HealthyGamerGG - Does Being a Virgin Make You More Enlightened?

Episode Date: February 2, 2024

In today's video, we explore the societal dynamics that revolve around human worth and sexual activity in today's world. In today's discussion, we delve into the intricate debate surrounding the differences in attitudes towards lust and sexuality between Eastern and Western cultures. Check out HG Coaching: https://bit.ly/46mKzHj Or, take the quiz to see which Coaching types is right for you: https://bit.ly/3FjiHcd Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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about how the ultimate chads are actually virgins. So in the spiritual Eastern traditions. There's this concept of Brahmacharya. Brahmacharya is a Sanskrit word that usually gets translated into celibacy. But technically it's not celibacy. What the literal translation is, is to dwell in Brahman. And Brahman is sort of this cosmic consciousness. So what it literally sort of means is to like focus on the divine, which kind of more literally translates as non-lustfulness. And if you sort of look at these Eastern traditions, these like monks and, you know, meditators and people living in the Himalayas and whatnot, they talk about the immense power of Brahmacharya. And they kind of say that if you're a brahmacharya in the right way, this is what sort of cultivates the most powerful

spiritual energy that will result in like enlightenment and freedom from bondage and all this other kinds of stuff, right? So basically what they're saying is if you're not lustful, you will become O.P. Hey, y'all, I want to take a second to talk about HG coaching. And y'all may be wondering, my God, bro. Like, I don't want to talk about coaching. I just want to watch YouTube videos because there's a part of your brain that recognizes that you need to do better in life. But you don't actually want to invest the time and energy. You just want to sit there and watch another YouTube video, which is exactly why I developed a coaching program. Because I realize the problem that we have today is not that we don't know what to do.

It's that we don't really understand how we work and how to get ourselves to actually do things. And the reason I developed a coaching program is so that 12 weeks from you, now, you can actually have made progress. We've shown that people improve in their sense of life purpose by about 58% and a 25% to 45% reduction in depression and anxiety. The reason we made a coaching program isn't because you can't DIY it.

It's because if you want to have made significant progress three months from now, you're gonna need help doing it. So if you're interested, check out the link in the description below. And if you're still not ready yet, totally fine. That's why we literally have 800 YouTube videos. And so monks in the east are all about not having sex and not being lustful. But here in the West and sort of in the developed

world, we're actually moving completely in the opposite direction. Because in today's society, sex sells, right? Everything that we look at is somehow sexual in some way. So, you know, look at, take any sort of celebrity or any movie, they're going to be dressing in ways that sort of provoke their sexuality. We as a society are obsessed with sex. We sort of place value on human beings based on their sexual activity. So for some of us, if you get, if you're having a lot of sex, that means that you are a superior human being to other human beings. But on the flip side, that's usually men, right? So we'll sort of say, oh, like this guy is like, so he's so alpha and he's having sex with so many people. He is a better human being than I am. And on the flip side, we've got

the betas, right? And the betas are kind of like, well, I'm not having as much sex as other people or I've never had sex. So like, I am not useful as a human being. And I've literally worked with patients who are suicidal because they've never had sex at the age of 21. I'm not trying to bash them or anything, but that's just people's experience. On the flip side, if we look at women, this is also a situation where the more sex you have, the less valuable you are as a woman, right? So something weird is going on in our society where we place value on human beings based on their sexual activity. And there may be some kind of like biological, like imperative kind of argument here, right? So a lot of these people are quite pseudoscientific. And they'll sort of say, well, like the purpose of

human beings is to procreate. And so like, you know, procreation is why, the reason that sex is so important is because it's biology. It's not us. It's not a human construction. This is what the biology, the biology wants us to all have sex. And so if we sort of think about it for a second, right, a virgin who goes to a sperm bank once a week is much more biologically successful than someone who is getting laid all the time and pressuring all of their partners to be on birth control or get abortions because they don't want to be a follow. and they don't want the responsibilities of it, right? So, like, the biological imperative thing is kind of insane.

