It is understandable why your family thinks you are in cult, especially if the quality of your social, emotional, psychological, familial, and professional life is deteriorating. As any serious meditator asks, “Why is this the case? Why do I suffer? What can I do to change? How do I not only eradicate the internal causes of suffering, but also benefit my community in the process? How do I make my spirituality practical and of benefit to others in a psychological, emotional, material, social, and spiritual sense?”
This is why having a job, a career, an education, a goal, is the requisite of the spiritual path. It is necessary to work out the material part of life’s equation while addressing the inner, the psychological, the spiritual. Real spirituality is not abandonment of the world or abnegation of responsibility, because it is responsibility that orients the body, mind, and heart. A lack of responsibility or the unwillingness to voluntarily take it on produces, even biochemically, depression or anxiety, for if you have no practical goal, career path, livelihood, or goal to aim at in terms of your material and spiritual life, your brain will signal to you that you are in bad place. This is modeled even in terms of dopamine, the neurochemical that “rewards” you for accomplishing an aim. When you have no aim or goal, even in the basic physical sense material livelihood, you lack dopamine, and suffer.
Now obviously there are other psychological and spiritual reasons to this, but in a conventional sense, lacking a career path or a desire to educate yourself so that you can be an effective member of your community is seriously detrimental, both physically and spiritually. You cannot separate the spiritual path from having a job, a position, a livelihood, since “Initiation is your own life, lived with rectitude and love.” That rectitude is the willingness to acquire necessary skills to adapt, subsist, and negotiate with the world. Otherwise you have the case of someone as serious as a “stupid saint,” a person with lofty spiritual ideals, but no ability to translate it in practical in life.
Semen retention is also not enough. Saving sexual energy is the beginning. But more importantly is the practice of directing it consciously, willingly, within positive activities that promote spiritual benefit for you and humanity. The main practice for this is pranayama, especially for young persons learning to direct sexual force and to empower the consciousness. The effects of such a practice are increased emotional stability, mental focus, concentration, patience, serenity, and insight. When that energy is directed within the consciousness, then you have the power to awaken virtue. However, virtues must be used in life, through a job, career, family relationships, friends, since those conscious abilities become weak in us when unexercised within the social domain.
Obviously you know the damages masturbation causes to the mind and heart. However, knowledge is not enough. Comprehension is what fundamentally changes behavior. Knowing in your intellect is insufficient. Profound cognizance of how such actions produce suffering is what motivates us to change, and to never go back to old habits that destroy. We recommend you study and reflect upon the referenced article below from Chicago Gnosis, since it covers many aspects of this problem in more detail than we can manage here.
If you wish to rectify your social anxiety, then you need to make the effort to socialize with others, even if it means small events, activities, or hobbies. Being reclusive and solitary, especially at your age, is not healthy nor recommended. Balance is the key, whereby you engage with the psychological gymnasium of life and learn to extract wisdom from daily interactions, interrelationships, and events, so that when you do take the time to meditate, you have material to study and draw from. Avoiding social situations is not the marker of competence, spiritual advancement, or health, but fear, avoidance, and the incapacity to develop genuine spirituality within the world.
Have you spoken with or consulted a therapist about your anxiety? Suicidality is very serious and should be addressed with a psychological professional. Here is the suicide hotline number:
988
Therapy can also teach you fundamental skills for navigating the verities and challenges of life, especially as you are cementing your personality and learning to survive in the world. You cannot neglect the development of your personality for the sake of your consciousness. Both are necessary. This is why knowledge and being must be balanced to produce an optimal lifestyle.
Joyful in hope, suffering in tribulation, be thou constant in thy prayer.
Benedictis, qui venit in nomine Domini. Osanna in excelsis.
"Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest!"