How to Collaborate with Your Animal Soul (Nephesh)

Introduction

Mastering your basic urges and body is an aim mutual to Magick and Personal Development. In Freudian terms, this has to do with controlling the id through your ego; in Qabalistic is doing the same with your Ruach, animal soul (Nephesh), and G’uph. Behavioral science and neuroeconomics view it as a balance between the emotional and rational mind. Also, between the reptilian or ancient brain and the prefrontal cortex, the reasoning brain.

While working with the elements has its place (for magicians), IMHO, the groundwork for it can be what Napoleon Hill defined as ‘mastering the three basic appetites,’ This includes those for food, sex, and loosely organized opinions. After slightly touching on them in a newsletter, I’ll elaborate on what I view as the ultimate tools for achieving such an outcome. Besides recent evidence, I’ll also share personal experiences.

Removing Delusions

The three pieces of advice I’d give my younger self for controlling basic urges are: (1) This concerns brain chemicals, internal reflections, and negotiation. (2) The key is reconciling them gently, as displayed on the Strength Tarot Trump. Not punishing your animal soul, as that backfires, producing the opposite result. (3) Willpower is (often) useless against our biology and primordial drives; it is fluctuating, fragile, and limited, whereas those can be permanent and remarkably strong. This is proven by scientists, including Roy Baumeister, Michael Inzicht, Kelly McGonigal, BJ Fogg, Judson Brewer, and others. 

Avoiding the Biggest Mistake

Attempting to use willpower against your animal soul has various consequences. The most common are ego depletion/mental fatigue, defeat, and self-flagellation. As emphasized in Kelly McGonigal’s The Willpower Instinct and Judson Brewer’s Unwinding Anxiety, self-control can also be unavailable during stress, as the prefrontal cortex (the area responsible for it) can shut down. So the reptilian brain has the upper hand. You can think of it as your animal soul (nephesh) controlling your thoughts and actions. Given that, making this ‘reconciling’ independent of willpower seems pretty reasonable.

Keep the Waters Calm

In his Kabbalah Magic and the Great Work of Self- Transformation, biohacker Lyam Thomas Christopher likens the nephesh to a pool of water underneath the Neshamah or the sky above. Between them is the ego, or ruach. Limited in its perception, the ego can only look down in the waters reflecting the Neshamah’s image. When those are calm, this image is clear. When the ego tries to punish or force the animal soul into something, ripples or waves start forming, disturbing the image. Besides rendering you unable to perceive the Neshamah’s signals, that can result in various phobias and conditions that are basically demons. The same applies to childhood traumas beyond the scope of this video. 

Wanting The Right Things

Like the late Christopher Hyatt, Standford professor Baba Shiv argues that the emotional brain makes 90% of our decisions, which the reasoning brain (merely) justifies. Based on that, finding ways to make the animal soul want the right things seems an appropriate aim.

Dopamine

Knowing that willpower isn’t the way, controlling dopamine is the first step for controlling basic urges. 

With some caveats, controlling dopamine controls your animal soul . This means substituting instant gratification/cheap dopamine for long-term fulfillment. On the contrary, it also doesn’t imply dopamine is particularly bad. It is essential, as it allows us to seek and crave. So the key is using it for the right things. 

Exercise

Without exaggeration, hitting the gym is the best for training your brain to delay gratification. One reason is that you must first do the work to see results. 

Another is that it provides you with a rush of good endorphins, endocannabinoids, and dopamine. 

As Mark Stavish says, exercise also reminds us we live in Assiah, the world of action. And only by taking action, combining word and deed, can we make things happen, which is the goal of magick. Exercise also builds your discipline, so when it comes to adopting a daily magickal practice, that feels much easier. Frank Zane calls bodybuilding the Yoga of the West. Although I disagree with that, as Qabalah and Magick have the place, I recognize there’s some truth to it, as bodybuilding is extremely mental training your mind in various ways. That’s precisely why LHP scholars liken bodybuilders and fitness enthusiasts to following what Gurdjieff defined as the way of the fakir. And as found in Charles Duhigg’s The Power of Habit:

“Typically, people who exercise start eating better and becoming more productive at work. They (…) show more patience with colleagues and family, and they use their credit cards less frequently and say they feel less stressed. Exercise is a keystone habit that triggers widespread change…”

Getting Your Nephesh on Board

Dopamine is associated with motivation, determination, and grit; the lack of it relates to depression and apathy. Coupling pleasurable with constructive habits, techniques like ‘pleasure bundling’ and Premack’s principle avail of dopamine’s power. They incorporate the productive (or necessary) with the purely pleasurable. Examples include watching Netflix or listening to music while cleaning or doing other chores. Or getting rewarded after doing something productive. Essentially, they do what Qabalah scholars define as ‘getting your nephesh on board.’ Also, what modern researcher and best-selling author James Clear calls ‘making a habit irresistible.’ If you are new to it, you can use such methods to start exercising. While they have their place, improving dopamine sensitivity is vital for controlling it.  

