other hobbies, for example, and they would be uniquely yours, rather than a copy-paste from some generic website. 

Now, most of your fantasies are fed by banal templates that society has poured into your brain, in a way that will keep you as a predictable pawn inside the system. Against the natural Eros that serves in our souls as a fermenting and creative force, a force meant to be constantly rewilding us, porn today serves as a domesticating force that suppresses creativity.

Let’s go deeper into this last claim:

Pornography as a Domesticating Force

It seems to us that slavery has passed from the world, but the truth is that even in modern liberal society, people still live like slaves. They are enslaved to the system itself. The interesting part is that porn is supplied by that same social system, just under the table. Porn is supplied to the frustrated "slaves" as a sedative drug, so they'll continue to be obedient slaves and won't rebel. That's how I suggest seeing it, at least.

Many people spend their lives chained to a small office, to an emptying routine, to frustrating marriages, and to children who've become little tyrants. Then they find themselves a dark corner to secretly stimulate themselves with porn, ejaculate, release tension, clean, and go back to their radically unsatisfying lives.

When slaves consume sedatives, like pornography, then instead of creating revolutions, they contribute to the creation of more and more porn sites. Instead of asking "How do I change my life?" they wait for the moment when they can finally release the tension they've accumulated from living an obviously unsatisfying life, and calm down in front of a stimulating image on a screen.

Drugged slaves don't make revolutions. And when the drug is supplied under the table, as something immoral, then the slaves consuming it feel guilty and immoral in addition to everything else, and this, of course, helps to enslave them even more easily later on. 

Pornography kills two birds with one stone.

The Holy Spark

And yet, in the Kabbalistic view, we claim that in every “shell” there is a holy spark. That is, in every lie there is a point of truth - even if it's buried under piles of distortion. Therefore, we must ask ourselves: what are people really seeking in porn?

I can think of several answers, and there are surely more.

For example – freedom!

Porn time is time when you do what you want! Not what your wife wants you to be doing, not what society expects of you, and not what your boss told you you must do. Therefore, it seems to you that in consuming porn, you're rebelling against conventions, even though, as I said before, you're only consuming the sedative drug that the enslaving system gives you under the table, so you'll continue to be a submissive slave.

Natural curiosity -- is another good answer to that question, in my opinion. In everything we love doing, we naturally want to explore more nuances. Cooking fans want to taste different cuisines, wine enthusiasts want to taste different wines, and musicians want to experiment with different musical styles. But who will give us the opportunity to know many nuances of sexual organs, orgasms, and styles of sexuality? In the lack of this important sexual education, porn sites serve as a kind of open-university for sex. You have different categories, and you can take courses in each.

Porn also serves as a small corner of pleasure and enjoyment, particularly for people who are very occupied with self-sacrifice and pleasing others. People who relate to their own pleasure as a sin, or as something that should be last in their list of priorities. Through porn, they finally respond to what they themselves enjoy, if only for a few minutes. It's not for anyone else. Only for themselves.

There's, of course, also the matter of tension release that people seek through masturbation to porn. When the body is full of stress from daily life, orgasm can serve as a natural medicine to reset the systems. I'll talk more about this later.

All these and more are legitimate needs that people try to find answers to through porn consumption. The problem is that porn doesn't really meet the need. It only calms the pain for a moment. It provides a short-term solution, like painkillers that don't cure the disease but definitely relieve its symptoms.

Eyes

Even if we dress in suits and ties, beneath all our garments, we're still primitive creatures, and I certainly don't mean this negatively.

We are tribal creatures. Our nature as primates hasn't changed much in the few thousand years of current civilization. Our eyes want to see the human body in its natural form, as in "the Garden of Eden," that is, when we were hunter-gatherers. We seek encounters with natural nudity not as an exceptional event, but as an organic part of life. This calms us on a very deep level, which is unfortunately concealed from most modern people. As a result, instead of nudity being something natural and simple, like in ” primitive” tribes, it has become taboo in our society. When we finally see the naked body, we enjoy it like "stolen waters," and therefore a whole industry was created to supply nude images in the black market.

