Hell realms and masturbation

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_views_on_masturbation#Judaism

This activity leads to suffering and involves increasing levels of greed, hate and delusion.

What, Judaism?

It feels like a long time since I posted this one and my sister has since reminded me that Wikipedia is not a reliable source (some of her students used to reference it against her advice making her sigh). Thank you for posting a response though. I guess the questions that I was thinking on have to do with a sense of isolation in a general way that seem to have come up and the words patient and kind are key so thank you. As I type I'm listening to a program on TV about scientology and the witnessess, a few stories about when things go wrong in a religious context. I guess I'm interested in the history of the OBC having read how at one time there were married monks, and how the organization evolved and more importantly wondering where it may be going in the future.

I agree the sense of isolation is key and is key to so many issues. When we are strong we dont feel isolated and when we feel weak we fall apart and feel isolated,these feelings may well be illusional but when caught   up in them they sure feel real,Looking at it from a perspective of zazen when we sit still and allow our 'self' to drop away our feeling of isolation and separateness drops away too.

Immersed in our self
we paint many pictures of
our own dreams

It's fun. Anything else is just a load of ideas going around your head.

Give it a try.

Its amazing to me how much judgmentalism, and underneath how much emotional power we as human beings invest in sexuality.

The stories I have read re Jiyu Kennett suggest to me that she was sexually repressed and often used her position to use sexuality to undermine other people.

I think that judgementalism over sexuality is endemic in our society.

Words like masturbation, abortion, infidelity, rape, homosexuality, promiscuity, sado-masochism, titilating, beastial, fornicating (to name a few) can conjure up in all of us strong emotional and judgemental reactions. 

It also amazes me that making love and rape are essentially identical acts physically, but feel to the people involved at opposite ends of human experience. So its not what you do its the way that you do it...

Also Freud and the world of psychology has  a huge amount of wisdom re sexuality, and the subconscious drives that we learn in early childhood. And how they are far more powerful than we realise. Unless we listen a bit deeper.

In psychotherapy, "deviant" sexual behaviour is  not seen as something to be judgemental about, but more a vehicle to listen deeper into ourselves to find out whats really driving us. Michael's loneliness and isolation is one such possibility.

Also in Psychotherapy, judgementalism is seen as an off-switch to listening. And it is only by listening deeper that we find our real non-conscious drives, that were put there in early childhood. 

Behaviour is not going to change on the surface if the root cause is not allowed out into the open.

For me and for everyone i have known at any depth, sexuality is fundamentally a vulnerable and opening place, where we contact in a very real way the exposure of our infancy and our relationships with our mother and father. As every counsellor and psychotherapist knows, this is why most sexual relationships fail, as most do. Where other than in psychotherapy is this talked about in any detail, and with any sense of its real importance to who I really think I am?

and Glorfindel, you are naughty!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJmg-879j5o

oh oh my major childhood smutty humour influence! I've been outed!!