Dopamine Sensitivity

Generally, desensitization is caused by stimulating too much dopamine for too long. When that happens, the dopamine-sending neurons keep releasing the chemical, but the receivers no longer respond. Similar to the later-covered insulin resistance, studies found this can occur quicker or slower based on one’s brain vulnerability 

and intensity of use. Whatever the case, scientists agree frequent dopamine stimulation leads to desensitization. In fact, some argue this is worse than fewer intense spikes. Meaning fapping, conventional eating, social media, and smoking may be more addictive than coke or speed. 

Addictions Must Die

Given that, controlling dopamine begins with listening to Don Webb’s advice that ‘addictions must die.’ This means eradicating self-destructive habits and diverting the energy toward productive ones. Turning lead into gold, like a true alchemist. And this may have a different start depending on your journey’s current stage. 

Personal Experience

Fifteen years ago, I began by giving up tobacco, gas, speed, and liquor. Later, I overcame severe fapping and food dependencies. Though seemingly different, all these do the same, triggering the brain’s reward mechanisms abnormally.

Starve Your Addictions

Тhere are two important lessons I learned when quitting substance addictions. The first is that going cold turkey is the easiest and painless way. Not giving them fuel, such a change makes substance addictions fade away; it’s almost as if you starve them until they eventually die. 

Filling The Emptiness

The second crucial is that the former requires substantial reasons and a plan to keep you on track; if they are absent, you lose. That is a combination of meaningful, engaging, and productive activities you actually enjoy. As later stressed, your nephesh must also get something in return; if there isn’t such a thing, you better first figure that out. Nothing should feel like giving up something and ending up with less, but as if trading one for another or turning it into a better one. Mark Stavish likens giving up a substance addiction to freeing yourself from an egregore. And in that regard, he says:

“A plan, purpose, and meaning for life is needed to fill the psychic and physical gaps that are left.” 

That, not being the case, creates a vacuum that nature despises. So it fills it how it finds it most suitable. And most often, that means relapsing.  

The Bigger Issues

Although drug abuse negatively impacts dopamine (and the animal soul ), two issues are more ubiquitous: food and porn addictions. Actually, I’d argue that the reason they are so vastly misunderstood plays a role in people having drug and booze issues. 

Hunger and the Nephesh

In her lecture, All the Kabbalah You Really Need to Know, Soror Miriam BatAsherah, explains an unfed nephesh is a recipe for disaster. Thanks to modern science, we have powerful tools. So neither snacking nor willpower is required to control this aspect of the animal soul.

Understanding Hunger

No matter how food-dependent, diabetic, and obese you are, change is available, and diet is king for making it. The most crucial understanding about being hungry and obese is that this isn’t because of lacking willpower; it results from an improper hormonal balance. Particularly a condition called insulin resistance. The second in that order is that while many foods make you hungry and some are specially engineered, specific ones suppress it. To learn more about that, I offer my first book, such as the works of Dave Asprey, Peter Attia, David Perlmutter, and of course, Rob Wolf’s Wired to Eat.

Insulin Control

Though that may sound oversimplified, controlling insulin controls hunger. This doesn’t mean demonizing it. Ideally, it implies spiking it infrequently and strategically. Supplying your body with good nutrients, such a dietary intervention lets your inner kid enjoy a delicious meal. What elevates insulin is calories. And what keeps it low is fasting. What conventional eating does to insulin is even worse than what it does to dopamine. It breaks it, causing insulin resistance. Besides obesity, diabetes, and many other issues, the latter leads to leptin resistance. Coming from the Greek ‘Leptos’ (or thin), leptin works like a break for ghrelin, the hunger hormone. When that chain is hijacked, you can stay hungry 24/7. Researchers found that often bodies of obese people produce a lot more leptin, yet the receptors resist it. Hence why they can’t manage their hunger and body weight. 

Understanding Fasting 

As one of the first to talk about its miraculous benefits (on the web), I consider adopting OMAD as the ultimate indicator for mastering hunger. Implementing it, however, requires patience, time, and adaptation. Simply put, you must let your body build the machinery for burning its stores through beta-oxidation and no longer rely on snacking. As explained in my OMAD GAINS book, combining an 8-16 feeding window with zero carb carnivore diet is unmatched for that. Yet other protocols like keto and paleo may also be suitable. 

