1) Contemplate on the impermanence of life
A hundred years or more from now, everyone you currently know would be dead. Every physically beautiful person alive today will eventually become very old and ugly and/or dead. Every old person you’ve come across was probably very alluring, beautiful and young at one point in his/her life.
So every time you’re around people or see images/videos of people on the internet, take time out to mentally transform every young/attractive person into an old person, and turn every old person into a young/attractive one. This will help you observe how your crush or the person you’re lusting after is just invoking a temporary/illusory feeling of desire within you.
2) Contemplate the gross aspects of the body
Every body contains feces, urine, pus, bacteria, mucus, sweat, oils, and other nasty things. The body has to be washed regularly for a reason. Humans nowadays do so much to give each other the illusion that they’re flawless by hiding the gross aspects of the body. Nice clothes, makeup, perfume, photo filters, camera angles, plastic surgery, etc are all designed to make you not think about these gross aspects. Next time you look at a person, try to see them completely.
Such regular contemplation will take away a lot of your attachment towards the body.
2) Who are you?
Ever wonder why sex happens with the genitals and not with our heads, or legs or hands? ever wonder why you became conscious in a human body, and not in a dog’s body, or an ant’s body, or a plant’s body? It’s as if we’re just players in a game designed by someone else and the rules have already been set way before we became conscious of ourselves and this game.
It seems randomly we became aware of this human body and grew up trying to figure out how to use it and navigate in this world, just like how we had to figure out how to drive a car and travel around…
But are you aware that you are just a driver of this body? that the body is yours but it’s not you?
Realizing this will help you gain more control over your body. You’ll realize that you might not be a good driver because you sometimes let your body drive you. Due to which you confused yourself into thinking that the sense desires of the body are your desires. This is not true, your body wants you to indulge in excess sexuality, drugs, alcohol, weed, etc, but the real you that’s inside the body doesn’t really need to indulge in such activities for optimal survival and thriving.
Therefore, from now on, be mindful of the real you and mentally separate yourself from your body. Use your body as a tool or as a car and maintain it properly. Don’t let your car make decisions for you and take you places that you don’t really care about.
5) Thoughts and memories are mostly garbage
Just like how you are not your body, you’re also not your mind. Just like how a new laptop accumulated random files and software, you accumulated random thoughts, philosophies, and memories. The truth is you’re not that different from all the other people in this world.
Everyone was like a new laptop at one point when they came out of their mother’s womb. But soon their parents, environment, and society put files in them (thoughts, and memories), gave them a name, identity, race, gender, religion, citizenship, culture etc. But ask yourself, are you your files (thoughts & memories) or are you the original new laptop, the consciousness that’s been collecting all these thoughts, memories, and experiences?
Realizing that you’re not your mind and also not your body is what the monks call Self-Realization. Once this happens, you’ll give less importance to your thoughts and memories, and as a result, past temptations, or memories that invoke lust will lose their power over you, you’ll start to use your thoughts and memories as information to make better life decisions. If we use the car analogy, then your thoughts will be like the GPS of the car, that you can choose to follow or ignore. Never let the GPS control your car for you without your careful evaluation!
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