#84 - Wet Dreams Discussed
Are you someone who’s been having wet dreams? Do you know what it means or why it happens?
There can be a lot of factors why wet dreams happen and it’s not only because of your sexual desires. Knowing why it occurs can help you control it, but remember that your lifestyle can also affect your body, mind and even your sleep.
In Episode 84, Benjy and Andrew talk about something that’s directly connected to focusing your sexual energy in a productive way, and it is all about wet dreams. We will unpack what it truly means, why they happen, and what you can do about it. They also share some tips that you can do throughout the day that can help you have a more productive sleep at night.
Listen in as we try to answer questions like: How are you going to bed? What are you doing before you go to bed? What are the things that affect your sleep state in general?
Upon answering the following you can learn to accept this natural phenomenon, control it, and understand why it happens to you or your body. Join us to learn more!
What is a wet dream?
Practical stuff to apply to avoid wet dreams
What is lucid dreaming?
How the environment affects your dreams
Self-introspection and reflecting on your mental, emotional, and physical state
Meditating before you go to sleep
Learning to control your dreams
Helping people to grow without getting wrapped up in sexuality
The seven stages of growth
Shame should never be a part of the process
The goal is self-mastery
Episode Transcript:
Andrew Love
Welcome back to Love, Life and Legacy, a podcast dedicated to helping you navigate these hypersexualized times of ours. I have some screaming children in the background, don't even mind them for a second. So in today's episode, Benjy and I are going to get into wet dreams. This is a topic that's been requested of us by a number of people, so we are doing it. We are making it happen. We're getting into the weeds on this topic and helping you unpack it so that you can make sense of what are wet dreams, why do they happen, and what you can do next in relation to wet dreams? So enjoy the podcast, everybody.
Benjy Uyama
Hi folks. This is the podcast, welcome back. We're here with Andrew Love, myself, Benji Uyama.
Andrew Love
So that was Benjy's first intro, and he said the podcast. What's the name of the podcast?
Benjy Uyama
Love, Life and Legacy. A podcast about sex and integrity and focusing your sexual energy in a productive way to be a creator, and not a consumer, especially applicable for today's topic which is about wet dreams. This is a topic that has come up at least multiple times in groups that I've run and recently has been coming up so we decided to dive into this topic. Andrew has got a lot of really insightful things that he has learned and been studying. Also, I want to share experiences from the perspective of an individual who is going through a porn recovery and trying to gain sexual integrity. They're struggling because they don't want to have these sexual dreams, dreams that are sexual in nature, and that's really the difficulty of this. And so they feel dirty and guilty and shameful around this, but we want to bring it out in the open to talk about it from a more factual standpoint.
Andrew Love
Yes, to help you navigate this topic because it's really, really interesting. I love the fact that we have our faith because it helps us decipher. In all my research and all this, there's the Christian viewpoint. There are different religious viewpoints, then there's the NoFap viewpoint and then there's the secular viewpoint and the secular progressive viewpoint. And to navigate all these wildly different viewpoints, it's really important to understand what's the purpose of all this? Because nobody's asking that. What's the point of sex? Do we have control over ourselves? There are some very fundamental questions that need to be asked and answered before you get into the details about this because otherwise, you're just looking at it again, it's like a symptom.
You had a wet dream. Great, cool. Is it good or bad? It depends. What's your worldview? I would love to unpack this from a few different angles, but just to start with the end in mind, first of all, to add guilt or shame to any aspect of your life doesn't help. So if you have a wet dream, to feel guilty or ashamed and to hold that as some bad thing, that's obviously not productive. It doesn't help. Okay, that's first and foremost. Should you be ashamed? No, it doesn't help. I know Uncle Dave's viewpoint on this is when he pats people on the back when they have a wet dream. That's his viewpoint. So what I would like to talk about and let go in with you, Benjy, is what do you think, in terms of, can you control wet dreams? Let's get into that. Let's unpack that.
