Chaverim,

I don’t know what to say. I feel like I have just fallen into the 50th level of impurity. I thought I was doing fairly well keeping my addiction in check and then something happened and I fell in a big way, worse than ever before, ignoring all the amazing signs Hashem had sent to try and steer me on the right path.

I don’t know what to do. Chazal have taught that when we were redeemed from Mitzraim we were on the brink of the 50th level from which there would be no redemption. I feel like I’m already there so I kind’ve feel like I should just accept that I’m lost and just go even further.

But I don’t want to! I want to be a good Jew, I want to be an eved HaShem and I want to feel the simcha that I have felt in previous (albeit too brief) periods of cleanliness, but I don’t know that I can ever get there having sunk so low.

Yours with a broken heart,

Lev

Chaza”l tell us that in the darkness in Egypt 4/5, 49/50 or even 499/500 of the Jewish died ‘cause they didn’t want to leave Egypt, the most immoral place in the world, and they were still outside the 50th gate.

Why do you think that with one set back in a war bitterly fought you landed there at once? It is hard work to get there, man.

There is a saying from an old Slonimer chosid from Tsefas, His name was like our fellow commando “Luria”, in the battle with the YH it’s “a patch mir a patch dir” a slap me a slap you as long as my slap is the last!

You got a slap, get up and fight back using the good memories of your prior slap you gave him.

I am sure you will eventually win with a knock out!

You stand so much better than the frummers in Egypt.

Let’s say only 4/5 died, that means that for every pious yid there were 4 yiden laughing at him and discouraging him.

We all know who had the last laugh.

You, on the other hand, are linked up with so many heilige lechtige zeese feine yiden who share your struggle and support you all along.

PLEASE don’t be down, you break my heart. :'(

Dear levbasar,

Welcome to our community! Once you've arrived, there's no turning back. Everyone here will just grab a hold of you and pull you up, up, up!

Rabbi Nachman said “There’s absolutely no such thing in the world as giving up”. There is always hope, even from what seems to be the deepest depths of sin and despair. And he also said: “If you believe you can destroy, believe you can fix”. You obviously believe you can destroy, no? That is clear from your post... So, admit that you can FIX. There is no such thing as a sin that can’t be fixed, or a situation that is completely hopeless. The Zohar says that there can be no light if it doesn’t come first through the darkest darkness. And as Rav Yisrael Salanter said: “As long as the candle is lit, one can still fix”.

What you describe now, is called "hitting bottom". This is a prerequisite to change, and it provides us with a real "Kli" to receive Hashem's help. Our admission of "powerlessness" over our addiction, is the foundation upon which we can build a "new" you. Who knows if Hashem didn't bring you to fall so far, only to bring you to this level of desperation where you finally have the proper "vessel" to call out "mi'mamakim karasicha Hashem".

Scientific studies have shown that it takes 90 days to change a neural thought pattern that was ingrained in the brain through addictive behaviors. Did you join the 90 day chart on-line? Sign up over here...

We get cries for help every day, by e-mail and on the forum. Tzuras Rabim Chatzi Nechama    And that is why we created the GYE handbooks (links below). If you read them well, from beginning to end, slowly, and try to implement what you read, you will find the answers within them to enable you to completely turn your life around. You're worth it.

Also, join the daily Chizuk e-mail lists to get fresh chizuk every day, and post away on this forum. You will get tons of daily Chizuk and support. This disease can't be beat alone. It works best when you get out of isolation!

GuardYourEyes also offers various free anonymous phone conferences, where you can join a group of other frum Yidden, along with an experienced sponsor. See this page for four different options. Our conferences are taking place daily, throughout the week... This would be a tremendous step in the right direction for you and help you learn freedom from this addiction. Not only will you learn the secret of the 12-Steps - which is known to be the world's most powerful program for beating addiction having helped millions world wide, but joining the group will be another way of GETTING OUT OF ISOLATION and connecting with others who are going through what you are.

Let me tell you a little about the two GuardYourEyes handbooks. They lay down the cornerstone and foundation of our work, and they make our network much more effective and helpful for people.

