Hi Syd,
I am glad that you recognize that before those electrifying bodily sensations, and concomitant with them, is the affective passion of lust, and thus there is something to “‘decline’” after all (i.e. that it is a choice whether to decline it or not).
Then it’s worth re-assessing just what “feeling good” (in actualist lingo) means, since lust, being a ‘good’ feeling (and not a feeling good), inherently diminishes / takes away from feeling good.
This is not a moral judgement or a definitional trick – they really are just two different things entirely. The trick with the ‘good’ feelings is that they are seductive, and highly appealing to ‘me’, and as such they lure you in, leading you down the garden path[1]…
It is most obvious, when in a remarkable, astoundingly fantastic mood, just how much lust really diminishes from that.
Well, does it not diminish it at all, or does it but only a little?
And if it does but only a little – firstly, why indulge in it at all if it is taking away from feeling good? And secondly, how often does it really “swiftly come back”, and how often does it, ehhh…, swiftly lead to accessing some various hub sites and doing a bit more indulging (perhaps also being perceived as ‘felicitous indulging’ [sic]) and then ‘enjoying’ some kenjataimu afterwards, and once all the hormones of all that has worn off, getting around to looking again at this ‘feeling good’ thing? (This is nought but a food-for-thought rhetorical question of course.)
It’s interesting (and perspicacious) that you brought up harm, as it means you do recognize the lustful passions are inherently harmful. Given you already know that, what more information do you really need in order to get on the path to minimizing rather than indulging in them? (In the actualist way, not the suppressive/repressive way, of course.)
Whether the harmful passions translate into harmful action or not (and it is far better that they do not), does not change their nature (of them being ‘harmful’). Wouldn’t it be so much easier for them not to arise in the first place, rather than having them arise but then having to restrain yourself from acting on them?
I say this because, from experience, when the topic of ceasing to indulge in a harmful feeling (yet with no harmful actions) has come up, I find the approach of “because it’s better for other people” does not, in that mindset, really work. It’s a very self-centered mindset. So, appealing to oneself via the benefit to others, doesn’t work. However as it is a self-centered mindset, appealing to the ‘happiness’ aspect does work, namely and to wit: that it is a far worse experience of being alive, for oneself, to be indulging in lust!
In other words you end up only hurting yourself, both in the short and long-run – all the more perverse because it feels enjoyable (at least for parts of it) in the meantime! But that is how addictions/addictive feelings work – and there is a very good reason that pursuing addictions is called “self-abuse”.
Note that the above is merely an assessment based on the words written here, as such it can certainly be “off”, and as there’s no moralizing or attempting-to-change-the-other coming from this side, if any of it was triggering in any way then whatever harmful passions arise are best directed not towards the feeling-being writing this 
.
Cheers,
Claudiu
lead (someone) down/up the garden path: to deceive (someone) : to cause (someone) to go, think, or proceed wrongly (Merriam-Webster) ↩︎