Benjy Uyama
From my understanding, a wet dream is something that is a natural occurrence to release stagnant semen/sperm for men. What seems to be the line, or what people feel the shame and guilt around is they're typically bringing sexual content into that dream based on previous experiences, or previous exposure to pornographic material into that regime. It's very common that people in our groups to have sexual dreams about them watching porn, especially when you're so focused on not watching porn or not eating cheeseburgers or going to McDonald's. And as soon as you have the dream, it's like, was that dream? Did I just take a misstep and made a mistake? And that's a common thing about it.
Benjy Uyama
For me, I think that the healthy approach, like you, said Andrew, is anything regarding shame or guilt is not productive. It's not healthy in the long term, and it's not going to help you actually get to the place where you want to go regarding your sexual integrity and especially if you are dealing with an ongoing porn addiction or habit. So for me, when the line is drawn, when you are bringing sexual content into your dreams intentionally as a way to navigate around not watching porn, and I've done that. I think that's especially common for young adolescent men.
Trying to have sexual dreams, and to say that it's not watching porn because it's part of my dream and this is a natural thing. But at the same time, you could debate all day long about what's healthy and unhealthy but is it really a productive use of your sexual energy and your time to do that? Or is there something better that you could do with your energy? Or are you just using it as a scapegoat? That's a whole thing, wet dreams, and sexuality, and it's not as clean cut.
Andrew Love
It can be. I heard this one doctor giving a lecture about this topic, and it is pretty interesting because she was talking about how it depends on where you're at in your recovery cycle. So in the beginning, let's say you're just starting to get into not watching porn, not masturbating, you're acclimatizing in your mind, and all that. There are still residual thoughts and connections to that world of watching porn and all this. Your brain is still largely pornified, and so even when you start to segue out of that world, having such dreams like wet dreams are common because you've already started the process of sexualizing your body. These dreams are more likely because they're already in your subconscious mind because you've already infused so much of them.
Think about this. When you have an incident happen to you, it's much more likely to go deep into your subconscious if it's fused with emotion. I guess what we do when we masturbate to something is we're adding emotion, we're adding some meaning to the imagery that we're seeing, and then it becomes meaningful to us. So then as a part of, not only our consciousness which is what we're thinking about but our unconscious mind which is what's operating when we're asleep. Again, when you're going through this process of unplugging from the porn matrix and you're trying to plug into something healthier, there are still some residual thoughts and feelings and connections to that old world especially as you're in the early stages, much more likely to occur.
There's some practical stuff that I learned too like don't sleep naked. There's a lot more friction that will take place if you sleep on your stomach as well. Imagine, especially if you're a guy, things are going to be rubbing up and moving around and creating some friction which creates stimulus. So there's that too, the type of textures that you have like your bedsheets and all this stuff factors into it. But my question to you is, do you think that you can control your dreams, your unconscious mind? Have you ever experienced that? Have you ever been lucid dreaming, having to say as to what occurs while you're asleep?
Benjy Uyama
I have a bit of experience of this if you're asking me personally.
Andrew Love
Yes, I am.
Benjy Uyama
I think this is a bit of a story but also, it's relevant to the conversation. I have a really good friend who is very much into lucid dreaming, he was teaching me all about this. And for him, when you actually look up lucid dreaming online, the typical kind of person that tries to lucid dream is for sexual content. They're trying to have sexual experiences through their dreams. But there's an entire sector group of individuals and specific religious communities that use lucid dreaming as a spiritual practice, as opposed to self-satisfaction or just being able to fly for this. They actually used lucid dreaming as a way to meditate, and a way to clear their minds while they're sleeping and sleep more deeply, which I thought was very fascinating.
If you think about your father's experience of sleep is very minimal, two hours to three hours a night, even at times. And how is it that a human being is able to operate at that level on such little sleep? There's something going on during the sleep. There's some level of meditation or clearing the mind, and so there are these practices of lucid dreaming like you start to get to a certain stage where you're inside your dream. You're eventually getting to a point where inside your dream you can just sit and just meditate throughout your entire sleep. That's your entire dream, you're just meditating while you're sleeping. And when you can do that, and just clear your brain of all subconscious worries, fears, distractions, addictions, whatever it may be, and just be blank, then you can sleep in a more peaceful and deep manner. And so I thought that was really fascinating. I played with lucid dreaming just because I wanted to fly. But it just takes so much control and intention, and some people are just more conscious of their dreams than I am, and I just couldn't do it.
