I have spent a lifetime seeking authentic spiritual experiences. I sought them in Catholicism, but was labelled an abomination and promised a lifetime of strife just to be accepted. I sought them in Neo-Paganism, but found that the Goddess only fueled the ego to create cults of personality. I sought them in Atheism and Intellectualism, but found them hollow and devoid of real meaning. Lastly, I found them in Theistic Luciferianism and acquired empowerment and acceptance. 

Zealot

When I first met JackDrago, his faith impressed me. He lived a life tied to his spiritual beliefs, where behaviors throughout his day were tied back to his patrons, those demons he chose to follow. And I became jealous of his certainty, having wanted the same kind of certainty for myself for many years. 

When I think about “spiritual experiences,” I often wonder exactly what I sought to feel or believe or become. As someone who believes in the intellect — perhaps to the detriment of the soul — I tend to analyze what happens to me. This analysis can become paralyzing because it never comes to an answer that facts can’t support. By definition, what I’m looking for transcends facts and resides deeper in the body, past the emotions, rooted in the flesh and spirit. I look for something authentic and which cannot be explained away. 

After being introduced to Satanism, I went through an Atheistic period and regarded demons as complicated symbols of deep psychological processes. They were collective archetypes. But, as I began engaging the spirits, I re-realized something I had believed in my Neo-Pagan days, but had erroneously discarded after the disappointments of that era left me bereft.

I remember that I felt on a visceral level that my being extended beyond my living flesh and connected with the Universe and the other people whose beings also extended beyond their flesh. Our energies overlap and interact. Our energies could be directed and worked. I remembered that I believed that spiritual entities exist , perhaps not tangibly, but definitely.  

My delving into Satanism, Luciferianism, and magick taught me again that everything I experienced could not be chalked up to a purely psychological process. My Atheism grew broader, until it broke the definitions of Atheism and turned into Theism. 

I built a nascent faith out of what I saw and felt during what I call Pathwork during my indoctrination to Luciferianism.

Stepping into Sacrifice

The 12-Step technique promises relief from addictive behavior, if the not the addiction itself, by following steps rooted in cognitive behavior therapy and saturated in the gunk of Right-Hand-Path (RHP) spiritual ideology. The program is a product of its time and culture, but clearly, the RHP beliefs will not work for me. 

The essence of the second step revolves around having a faith that a higher power can intercede and deliver one from their addictive behaviors that were identified in the first step. 

My patron, Marbas, tasked me to stop fapping. I have a faith. I believe in a power greater than myself. I believe my patron propels me down a path toward the resolution of deeply held issues (here, the reasons I fap as much as I do). The path itself manifested when Marbas took me to the Gateway of Belial; in the darkness beyond the gate, I saw my own unresolved, inky issues. 

I have no doubt that Marbas could blink and remove the fapping impulse from me entirely; but he has not and will not. That isn’t what is happening here. For a couple of years, Marbas has empowered my losing weight, becoming more masculine, building a more muscled body; I’m becoming Alpha to some degree. With the NoFap requirement, a measure of that Alpha-ness is subverted. 

I am sacrificing some of my power to Marbas. I am sacrificing because of my faith. I don’t know exactly what will happen or how I might be rewarded, if at all. I don’t know how I’ll be changed and whether I’ll like what I become. 

I have to concentrate on avoiding the fapping behavior. That is my task. That is my only task.