Dov wrote:


My problem is was that honesty was brutal Ouch!

It is in the process of going from brute to beaut

Staying busy is not about distracting ourselves from shmutz and lust. It is about really living.

RMB"M wrotes that the heart/mind of the bored and lazy (that means life-avoiding) person is filled with shtuyot. And that is natural, not a sin, at all. It's just a fact of reality and cannot change, even if the szhlob has lots and lots of emunah and is a holy, holy yid....shtus ALWAYS fills a dormant heart.

(BTW, "shtus" includes self-absorbed and self-conscious thinking and - even if it is about totally rushniyus pursuits. Shtus also is a focus on self-pleasuring - even if it is religious or moral. A gambler is posul l'eidus because he is "not oseik in tikun olam," a view in the gemorah says. It's not a k'nas - it is just that such a person is not reliable because he is motivated by shtus ur'eus ruach.)

So saying that "we'd better avoid she'amum (boredom and lazy living) because when I am not distracted by SOMTHING I end up lusitng and masturbating" is actually missing the point! She'amum is poisonous because it is the opposite of real living.

And if we are busy with real living, then fantasy has no place for us.

Subtle?

Those who prefer above all else to 'fight and win', will not understand the chiluk, at all. For beating it is real living for them.

Dov wrote:


They don't call you Captain Subtle for nothing

I agree R' RGT that it's pretty subtle, but it's been circling my head and I think it's pretty important, even if I am not all the way there. Like when I am busy reading a sefer on the bus to try to avoid looking at all the women and then craving desperately to have sex with all of them right now... it's gotta be cause I have more important and real things to than to kill myself, and not that instead of running away from life through beautifull and attractive objects I am distracting myself by running away to an interesting book. Or something like that.

It's amazing how when I am feeling high and cool and awsome and intense and all sorts of things, I still cannot just stay still and do life as it comes to me, I am as tense and unsettled like Mr. Obama on Election Day or something like that, and then before I know it I am masturbating my brains out. Because I am using life's things to distract me from life itself.

chaimcharlie wrote:


Very wise observation

Eli

CC - regarding what step are you up to, chaver? Answers to how to slowly cultivate the ability to accept life on life's terms are many, and there are at least three steps that help us with that issue directly or indirectly. So it's a great thing you are writing abt it...

I'm in the later steps now (11), so I'm noticing more how I really have work to do to accept life and myself and all the people around me.

What I said about reading on the bus is just one example, in truth there are many more. Especially when learning Torah and other religous stuff I am very good at using ti all to help me escape my feelings and enter the fantasy world of holiness and greatness, I spend much time fantasizing about how I am as great a scholar and as holy a person as the Torah giants of all the generations, and perhaps even greater because I am a sexaholic and still manage to delve into the depths of the Torah in a way that absolutely noone has done before. I'm just awesome and special, and klal yisroel is lucky to have me among it's ranks.

And fighting these images and obsessions gets me noowhere (I tried that for a decade), but the process described in the BB on step 10 does wonders - to watch out for selfishness, dishonesty [I think most of the obsessions classify here], fear and resentment; when noticed ask G-d to remove them [cause I can't]; discuss them with someone [or rant about them on the forum if noones around or if I'm in the mood, but not too much cause it's virtual]; if hurt someone make amends; and then go help someone else besides my holy self [that's really important and really cool and really works].

Well that's my showing off for today, that I'm Mr. Twelve Steps and am so deep in the waters of recovery that pretty soon I better be careful not to drown ch"v.

Gut Voch guys.

Chaim

chaimcharlie wrote:


You're not as big of a Tzadik as me because I've never said those things to myself (I just know it intuitively)

In all seriousness, It's crazy hoe we have those thoughts going through our heads, we know how nuts it sounds but we still (not so) secretly believe it to be true

Eli

I like to say that I am such a tzaddik nistar, that even Hashem Himself does not yet know that I am a tzaddik.

Maybe we are all related?

Thank you Hashem for the first sober Shovavim since I discovered masturbation 8 years ago. Every year I spent hours upon hours devising what would be this years attempt to turn over a new leaf in matters of keduasha, only to be dissapointed and fall at one point or another. I cannot stop on my own, it is only with Your help that I did not intentially waste any seed during these 6 holy weeks.

Hashem, You are the Higher Power of All Higher Powers that gives power to all the Powers greater than me, thank you for giving me SA and all the special fellowship and sponsor, that through them You send me a new gift of sobriety every day. It can't be just their power alone, because the miracle needed to keep me sober is something no human being or group of human beings can accomplish alone, I still cannot keep on living without constant lust to soothe me and nurture me and give me pleasure. But so many millions have found sobriety and serenity through the Steps that you showed Mr. Wilson some 80 years ago, through them we can find You without having ourselves block the road to happiness until we crash through the telephone pole and die.

Thank You.