Andrew Love
I bring this up because I think a lot of people think that their resting state when they're asleep is somehow disassociated entirely from the day that they just had, and they think, I just go to bed and then I go to sleep and then, that was a weird dream. But sometimes yes, things might come out of the left-field or it's that you have a dream based on an experience. You had it when you were a little kid and maybe some suppressed emotion or something that happened way long ago. But so often, I've tried this out so many times and I believe it to be 100% true for me at least, is that how you live your day and how you wind down prior to going to sleep impacts the quality of your sleep and the type of dreams that you have.
Your environment too, sometimes when you're traveling and you're sleeping in a hotel, I've had some very strange dreams in hotels because of the spirits in there and the environment, it's just really weird. But even if you can prepare it, you can prepare the room and you can prepare yourself. But let's just say for the average person sleeping in your normal bed, to wind down and start having the type of thoughts that you'd want to have while you're asleep before because you meditate before bed. I don't go to sleep without meditating. I can not. I don't get nearly as good of sleep, I'm not as deep asleep. But also I want to think about certain things because I want to put my mind there consciously. I also start to feel certain emotions when you conjure certain images in your mind, and so you're already feeling some stuff. There's a chance that you're going to continue feeling that is more likely that you're not just going to feel great while you're falling asleep and then wake up in a hot sweat with some weird dream.
So there is that fact. I've talked to some people that I've coached some people about their wet dreams, and when they were getting it frequently I was like, what's going on with your life? A lot of it was if you can imagine your sexuality as this fire. There are ways of stoking the fire within you, and when you have a raging inferno, that's when you're extremely horny. But throughout your day, looking at Instagram before bed, do you think that might impact your dreams? Probably. Even if you looked at Instagram during the day, even if you were walking down the street checking out guys/ girls, you're stimulating something in you and maybe it's just some embers, maybe it's not a fire, but it's still there. It's still likely to somehow flare up at some point and why not when you're asleep when your defenses are down. So part of this, I know, is based on how you go to bed, even the foods that you eat.
When we were in Korea together, you and I, remember we went to this really long workshop and there is this really bad habit that they got into of giving us doughnuts and ice cream right before bed. What I noticed was I was having the most vivid, insane, scary, frightening dreams when I would have a lot of sugar right before bed. Every single time they gave us a Krispy Kreme donut and I would eat it and then go to sleep, I'd have the most terrifying dreams. It's the craziest thing. And when I didn't, those dreams wouldn't happen. So please understand, I'm not saying this is 100% why but this is a factor. Think about what you're eating and what you're thinking about throughout the day, but especially within a couple of hours before bed. And that's the bad stuff that you're consuming or non-productive stuff, but if you flip that around, what could you be doing instead of that? Stretching your body is really important. Meditating, that's stretching your mind and spirit. Breathing, doing breathwork, calming yourself, having a nice not too hot shower. I heard too hot showers are not so good, but a cool shower before bed. All this stuff really contributes to a state of productive sleep.
Benjy Uyama
I've been hearing success from some of the guys in my group who has started before they went to sleep they started journaling, because in my group, in the program in general, emphasize the importance of self-introspection and reflection on your state of mind, your state of emotion and just your health, your physical state, and they started doing this journaling before bed. I think it really does supercharge them for the next day. Not only that but especially when they're sleeping. It sets their subconscious up with that context. Even for me, I don't journal before I go to bed but I have to even if it's for 20 seconds, at the very least. I'll just think about what is important to me? Reprioritize myself to what I'm trying to do with my life, because if not, if I don't set myself up that way before bed, the default thing that I'll usually do is go on YouTube, or watch Family Guy or whatever stupid thing that I like to wind down for the day.
Tony Robbins does the same thing by the way, which I found it which is cool, watch the Family Guy before bed. Anyways, so doing something that prioritizes what is important, and the next thing I do that day or that night or while I sleep is always more in line with what's important to me. It's never making more money or it's never status or ego or whatever, it's always about how I can help, how I can prove myself, my relationship with God, my health, my state of being, and all that stuff. So journaling, that can be very powerful. It's probably the cheesiest thing I could say, and hard to do for a lot of people but it can be extremely powerful just to reflect.
