There are things we do almost unconsciously—routines, impulses, patterns that arise in the solitude of our lives—and one of the most emotionally charged among them is masturbation. It’s rarely spoken of openly, and when it is, it's often reduced to biology, morality, or shame. But for me, and perhaps for you, it’s become something far more revealing: a doorway into the deeper landscapes of the psyche and the soul.
Some find themselves turning to masturbation not out of joy or desire, but from a sense of sadness, boredom, or inner disconnection. It’s as if a void inside is aching to be filled—not with pleasure, but with presence. As I’ve come to understand through the work of Carl Jung, this seemingly simple act can often be driven by unconscious forces. Jung called this vital force libido, not just in the sexual sense, but as the deep animating energy of life itself—the impulse toward wholeness, transformation, and expression.
When I began looking at my own behaviors more closely, I started to see how often desire was a mask for something deeper—loneliness, rejection, childhood wounds still echoing in adult life. Jung taught that within each of us is a shadow, the parts of ourselves we've denied, rejected, or hidden away. And sexuality is often the very first place this shadow shows itself. From early on, many of us are taught to feel shame about our bodies, our fantasies, our natural urges. So we bury them. But buried things don’t die—they resurface, often distorted, in compulsive acts, in guilt, in the strange emptiness that sometimes follows pleasure.
Masturbation can become a mirror. Not a sin. Not a secret. A mirror. I saw the same pattern repeat—a flicker of tension, the act, the release, and then a quiet sadness, almost like a whisper: This isn't really what you're longing for, is it?
In those moments I would remember what Ramana Maharshi said:
“The Self is always there. You have only to remove the veil of ignorance.”
And so I sat with it. I didn’t try to stop. I didn’t try to shame myself. I simply became more present. Who was I really with, in those fantasies? Was it a memory? An idealized partner? A distortion of my own inner feminine, what Jung called the anima? The more I asked, the more the act transformed. It became less about physical escape and more about emotional inquiry.
Jung wrote that unless we become conscious of our shadow, it will rule our life and we will call it fate. That hit me hard. I began to wonder: How much of what I called “desire” was actually a complex—a cluster of unmet needs and repressed memories acting through me like a puppet master? I began to ask deeper questions: What am I running from? What part of me is asking to be seen, to be healed?
As I explored these questions, I remembered something Nisargadatta Maharaj once said:
“Desire is the memory of pleasure. Fear is the memory of pain. Both make the mind restless.”
And so, with mindfulness, I started to practice what Jung called sublimation. Not repression. Not resistance. Transformation. I began to notice when the fire of sexual energy would arise, and instead of defaulting to release, I asked myself: Can this energy be used differently today? I would paint. I would write. I would meditate. I would breathe deeply and channel the current into something sacred.
Yogananda beautifully described sexual energy as a form of divine electricity. In Autobiography of a Yogi, he wrote:
“Creative sexual energy can be transmuted into soul force through willpower and understanding.”
When I stopped seeing masturbation as either a guilty pleasure or a spiritual failure—and instead saw it as a potential for integration—something began to shift. The guilt lessened. The emptiness receded. And in its place came a deeper intimacy with myself.
There are still moments when I slip into old patterns. But now I see them not as regressions, but as reminders. Reminders that I’m still healing. That some part of my being still wants love, attention, connection. And perhaps, just perhaps, what I thought was desire was actually a call—not to pleasure, but to presence.
Rumi said:
“Don’t seek love, seek the barriers you’ve built against it.”
In that spirit, I now see even my most private moments as opportunities for deeper self-knowledge. Masturbation, when done unconsciously, can entrench suffering. But when practiced with awareness, with reverence for the energy behind it, it becomes something else entirely. A bridge. A sacred pause. A place where body and soul can begin to speak the same language again.
This isn’t about renunciation. It’s about reunification. Uniting the scattered fragments of self—the rejected, the repressed, the sexual, the sacred—into a single, living, breathing wholeness.
So I no longer ask myself whether I should stop or continue. I ask: Am I awake right now? Am I using this moment to know myself more fully? Am I listening to the whisper beneath the impulse?
Because sometimes, in the silence after desire has passed, the soul finally speaks.
This also relates to "Positive Solitude" by Rae Andre. It is also related to this video on my website , "A Universe of Value".
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