In my opinion, children who grow up with natural nudity, without shame or guilt (and on the other hand also without pushing it in their faces), don't have great potential for porn addiction.

“There is a Different Sex, Bring it Here.”

Another problem relates to the ignorance most people suffer regarding the potential quality of their sexuality. The truth is that indeed "there is a different sex" as the poet Yona Wallach said, and we, the teachers and educators, should indeed  “bring it here”. The problem is that this “different sex” is subversive. It tends to liberate slaves and induce creativity, results that don't always align with the inherent interests of capitalist-patriarchal society.

Every sexual experience you come out of with a feeling of depletion and emptiness is a sign of the wrong use of sexual energy. Sex, with others or with yourself, should be rewarding, healing, and enriching to soul and body. If you came out of it depleted, frustrated, or alienated, it's a clear sign that something there didn't work as it should.

The genius scientist Wilhelm Reich called the orgasmic energy 'orgone' and referred to it as cosmic energy, energy that works in the whole cosmos and not only in biological living beings. He spoke of how important it is for Orgon energy to flow through the human body without blockages. To experience such an orgasm, Reich emphasized, one must surrender completely to this bigger-than-you energetic wave, without trying to control it. The FBI in the fifties didn't like these ideas, of course, and Reich was imprisoned, his books burned, until sadly, he died in an American prison. A real tragedy.

Following Reich's realizations about the nature of human sexuality, I want to say something that may sound strange to many of you: not only is there a biological possibility to experience orgasm without ejaculation (as all modern Tantra teachers preach to men on Instagram), but there's also a possibility to ejaculate without experiencing a real orgasm.

In fact, most men today ejaculate without experiencing a true, full orgasm, the kind that Reich spoke of.  Precisely because of this, they're left feeling empty and not in a good Buddhist way. It's not because they "wasted life-force energy" in the very act of ejaculation itself, as both religious and Tao-Tantra people would say. But because they didn't experience a deep cosmic orgasm in their ejaculation. 

After you've experienced a cosmic orgasm, whether you ejaculated or not, doesn’t really matter much. Not only is your nervous system left in a calm, balanced state, but you also come out of the orgasmic event in a very vital state, full of inspiration and positivity. Not with guilt, emptiness, or fatigue that characterize most masturbating men, but with vitality, inspiration, and a wish to do good in the world.

The point is that to experience such an orgasm, we must release control, and many men don't know how. In fact, so many men seek to find ways to control their ejaculation, because they feel under the control of sex. The thing is that whether sex controls you or you control sex, it is still the same old control game. But liberated “Different Sex” is not part of the games of control. 

Instead of learning to control sex, men can learn to surrender and release control in a very deep way. To learn how to allow this enormous cosmic energetic wave to crash through them to the shores of material reality. Releasing control can indeed be scary, but only this way can one experience a full, healthy, regenerative orgasm.

Masturbation as Medicine

Dr. Nicole Prause, a researcher who received her doctorate from the Kinsey Institute and worked in the psychiatry department at UCLA, wanted to research the beneficial effects of masturbation on mental health. In the USA, even in California, she suffered severe attacks and didn't receive funding for her research. She needed to emigrate from the USA and open her clinic in a less puritanical place.

Based on her research, Nicole Prause claims that nature planted in us built-in knowledge that guides us how to regulate our nervous system – yes, through masturbation. 

Our relatives, the bonobo apes, genetically close to us by more than 98 percent, have been using sexuality to reduce social tensions for millions of years, and it works quite well for them. She argues that if we taught people to pleasure themselves, we would probably reduce the need for anti-anxiety and anti-depression medications. 

