Perhaps the greatest roadblock on my path to spiritual growth has been falling again and again to the sin of lust. Not just the lust for the flesh, but the lust of items, money, beautiful things and that which ties us to the world.
With the smartphone culture we live in, we have created a world in which we seek for the shortest term dopamine hits, and with the ease of access to the internet from quite literally anywhere, we all have an uphill battle against the sins of sloth, envy, and lust. We have fried our brains (and consequently our souls are damaged in the process) because we live in such abundance of entertainment, resource, and time that we can fill it with the consumption of that which is directly in opposition to that which we truly need in this life.
This is not unconquerable, however. With the grace of God, you can overcome this addiction that is so pervasive in our society today.
The thing you must do, however, is do not look.
Do not let your wandering eye to allow you into sin.
At the gym, this is difficult, as young women seem to believe that the workout room is the new nightclub, where they wear designer neon outfits that barely cover any skin at all. In contrast to vespers and divine liturgy, this is a stark, abrupt difference that leads me to keeping my head down and most often to show up to the gym without my contacts in so that I cannot see more than 3 feet in front of me.
I no longer attend bars and pubs past the hours of about 8pm, so this is less of a concern as I get into my thirties, but the idea that we should allow ourselves to look at other human beings with anything but love in our hearts for our neighbour is a massive change of heart from the old me.
Simply Do not Look.
Don’t allow your eyes to betray your soul, for the eyes only allow us to see the “beauty” of the flesh, but the spiritual eyes allow us to see the grandness and beauty that is eternal life. Interestingly, when I look at the feed on my instagram account, where once was women in yoga pants, fast cars and mansions; it is now all church interiors and services, monks, and priests. This is a stark contrast - one that I will thank the grace of God for.
The absurdity that is internet pornography is so offensive, so in your face that I have been taken aback by the efforts of women to seduce online - I now see the Tik Tok dances (that sometimes come up in my twitter feed) that men seem to salivate over as obscenely and pathetic attempts on my soul. If you are a young man with a TikTok account, I advise that you close that app, delete it, and never return.
It is as such that I will be once again pulling back from social media, so that I can focus on that which matters in this life: family, God, purpose, and aid of other. All else is noise that is directed toward making the soul restless and unhinged toward our Ultimate purpose - to know and commune with Him.
Truly once we see it we know the attempts that are made on our souls know no bounds. It is only apparent when we are outside looking in, though. While one is still on the inside, consuming the smut, the garbage, we do not see the spiritual implications, we don’t see that Satan is laughing at us at each and every stumbling, the Saints above groaning at our weaknesses.
How to block adult content on your phone
Personally, the phone is the device that I have been Pavlovianally conditioned to seek out the lustful content, so I had to stop it at the source.
You can watch my short video on the subject.
Or, you can add the CleanBrowsing DNS servers to you phone and block all adult content.
I will leave with this: When you choose to watch this content, know that you are not alone, know that all of the saints in Heaven, the Angels, and God Himself are there in the room with you, hoping and praying that you will stop before harming your soul more.
God is there, for there is nowhere that God is not - How you act right now echoes in eternity.