Zen

For what its worth, I've written this post for young Christian men. Hedonists simply won't understand.

As a man who is naturally Hedonistic, I'll be the first to agree that virginity is one those things that hasn't got much going for it. The pleasures of the flesh have much more worldly allure than the distant heavenly rewards of the ascetic virtue of virginity. The problem is though, the prohibition of fornication, comes from the mouth of God himself, and a man who wants the live the faith has gotta get on board. My conversion to the faith happened in my college years. (The details are irrelevant, it's proof that God has a sense of humour) and in that environment of plentiful supply of sex and social encouragement to partake, I got religion.....Lucky me : (

Now, one of the misconceptions that non-Christians are frequently guilty of, is the assumption that when a man becomes converted to the faith he ceases being a man. People seem to think that when a man begins to worship God, he ceases to have any interest in sex. Nothing could be further from the truth. As many a TV Evangelist shown, that a man with an interest in God frequently has an unhealthy interest in sex.

As a result of my conversion I took my religion seriously though reluctantly, and while the flesh always remained willing, my conscience was pretty effective at stopping me giving in to temptation. That is not to say I still did not go out with women or try push it to the absolute limit. But I imagine many must have thought me gay(If they only knew, I kept my religion personal), when I rebuffed their sexual advances. I thought my faith was a curse. Here I was in ocean of women, in their prime, but not allowed to touch. But a curious thing happens to a man when he goes out with women which he cannot have sex with, the nature of his relationship with women changes.

As the nice beta I had thoroughly imbibed the contemporary romantic ideation with regard to women. They were sugar and spice and all things nice. Now, I am naturally of a genuine and courteous nature and acted the part of the chivalrous male. As any man with even the slightest knowledge of Game could have predicted , I got rejected many times, despite doing all the supposedly right things. The psychological consequences were predictable. Repeated sexual and romantic frustration had destroyed my self-confidence around women. In your teenage years, whilst all about you are wallowing in lust, nothing more thoroughly confirms your undesirability than, when everyone else is paired, you are alone. Partnering was a way of self validation.

The other issue was of course the way I looked at women.

I don't think women really appreciate the effect of beauty on a man. It really does cast a spell over a man. When in love, a man can literally so no fault in his beloved. Women in their prime years are simply amazing. I imagine that it's why artists are painting young naked women all the time. They are simply incredible. And it's not just in their sexual allure. It's in the little things. The way they move, their smell, the feel of their skin, the way the hair falls around their shoulders and so on. It consumes a man while at the same time overwhelmingly sabotaging a man's critical faculties. The beautiful woman becomes the good woman. It is said that a woman with many faults will be forgiven if she is beautiful, it's not that she is forgiven, it's just that beauty blots out the faults. A man's brain simply stops working. I was no different.

It was with this mindset that Christianity struck me like a thunderbolt. Religion became a real and meaningful thing, not something you paid lip service to. I was compelled to live the faith, including the prohibition of fornication. Which of course meant that you could pick up and go out with a girl but you couldn't have sex with her until you were married. Bummer...... or so I thought.

However, this created a curious state of affairs in me. I was caught between two opposing forces. The flesh which wanted to be sated, and the soul which wanted to be good. My response to this dilemma was to push sex into the back of my mind whilst out on a date. Indeed, in order the keep the libido in check I would tend to concentrate on a woman's other features, the further back I pushed the beauty and sexual allure, the more pronounced her other features became. What I found was a revelation.

Stripped of their sexual allure, many women had nothing else to offer. Women whom I hung around with because of a potential sexual interest, suddenly became uninteresting; no actually repulsive. Not just that, many were down right mean, manipulative and self absorbed, some desperate social climbers, some obvious gold diggers, others seriously psychologically disturbed, and far too many coarse and undignified. Indeed, it came slowly as a revelation, that stripped of their sex appeal, a huge proportion of women(not all) were unattractive as human beings. Had my male friends possessed the moral characteristics of some of these women, they would not have been my friends.

But it also lead to a further realisation. That I was a better; much, much better person than many of the women that I wanted to bed. It slowly dawned upon me. I........ was........quality. The urge for female validation evaporated, and female qualification assumed its place.

I met so many women that disappointed, that I seriously began to wonder if there wasn't something wrong with me. I began not to give a damn about their opinion of me. Instead of being the needy beta seeking female validation, I started not rejecting women because they repulsed me. Before I would let a women into my life they were going to have prove themselves to me. Women who knew how to use their sexual allure to manipulate, were shocked when I didn't respond. Beautiful women perplexed when I spent the evening talking to her plainer friend. The perplexed look on their face proof that the world was definitely unpredictable. If I was going to commit to a woman, I wasn't going to settle for second best and many women were deeply flawed.

Being able to tame the sexual beast bought other benefits. I initiated when I pleased, the gnawing sexual urge, there, but not forcing my moves. If she became tiresome, I left. Insulting, she was put down. I maintained control at all times. Shit tests were not an issue, since if she didn't like response, I couldn't care less if she walked. The girls that met me thought I was arrogant. I had reached a point where I really didn't care at all if a woman liked me. But not feeding the sexual beast kept me hungry. I never became apathetic. What had happened is that I had inadvertently developed strong inner game. I had achieved the Zen state.