You see, until now, people would often get "lost" when coming to our website, not knowing what tips and techniques to try. For example, a beginner wouldn't jump straight into therapy or 12-Step groups, while on the other hand, someone whose addiction was more advanced wouldn't be helped by the standard tips of "making fences" putting in "filters" etc... So it was essential to develop a handbook which details all the techniques and tools to dealing with this addiction in progressive order. Now with these handbooks, anyone can read through and see what steps they've tried already, and if those steps haven't worked, they can continue on through the handbook where the steps become progressively more powerful and "addiction-oriented".

And the second handbook, called the "Attitude" handbook, can also help anyone, no matter what level of addiction they may have. Often people write in to us saying that had they only known the proper outlook & attitude that we try and share on the GuardYourEyes network when they were younger, they would have never fallen into an addiction in the first place! So we hope that through this handbook, many addictions will be prevented.

The handbooks are PDF files, set up as eBooks, and they have bookmarks and hyper-links in the Index, to make them easy to navigate.

Make sure to read them, they contain a wealth of information on beating this addiction! And I'd love to hear your feedback on them...

Note: You might want to print them out to read away from the computer. Keep in mind though, that if you do this, you won't be able to click on the many web links in the articles. But you can always come back to them later. The truth is, it's anyway good to go through the whole handbook once without clicking on links, just to get an overview of all the tools available. Once you did that, you can start again from tool #1 and read each tool through more carefully, click the links and study each technique and assess whether you have tried it fully yet or not...

Right click on the links below and select "Save Link/Target As" to download the handbooks to your computer.

1) The GuardYourEyes Handbook
This Handbook details 18 suggested tools and techniques, in progressive order, beginning with the most basic and fundamental approaches to dealing with this addiction, and continuing down through increasingly earnest and powerful methods. For the first time, we can gauge our level of addiction and find the appropriate tools for our particular situation. And no matter what level our addiction may have advanced to, we will be able to find the right tools to break free in this handbook!

2) The GuardYourEyes Attitude
The Attitude Handbook details 30 basic principles to help us maintain the proper attitude and perspective on this struggle. Here are some examples: Understanding what we are up against, what it is that Hashem wants from us, how we can use this struggle for tremendous growth, how we can deal with bad thoughts, discovering how to redirect the power of our souls, understanding that every little bit counts, learning how to bounce back up after a fall, and so on and so forth...

May Hashem be with you!

LevBasar

you are a good Yid

never let the yetzer horah tell you otherwise

please stick around

it's a safe and kind place here.

we all are in this together

you are not alone

Thank you so much everyone, there are tears in my eyes as I write because of your kindness and chizuk and I can feel some sense of hope in my despair. Reading the efforts of so many brave yidden makes me believe that maybe I can change but it’s just so hard and at so often I don’t feel I have the strength to win the battle with the yetzer hara.

But I won’t give up! I feel that this site has pulled me from the edge of Gehinnom and I will hold on tight to it because I don’t want to fall back in ever again, no matter how tempting and alluring it might seem. I am trying to keep in mind a teaching of Rabbi Nachman that a single drop of water can eventually wear away stone and apply that to the many times that I have said ‘no’. The cumulative effect of these ‘nos’ must be doing something and I need to keep that constantly in my mind because I find it so easy to slip into a self-defeatest cycle of always being ‘back at square one’.

Thank you again for your welcome and bli neder, I will come here whenever I feel myself slipping and sit at the feet of the heilige yidden who share their struggles here.

May we all be zoche to see the end of our sadness soon.

Welcome to our community, Levbasar!

It's wonderful that you've experienced the joy of cleanliness and, therefore, know without a doubt, that any temporary pleasure we experience by, c"v, allowing ourselves to slip or fall pales in comparison to the joy of being clean!

Thank you Kedusha.

You are right, the joy of being clean and the difference it makes to davening, study, shalom bayis etc is amazing and I think that is why I am so angry and disappointed with myself for this major fall because I know better! I knew even as I was committing the aveirah that it would not bring any joy, and any pleasure that I would experience would be short –lived and empty, and yet still I continued. That is the thing I can’t quite get my head around – How can I know how good it is to be clean and yet still go running after things I know bring only misery and pain, remove me from Hashem and delay the coming of Moschiach?!

