Need/desire is a duality.
You are the one defining them. Whatever you say is a need becomes a need.
Strictly speaking there is no need to do anything. You could just lay down and die. There is not even a need to live.
Practically speaking, sex is one of the most powerful human drives. Good luck ignoring it. It's designed to be unignorable.
By saying that sex is a need all we're saying is: it's a core biological drive which dominates human survival. It can be overcome, but not easily, and not through something as simplistic as NoFap. You might as well be practicing NoShit.

@Patrick Lynam I'm not really sure anyone offers MDMA assisted therapy since MDMA is illegal in most countries and a serious therapist would not want to risk it.
You can either do psychedelics on your own and that itself is the therapy.
Or you can consider doing psychedelics with a shaman like with Ayahuasca or toad venom or ibogaine clinics in Costa Rica, Canada, etc.
Traditional talk therapy certainly works, but nothing compares to the therapeutic power of psychedelics. You don't need a therapist to administer it. The psychedelic is 100x wiser than any silly therapist. The therapist is more of a distraction than of help during a trip. The psychedelic will show you everything you need to know about yourself and your issues if you come to it with a genuine intention. All that's required is that you want to know the TRUTH about your issue. That's all. The psychedelic will show you all the answers, as much as you're willing to stomach.
Just make sure you follow a proper tripping protocol. And start with small doses.
It's very smart to take charge of your own mental and psychological issues. No one can really sort you out but you. Which is why traditional talk therapy is so gradual. The answers are all inside you, if you'd only sit down with a notepad and introspect.
You can teach yourself how to diagnose and troubleshoot all of your own psychological problems.
Of course if you have the cash to burn, talk therapy could be good too. But you can't just rely on talk therapy to fix your life. Your life will require a lot deeper work to truly sort out. No talk therapist even understands how deep this work goes. So it's worth your time to learn how to self-help.

The ego-mind returns surprisingly soon. Like within 30 minutes you're back into standard ego operating mode. But of course shaken to your core. It's often a relief to return to ordinary life. But there is also a deep regret for losing that full-on God-consciousness because nothing in life will ever top that.
Sometimes the God-consciousness lingers for a few hours or even into the next day.
The saddest part about 5-MeO is that you cannot be that high 24/7/365. Losing touch with God is one of the deepest pains. But as you awaken more, you will start to realize that God is present all the time, even if you're not on a peak. This takes a lot of tripping to start to realize.
Enlightenment is right here, right now, at all times. But only if you're awake enough to see it. It does zero good telling an unawakened newbie that enlightenment is right here, right now, at all times. He just cannot see it. He needs actual breakthroughs and mystical experiences to demonstrate it to himself. That's where the 5-MeO comes in so handy.
After enough tripping, your whole life will start to feel like a trip. The materialist paradigm slowly gets snuffed out forever. I no longer experience myself as in a material world. The world gradually becomes self-luminous.

Perception, thought, and creation are not two.
The universe is hell for devils because of how they perceive and how they think -- which is their creation.
How you think about reality affects reality directly. By thinking of the world as a place where you exist, where others can harm you, and where one day you will die, you literally create your own hell.

Yes, but Green is still not thinking about it systemically. Green is mostly doing it from her heart. That's all great, but it is not the kind of full-bore systemic thinking I described.
Green is still looking at the situation from a personal agenda level, it just so happens that saving the Earth is now part of her personal agenda.
Yellow and above is more impersonal. And yet still very personal! Tier 2 is more detached.

God created relationship so that the depth of your love could really be put to the test. It's easy to love the world when you're sitting alone in a cave because there are no fools or devils to deal with.
Try being enlightened while running for president. Now there's a real test of your consciousness!
Osho was an enlightened master, but his community was full of devilry.