Andrew Love
It's also the process of getting thoughts out of you because a lot of times you're stuck in this loop. You just have to get it out of you, and it's very cathartic. Now, there's a lot of studies done. It's very impactful. This is a great conversation because there's no evidence to say that it's entirely induced by external factors. Sometimes you'll have a wet dream just physiologically. I don't think there's evidence one way or another, but what I'm suggesting is from my own experience and helping other people do the same results is, it's definitely a factor that goes into your eyes and ears throughout the day into your senses, what comes out in your subconscious when you're asleep. That's definitely a factor, and how you go to sleep definitely makes a difference.
But again, when you go back there could be some physiological need to release if your body's going through something, or if it's changing. Who knows, I don't believe that there's enough evidence one way or another to suggest either, but if it does happen, I never had a wet dream my whole life until actually I was matched. And then I started having all sorts of crazy dreams. I'd like to get into dreams just a little bit because we're talking about wet dreams because sometimes you have a wet dream, and you don't even remember a sexual dream. You just woke up and it just happened. Your body just released something. But sometimes it's connected to a dream, and I just want to say that I grew up one way outside of the church, I had girlfriends and stuff like this. And then when I joined our movement, I stopped everything. I stopped masturbating and stopped watching porn, everything. I guess they call it no fapping now, but this is a pre-no fap, pre-branding. But I had a clear reason why, and for some reason or another, it wasn't a struggle for me. I had other issues, ego, whatever.
But that was about two years, no issues whatsoever, and then I got matched. I started hanging out with my future wife, and we started spending a lot of time together. We started hugging and stuff like this, and all of a sudden I started having some crazy dreams. It wasn't me and her sexual dreams, it was more intense, weird dreams of being sexually assaulted and stuff that I have no idea where it came from. But all I knew is that in my dream, if I was weak and somehow acquiesce to whatever sexual act was being imposed upon me, then I would have a wet dream. First time in my life, that time I was 30 years old, up until that point I had no wet dreams. I had no idea about these things. I've heard about them, obviously. My parents gave me a book about it. They didn't talk about it, they slipped a book into my bookshelf when I was 10 or something. And I just found it one day, I was like, what is this?
So I read about it, but never experienced it until I was matched. I realized that in my understanding of it, my unpacking of what was going on was my spirit world, my energy was starting to coalesce with another person, and we're bringing not just us, but all of our ancestries with us through our genetics, through DNA, but also energetically she was bringing the same. There is this weird thing that's like coagulating, like when you have a bunch of ingredients cooking together. There's a time when they're separate ingredients, and then there's this process where they become one ingredient. Spaghetti sauce is a bunch of different ingredients that through heating and whatever become one cohesive thing. When you're going and you're meeting somebody and you're learning about them and you're building an attraction with them, you're understanding them, stuff is happening that is beyond you. Because there's stuff going on psychologically, physiologically, but then there's spiritual stuff happening that is really hard to put your thumb down. That's the point. First time in my life where I started having wet dreams. And it was again, not because I was lusting after this person but it's some crazy stuff that I can't even explain. But I remember in my dreams very clearly that if I was very clear, and I was like no, and I stood up for myself, then I wouldn't have a wet dream. Because in my dream, I was consciously saying no. But if I let it happen to me, then I'd have a wet dream. I'd wake up feeling like I had just been violated. It was the weirdest thing. So I typically caution people when they're going through the matching process, when they're courting another person, just be careful because the more you get comfortable with somebody and hugging them, holding hands or whatever, you're activating stuff in you that you might not fully understand. I'm not saying it's good or bad, I'm just saying to be careful and understand that sometimes you're unearthing some stuff. Because I definitely went to that and I've seen it happen a few times with different people that they're like, what's going on with my body right now? Are you in a match with somebody and a lot of times they are.