Like, we don't need human beings to have human beings. And if you kind of look at it, like, there are lots of people out there who are neither alphas nor betas, but are just, like, from countries without birth control and they're having, like, eight, nine kids and they're, you know, just ordinary human beings. So I don't quite buy this biological imperative. I'm sure there's some argument, there's some truth to it, obviously, right? So we know that we want to propagate the species and all that good stuff. But I think that this is sort of where like a lot of psychological stuff gets conflated as biology.

But at the end of the day, I was sort of stuck between these two perspectives. So here in the East, you have all these people who are saying that non-lustfulness is super OP. And here in the West, we have entire lives that are constructed around getting late. So then I started to wonder, okay, if these like people in the East are right about this, then there should be some science to it, right? There should be some scientific evidence that not having sex for some amount of time or not being lustful, which is technically what it is. You can actually have sex as a brumachari, which is an issue for a later date.

But so what they were sort of saying is that, okay, like, if this truly makes you OPE, there must be some scientific evidence for it. And I went and I tried to find like, okay, what does the science say about people who are not lustful or don't have sex? Like, what would change in the brain, right? So when I get curious about this stuff, I look at the science. And what I found was I couldn't find an answer. And that's when it hit me that there's actually a really, really interesting answer.

So if we look at the science of sex and the brain regions involved in sex, I was trying to figure out, okay, which brain region is affected if we have sex or we don't have sex, which parts of the brain are involved. And it turns out that literally every part of the brain is involved in sex. And this is actually a really interesting phenomenon because if you look at basically any other human function, if we look at language or the ability to do mathematics or even hunger and thirst, if we look at the way that we form relationships, the way that we process visual information, where we experience our emotions, where willpower comes from. Every other human faculty can be reduced to some part of the brain. The weird thing with sex is that every part of the brain, literally, every part of the brain is involved in sex. So let's take a quick look at this paper. So this is a great review.

It's called the neuroanatomy in function of human sexual behavior. Okay. So they're talking about which parts of the brain are involved with sex? And if we kind of scroll down, like, this is what's kind of interesting. Summary of brain areas involved in human sexual behavior. So, like, okay, so this is the reward system. There's the thalamus is involved. The hypothalamus is involved.

The septal region. The prefrontal cortex. The cingulate cortex, the insula. Right? All of those are involved. And all the sensory parts are involved, too. The occipital cortex and all that kind of stuff. So, like, basically the whole brain.

And then, like, all of these areas are somehow main brain regions involved in human behavior. It's like most of the brain. Okay? And then there are also subdivisions, like there are various cortical areas. So the cerebral cortex is kind of what makes us human. And lots of different parts of the cerebral cortex are involved in sex. But what about things from a more, when they talk about networks and stuff like that. But what about things like neurotransmitters, right?

So we sort of say, okay, like dopamine is the pleasure chemical. And serotonin like helps you feel good. And like nor epinephrine is adrenaline. And like all of these different neurotransmitters do different things, right? It turns out that like literally all of them are. involved in sex in some way. And so this is the really crazy thing is I was trying to figure out, okay, like, if someone is celibate for a little while or they're non-lustful, which parts of the brain get freed up? And it turns out that like all of them get affected, okay? And that's

when it sort of hit me. Holy crap, maybe these mugs are actually onto something because the reason they say it's so OP is because this is the one axis, which will affect like literally all parts of your brain and affect every neurotransmitter. And so maybe they're actually on to something. And as I dug more into the research, I found a couple of things that I thought were really interesting. So we're going to just highlight three of the many regions that are involved in this. Okay? The first region that we're going to talk about is the amygdala. So the amygdala is the center of our brain that we experience primarily negative emotions and it's also our survival center of the brain. So this is a part of the brain that helps us stay alive. So this is what teaches us things like fear.