@NoSelfSelf You are missing that you are member of society whether you like it or not, whether you're enlightened or not. Society can only function when its citizens are well-educated and conscious. If the most conscious people stick their head in the sand and only focus on making their own personal lives work consciously, then society will be seized by the most unconscious right-wing nationalist tyrants. That's how Hitler and WWII happens.
As a human being you have to take responsibility for your role within a collective. Personal enlightenment is good but not good enough! Which is why enlightened masters become Bodhisattvas, to help elevate the rest of mankind. They are playing  a much bigger game than their own personal enlightenment. Personal enlightenment is a cake walk compared to enlightening society.
If you are the whole universe, then you are also society. You cannot treat yourself as only an individual unit, only a personal human life. You are also the collective! The life of all beings is your responsibility. You are God after all. How can you neglect your creation? Are you really going to sit by and watch devilry prevail? No! You cannot. It is actually impossible. Love and consciousness will move you to towards the highest Good.
To be fully conscious is to take responsibility for EVERYTHING to the point where you are willing to lay your life down for the greater Good. That is literally God's work. God did not design this wondrous creation through negligence or selfishness.

This has never been about the money. It's about helping people understand reality.
You might as well ask, why didn't Jesus or Gandhi retire and live in a cabin in the woods?
They had much higher callings.
Do not confuse these callings for ego. That would be a big mistake. God does its work through conscious people. How else do you think Goodness happens?

There is not one strategy, there are many
You could focus on gaining financial security first and then go hog-wild on spirituality.
Or you could do just the opposite.
It really depends on what your heart wants and what you can handle. It can be very painful to force yourself to work on mundane financial stuff when you are itching to be creative or spiritual.
Then again, if your financial situation collapses, that might force you into slave labor and out of your spiritual quest. Again, depending on who you are.
The most spiritually gifted people will never be stopped by financial concerns. But that's not most people. You have to be realistic about what you're gonna be able to handle.
If you want the most direct path to the highest human life, drop everything and go balls deep into spirituality. But that's very hardcore and too difficult for most people to pull off. Most people won't be able to handle it. Hence there are more gradual approaches.
Personally, I focused on locking in financial freedom first. But it was pretty painful, to be honest. I would not wish that kind of pain on anyone. But it sure beats being a wage slave.

It is easier to get enlightened out in nature than in a busy building full of people. There's a reason yogis meditate up in the mountains and forests. Nature has a tranquilizing effect on the mind.
But don't make this an excuse. You can practice spirituality anywhere.
The problem with rural areas is that the people there will be more closeminded and rednecky. Don't go telling them you're God, or they might hang you. City-folk are more tolerant and open, but more lost in the materialist race rat.

@Shaun You are misunderstanding what "everything is perfect" means. It does not mean that you don't take action to avoid catastrophes.
You don't jump off a tall building and while you're falling tell yourself "everything's perfect". That would be foolishness.

You're missing the bigger picture. Your understanding of what life purpose is is far too small. Life purpose is not a materialistic thing, life purpose is the highest spiritual thing! Your spiritual love IS the source of your life purpose. Stop pitting spirituality and LP against each other.
You just need to upgrade your LP to reflect your new spiritual values and orientation.
Life purpose is an expression of your soul. It has nothing to do with money or career per se.
How is your new spiritual awareness going to impact the world??? You're not here to sit around listening to birds chirp for 60 years. You are here to be a creator. What do you want to create?

When traditional prayer works it's due to law of attraction and intention. Your intentions DO affect reality. Intention is very powrful when it is practiced consistently and consciously.
Whatever you intend with emotion and conviction will tend to become true. Because your will is a splinter off God's Will. You literally have the power of God within you. The more conscious you become the more of it you will be able to tap and manifest.
It's not a miracle. It's because you are God, and reality is a giant Mind.

@Swagala See, that's how tricky the devil's mind is. It convinces itself that there's nothing to awaken to, and goes back to being a devil while telling itself that it is awake.
You are not awake yet. So the most dangerous thing you can convince yourself of is that there's nothing to awaken to. That's wrong. There is lots to awaken to. So get to work!
The seeking only stops AFTER your entire reality collapses and you are totally reborn.
Don't burn your canoe before you crossed the river.
Awakening is not futile. It is very real and palpable. Awakening is not part of the game. Yet also not separate from it.