Benjy Uyama
Yes, that's something that I've experienced similarly. With multiple other guys and women who go through the matching process and receive the blessing, because I work with a lot of couples doing that, and it's very common, especially regarding pornography, to go a long time without any slip-ups or urges regarding masturbation/ porn as soon as you're in a relationship. This is what happened to me. As soon as I was blessed, within a year, I had very, very strong temptation in that area. I didn't really understand it, because I had been clean for years. I was feeling really on top of the world, my sexual energy, and integrity, and then as soon as I was blessed I had so much temptation. And it was really scary because you've made this life an eternal commitment to a spouse. This is what a lot of people who are single now are afraid of, and it's actually very common.
So I told my dad about this, and I was like, this is really hard and I don't know what to do. Something that he helped me understand is that when you're in a relationship when you're blessed, it's really a different level. You're at a different level, you're not yourself alone, there's another person involved. It's a different dynamic, it's a different sexual energy. It's a different relationship with pornography, with masturbation, and it's a different way to approach it. But also, like you said, it brings in the spiritual elements, the emotional relational elements. It brings in the relational elements of that relationship. What occurred to me at that time is that this is just the next level of my integrity, this is the next level of what it's going to take, and focusing that energy on my spouse and myself to grow through this experience. It's really interesting that people going through ascending have just felt really confident.
Most of the single people that are going through our program with High Noon are there, partly because they want to prepare themselves to be a good husband or wife in the future. That is a huge priority for people without a doubt. And to face the reality that you might be in a relationship that this might come up is challenging. But I want to encourage everyone who is going through that experience that every couple that I've seen successfully navigate pornography, masturbation, sexual integrity, has communicated about this well in their matching process throughout their blessing. It has never been, let's just skirt under the rug and not talk about it, and just pretend as if I beat it. All the couples that we have on the podcast, we talked about on YouTube, Ronda Robertson, Carina's of the world, those couples at a certain point during their relationship had to have these difficult conversations and manage and navigate it together and to beat it together, and to look at this issue as a team, as opposed to fighting the issue against each other. They were fighting the issue as a team. That's just what it takes. That's what it takes.
Andrew Love
Understanding it and processing it. To me, I had clearly turned off the faucet. My sexual energy, I just turned off that faucet. And then when I started getting into a relationship with my potential lifelong partner, it was that my faucet was closed but there's a bit of a leak because we were touching and we were hugging. We were canoodling at times, going to the movie and maybe my arm was around her. It was a new experience, and that was stimulating something in me. Again, it wasn't like I was becoming sexual with her, sexually attracted to her in that way. It was more of they were inert systems in me that became active. Again, that can have all sorts of different outlets. But for me, it was some crazy subconscious or spiritual phenomena where I was just having these crazy dreams, and in my dreams, I realized that the next level of my sexual integrity was, I have to have sexual integrity when I'm asleep. I need to clearly know when somebody is trying, and that has happened to me since. After our marriage every so often I'll have dreams that if I'm not clear about where I'm at with my wife, and how much I'm committed to her, then there'll be temptresses in my dreams who try to coerce me to be with them. If I'm not 100% clear, then I wake up feeling like I've just had an affair with my wife is a horrible feeling.
It's a really terrible feeling. But when I am clear, I'm so clear even in my dreams. Clear in my dreams, night and day, I'm clear. So that's something that's worth striving for is, again, not to judge ourselves. If you have some crazy dream, it's not always within our realm of control. But I do believe we can assert quite a bit of control even in our sleeping state. When we're living a very congruent and vertical life where we're very clear about who we are and what we want out of life. We can stand up for ourselves even in our dreams. I can't speak with great authority on that outside of my own experience, but I do know that lucid dreaming is like that guy, Tim Ferriss, he did it to practice his wrestling when he was in high school. And he became such a better wrestler because he was using his dream time, his asleep time to envision how to wrestle better and he would wake up and he would just be better because he'd already been practicing all night. He learned how to optimize. He's such a nerd, he optimizes everything but he could even optimize his sleep to be better while he was awake.
