3 Things I Learned From Nine Months Of Celibacy

Peace and grace to you, gentlemen, from the Lord Jesus Christ.

Though I never in my life thought I would arrive at where I am right now, it is God’s will for me that I share with you what I have learned in my transformation from living a degenerate and hedonistic life into a disciple of Christ, who lives by the guidance and conviction of the Holy Spirit.

In fact, I don’t even want to be writing this.

I would rather be in the background, living my life and running my business with complete anonymity — but God impressed upon my heart that my story and testimony would do no good for the world if I were to keep it to myself.

Therefore, I’d like to share with you what it’s been like for me since leaving behind the world of harems, threesomes and one-night stands for the celibacy I have been experiencing over the last nine consecutive months.

My “Salvation Experience” occurred earlier than that, which I will probably write to you about soon, and that is where my heart and mind were truly transformed.

However, I was still an infant in my walk with Christ, and I became more purified the deeper that walk becomes.

Now, looking back, I believe I can somewhat-effectively verbalize an experiential transformation that truly defies description in the limited lexicon of human language.

I will share with you the three greatest lessons I have learned in that span of time, but first I will give you a quick background first on the kind of life I used to be living.

I mentioned in my article on copy-writing that I often used drugs and sex to numb myself from the pain of this upside-down Clown World we live in.

You know what I mean: the world where being honest and virtuous gets you chastised and mocked, but being a functional sociopath gets you lauded with praise and reward.

If you are like me, you may have never felt like a part of this dark world in your heart — even if you had to “play along” sometimes just to survive.

In order to “deal” with it, I was constantly either high, seeking sex, or both at the same time.

Those moments of temporary escape were more important to me than the potential consequences, and needless to say, it led me in a very dark and lonely direction.

Since meeting Jesus face-to-face and experiencing the complete transformation of the very core of my being, I have been lifted above this dark world and the material prison in which our souls are trapped.

This is not to say I am perfect; I’m far from it, and as guilty of sin as anyone else.

However, that sin is of an exponentially rarer and less serious nature.

And rather than dwelling in it (or taking pride in it, like I used to do) I now feel utterly convicted in my heart that when it happens, I have distanced myself from God and from the comforting grace of the Holy Spirit.

So let’s start there.

1. You Cannot Make Genuine Spiritual Progress While Living For The Flesh

If the headline of this section triggered you in some way then I invite you to explore that feeling and its source.

You may be hosting some unwanted spiritual guests, invited into your home by your throwing the door open to them.

There was a time in my life when I thought that “learning Game” was spiritual progress.

I genuinely felt like I was growing as a person by studying Mystery, David DeAngelo, and other “gurus” back when I was in the position so many men still find themselves in today.

In a way, I was making progress.

I learned to stand up straighter, to be more assertive, to be more confident, to ask for what I wanted and to stop acting needy around other people.

All of these were great lessons.

However, as with all blessings, they can quickly become a curse when used for the wrong purposes — and that is exactly what the rabbit hole of the “player lifestyle” ended up being for me.

It led to a place of complete inner emptiness, with my being terrified moment-to-moment that “the mask might slip” around some particular woman of interest and I would never see her again.

I thought I was in it for sex; looking back, the validation was just as important.

All that time, all that effort, and all that energy spent learning how to please mortal, imperfect human beings was time, effort, and energy I didn’t spend learning how to please the immortal God—the only being whose validation or approval actually matters at all.

Genuine spiritual growth — which you will know by the fruits of a peaceful, harmonious mind and existence — only comes from doing a better job of living up to God’s will.

As long as your “spirituality” is just a mechanism to get more of what you want, you will be depriving yourself of these blessings.

2. Your Mind Is Capable Of Phenomenal Creativity And Power

With my thoughts constantly circling around how to maintain this girl in my harem or which kind of opener to use in that situation, I never had the “silence of mind” to explore my own inner world and the incredible depth of what it contains.

We are God’s children — and just as in the situation with our earthly parents, we do not receive the blessings and rewards of our Father in Heaven unless we are obedient to His will.

As our parents did not give us allowance and time to play video games when we misbehaved, neither should we expect God to bless us with peace, power, happiness and health while we are our spending our time and energy on materialistic and fleshly pursuits.

The human mind, while capable of wonderful things, is not unlimited in its resources.

With your mind focused on the material plane and fleshly pursuits, you will never know its true power and potential.

Look upwards and keep your eyes focused on the Spirit, and you will unlock fountains of energy that you never realized you had within you.

3. God Can Do For You What You Cannot Do For Yourself

The failings of New Age philosophy are many and varied, but this is perhaps the most serious and damaging of them all.

At one point or another, I was a part of many different systems of spirituality which all more or less branched off the “New Age Tree” — and one thing they all had in common was the ultimate conclusion that “God” was just a metaphor for “you.”

Not realizing either the blasphemy or stupidity of such a sentiment at the time, I was deep into the particular version of Gnosticism which falsely claims that the idea of man as God was the “secret teaching” of all the other religions.

Having no familiarity with the Bible at all — and no spiritual discernment whatsoever — I did not realize this was simply the newest iteration of the world’s oldest lie.

In retrospect, I now realize that this self-directed idolatry is the most prideful and poisonous of all sins.

By not recognizing God as without, as a Higher Power that is unfathomably stronger and wiser than a tiny human being could ever dream of becoming, I was cutting myself off from the highest blessings that the spiritual kingdom has to offer.

The most relevant of those blessings, at least for me, was being transported to a higher and purer plane of existence than I ever realized was possible.

I do not have to “fight against” my lust, most of the time.

I am not struggling to contain myself; in fact, just the opposite is true.

God lifted me to such a high place that the mere thought of going out and hitting on strange women creates a suffocating feeling in my chest.

That, the conviction of the Spirit, is not something that comes from within.

It is something that comes from repenting for sin and believing in the risen Christ, exactly as the New Testament details.

If the idea of being celibate for long periods of time sounds impossible to you, it is because you are considering it from your own power.

God can do what you cannot do for yourself, for “he who is in you is stronger than he who is in the world.”

Pray sincerely for the power to overcome the flesh, and God will send his angels to attend to your request.

Until next time.

Your man,

-Elijah “The Realist”