The difficulty results from the fact that awareness is nothing. The mind cannot grasp it in the same way it can grasp a wall or tree or a thought.
So by trying to become aware of awareness you are really trying to realize Nothingness/Emptiness.
Yes, it's frusrating. There is no way around that. You are being asked to grasp the ungraspable.
Through lots of practice the mind must become very still. That stillness of mind itself becomes the empty awareness of awareness. You. Are. It.
Try focusing your mind on nothing in particular and just let it sit there. The more it sits there, the more Emptiness will dawn on you. Don't try to grasp it. Let it wash over you.

They are attracted to non-neediness. But that is very different than treating people like crap.
Don't forget about karma. How you treat others will come back to bite you.
The more you manipulate people, the more deluded you are, the more you will suffer in life.
Conscious & happy people do not manipulate others. By manipulating others you sell your soul to the devil.

You are best off teaching yourself Yellow and above through independent study. You will learn more through independent study than in a university. Take responsibility for educating yourself. This becomes necessary if you want to grow beyond the center of gravity of your society/culture.
Read 100 good books around this topic and you will be wiser than 99% of university professors. And you won't have to go $100,000 into debt to do it. In a sense, these days, universities are looking more and more like scam. It's not worth the price of admission when you can achieve better results by yourself at 5% of the cost. You just have to be self-driven and passionate about learning/truth.
If you read and carefully integrate the 200 books on my book list you will have a deeper understanding of reality than 99.999% of people. And I'll be adding more books soon.

Don't confuse personality with ego. Less ego = more personality.

It's not thought which is the problem so much as self-referential thought.
Practical thoughts like: "Hungry, need to buy groceries" is no problem and necessary.
Problematic thoughts are like: "Why did I screw this up again? I'm always this way. I have been bad my whole life." Etc. These are the kind of thoughts to eliminate or let go of. These kind of thoughts reinforce the narrative of the ego self. They assume a biographical self which is an illusion.

The purpose of any emotion is to create behaviors necessary for the ego's survival. Mind you, I said ego's survival, not the body's survival.
It's a preemptive defense mechanism, so that you end up getting what you want.

I mean look at it! What even is this? It's so WEIRD, everything is SO WEIRD! How are we just sitting here accepting everything as if it made any sense at all? It's completely absurd! It's so hilarious, everything about reality is so much more nonsensical than any conspiracy theory ever could be! Just look around you, what the hell is audio, or vision, or anything else, and how can it even exist? I mean just look at it, it's so insanely WEIRD.
Everything is, everything is so weird. It's weird beyond all description. Holy shit it's comedic! How can we be so blind to this absurdity. It's fucking magical, I don't even know what to say. Nothing you could ever come up with is so absurd and ridiculous as everything that already exists. It makes no sense and we all just accept it, as if it was completely reasonable. It's like we are all seeing ghosts and are just ignoring them, but it's so much worse! Just stop for a moment and look at what is happening right now, what the fuck is this? 
It's not just weird or abnormal, it's literally impossible! It is completely preposterous, it's just ludicrous! Oh my god this is the most hilarious thing ever. How could I be so blind to this? It's literally FUCKING MAGIC! It is so utterly obvious, nothing could be more obvious. It's a cosmic joke, and I am taking it so seriously!
Holy fucking shit is reality weird, all of it. It's actually mysterious, it LITERALLY IS MYSTERIOUS! I don't even know what to say, it's just so absurd and we don't even think about questioning it. Flat earth doesn't make sense? Literally nothing makes sense, it's all ABSURD! The fact that anything could possibly make sense is the most absurd thing ever!
 
It's actually a joke, the fucking scariest joke I have ever seen in my life. I am a joke, I literally am a joke.
 