I know there are ways of doing this. I don't know how much you should go down that rabbit hole because I don't know how productive it is, because you can get lost. Some people get lost in that world of lucid dreaming, combined lucid dream tea, I tried that one when I was 20 something. I got into lucid dreaming tea, and I don't know if it was psychosomatic, but I felt like I had some really good dreams. But it's secondary to the main purpose, which is that your restful state is meant to allow your body to fix itself. If you're having disturbing dreams, or if you're having strange experiences, then it's worth looking at where you are psychologically. What kind of media are you listening to? Is it impacting you? I swear to you, if I hear a lot of pop music, I just feel terrible about my life and it impacts me, so I just try not to listen. Most pop music is garbage. Even if it sounds like it's a nice beat, what they're talking about is just garbage. Even back in the day, you listened to Motown music, listened to the lyrics of Motown music, it's garbage. So much of it is garbage, and it's depressing so it impacts you. All that stuff is impacting you in some way, shape, or form. Not to scare you, but just to let you know that you have the power to customize your waking life for sure, and you can have a lot of influence on how you sleep and what you dream about. I can't say 100% but you definitely have a lot of say if you practice certain things.
Benjy Uyama
Can I ask you a question? I want to take this conversation to a bit of a big picture. Something that I struggled with and questioned a lot, and I think a lot of our participants, High Noon people, are wondering and struggling with is that we have this ideal and standard, especially during our adolescent time that we're supposed to be focusing on preparing ourselves for the family, marriage, etc. Focusing our energy on creating and being helpful and whatever, but at the same time, we have this enormous raging sexual hormone imbalance that's going on at the same time. The question is why? You're saying earlier, we don't really ask the question, why. Not how, but why is it that we have such a strong sex drive at a time where we're supposed to be saving it?
Andrew Love
Things are way different than they were, first of all. There is a woman who is progressive back in the 30s, I think it was pre-World War II era. She was kind of a Kinsey-an mind where she wanted to prove that college men were actually secretly having a lot more sex and doing dirty things and masturbating a lot more. So she did a study, she studied a bunch of university people, and she found out that they were masturbating a lot less than she assumed. This is 100 years ago, let's say, so 90 to 100 years ago. When you look back at the world back then, masturbating had a different connotation. It was perceived in a different way that didn't mean that people weren't horny. It didn't mean like that. But the culture didn't stimulate you constantly as it does now. Everywhere you look, everything is sexualized. We have sex dripping from the walls of the buses that we sit in or billboards everywhere or anytime you go to social media, it's just lambasted with this stuff. It's constantly just stirring up the sexuality in you. I just want to paint a picture that our world is completely working against the purity model, the not being stimulated model because everywhere we turn we're stimulated, stimulated. When some women, if they were to wear a long dress versus wearing yoga pants, it's like the world is a lot different.
I'm not saying that yoga pants are bad, I'm just saying there's this constant stimulus that I'm speaking from the male perspective. So we're hyperstimulated, and the odds are against us. We're swimming up current. But if you can imagine a society where we're really looking out for each other and you have a lot of mentorship and elder brothers looking out for you, if you're a young lady, elder sisters that you can go to. When you consult somebody that you really respect and they listen to you and they hear you out and they support you, you feel a lot different when you walk away. You can walk into a conversation with somebody like an elder brother, feeling so frustrated, so horny, so agitated, or whatever, and talking to them can calm you down so much because you're being filled up with something real. That's love and attention. Societies used to have elders that you could consult. Their only job within the tribe was to be a consultant. They're people that have been around a long time, and they would give you wisdom based on their experience. Their only role in society is to provide support and love for the younger generations. We have a society based on people like that who are looking out for the younger generations. You're just learning how to orient your systems.
If you see a kid who's in middle school, his nose is huge, everything's disproportionate. It's called the ugly duckling phase because your body's all off-kilter because of certain parts growing faster than others. You're not a finished product yet. So that's just physiologically, that's like how you look. But emotionally, you're also having all these systems being turned on at different times, and you're going through it. And so without guidance, it's hell. But with guidance and with some understanding, you're meant to learn how to use these systems for your benefit. There are societies that have a much better tradition of doing this. The Hindu tradition has a very clear way of passing on knowledge and helping people to get to this age without getting wrapped up in sexuality. They have clear talks about this, you should study this. It's really, really cool.