So if I see a bear out in the wilderness, I'm going to have a fear response. That'll happen in my amygdala, and then I will hopefully run away from the bear. So if we sort of think about it, like the amygdala is critical for survival, but a lot of our suffering comes from the amygdala. If we look at people who are depressed or anxious or a borderline personality disorder or narcissistic personality disorder, even ADHD or autism spectrum, all of these disorders have some kind of dysregulation of the amygdala. So people who have ADHD, for example, have emotional dysregulation.

They feel their emotions more powerfully, and it's harder to get them under control. And this has to do with a dysregulated amygdala or non-optimiculah. So it turns out that if you look at sort of the science of it, the neuroscience of it, the neuropathology of it, if you lesion the amygdala, if someone damages the amygdala, what happens is we become hypersexual. So as the amygdala gets damaged or weakened in some way, our sexuality actually skyrocket. rockets. And in some cases, there's this thing called Clover Busey syndrome, which is like really, really hypersexuality. Like, these people are constantly, you know, humping things and masturbating

and hitting on things. Like, and I'm not talking about internet degenerates. Okay. I know that you're going to say, ah, I do that too. Everyone, the internet is so horny. No, this is like a medical condition that people need to be hospitalized because otherwise they would constantly sexually assault other human beings. Okay. So maybe internet users. I don't know. No, but it's a serious problem. Okay? So here's the interesting thing. So as we damage the amygdala, hypersexuality increases. So then there's a really interesting principle in the brain, which is that most things are reciprocal, right? So it kind of begs the question, okay, well, if we like control the amygdala and we restrain the amygdala, what would end up happening? What are sexuality decreased? The answer is yes. And some people even hypothesize that a certain kind of activity in the amygdala is required for spiritual experiences.

So you have these like stories of these like mystics or saints. or even people like Dostoevsky. And there's a lot of like interesting neuroscientific hypotheses about what's going on in the brains of these people who are like hyper-religious and have visions of God. And it turns out that there's a particular activity within the amygdala that correlates with spiritual experiences. So on the one hand, if we damage the amygdala,

we become hypersexual. But if we do something else to the amygdala, I'm going to go ahead and say fine-tune it, but that's not really a fair scientific statement. then we sort of result in spiritual or religious experiences. Really interesting, right? The second aspect that is really, really important is that the inhibition of sexual activity and sexual thoughts is probably the number one cause of willpower drain.

So if we look at the ability to regulate ourselves, we can only regulate ourselves so much, right? So after a hard day of work, when I kind of get home and I'm sort of fatigued and I don't want to do anything, Like, that's when I order a pizza because I don't have any willpower left to eat a salad after a hard day of work. When we feel emotionally drained, when we feel mentally drained, we have no willpower left to do anything else. And so one of the really interesting things is if you look at kind of the science of it, one of the most powerful sources of willpower drain is actually inhibition of sexual thoughts and sexual activities. And this is kind of interesting because if you look at people who do nofap, one of the reasons that I think nofap is so hard is because we have all these sexual desires and impulses. And NOFAP is all about regulating them, right? So we're going to smash them down with willpower.

And the reason it's so hard is because then you don't have willpower for anything else. The reason it's so hard is because you're not dealing with the underlying desire or horniness, which means that you're constantly regulating it. And what I've sort of found in my clinical work is that when people are sexually obsessed, it doesn't mean that they're getting laid all the time or whatever, but the majority of their thoughts have to do with horniness, lustfulness, thinking about sex, they tend to stall in life. And the more that I sort of read this research, the more I connected the dots, that it's not that these people are like worse or pathetic or their betas or anything like that. Because that's what they sort of conclude.

The simple reason is because their brain is spending so much time and energy on regulating their sexual impulses that they've got nothing left in the tank to build other parts of their life. This is your fix. I am your host, Stasi Schroeder. Welcome to Tell Me Lies, the official podcast. What's the most unhinged thing of season three? Stephen, because he's so evil. I do think he is misunderstood. You see everyone base consequences.

