The Library

Rav Yehudah Leib Ashlag, the Ba'al Hasulam, once said "What's the difference between Gashmius (physical pleasures) and Ruchnius (spiritual pleasures)? Gashmius everyone wants, but once you have it, there is no feeling of fulfillment. Ruchniyus on the other hand, nobody wa...

Hashem doesn't ask of us that which we can't do. The Torah says "Ki karov elecha hadavar me'od", which means "it is very close to you" (i.e that it is not difficult). So why does it feel sometimes so hard? The answer is, these profound words of the Torah are true only whe...

Chaza"l say that if a person is walking and he needs to say Kriyas Shema, he should "stand" and not continue walking when he says the first pasuk. The Beis Ahron of Karlin explains this to mean that one should stand firm like a beam of iron, meaning that when one accepts ...

Sometimes, when we find ourselves drawn, time and time again, to look at things we know we shouldn't, we ask ourselves, "wouldn't it be great if I just couldn't see"? But then, we start to think about how wonderful it is to be able to see. We begin to realize that withou...

A non-Jewish sex therapist in Maryland wrote on one of the forums of Arutz Sheva (on the subject of porn addictions): "While many men watch pornography to stimulate their sexual excitement with their wives, the opposite is the case. The experience of our clinic and studie...

We all know how the attraction to women makes no logical sense. It is part of our animal nature, given to us by G-d for the sole purpose of the perpetuation of mankind. As our sages said, "everyone knows that a woman is a barrel of excrement and that her mouth (allegoric...

Sometimes when a person tries to guard his eyes the evil inclination tells him "why are you not letting yourself experience the beauty that G-d created in his world? There is so much incredible beauty out there, why do you try to ignore it?" One must realize though that "...

If you struggle a lot with intense desire, it means you have a lot of emotional / spiritual energy in you. It is the people like you that have the capacity for the most intense spiritual connection with G-d. However, you need to learn to channel this energy in the right w...

Everything we are and everything we have, belongs to G-d. So what can we, mere mortals, give back to G-d? When we say no to our evil inclination, we are giving G-d something back. As one X-addict wrote; "The only thing I feel I truly gave G-d in my whole life was giving...

Someone who is addicted to por-nogrophy lives in a perpetual cycle, that alternates between three basic states. 1) Void: A feeling of a deep void of "I need, need need". Not a very happy state, to say the least. 2) Giving in: Letting go to "supposedly" fill the void. ...

The yetzer hara has a trick to get us to sin. Sometimes he makes us believe that without us giving in to these desires, our lives feel dark, void and empty. A person could have the most fulfilling life. A wonderful wife, beautiful children, a good job, a good spiritual ...

The whole world is running after happiness, for what more can a person ask for in life? But what people don't know, or what they choose to ignore, is the simple fact that true happiness only comes from a real inner peace, and not from ANYTHING external. This is hard for p...

Although we are encouraged to be humble, this is only when we are doing good deeds. This means that even when we think we have done much good, we must always remember that no man has yet fulfilled his obligations fully to G-d. However, when we go out into the street and a...

A fellow struggler writes on the forum of jewishsexuality.com: I am not very educated in these things, but from my own experience and struggles I can at least say: G-D is very true and frequently helps you when you ask for the right things (in the right way)! Every tim...

All the fascination we have for sexual desire is satisfied in a few seconds. After that we feel sick from it and don't even want it anymore. What a gyp! Is it worth it for this to give away Hashem, with whom our fascination can never be quenched, and with whom the more w...

To truly be free of the insidious desires, we need to make a true and final decision that we don't want these things anymore. When we are standing in Shul on Rosh Hashana or Yom-Kippur, or when we are meeting with a Rabbi we truly respect, is there anything we want more i...

We need to internalize that these desires are out to destroy us, not to help us. He claims to be our best friend, but he is our worst enemy. The evil inclination's goal is that the value of our lives should be zero. His job is to damage. To do this he was given permission...

One secret to success in overcoming the evil inclination is to enjoy the challenge! Imagine you are playing a video arcade game called "Life" and the enemy is called "Temptation". If a test comes and you overcome it, you get points and move to a higher level each time. On...