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Duvid Chaim helped us understand Step 1 of the 12 steps with the Big Book: "We admitted we were powerless over lusting and that our lives had become unmanageable".
I love the saying we've been using in the calls: "I was once a cucumber, now I'm a pickle, and I'll never be a cucumber again." When I was very young I could lust normally, but now I'm an addict and I'll never be able to lust normally again. We addicts are different than other "regular" people. We will never be able to lust like them. We can't even lust a little bit, because once we get started we don't know how to stop. We can't control our feelings of lust.
We tried many methods, but they didn't work long term; Vows, dipping in the mikveh, saying the tikkun Klalli, filters, etc. But in the end, we always fell again.
Dangerously, after having some "clean" days, we often felt as if we were in control over the addiction, and that we were becoming immune to it and could beat this thing ourselves, but that's not true. We would eventually act out again. We have to face the facts; we can't control our addiction to lust!
We can't use our willpower to beat the addiction. Our "minds" got us into this addiction, so how can we expect our "minds" to get us out of it?
We shouldn't get depressed over the fact that we are powerless on our own. This just leads in to steps 2 and 3, which are; that we believe in HaShem and His ability to help us. We have to turn to HaShem for help and "surrender" ourselves to Him. We can start doing this by building a relationship with Him ("feeling dveikut"), by talking to Him, opening up our eyes and seeing Him around us, and feeling His hashgaha pratis.
An analogy: We are playing tug-of-war with our addiction. He's always pulling. When we fight it, he pulls back. When we have clean days, that means we've pulled stronger than the addiction. However, in a game of tug-of-war, what happens when you start to win a little bit? Usually, the other guy starts to pull back very hard. If he pulls very hard, you will slip. Once he sees that he's got you slipping, he'll pull even harder, and then you might even fall.
Playing tug-of-war gets tiring after a while. Imagine how tiring it can be after "playing" it for weeks, or even months!
I think it's time to stop fighting the addiction. Let's "surrender" ourselves to HaShem by letting go of the rope! When you let go of your end of the rope, the addiction on the other side GOES FLYING!
Instead of fighting the addiction, let's focus today on opening our eyes to see HaShem everywhere, in every physical object we see. Let's try to feel HaShem. Let's talk to Him. Let's serve Him today, just for today, instead of serving ourselves.
And instead of preparing for huge battles, let's ask ourselves each day when we wake up in the morning:
Just food for thought.
Your friend,
Momo