It's intoxicating. The writers just know how to trick you. There's always a twist in this show. Tell Me Lies, the official podcast, January 6th, and stream the new season of Tell Me Lies, January 13, on Hulu, and Hulu on Disney Plus. And the really interesting thing is that even the red pillars have sort of stumbled upon this, right? And the red pillars are the ones who will say, like, actually stop worrying about getting laid and focus on yourself.

And so they've also sort of stumbled into this, which is really interesting, which is that stop thinking about sex so much and start going to the gym, you know, work on your career, do all of these things, and then attraction will come. So the second thing that's really interesting is that sexual activity, sexual thoughts result in a lot of, require a lot of, a vision that results in a lot of willpower drain. The third thing that we're going to talk about, and there's like thousands more, but the third thing we're going to focus on is actually serotonin. So serotonin is a neurotransmitter that's responsible for a lot of stuff, including things like gut peristolsis. And what does gut peristolsis mean? That means that as we eat something, the food travels from our stomach all the way through our intestines and out the back end, right, if we're lucky. And so that is governed by serotonin. So serotonin does all kinds of stuff. But one of the things that

it does in the brain is it leads to a sense of contentment and peace and relaxation. So what we sort of know is that there's two kinds of like pleasure or positive experiences that humans can have. One is governed by dopamine. So dopamine gives us excitement, joy, pleasure, adrenaline, fun. And serotonin gives us contentment. We're kind of chilling. We're relaxing. I'm happy. I don't need to do anything fun because I'm just sitting by the water and I'm reading my book and I'm kind of just enjoying life. Okay. We also know that serotonin is somehow impaired or messed up in some way when it comes to a lot of mental illnesses. That sort of theory is still being hotly debated. But what we sort of know is that medications that boost our serotonin transmission in the brain tend to alleviate symptoms of depression and anxiety. So we sort of know that, okay, like high levels of serotonin, generally speaking, are kind of healthy. But when we give someone this antidepressant or anti-anxiety, medication, one of the most common side effects as we boost serotonin transmission in the brain is anorgasmia or reduced sexual drive. So anorgasmia is the inability to have an orgasm,

which means that people on SSRIs are antidepressant medication, they can still become erect or become somewhat sexually aroused, but they're not able to complete an orgasm, so it's difficult for them. The second thing is that we find that there's a reduction in arousal. So once again, we're seeing something really, really interesting, which is that as we jack up our serotonin levels, it leads to theoretically more peace and contentment, but makes it difficult to have sex. And now this is kind of really interesting, right? Because now we're sort of stumbling into something that's really kind of interesting, which is that if we are a lot of the healthy things in life,

a lot of the optimal functioning that we want in life, actually is inversely correlated with our sexuality. The more lusty we are, the more we have to inhibit our sexual impulses and the less willpower we have, the less productive we are. There's something about weird around serotonin and contentment, where the more content we are, if we artificially boosted serotonin,

we become less sexual over time, and that's absolutely something that I can attest to in terms of my own spiritual practice. We just get become less lustful. And the last thing is that something around our emotional regulation and our hypersexuality is correlated, where the more dysregulated our emotions are, the more likely we are to become sexual,

and the more regulated our emotions are, the more likely we are to become spiritual. So there's some really interesting neuroscience kind of evidence about this. Now the question kind of becomes, okay, Dr. K, but like, what do we do about it? Are you saying that I should become non-lustful? And this is where I love to share with y'all kind of a story, okay? So once upon a time, there was a monk. And when the monk was meditating, he noticed that there was a rat in his room that was

running by. So the monk would sit in meditation, the rat would realize, okay, monk's not awake. It's like they're asleep so I can run around and stuff like that. And so the monk goes to a friend of instance and says, hey, like every time I meditate, there's this rat that comes out. A friend is like, you know, don't worry about it. If you have a rat problem, you should get a cat. The monk is like, that sounds like a great idea.

So he gets a cat. And then as he gets the cat, he starts to realize, oh, like, I need to feed the cat something. So he goes to his friend and he says, well, now I've got this cat. The cat took care of the rat, but I got to feed the cat, which I do. And the friend says, no problem. So I have cats too. Really simple thing. You just need to get a cow.