Yeah, so now I'm slipping again. Iv'e been doing a lot of that lately, thinking that as long as I don't masturbate to the finish, or as long as I don't see any really bad pictures - everything will be fine.

I can't say why this isn't true, it's so far been working, I even feel now how just a little bit could give me the strength to face the day ahead. But the fact is, whether I like it or not, that if I continue to sit and roll and sleep at the edge of the cliff, eventually I'm gonna fall off, and tumble all the way down to the bottom of my miserable addict existence.

It still doesn't make sense to my addicted mind, but that doesn't really make a difference, because if I was able to figure out the way to contol my masturbation and lusting, I would have done so long ago. But I can't, my brain is shortcircuited, thinking just endangers me even more, cauese that's where the disease is. I would love to devise some deep parable for this, but that's not so smart because it involves too much thinking.

So if I want to have a good life Iv'e gotta to what doesn't make sense and call somone and tell him that I'm full of lust today and am dying to masturbate to the sweet images of the porn that I last saw well over a year ago (not because Iv'e controlled myself since then, rather because it hasen't been available). Iv'e tried 3 people so far and they haven't answered, maybe they were lucky enough to not call someong before and are now enjoying their acting out in front of a screen full of nurturing moving objects (sorry, just gotta be honest sometimes).

Have a great day.

Chaim

Oh, get over it. You'll be fine. If you have to act out in order to get better, then you will, that's it. You are bitten by the recovery bug - there is no turning back for you now, whether you like it or not, CC.

Hatzlocha!

Dov wrote:


Wow, that hit me strong. Your'e right, I may just need to have a few falls and get beatem up in order to get better, and fretting about it won't help me. My tremendously inflated ego won't like it too much, and getting up will be tough, but in the long run it can be very good for me not to be the guy who says that he was healed from the very start and hasn't acted out for 14 years, 7 months, 13 days, and 2 and a half hours - which is the amount of time since he first stepped into an SA meeting, of course.

No, I still don't want to fall, my sickness makes it that every sip makes the craving worse and I feel even more miserable, so I'd rather not return to serve again the holy god of the orgasm. But I know that on my own I will have to go back, I am hooked and cannot stop, every clean day is only with Hashem's help, so if He thinks I need to go back then I will. That may be crooked thinking, but I don't care, I'm a very sick person and cannot afford to think that I am not.

Um. Tonight I was on the phone with someone sharing a bit of frustrations, together with a bit of hope and relief about being able to get things out, and was feeling a bit of sanity and sereenity for a change. Then in a flash of insanity my diseased brain recieved the following revelation: "you know, all this buisness of me giving up my will to G-d, I'm just a liar, because the reason I spent my whole day today trying to do His will is just so that He'll give me serenity and happiness and save me from the pain of the cravings, so really at the end I'm just doing my own will, not His will at all."

All the peace was over, back to the doubts and unsettledness, maybe I'm not doing any recovery at all, because deep down I'm doing it all for myself. So what that all the millions of people who have worked the steps also did it to save their skins, but once they gave over their will to G-d they did it for real, I am still just doing it all for my self-will, so G-d will help me, so I haven't dont anything.

Then I thought that since I amn't doing anything real anyways, I might as well drop the whole thing and go masturbate, maybe that'll give me some real pleasure.

Yeah, that was a long story to say (I"m too lazy right now to call someone and tell them, also my wife is around), but the bottom line is that I am a sick person, which means that I cannot listen to everything that my brain tells me. I will be honest, I do not know the exact true reason why this argument is flawed, I am actually pretty confused here, all I know is that it is insane. So who cares why it's wrong? If I listen and act out I surely won't get to the answer, but if I jsut go to sleep and be nice to my wife, maybe Hashem will help me get better - even if I'm just doing the whole thing for myself and haven't surrendered anything for real.

Got Voch

Chaim

Calm down, you and me are not such geniuses. The only people I have met so far who seem to 'have it all figured out' and have all the answers - are liars. Often they are not evil, just lying to themselves. When you really get to know such people and see their personal lives, it becomes apparent that they do not know what's going on much better than most of us do. (And the guys who accuse program people of believing that we have all the answers do so because that's how they think, themselves.)

But there is no question that lusting (or obsessing about drinking or gambling for people addicted to those things) makes our heads a very dangerous, unpredictable and silly place to live. So we need sobriety like we need air. We desperately want some sober months and years so that we may get the precious gift of sanity. Sane thinking is like Shabbos, for the addicted person. It's the promise of the 9th step - having some more clarity and peace - and it usually starts to come when "we are less than halfway there", too!

You are working and a work in progress. Life will get a lot better than it is right now, but versus perfect serenity and true clarity - it is unlikely to get there. Sadly, our 'holy grail' may remain with the guys from Monty Python...

But from the confused place I am sitting, the view is pretty good.

I am powerless over lust, that means I am hooked and cannot stop?
Maybe not? Um, well I am, so that's that.