What many men call normal, for me always felt like an addiction. I was introduced to porn at the age of 12 when we found some magazines in the paper waste of a friend’s house.
We soon found out where his father had hidden more magazines and video tapes. We spent hours and hours looking at the pictures and never ever talked about how we felt about them. Each boy would be isolated doing his thing, no communication, no connection.
I remember feeling empty, with a sense of guilt and raciness after those experiences, yet I would crave for more because I didn’t have any intimacy in my life. No cuddles with my parents or friends and I was way too shy to enter a relationship.
So the images of naked skin gave me the illusion of people being close, meeting each other. In truth, I was craving intimacy – meeting people and being met by people – not sex.
When I had my first sexual experience at the age of 19, it was a disaster. I had all these ideas and images disturbing me and setting me up for how to act, what to think, how to sound and the reality didn’t match at all with what I had seen on screen and paper.
I felt lonely and not met, nor could I meet my partner.
My friendships had changed by that time and since we neither had Internet nor cellphones, I didn’t have access to porn for a couple of years. But when I had the opportunity of visiting a big town, I would sneak into a porn movie theatre and this then confirmed to me that I was addicted to watching porn.
On the outside everything seemed fine. I had finished my studies at University and was working as a therapist, my body looked healthy from daily Hatha-Yoga sessions; I was married and had a great, well-functioning social network.
But why was I still watching porn? I had tried countless disciplines to let go of this habit.
By this time, I could already clearly feel that porn was actually looking at people being heavily abused, although I would still fool myself and think it would be less harmful if I didn’t watch aggressive porn.
What struck me most was the fact that I was working as a therapist often with women who had suffered sexual abuse. Although many clients found a momentary release through their sessions with me, they never experienced true healing from the sexual abuse.
Physical symptoms, fears and suicidal thoughts would come back time after time. But how could my clients heal from sexual abuse when I needed to heal this within myself to then be able to truly support their healing?
Sometimes I would have watched porn in my lunch break and then returned to treat clients that had been sexually abused. The images of sex sometimes were so strong in my mind that I had difficulties focusing on what my clients were sharing with me in the sessions.
I felt ashamed to touch my clients because it felt like I was somehow harming them. I couldn’t help it, but even without touching, in the moment when we looked at each other’s eyes, the energy of the pornographic images I had let into my body flooded the room and I could feel that I had absorbed the energy of the porn by watching it and this was actually abusive to my client and myself.
Nobody had ever told me that this was possible, but it was so awkward and real that I didn’t need proof of this other than my lived experience.
I started questioning myself as a therapist and the modalities I practised (which were mainly new age, shaman, spiritual, alternative therapies). If I was neither able to let go of the addiction, nor able to prevent the harm I was causing my clients in an environment that I was responsible for holding – one that is meant to allow healing from abuse – then something was genuinely missing and going wrong in my life.
Soon after this I began to get to know Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine. Although porn addiction was never a topic of the Esoteric healing sessions, the addiction just fell off my shoulders within one year.
The more intimate I became with my natural self, the more normal it became to really meet people and be met by them, including other students of Universal Medicine.
I decided to let go of all the new age modalities I had practiced before I had experienced Universal Medicine at once, especially all shamanistic ceremonies and sessions and instead began only to work with the Universal Medicine therapies that I had learned.
After this decision I watched porn two times and both experiences were so disgusting that from that time on I never touched porn again.
It was clear everything had changed. I have experienced that the Universal Medicine modalities don’t work through mental explanations or behavioural regulation or discipline, they simply re-awaken the ability to feel and be energetically aware of everything that one engages with.
I began to realise that the modalities that I had practiced and experienced before I had come across those taught by Universal Medicine, all the new age, spiritual and shamanistic therapies, seem to work with energy in a way that casts a fog around our energetic awareness in the most deceitful and evil way to make us think we are dealing with the energetic root causes of our issues.
This goes on until our bodies show us the truth by displaying symptoms of exhaustion, illness and sometimes chronic disease and mental and emotional ill-health.
When I decided to become an Esoteric practitioner and applied for accreditation through the “Esoteric Practitioner’s Association” (EPA*) I found out that a prerequisite for becoming an Esoteric practitioner is to commit to never watch porn as well as a number of other prerequisites such as not drinking alcohol.
It was the first time in my life I had heard of this or come across an organisation that considered how what the practitioner does will directly impact upon the quality of healing that is offered to a client.
No healing modality that I ever came across, neither at University nor around the world during my studies of alternative medicine, ever asked that I not watch porn, or engage in other activities, because of the harm it would cause me and my clients.
This made sense of my experiences of the Universal Medicine therapies and the power of healing that they brought to me and others. It was the final confirmation for the stupendous quality, care and space that Universal Medicine and the EPA* offer, something that is not seen or matched anywhere else worldwide.
My experience has informed me of how important the quality I live in is to offering healing.
I would want such a safe space for every single person on earth, so that nobody ever again has to suffer unseen energetic abuse through the side effects of their practitioner’s lifestyle choices.
More and more men are starting to talk openly and honestly about porn addiction and the effects they observe it is having on their lives and on their loved ones. This is the way to end the illusion we have allowed the porn industry to abuse us with.
It was the true love I had for my clients and for myself that allowed me to ask the right questions that brought me to meet Serge Benhayon. And it is his enormous love and care for humanity that allowed me to change and create a safe space in my clinic.
The women and men that now come to see me, some of whom may have been sexually abused, can now finally start to truly heal in my clinic because they are never going to be imposed upon by an abusive energy that was there before I understood what my porn addiction was doing and they are offered an environment where they can feel safe and supported through the loving ways I now choose to live every day.
* The EPA (Esoteric Practitioners Association) is a branch of Universal Medicine. It was instigated by Universal Medicine to monitor and accredit the modalities that were founded by Universal Medicine. 
By Anonymous, GermanyÂ
Further Reading:
Porn addiction – what are we missing out on?
Behind Closed Doors
Our secret medical history
