Tomorrow is 20 weeks clean for me! My goal is no more lusting and I feel like I am almost there. When I say lusting, I am referring to the act of thinking bad thoughts or staring at women for the sole purpose of getting that 'tingly feeling'. What I now realize is that doing those things and looking at p-rn online are essentially the same thing: food for my addiction to lust. And if you stop feeding the addiction, he dies. I'm living proof to the truth of that statement.
People need to understand that giving up lusting completely is not just an add-on. In reality, it is the ONLY way to actually quit forever. Like Boruch keeps saying (see chizuk e-mails #447 and 448 on this page), if you hold onto the lust while trying to give up the behavior, you are doomed to failure. It's like the guy who immerses in the mikvah while holding a sheretz. If you want to be purified, you have to let go of the sheretz - which in this case is "lust".
Ano - you're amazing. I feel exactly what you feel. I keep thinking how I need to give up lust and dig down deeper, but I am just too scared to give it up... Aren't you scared? When I see other women on the street, it is still hard for me to control that double-take I feel. I know it is lust, but for some reason I just can't seem to let go of it.
I used to be scared of giving up the lust. This was when I was using the lust as the means to fill an empty void deep inside of me. But when I did much honest soul searching, I was finally willing to take "risks" - which were just in reality "trusting in Hashem" no matter what, and I made changes in my life by finding kedushah to fill this void.
And now... when I take that Shabbos walk and all of the inflated chometz is walking down the street, there IS a voice that says to "have a glance"... BUT, there is a much louder voice now that clearly reminds me of the bitterness that I will taste if I do have this look. I remember so so very well this bitter bitter MAR taste (for me it is maybe just as bitter as the morrer is meant to be, to remind us of the bitterness in mitzrayim). That bitter struggle of "wanting lust, and yet trying not have it". This bitter struggle is so bitter because it is a paradox. How can I try to "not have something", that I am in fact "wanting"? And therefore, like Ano said, it can only really work when we are willing to let go of lusting altogether.
Pesach is the most appropriate time to make this final change. You are doing great, but you need to hurry up and work on the ROOT. You are still fighting the lusting. Now is the time to leave the lusting alone, and change yourself into a person that no longer lusts. A person that no longer has the "need" to lust. A person that has many many more important things in his life than lusting.
As we all know, lusting is only temporary. When we go out to grab it... it turns out to be all air, i.e. nothing to hold on to. It was all imagination... it wasn't really REAL.
This is the entire difference between bread and Matzoh. They are both made of flour and water, but... the bread (chometz) has the air added which inflates it. The lust is pure air, pure chometz... nothing to hold on to. This image walking down the street, is pure chometz... all inflated - not really REAL. Remove the air, and it all disappears and we are left with something tangible... matzoh.
Let us all use the rest of Pesach, zman cheruseinu - the time of our freedom, to really beseech the Ribbono Shel Olam and tell him:
Ribono Shel Olam, I have completely removed all of the chometz from my home and from my ownership, but I still have some non physical chometz left in my mind. PLEASE, PLEASE help me to remove this also, and let me taste the real taste of Cheirus-Freedom.
If you beg and plead from Hashem for this during Pesach, in the most auspicious time to remove ALL chometz and come to REAL freedom, how can Hashem possibly not answer you?