It's not so hard for them because there's a clear culture that supports this growth. So, yes, our bodies are changing and we have hormones that are going up and down, but to help regulate that is the fact that we're sentient beings. You're the invisible you, your mind and your spirit, that is meant to regulate the chemical you, your hormones, how you're feeling, your mood swings, all this stuff, and you can learn how to do this. You're not going to be good in the beginning, but you can learn the skill over time. And you're meant to learn that from people who know how to do it, who care about you, who invest in you. Learning how to calm your emotions, if you have a hot temper. Learning how to stop obsessing over being loved and getting likes from the girls around you or boys around you at school. So in that culture, the stakes aren't so high, it's not like you're walking on a razor's edge. There's support, and you're being guided through this stuff. Intellectually understanding through conversations, emotionally feeling calmer because you're going through stuff, but at least you know that you're being supported. It's totally different. That's why High Noon, we're in a place where we can have high school groups now. That was never on the table before, but we're evolving into that culture. And the more that we have that, and the more young people that have sexual integrity, the more that that's going to become normalized. And then you realize it's actually not that much of a struggle. We're told from every source imaginable that masturbation is normal, and to not masturbate is the most impossible thing in the world. That's your concept. Is not masturbate the hardest thing in the world? Actually, it's not that hard when you have a lot of meaning and purpose, and support. It's really not that hard.
Benjy Uyama
Yes. Thanks, Andrew. I had this question pretty much answered similarly with something I read from Father Moon, he said that when you think about your life, you should think about it in stages. He specifically talked about stages of seven years. Ideally, the stages of seven, zero to seven is like your formation. 7-14 is your growth period, you're growing the most. 14-21 completion stage, and he's saying that the purpose of those time periods, those time frames is to by the time you're 21 it's a general number to have mastery and control of yourself. I think this is the purpose. For me, that's the purpose of my sex drive, especially during those times is to direct that energy, not to just abstain for the sake of abstaining, but to have self-mastery. But also to direct that energy towards creating something, towards building something through, towards doing something powerful and exciting. When you masturbate and watch porn, after you do that your feeling is not generally more excited about life, it's usually depleted. You generally always deplete your energy, your focus after slipping up after doing that. Instead of that, what if we could just hone that energy and hone in on focusing on creating something, about doing things that are exciting for us. You're saying, Andrew, that the problem is that ability to focus, that ability to create something to be creators is being hijacked by the hypersexualized culture and stimulation constantly. It's been completely hijacked. That's where we're starting it with High Noon. We can talk all weekend about that. Unfortunately, the current situation we're in right now is that we're being exposed to such sexualized content everywhere you go.
You mentioned yoga pants. These yoga pants are an example of so many things that have changed over the last 50 years. Whereas 50 years ago, if men and women were wearing the things we're wearing right now, it would be like, what are you doing? It's just undeniable that things have changed. It's not necessarily right or wrong, but it's changed. And it's undeniable that has changed because men, we are unable to look at a woman that is fully-clothed, that is wearing a nice dress, that is not wearing a ton of makeup, and just say: Wow, she's beautiful. We're unable to do that.
Andrew Love
Yes.
Benjy Uyama
I can, because I've wired my brain to look at my wife that way. My wife is not a very promiscuous woman. She is very modest in the way she dresses and the way she presents herself.
Andrew Love
I think you mean gracious, maybe not promiscuous.
Benjy Uyama
In the beginning of our relationship, I was like: I wish you would do this or wear this kind of pants or whatever. And I was realizing that this is just like my completely sexualized mind attacking her and saying, you need to do this because that's what's beautiful and that's what I think is attractive. But her saying, I don't want to do that because that's not me. I've had to re-acclimate my mind to see her, be able to look at her fully clothed, or naked, depending on our situation. And just be like, that's beautiful. Now, I can look at women, tell a story like in an airplane one time. I was looking at going to Las Vegas and all these beautiful women. If you go to Las Vegas, there are all kinds of people. There were all these beautiful women, and then I saw this one mom, she was like this cool mom, she had a bunch of kids with her by herself, and she was just smiling and having a good time. I was like, that's super attractive to me. I wasn't attracted to her but I just made that mental note and I was like, that's really attractive. I was just proud of myself from going, from seeing all these women going to Las Vegas and seeing that as beautiful. And now I just see that and I think that's actually sad, honestly. That, as a culture, we've come to a point where we have to be so desensitized to the beauty that that is required, that level of men and women, by the way, this is not a one-way thing. That's beautiful and that's attractive.
