Pulling out a thread... yes, masturbation was the beginning of the end for my dedication to the "faith". How can this be bad? How can this be wrong? This feeling won't stop; I can't control it -- am I truly evil?
Well, I thought I was truly evil for a long time. Then other life events, guilt piled upon guilt until one day (years, YEARS later) it all came crashing down.
I believe I read a medical study somewhere that said lack of masturbation in men may contribute to prostate cancer (or was it some old guy I met that told me?). I'll take that notion and run with it.
Well, I thought I was truly evil for a long time. Then other life events, guilt piled upon guilt until one day (years, YEARS later) it all came crashing down.
I believe I read a medical study somewhere that said lack of masturbation in men may contribute to prostate cancer (or was it some old guy I met that told me?). I'll take that notion and run with it.
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SF Bay Area
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Re: Masturbation & Guilt
Fri, January 30, 2004 - 2:03 PMso are you saying that when you realized that you disagreed with one teaching, it made you question the rest? what do you mean by "crashing down" exactly? -
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Re: Masturbation & Guilt
Thu, February 12, 2004 - 9:43 PMYes, I felt like religion was trying to tell me that the strongest urge I had ever experienced was somehow wrong, or evil, or needed to be denied. That made me start questioning the whole thing.
There was alot of guilt about things, but mostly related to sex and relationships; at 18 the military sent me to the Philippines, which was wild, but I felt guilty. I got married and divorced and felt guilty about that. I engaged in some other experimentation, and felt guilty about it.
Finally, when I was in a very conservative, fundamentalist-type area, and lots of people who didn't even know me kept assuming that I wasn't saved and I was going to hell, I came to the realization that all that guilt and all these misguided people were just a load of crap that I didn't have to accept.
I decided their philosophy and my guilt had accumulated and become waaay too much negativity in my life. I rebelled. I started a student organization called the damned. I also had nightmares, and one night woke up to find my curtains shaking and thinking I really was going to meet the devil and go to hell. It was a mouse climbing on the curtains. I realized that was the essence of imaginatory philosophy, and the reality of life without heaven or hell at the end was not so frightening.
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