Such results do not align with the interests of pharma companies nor with the doctrines of religious institutions. Therefore, it's likely your shrink will keep on prescribing you chemical medications instead of sending you to learn how to masturbate well when you approach them with complaints of depression or sleep difficulties.

Between Porn and Porn Addiction

Until now, we've talked about porn in general. But there's also the matter of addiction.

Addiction to porn, like addiction to anything else, is mainly an attempt to escape unpleasant emotions we prefer to avoid feeling. The question the addicted person should ask themselves is: What are the emotions I'm trying to avoid feeling through this activity? Is it deep loneliness? Grief? Sadness? Mourning? Anger?

When you identify the emotional source, you can work with the root, not just with the symptoms. But this is another big topic that our repressive society doesn't know how to deal with – emotions. 

People try to repress their true emotions, and then, when they can't flee anymore, they explode with rage, or crash in depresive helplessness, and think that this is what emotions are about. 

This article isn't meant to delve into the important topic of emotions, but I will say that emotions are like fish: it's crucial to eat them fresh. Emotions that stand go bad and become toxic. In addition, emotions aren't meant to be discharged on whoever is with us. They are healthy signals from our system given to us and for us. When you learn to work correctly with emotions, you stop fearing them. On the contrary, you begin to identify them as healthy indicators that something in your life must shift.

The Necessary Revolution

Personally, I've never consumed prostitution, but during my years of work, I've worked closely with quite a few men and women from the sex and porn industry. It's common in 'woke' culture to see those people as victims, especially if they're women. There's an a priori assumption that "no woman wants to sell her body for money". In my eyes, this is complete arrogant nonsense. 

Anyone working in a job that imprisons them is selling their time, their body, and their life for money. True, factory workers don't sell their sexual organs, but other organs, like ears, eyes, hands, and legs. But does it really matter? Aren't they also selling their bodies to survive? And not just blue-collar workers. Aren't people stuck in an air-conditioned office from nine to five working at a boring job so someone else can get rich off their backs greater victims than an independent woman who chose to pose naked in front of a camera and smile all the way to the bank?

True, there's a lot of sexual exploitation in the porn industry as it is today, and part of it also interfaces with illegal prostitution built on human trafficking. This is disgusting! 

Precisely because of this, I vouch for legal prostitution. One where workers of the sex industry have proper rights, a union, health insurance, and the possibility of early retirement. I'm also for conscious porn, porn made by people who choose this as a legitimate way to earn their bread, as legitimate as someone choosing to spend their whole life in a cubicle. 

More than that, I'm for porn that will serve as a way to create real sex education, one that will teach youth and adults about intimacy, different types of touch, curiosity, exploration, respect, healthy boundaries, surrender to the primal flow of life, and how to experience cosmic orgasm.

What's needed here is not puritanical self-righteousness and useless prohibitions, but a real revolution that will make the drug-porn that exists today seem shallow, boring, and irrelevant. Just like someone who has experienced real Ayahuasca ceremonies won't be interested anymore in low-quality party drugs.

Re-humanization, Gratitude, and Blessing

And finally, I want to say one more thing to all porn consumers (even if outwardly they speak high and mighty against pornography) – 

Remember that behind all the images and videos on your screen, there are real people. Men and women who lead real lives, pay bills, and have dilemmas about their future. Maybe they even deal with deep questions about the meaning of life.

Therefore, when you've finished pleasuring yourselves, remember they are human beings just like you, and re-humanise them by sending them blessings and gratitude. I assume that, to a cleaning worker, a taxi driver, or a pizza delivery person, you say thank you, give a small tip, and wish them a pleasant day. Why wouldn't you behave this way with those who gave you sexual services that no one else around you was able to provide?

Beyond all the internet transmitters – send them blessings and gratitude. They would be happy to know that's how they're treated from the other side of the screen. 

And who knows, maybe even a little smile "for no particular reason" will suddenly rise on their lips, without knowing it's because of the good energy you sent them, from the other side of the world?