This is what changed everything for me

I started porn recovery at 24. I never expected it would lead me to ordain as a monk in Myanmar.

New here? This is Part 3 of my story about breaking free from porn addiction and discovering what real freedom looks like.

In Part 1, I shared how a moment outside a coffee shop made me realize I was no longer in control of my mind.

In Part 2, I discovered neuroplasticity through Matthieu Ricard's book and made the radical decision to travel to India in search of healing.

You can catch up on the full story in my previous posts, but here's where the real transformation began...

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After that breaking point outside Peet's Coffee, I was desperate for answers. That's when I wandered into a bookstore and found Matthieu Ricard's book Happiness , the story of a molecular biologist who became a Buddhist monk.

One concept hit me like lightning: neuroplasticity. Neurons that fire together, wire together.

Suddenly, it all made sense.

All those nights scrolling through videos weren't isolated choices, they were training sessions. I had been rewiring my brain to crave novelty and reject stillness.

But if my brain had learned those patterns, it could unlearn them.

That realization led me to years of seeking, traveling to India for meditation retreats, studying with teachers, slowly learning to work with my mind as a lay practitioner.

Each retreat deepened my understanding and strengthened my practice, but I knew I needed to go deeper. Eventually, this journey led me to the most intensive experience of all: 21 days as an ordained monk in Myanmar's Sagaing Hills, practicing vipassana meditation in complete silence.

The monastery wasn't what I expected.

I had imagined ancient stone walls, silence broken only by distant chanting, maybe some wise old monk with a long beard who would share the secret to enlightenment over tea.

Instead, I found myself in a simple kuti, a small wooden hut perched on a hillside overlooking the Irawaddy River, sharing this sacred space with other seekers who had also chosen temporary ordination. I learned that transformation happens not in dramatic moments of revelation, but in the grinding repetition of daily practice.

My first morning, the bell rang at 3:30 AM.

Dtongg!!… Dtongg!!… Dtonnngggg!!!…..

As I stumbled through the darkness toward the meditation hall, the cold mountain air biting at my freshly shaved head, my mind was already rebelling: "This is insane. You could be sleeping. You could be comfortable. You could be watching..."

And there it was.

Even in this sacred space, thousands of miles from my old life, the pathways I had carved so deeply were still firing. The saffron robes I wore felt foreign against my skin, but the mental patterns were achingly familiar.

Neurons that fire together, wire together.

I had learned about neuroplasticity intellectually. I had experienced it gradually through countless hours of meditation practice. Now, in this intensive environment, I was about to discover what deep rewiring actually felt like.

The core practice was simple, almost embarrassingly so: sit still and practice vipassana, insight meditation, watching your breath and observing the arising and passing of sensations in the body.

That's it but simple isn't the same as easy.

When you've spent years training your mind to constantly look for novelty, stimulation, and escape, asking it to focus on something as mundane as breathing feels like asking a racehorse to sit. Even after years of retreat experience, the intensity of monastic life was unlike anything I had encountered.

My first meditation session lasted exactly seven minutes before I gave up, frustrated and fidgety. The schedule was grueling, 18 hours a day of alternating sitting and walking meditation, with only two meals: breakfast at 5:45 AM and lunch at 10:30 AM.

After midday, nothing but water until the next morning. It was hard!

Reframing

I wasn't failing when my mind wandered to sexual fantasies, shame spirals, or escape plans. I was simply getting opportunities to practice returning to the present moment.

Each time I caught my mind in its old patterns and gently guided it back to the breath, I was literally rewiring my brain, creating new pathways and weakening the old ones.

But let me be honest, it wasn't all peaceful insights and gradual awakening.

There were days when the sexual urges felt unbearable. Days when the silence amplified every uncomfortable emotion I had been numbing for years. Days when I questioned whether I was wasting my time chasing some fantasy of inner peace while fishermen worked their boats on the river below, living what seemed like more authentic lives.

The hardest part wasn't the physical discomfort of sitting cross-legged for hours on a thin cushion, or the ache in my knees, or even the hunger that gnawed at me each evening.

It was confronting the person I had become.

In meditation, you can't hide from yourself. Every suppressed emotion, every shameful memory, every pattern you've been avoiding, it all surfaces. The monastery wasn't a retreat from my problems. It was a direct confrontation with them.

And I realized: this is exactly what I had been running from all these years.

This discomfort, restlessness and this feeling of being trapped in my own skin.

Porn hadn't been the problem.

It had been my solution to a problem I didn't know how to face: the basic human experience of difficult emotions.

The moment everything shifted. Two weeks into my stay, something shifted. I was sitting in morning meditation, watching the sunrise paint the Irawaddy River gold, when a familiar wave of sexual craving arose. Instead of fighting it or feeling ashamed, I simply observed it.

I watched how it felt in my body, the tightness in my chest, the restless energy, the mental images that arose and passed away like clouds across the sky.

And then, something remarkable happened. The craving peaked, lingered for a moment, and then... dissolved.

Just like that. Not because I had conquered it or controlled it, but because I had simply been present with it.

In that moment, I understood something profound, the key to freedom wasn't control, it was connection. Connection to the present moment, to my own experience, pleasant and unpleasant alike and connection to something larger than my individual desires and fears.

For years, I had been trying to manage my urges, to build walls against them, to distract myself from them. But what I learned in that monastery - built upon years of gradual preparation - was that what we resist persists, and what we embrace transforms.

The neuroscience

What I was experiencing had a scientific basis. When we're caught in compulsive behaviors, we're operating primarily from the limbic system, the ancient, reactive part of the brain that just wants pleasure and avoids pain.

But mindfulness meditation literally strengthens the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain responsible for executive function, decision-making, and self-awareness.

Studies show that just eight weeks of mindfulness practice can measurably change brain structure. The insula (associated with interoceptive awareness) becomes thicker. The amygdala (associated with fear and reactivity) becomes less active.

I wasn't just learning to sit still. I was rewiring the very architecture of my mind - a process that had begun years earlier but reached its deepest expression in this intensive environment.

But here's what the research doesn't capture: the profound sense of coming home to yourself that happens when you stop running from your own experience.

After 21 days, it was time to disrobe and leave. I wasn't "cured." I hadn't achieved some permanent state of enlightenment but something important had shifted.

I had learned that urges are temporary visitors, not permanent residents…that discomfort is survivable. Most importantly, I had learned that healing doesn't happen in isolation.

The other people who had ordained alongside me, the patient guidance of the abbot and teachers, the simple act of sitting together in noble silence, it was all part of the medicine.

As I prepared to return to the "real world," I carried with me not just new practices, but a new understanding of what it means to be human - an understanding that had been years in the making.

In Part 4, I'll share what happened when I came back to America, the challenges of integrating these insights into modern life, the relationships that saved me, and why I believe connection, not control, is the key to lasting freedom from any compulsive behavior.

But for now, I'll leave you with this, your urges are not your identity, your thoughts are not commands and beneath all the noise, there's a stillness that's always been there, waiting for you to come home.

On a related note, if you're interested in one-on-one coaching and getting support to heal from compulsive behaviors and bad habits, just go to my website, jeremylipkowitz.com/intro , and sign up for a free discovery call to see if coaching is a good fit for you.

With you on the path,

Jeremy