And you can just milk the cow every day. And then you'll have plenty of milk for the cat. and you'll milk for yourself too. So the monkey's like, great. To solve this problem of what to feed the cat, I will get a cow. And then the monk is like, hold on a second. So he gets milk for a couple days and he's like, well, what am I supposed to feed the cow? So he goes to his friend and he says, well, now I've got this cow and like, I don't know what to feed it.

He's like, hey, no problem. I got you, man. Since you're a monk and you're a holy person, I've got this plot of land. I'll let you use the plot of land. You just have to take care of it and stuff like that. And you'll have plenty of grazing land for your cow. And so then the monk is like, okay, fine, thank you so much. So he gets this plot of land.

And the cow is grazing every day. And now he's like taking care of this plot of land. And he's like, well, like now what do I do? I mean, this is too much. Like, taking care of this whole plot of land, like, it's too much for me to handle. And his friend is like, don't worry about it. You know, there's absolutely an easy solution to this. The monk is like, what's that?

He's like, you should get married, have a family, right? Because on a farm, like, you can't take care of a whole farm by yourself. So you need to get married to have some kids. And you'll be, you'll be golden. You'll be Gucci. The monk is like, okay, fine. So decides to get married and have kids. And this, I love this story because it's like, this is what we've done with sex.

We've taken this tiny little thing, which is sex. And by the way, y'all may be surprised to hear, do you know how much sex people have on average? So the average sexual coupling lasts three to seven minutes. And if you poll the average person who has sex, including women, they will say that 10 to 30 minutes of sexual penetrative intercourse is too much. The average sexual duration is three to seven minutes. And if you're someone who's like a virgin who's never had sex and all you do is watch pornography, and these are hour and a half pornography videos, this may sound confusing. But if you are someone who has had sexual relationships for a long period of time, you will know exactly what I'm talking about.

Doesn't take that long. The other wild thing about this, and by the way, that's why foreplay is so important, okay? Because like, you know, people just don't like penetrative intercourse like 25 minutes straight. That's why foreplay and arousal and all that stuff is really, really important, okay? But that's neither here nor there. The other really interesting is how often do people have sex? Most people have sex once a week, sometimes twice a week. And so here's the problem with our society today.

We have an activity that we do for, on average, three to seven minutes once a week, okay? So let's say that like the way that we collected that data is kind of messed up. So let's be like even more conservative. Let's say we have sex three times a week. Okay? So like triple the average. And let's say that our duration is also triple the average. We're going to have sex for 21 minutes three times a week. This is one hour of your week.

And what do we construct to get this hour of enjoyment, right? It's one hour a week. This results in my sense of self-worth. This results in the career that I pick. It results in the way that I do my hair, the clothing that I buy, the fact that I need to buy clothing, the fact that I need to have a job, what I eat, what I want to spend my time doing. Everything that we do in this life is just like the monk and the rat. In order to satisfy ourselves for 63 minutes a week on the top end,

we are constructing our entire life to do these 63 minutes. We are obsessed with it. And there are people that I've worked with that are literally suicidal because they can't have sex. And so what does this mean for you? So I want to share with y'all kind of like a very, very interesting perspective. So when we look at, you know, people who are obsessed with sex and they kind of say like, okay, like I'm going to make it. I need to make six figures.

I need to become six feet tall. I need a six inch a dick. Like, whatever, right? So I need to do all these things. I need to get in shape. And then I can get laid as much as I want to. So you are, by the way, sacrificing the rest of your life for this objective, which I don't think is worth it.