Total Elimination

How far you should go regarding elimination depends on how addicted you are to food. The same applies to how long you should stay on such a diet. A zero-carb diet isn’t something to (necessarily) do forever; it just works like magick for compressing your feeding window. 

Personal Experience 

Like many others, I couldn’t wholly suppress my appetite without such a regimen. It also took me about a year to fully transition to OMAD. You may be different. So trust your empirical results. 

Hunger Suppression Through Diet

Besides optimizing your hormones through good cholesterol, this accomplishes everything you need. It makes you burn fat for fuel while stimulating the release of peptide YY (PYY) and cholecystokinin (CCK). When injected with those, mice and humans don’t want to eat. Luckily this isn’t required, and eating high fats and proteins produces identical results. 

Mysteries of the OMAD Plan

“The different types of physical activity, whether in molecules or masses, can be classified under the two headings of anabolism and katabolism, that is to say building up and breaking-down process…” 

Dion Fortune. Mystical Qabalah

When doing OMAD, you alternate 23 hours of fasting with 1 hour of feeding. While the latter spikes insulin, the former elevates glucagon. Secreted by the pancreas, insulin and glucagon oppose each other, as the first builds, whereas the second destroys. Hence why the ketogenic researcher Benjamin Bickman likens them to yin and yang, whereas Dion Fortune to Chessed and Geburah. 

Letting Geburah Do Its Thing

Following a standard Western Diet, society, by large, always keeps Geburah’s metabolic representation from doing its thing. So we have an obesity pandemic, and people are struggling with permanent cravings. Following an OMAD-like regimen allows Glucagon or Geburah to do its job. It also lets your ‘nephesh’ enjoy food to the fullest, aligning with our primal human nature as our ancestors were hunter-gatherers fasting and hunting for days and then feasting at night. 

Ketosis

The more you fast, the more ketones your body produces and burns. Besides enhancing mental performance, blood ketones beta-hydroxybutyrate suppresses hunger. More on that can be found in the works of Dominic D’Agostino, such as in my first book.

At the 18th hour, you also reap the benefits of autophagy, as identified by Dr. Jason Fung. That’s precisely what Geburah does, burning unwanted and excess stuff, which in this context is stored fat, damaged cells, and toxic proteins. 

Metabolic Flexibility

The cost of all that is not being hungry, which is the goal. Mostly made of fat, the brain prefers mainly running on ketones. And based on my and many others’ experiences, keeping your body in such a state substantially helps override primal impulses. The longer you sustain the lifestyle, the more you enter deep ketosis, improving metabolic flexibility. This is your body’s ability to burn carbs and fats equally efficiently. The more that is, the less often you need to eat. So the more satiated your nephesh stays all the time. 

Sex

Next to hunger comes mastering the desire for sex. Viewed as the strongest, the same you can use to conquer others as the main driving force of your self-improvement. For the contemporary person, this begins with NoFap. Besides removing notions instilled by porn about what you should be attracted to and letting you fully own and express your sexuality, NoFap starves your fapping addiction, balancing brain chemicals. Think of it as working identically to fasting and ketosis but on another and more crucial aspect of your ‘nephesh.’ Being one of the pioneers in both, I found fasting and NoFap have synergistic effects working as an actual nootropic. 

Studies

When comparing the brains of alcoholics, gamblers, and drug addicts, scientists discovered their changes in gray matter are similar to those of people addicted to porn and junk food. The good news is that this is reversible.

Moreover, researchers found that by abstaining from porn, you can actually grow gray matter above baseline. According to the same study, it takes about 250 days to recover completely, yet it is often recommended to go with about 315. By balancing brain chemicals and helping you rewire, this heals your brain. It puts you in a very healthy and sober relationship with sex while improving your sex life unimaginably, which is the actual thing your Nephesh craves. So there’s plenty for it, although it may not realize initially. 

Cyclical Celibacy

You can also implement cyclical celibacy. Often used in conjunction with NoFap, this means alternating periods of having sex and orgasms with others of abstinence. Whether you should do that depends on how bad things are. In The Search For the Miraculous, Ouspensky asks Gurdjieff whether complete abstinence is required for sexual transmutation; Gurdjieff answers that this is true only for pathological cases and for a while. Once the person recovers, they should enjoy a healthy sex life.

