This article was published on aish.com a while ago:
"Judaism, Masturbation and Me"
www.aish.com/sp/so/Judaism-Masturbation-and-Me.html

One excerpt got my attention:




I haven't personally made use of that, but I found it interesting. I wondered if anyone here has used that strategy.

There was a time when I had a crazy drive to quickly get an education and a good job, and a few promotions and some private clients. With the help of Hashem, I did all that and didn't have so much lust when the real drive was on.

But now that I have the job, lust is taking over again, and if I keep working so little I may lose my job. I have already gotten in trouble.

So maybe I was harnessing my sex drive for wealth building projects. 

But I'm not so interested in building wealth anymore. Now I want truth and spirituality.

If "wealth-building" works in this context, then I suppose other kinds of activities would too. But I don't understand the basic principle.

Dovid824 wrote on 14 Aug 2018 14:52:

This topic was bothering so I looked it up. I googled a sentence from that quote from aish.com, which is itself a quote from one of those self-help books. There are a lot of down to earth, intuitive explanations of this principle out on the web.

People are interpreting this to mean that sex is a the fundamental drive, and they are channeling it into something else. To me this sounds fishy. I think what's really going on is that there is a drive in man which has to be satisfied and this can only be achieved through actions, which leads some to think that one action is fundamental and the others are secondary.

I think the fundamental drive is something about watching the world around us, drawing conclusions, forming plausible explanations for what we see, etc.

Sex can go a long way to satisfy this need. I for one think that the greatest sexual satisfaction I achieved was at times when I pleasured my wife in unexpected ways and watched her go through the experience. Compared to that acting out is more like scratching an itch. So it makes sense that a person that has great sex is not driven to build wealth.

If your ideal of success is wealth then working is the highest expression of this. But if you are a kollel man, then the highest expression is learning Torah. We know that the yoke of wealth building is removed from one who carries the yoke of Torah. And we know that learning Torah in a general sort of way decreases sexual desire.

None of this helps address sexual addiction, but it's valuable info nonetheless.

Hi everyone, yes s.x drive is absolutely a type of energy which can be redirected to use for self-building purposes. I have noticed that and I try to practice this "conversion of energy" purposefully. 

עיין ספר "טינק אנד גראו ריטש" לר' נאפוליון היל (חכמה בגוים כו'), פרק י"א, ותמצא מרגוע לנפשיך

Boeing747 wrote on 12 Feb 2021 14:49:

Does Pratt & Whitney know about this?