My disqualifiers of women were both looks and character. She had to be feminine, a hottie and good natured.. I like people who are nice, polite and honest. A woman who lacked grace or class fell in her desirability to me. Many a hot 9 or 10 would on closer inspection drop to a 3 when she opened her mouth or after she had a few drinks. I would be lying if I said the converse was true (for myself at least), 4's may of become 6's with good character but they would not have moved up to 10's.

This did not mean that every woman I met, liked me. Nor did women magically flock to me. In fact I'm certain I would have picked up much more had I cared more for my appearance. But my success rate went up, way up. I still got rejected, but because I was never in awe of a girl's beauty and had not invested much time in her the loss was small and the injury slight. Move on.

The practice of sexual self-control whilst restraining my libido opened my eyes and inadvertently gave me strength of character. It allowed me to appreciate a woman's beauty without being a slave to it. When the dangling carrot of sex ceases to be an incitement, you begin to judge women by other assets. Many had nothing. It seems strange and such an elementary insight, but while brain was down below I could not see it. But more importantly this change in me wasn't conscious, it sort of happened by accident.

Now it is possible to gain this insight through disciplined Hedonism. Roissy too, wrote of this insight, in one of his "Sixteen Commandments of Poon":

The man who trains his mind to subdue the reward centers of his brain when reflecting upon a beautiful female face will magically transform his interactions with women. His apprehension and self-consciousness will melt away, paving the path for more honest and self-possessed interactions with the objects of his desire. This is one reason why the greatest lotharios drown in more love than they can handle — through positive experiences with so many beautiful women they lose their awe of beauty and, in turn, their powerlessness under its spell. It will help you acquire the right frame of mind to stop using the words hot, cute, gorgeous, or beautiful to describe girls who turn you on. Instead, say to yourself “she’s interesting” or “she might be worth getting to know”............

(My bold type)

Now it would appear that that Alphadom can be approached from many directions. And it would appear that the Zen like state of the two approaches is the same. But that would be wrong. For the Hedonistic Alpha a beautiful woman's spell is neutralised by sexual satiety. Whilst the Christian Alpha neutralises through sexual self control. Is there a difference?

Well in terms of picking up women I doubt it. I think both approaches will work just as effectively, but in the longer term, especially when looking for a long term mate, I think the two methods lead to quite different outcomes.

Firstly the hedonistic approach is aimed towards easy sex and plentiful sex, the Christian approach toward finding a mate. The hedonistic approach is directed towards the sexual quality of the partner, the Christian approach to both the sexual quality and the character of the partner.
Christian men want hotties as well, but good hotties.

Commentator Roosh V has written two excellent posts on dealing with the psychological consequences of Hedonistic game. It's interesting that the men who are most practiced at game seem to despise the women who most easily give them what they want. The girls they seem to value the most are the girls who have not slept around, but as the gamesters write off a girl if she hasn't provided the goods after the third or fourth date, they're actually screening for unsatisfactory women. The predictable effect is that the women that they score are low quality. No, that does not mean that they score unnatractive women, it's just that their attractive women are of low quality. The imperative in their mindset is sexual satisfaction. The girl that doesn't provide the goods (in other words the girl that doesn't sleep around) is the one they're going to pass over. The joy of hedonism is that you get to enjoy the company of the low hanging fruit of female virtue.

The Christian approach superficially has little to recommend it. The barren desert of abstinence vs the lush oasis of sated lust: The Spartan approach vs the Persian. But it seems to toughen a man up in the way hedonism doesn't. If you can tame the beast in your pants then there's a good chance that you can beat other vices as well. The other advantage is that without the distraction of sex, a man can choose more based on character,something that is more enduring than beauty. Beauty's spell is neutralised. That's not to say that a man can't appreciate beauty but he learns to see past it, he gains the skill of seeing the woman behind the mask.Indeed the man can be more selective for the traits which mark quality in a woman. Instead of trying to have sex with her, he's trying to get to know her and then have sex with her.

When I read the HBD and game blogs and see an author say that men choose women solely on the basis of their beauty, they're using a different metric to me. I don't think many of these commentators actually realise just how distasteful a woman with bad behaviour is. But then again they can't see it. What matters when I look at a woman is both looks and the ephemeral qualities that make up "class". If there is none of that, then no matter good how she looks, she doesn't matter. After a while you really do develop a highly attuned skank filter. You learn to recognise the flakes, the disturbed, the manipulative and the easy. The problem with this though is, that your moving a much smaller pool of women, albeit it is of a higher quality. (That's the other thing, I started to avoid the the declasse and became known as a snob). It's a consequence of like being attracted to like.

And before anyone thinks I had excessively high standards, I did. I was playing for keeps, this wasn't a game. My treasure, my good name and my future children (and all that frustrated hedonism) had a vested interest in the choice of my mate. She had to be exceptional. She is.

It needs to be remembered that while sex is an act, love is a state of being, the two are correllated, not conditional. You can have all the sex in the world but not be in love. The converse is true as well, you can love passionately even without the sex. Love by its nature is other focused, it is conditional on the qualities of the other person. The other interesting thing about about it is that love is not chosen, it's an involuntary reaction to the other person, you just can't will yourself to do it. Exceptional men will only be inspired by exceptional women. The Zen master realises that skill is not just in being able to attract, but in being able to attract the right ones.