Personal Experience

Sex was the main reason and tool helping me quit fapping, as that killed my erections identical to speed.  Fapping and sex stimulate the release of very different chemicals. One is mainly dopamine, whereas the other is serotonin and oxytocin, improving well-being and calming the mind. On the other hand, restricting orgasms played an enormous role in completely rewiring my brain for how I viewed sex and my partners. It also helped me evade the emerging-back then pick-up culture, which, IMO, can harm (both) your Nephesh and conscious mind. 

Ancient Daoists have a formula for finding the exact number of orgasms per year for optimal health and performance: your age minus seven divided by four. What that gives you is the ideal number of days between ejaculations

Nevertheless, orgasms tend to lower testosterone while elevating prolactin in men. This can result in less happiness and satisfaction, such as decreased performance. In the past, I tried to avoid that. Yet, in recent years, I found that keeping my lifestyle as it is and performing SIRP or Alaerian’s OBW up to twice a day removes the need for it. Go figure. 

Sleep

Without getting too much into it, I can’t skip mentioning the importance of sleep. The main reason is that not getting enough high-quality cranks up all your cravings to an unimaginable degree. Studies show that sleep deprivation strongly affects the prefrontal cortex, which is how you reason, make decisions, and self-regulate. The thing to remember is that not time in bed but quality is the most important. So use a sleep tracker to ensure yours is on point.

Meditation

Numerous studies show that daily meditation doesn’t just balance brain chemicals; it thickens the prefrontal cortex, decreasing lower brain activity. It does that through neuroplasticity, the physical adaptations your brain makes by rewiring neural connections and networks.

In The Willpower Instinct, Standford Ph.D., Kelly McGonigal reveals that the simple four-fold breath technique massively increases self-control. She further notes that it trains the mind to handle various distractions and temptations, including cravings. Like Joe Dispenza and others, McGonigal adds that meditation helps quit (any) self-destructive habit. And can help with forming new ones via neuroplasticity. Therefore it helps with all covered. And more on that can be found in my second book: Discipline or Something Else.

Besides more self-control, as Regardie and Swami Vivekananda stress, meditation lowers the action in the default mode network (DMN). According to Buddhist teachings, this is basically ‘the monkey mind,’ associated with restlessness and confusion. Also, with your inner critique telling you you aren’t good enough. So meditation doesn’t just help control the urges of your animal soul. It also tunes down the worst parts of your ego, as recognized in Modern Magick. And this is now confirmed by EEG and fMRI.

Your Inner Kid

Always remember that this process should be a collaboration with all parties being happy and a vacuum or emptiness eliminated. Also that everything has its polarity. Fasting throughout the day is incomplete if you don’t combine it with an epic and nutritious feast to make the inner kid happy. Fapping should be exchanged for quality sex with (ideally) a meaningful partner. Drugs are to be replaced by the gym, and other stimulating activities, like learning skills, playing instruments, magick, drawing, and whatever your inner kid is up to. 

Modified Asceticism

Remember, humans are meant to hunt, gather, build, destroy, and have sex, whether with or without orgasm. Not to watch porn, get sick, and rely on drugs. Much of balancing your ‘animal soul’ comes from giving it what it (really) wants. IMHO, this accomplishes what Regardie defined as modified asceticism. It lets you reap some benefits of (both) stoicism and epicureanism while being a slave to neither, as neither serves the magician, according to Don Webb. 

Reflections

By looking deep within, you’ll likely find your animal soul wants to enjoy food but hates craving it. It needs not porn but human connection and sexual intercourse. It wants to do fun, engaging stuff and build, not damage the body. It’s really because of modern living and Western culture that things went wrong.

This is a powerful way you get your animal soul (nephesh) on board. 

By satisfying your inner kid constructively, you not only live a happier life, but you also get to read your HGA’s signals better. Especially when considering the analogy with the water pool, such as that the angel often speaks through the animal soul, as in the words of David Shoemaker and Philis Seckler. Do not do it as a challenge or reset, depleting willpower only to revert to old crap and paradigms. Initiate a truly-lasting meaningful change, and don’t look back. 

Final Words

I found that conquering the first two appetites automatically masters the third. So likely, there won’t be a need for expressing loosely organized opinions, being cranky, or snapping at people for no reason, as these often result from low levels of satisfaction and blood sugar dysregulations. When you reach that point, you can channel what previously was craving for junk, fapping, or anything else toward productive aims and improving your life. Actually, that (kinda) happens automatically.

And though going on a six or eighteen months retreat may not be suitable for the modern person, these tools can help you reap similar benefits, elevating your consciousness. The same has been appreciated by all mystical traditions and religions, and they are now at your disposal without any sacrifice. But that’s just my opinion. Let me know what yours is, such as how I did with this article and video.