The Paradox of the Libido

What is our biggest obstacle to progress on the path of semen retention? Our unchecked libido. Our overwhelming need for release is what causes us to spill our seed, every time. It’s what drives us to spend so much time seeking sexual pleasure, sometimes through the pursuit of women, but oftentimes it comes in the form of mindless porn-scrolling and masturbation. 

If the libido is our biggest enemy, what is our biggest ally towards progress on the path of retention? Paradoxically enough, it’s also our libido! 

“How can this be?” I hear you say. As writer on all things stoicism Ryan Holiday puts it, the obstacle is the way. In fact, the libido is the source of all our fuel for self-evolution, and make no mistake, the only goal of true retention is conscious, directed self-evolution.

Libido – friend or foe?

It’s often better to simplify, simplify, simplify, but in this case, let’s take the concept of libido and expand upon it a bit. To most of us, the libido simply means our sexual desire. Possibly the most well known of all psychologists, Sigmund Freud, coined the term libido. He defined it as, “the energy, regarded as a quantitative magnitude… of those instincts which have to do with all that may be comprised under the word ‘love’.” According to wikipedia, he “also explained that it is analogous to hunger, the will to power, and so on insisting that it is a fundamental instinct that is innate in all humans.”

Freud’s disciple and world renowned psychologist Carl Jung goes one step further, identifying it as the totality of psychic energy, not limiting it to just sexual desire. “It is the energy that manifests itself in the life process and is perceived subjectively as striving and desire.” In this sense, it can be thought of as the psychic desire to achieve, the psychic desire for better and more. For most of us, this desire for achievement rarely goes beyond sexual desire or the desire for status, power and wealth.

This “totality of psychic energy, striving for and desiring better and more”, is very analogous to the concept of kundalini within Indian yogic schools of thought. This kundalini energy lies dormant at the base of the spine, and no matter what style of yoga you practice, and whether you know it or not, the goal is the same – to rouse and awaken this sleeping energy and move it up the spine, through all the chakras until it connects with and comes to reside in the 7th, highest chakra. This is the end goal of all spiritual pursuits. Your goal may not be spiritual enlightenment but trust me when I say that no matter your goal, you want this psycho-sexual-spiritual energy working for you, not against you.

Most of us are essentially walking around like spiritual zombies. Our kundalini lies dormant and our chakras remain in a sad state, operating at a bare minimum. Look around here in the west – we’re all fat, cranky, stressed, tired, lazy and grumpy, never mind all the needless masturbation. If we can’t keep up our physical bodies, which we all can see and agree exist, how do you think our energetic/spiritual bodies look? Most of us don’t even believe in such things. 

And as a quick aside, I’ve said before that if the concepts of chakras and kundalini turn you off, just use them as metaphors. Whether they exist or not is irrelevant, all we care about is learning to tame, control, harness and build up our sexual energy, right? Just do the practices and the results will follow.

Harnessing the Libido

So this libido, this kundalini, this psychic energy that desires “better and more experiences” lies dormant. It actually isn’t completely dormant, it’s just barely operating.. After all, we all do have a libido. That energy, for most of us, never makes it past the second or third chakra. Most of us are stuck operating somewhere in the limbo of the first three chakras. The first chakra is concerned with survival; the second with sense of self/ego and the desire for sex; and the third is concerned with personal power, status, and your place in the world. You can look at the chakras as stages of life or levels of maturity – most of us never make it past wanting more sex, status and power for ourselves.

Makes sense, doesn’t it? Our first concerns are simply to survive. After we’re comfortable on that front, we generally want to go out and make it in the world, and hopefully find a nice lady or two or ten to pair up with. Some of us never want to settle down and just want more and more women. We are obsessed with sex, status, wealth and power – that’s not hard to see is it?

Imagine the central channel and the chakras as a hose with a very powerful stream of water flowing through it. This hose has 7 junctions where water can flow out, and our goal is to get it to flow fully out of all 7 junctions. Unfortunately, most of us never make it past the 2nd, maybe the 3rd junction, and the water isn’t flowing, it’s a mere trickle. See, that channel where the energy is supposed to flow through has blockages. Those junctions are shut, hardly open at all. What energy does flow through this channel is a far cry from the amount that should, and it rarely makes it past the first three chakras because we rarely act from a place of higher consciousness.

Most of us are never concerned with anything other than “me, mine, and those people I can fuck or use to further myself.” Sad but true. Chakras or no chakras, this is what the majority of people obsess over.

This is why the libido isn’t actually the enemy. It’s the most powerful tool we all have for self-evolution and for achieving all of our desires. The problem is for most of us, our libidinal energy is stuck. Our libido never makes it past our cock and balls. Our libido is stuck here, and that’s why most of us are obsessed with sex, finding more women to conquer and with hoarding more wealth, status or whatever.

Further, that energy that is flowing is a mere trickle of what it should be. Whereas if the channels were cleared, and the junctions opened, and the energy increased.. Oh boy, it’s a whole different ball game.

Your libido is NOT the reason you can’t stop jacking off – it’s because you haven’t learned to increase and circulate this energy!

While a bad idea in the beginning, as you progress on the path of retention, you actually want to increase your libido, because once you’re able to move it past these lower centers that are only concerned with sex and egoic needs, you’re able to truly make some very satisfying and rewarding progress in life. At the very least, you don’t want to be squandering your sexual energy on porn and frivolous masturbation.

And guess what? If you’re still wanting to make it in the world, gain some status, lose your virginity or find a partner, you still need to harness this libidinal energy! There’s nothing wrong at all with these things in and of themselves, it’s just when people get STUCK there and they never progress past it that it turns into an issue.

Keep that in mind as you practice semen retention – these practices, even ones that seemingly would have no effect on raising this sexual energy up to higher levels, are all intended to awaken your chakras and raise the libidinal kundalini energy up as high as it can go. All the practices are designed for conscious self-evolution, not just to become an enlightened being, but also to be used for you to achieve all your dreams and passions in life.

It’s the greatest asset we all have, so stop draining it into your crusty sock on Pornhub in your dark bedroom.