 

When you fully realize what ego is, it will be like you were never even born. It will not even be possible in that moment to imagine that there could ever be a self or a human.
A human is 100% a total illusion, including birth, death, mind, body, and biographical life. None of it has any reality whatsoever. There is no such thing as biological creatures who are born, live, and die. All that is imagination.
But you can't understand this at all from your current state of consciousness. Your current state of consciousness IS the imagination at work, locking in "reality". Whatever it imagines is "real" for you right now.

@Angelo John Gage The desire to change the world is tricky. Yes, part of it is genuine but part of it is also ego.
On some level you still don't accept or love terrorism and war. Which is a self-hatred. You have to make sure that you're changing the world not as a reaction against some part of it which you refuse to accept.
Are you conscious of why war is necessary? Of what function it serves?
If what you seek is one half of a duality, like peace/war, then that will not work. What's necessary is to transcend both of those and discover Peace as an Absolute which unifies and embraces peace/war. That is how you get true Peace.
See, the problem is that the terrorist too is busy creating a good world, from his POV. Everything who tries to change the world for the better is in danger of falling into the trap of the lesser jihad.
The desire to do good cannot be taken on blind faith since a devil always frames what he does as good. Good intentions are not enough to create a good world. You also have to be aware of how goodness is relative.

@Ashlyn I see. Sounds like you're resisting something.
Have you tried contemplating what the root issue is? As in: why do you feel the need to do that?
Ultimately what you want to do here is to become conscious that all the above is something that YOU ARE DOING. Right now you're not conscious that you are doing it, in the sense that it feels like something that is happening to you. To change this, you must take ownership of it. So step 1 is: "Okay, I suspect I am doing this, but I'm not sure how or why", and step 2 is: "Okay, now let me get to the rock bottom of why I am doing this. What does it get me? How is it serving me? What is it protecting me from? What bad thing would happen if I stopped doing it?"
Sit down with a journal, set aside a couple hours, and really bore into this. You want to get to the rock bottom of it so that you're clear and conscious of what it is and why it is. It's clearly serving your survival in some fashion. As you investigate this, the goal is not to go back into your past and find justifications or causes. It doesn't really matter what happened in the past. What matters is why you still feel the need to keep doing it today.
If you are able to reach the rock bottom, you should feel some release. But you have to actually reach the true source of this, not just some ideas or opinions. You need the actual source. And the source may not be what you think it is. It is often something counter-intuitive like a belief such as: I am fundamentally unlovable, or, I am afraid I will die, or, I am worthless, or, I am afraid that if I give my love freely it will kill me, or, I need money to be happy, etc.
If I were you I'd contemplate this deeply sober. Then I would take some mushrooms or LSD and contemplate it again during the trip until the issue because very clear. Psychedelics are perfect for this kind of self-reflective work.
Fundamentally what's happening here is that the ego is sabotaging itself because it has a deeply flawed understanding of itself and life. The ego is stuck in some sort of unconscious survival pattern which it feels it needs.
You could also try to address this issue from a somatic perspective. See my video: Shamanic Breathing and use that technique every day for a week and see what comes up. That should open up various blockages in your body.
Practices like Hatha yoga might be helpful for you. Also see my video on Body Awareness. It sounds like you live too much in your head and are disconnected from your body. Body awareness practices can reconnect you with your body.

@Truth Addict Yes, now you get it.
It's sort of like trying grab one part of a blanketing using another part of the same blanket because all you have to grasp with is blanket itself. The blanket is oneness. Oneness is trying to grasp itself but can't ever succeed in total. How can a blanket grasp itself totally? It can only grasp itself partially. To grasp itself totally is must simply be itself (without any grasping). And that is enlightenment.
The moment you realize that it's impossible to grasp yourself, you've grasped yourself
The Nongrasping Grasp. The Gateless Gate. The Groundless Ground. The Selfless Self.
The self-licking ice cream cone.