But okay, fine. If you want to say it's worth it in the biological imperative, whatever. But I'm going to give you all kind of this interesting perspective from the East, which is really what Bramacharya is, which is non-lustfulness, which is I want you all to think about what you want freedom and power for. So a lot of people that I talk to will say,

like, yeah, I want to be free and I want to have power, I want to have money. And the question is why, right? Why do you want freedom? So I don't want any external constraints. I don't want to go to work. I don't want to have to have a job. I just want an endless amount of money

in my bank account. And then the question is why. And then what these people almost always inevitably come down to is so I can indulge my internal desires. So if I had no external constraints, then I could do whatever I feel like. But the crazy thing is that giving into whatever you feel like is a different kind of bondage. It's not really freedom. If I have an endless amount of money, but all I'm doing every day is like using cocaine and like eating unhealthy food and like hiring hookers or like whatever or even not even hookers but taking people on first class flight so that I can get laid, what kind of freedom is that?

Like, it sounds epic. Don't get me wrong. And I've literally worked with people who have done this, right? So I've worked with people who have just gigantic trust fund babies. And their lives are absolute messes. And you can look at celebrities and you can look at all kinds of people who are privileged and you can see like, these people are screwed up. And I think what the yogis really figured out, and this is the value of Bramacharya,

is that even if you have all the external freedom in the world, are you just going to give into bondage within? Are you going to give in to all of these impulses? yeah, I drink this kind of coffee every day, and I'd have this $5,000 espresso machine. It would make the best cup of espresso. And then everything around me, like, I do this, I do this, I do this. And you're just giving into that bondage over and over and over again. And it does not lead to happiness.

Now, I'm not saying don't pursue it because I think the right thing to do is to chase all of those things, right? By all means, go for it and get your $5,000 espresso machine and have the $5,000 cup of espresso. and then have a $2 cup of espresso from the Cuban place down the street and notice the difference between those two things. If you all haven't guessed, I've actually done those two things, right? And what you'll discover, I think, is what the yogis discovered when they sort of discovered Bramacharya, which is that bondage to our internal self

is actually the source of our suffering. And if we really want to be free in this world, it's not the outside stuff that we necessarily need to be free from. that if you can be free from the things in here, then you will have true freedom and bliss and all kinds of other stuff. And on a more practical perspective, I think what they sort of realized is as we stop obsessing over sex, it frees up our brain to handle all kinds of other things.

So at the end of the day, I'm not suggesting that y'all become brahmacharis. I'm not suggesting that you become celibate. But paradoxically, that's what helped me, you know, find my partner long term, which is when I walked around and I kind of said, hey, I'm celibate now, right? And something beautiful happened when I did that. I said, okay, I'm going to be a Bromachara because I want to be a spiritual chat. And then what happened is

all of my interactions changed, right? So now when I meet people, women, I'm not like worried about, does this person like me? Does this person not like me? I just get to be with this person with no goal in mind, with no thoughts of lust or anything like that. I'm just like, I'm going to just be with this person. I'm going to appreciate this human being for who they are. Even when I meet with men. There's no thoughts of, okay, this person is better looking than I am, less, better looking than I'm, I'm, I'm more Chad, they're more alpha, I'm more beta. All those thoughts go out the window because it's like, I'm not worried about that anymore, right? That's not a part of my life. So I can sit down with another dude and like, we can just be

chilling without any sense of competition. Or I'm meeting this friend for the first time and a hot girl walks up. And now suddenly it's like, all right, like now we're in this competition to one up each other and all this other stupid crap. And you just let free get, let it go. Be free of it. And it's liberating to not worry. about that crap all the time. Imagine what your life would be like if you were not thinking about sex or getting laid or what this person thinks or what that person thinks. Imagine what you could accomplish. But instead, we sacrifice our whole life, our whole sense of identity. We choose careers. Literally, people will give themselves heart attacks to make so much money so that they can get laid

by the person who they think is the hottest. You're sacrificing so much of your life for this one thing. And how much is it really? Three to seven minutes once a week is what we're talking about. So is it worth it? I encourage you all to think about this. This isn't stop having sex or anything like that. This is like think about the way that society has conditioned you. Think about what you want your life to be.

And if you really want to be free of all that crap and really want to live up to your full potential, I strongly encourage you to take one step towards Bramacharya.