Andrew Love
Absolutely. To me, the idea of training a horse. In the beginning, it's actually quite dangerous to get on a horse that's wild, but there are people that know how to train horses and tame horses and subjugate them and cause them to be like: Hey, I'm your friend, if you let me work together with you, I can ride you and we can go around and then I'll feed you. I'll take care of you. I'll give you safety. That's our sex drive. But you need to learn from somebody who has tamed that horse, who has learned how to control it and subjugate it. And then you can be great friends with your sexuality, but in the beginning, it's bucking like crazy. It's kicking up a storm, it's acting up, and it's going all over the place, and you just have to learn how to calm it down. You have to learn how to calm it down, and that's a skill set.
So honestly speaking, we started with wet dreams, we got into dreams, and now we're getting into other stuff. So maybe we should just swing back around and just say, to conclude, we'll end just as we began, which is shame should never be a part of any equation. Shame doesn't help anything. If you're having wet dreams, please look at your lifestyle, are you allowing yourself to indulge in stimulation that might be causing some reaction in you that's stimulating some reaction later that it gets stored. If you can imagine, it's like stimulation that gets stored, and then it just lingers around and when you're asleep, it activates it. It acts up again. That definitely is a part of it. How are you going to bed? What are you doing before you go to bed that affects your dreams, that affects your sleep state? In general, don't worry about it but if you would like to stop, just start to practice how to have better rest. And if you would like to learn about lucid dreaming, then just practice. Try to say no next time. Some sexy person in your dream trying to seduce you, you just say no. And then just be like: Hey True Father, True Parents. Hey God, can you come here? Somebody, help me out, talk to this person. They need help. Just change the state. Just fly away, turn into a cucumber and just fly away.
I hope this was helpful. Just know that you're good, you're amazing. We're all works in progress, but the goal is mastery, self-mastery. Mastery looks like everything you do is creating more momentum for you to become the person that you were born to be. So that you radiate, we say in High Noon, we want radiant individuals to create radiant blessings that create radiant families so that our society can radiate. Radiate what? Goodness God, heavenly love, intimacy, care, honesty, our virtues, all these things. So please, when you focus on that the rest of this stuff starts to go away naturally. Even if you have strange dreams or whatever, you can still wake up and go back to being a happy person. You don't have to linger in that for so long. So anyway, as always, if you guys have any questions, please let us know. We'd love to hear from you. And again, this episode was created because somebody asked us to make this topic. A few people did. So if you have any more requests, let us know and we're happy to indulge you in your desire for the podcast. Any last words, Benjy?
Benjy Uyama
That's good. Thanks, Andrew.
Andrew Love
Thank you, dudes and dudettes. We'll talk to you soon.
Hello everybody, Andrew Love here, and I just wanted to add one more point. High Noon is a nonprofit organization and we are run by donations. Although we've been doing okay, thanks to the massive generosity of our founders, the Wolfenbergers, we want to expand higher, higher, higher, higher. We want to make a global impact. We want to reach every family. We want to change the culture. And for that to happen, we're going to need a lot of volunteers and a lot of staff. That's just the reality. It takes money to travel, it takes money to do a lot of the things we do. We want to let you be a part of this growth. So what we've created is a donor's club which is a $10 a month club, and when you join, you get a t-shirt mailed to your door, you can get some exclusive content. We also have some really good goodies for our tribe of people who are a part of the donor's club that we're going to talk about in the coming months. So I just wanted to invite you to be one of these people. Everybody can afford $10 a month, it's just a matter of whether it's a priority. So if you feel High Noon has impacted you positively or your family or somebody you know, please consider donating. I don't want you to give any money unless you really, really want to. But if you do want to I encourage you to really, really donate. So $10 a month is, I don't know, a cat a month. I don't know how to measure it. It's a giant hamburger and french fries a month that you can sacrifice in order to help this world become a more habitable, more enjoyable, more connected, more loving place. So please consider joining our donor's club, it's just $10 a month. We look forward to seeing you on the inside of our secret society for donors. Have a good day everybody.