I try to remind myself of the following:

I've had enough of the cycle of pain, tears, regret, and living a double life.  Instead, Hashem, I ask for the pleasure of a meaningful relationship with You, the Simcha of living a life of Kedusha, that I be comfortable with who I am and where I'm holding, and for my private life to be consistent with my public life.

Levbasar

It seems to me that you were still at the begining and therefore it is still hard.

Let me tell you, it gets easier as you go along.

So don't despair, just go ahead and you will see for yourself.

Kedusha wrote on 27 Oct 2009 14:59:


Wow! That is exactly right. That is what I daven for every moment. I feel like such a sham that the two sides of me are so far apart, almost like they're different people. The me that you see in shul would never do the things I do in private.

G38, yes I am still at the beginning of this and I must try not to look too far ahead because the goals seem so distant at the moment that I am scared of them. But yesterday I watched my 7 month old son playing and learnt a lot from him. He has just started sitting up and every so often he loses his balance and falls backwards. Sometimes he finds it funny and sometimes he bangs his head and cries, but within seconds he is playing again and has forgotten about his fall. This is how I need to be!

Beautiful lesson from your son!




Principle #1 in the Attitude Handbook will help you understand what you are up against; i.e. the nature of addiction.

Levbasar wrote on 27 Oct 2009 14:22:


Guard one mentioned in the name of the Marsh"a (I think!!) that it says "he who comes to purify, they asist him". who is the "they"?

Says the holy Marsha,  "they" are all the holy angels created from every time you said NO!!!!!
--------------------------------
Warmest welcome to this Makom Kodesh of GYE- a virtual taivas Noach in a world gone mad!!

That u feel as if u r in level 50 - I've also @ times felt like that and can relate 2 it very well.  

However.........from an objective view as an outsider, I can tell u with absolute certainty that it is pure unadulterated "atzaz haYetzer". Period!!!!!

I say this even without knowing any details of who u r and why you feel this way.  

I ask u my sweet sweet holy Yiddeleh, are you perhaps a bigger sinner the Yerovam Ben Nevat? and the seforim write that if he would of "banged on the door". He would have been let in.

More so I ask u: if a person is really in shaar nun, do u think it would bother him enough to "tears and pain" as you so heart rendering wrote about yourself?

Answer me please!!!!!

Of course I'm right

Not only are you not in Shaar nuun, I will wager that you are probably a "tinok shnishbah" in whatever you did!!

In this world gone mad, we are all tinok shnishboh's.

Shaar nuun is the shaar of kfirah. And  a kofer it wouldn't bother 2 cents worth, and you definitely would not join the "Vanguard of Holy Warriors on GYE"

With fiery love and tremendous respect to such a beautiful tzadik yesod olam

Noorah from the house of Amram

Noorah, thank you, that was a beautiful post and really lifted my spirits.

I am doing pretty well and got to see first hand some of the hashgacha pratis that I have read about on this site. It happened two days ago. I was pretty low and it was late and I found myself typing out an all-too familiar web address. I told myself that I didn't really want to, and it is true that I didn't feel nearly as much excitement or willing as I used to, but I was acting out of habbit more than real desire. Anyway, I was just about to click on the link to enter the site and the screen disappeared and I lost all internet for the rest of the night. It was an amazing feelling of releif that even as I was about to turn my back on all my good intentions, Hashem was watching and pulled the poison away from me.

It made me realise that it is not just me against the y"h but that HKB"H is helping me become what I am supposed to be.

With love to all you Holy warriors.

Mamash amazing! Once Hashem saw you started the journey, He's like, "NO WAY YOU ARE GOING BACK AGAIN JUST OUT OF HABIT!"... He wants to show you He's there with you and will help you...

But now... now that's he's given you that message, it's up to you to STICK with it!

This is amazing. it's happening again and again on our website... Read through the Chizuk e-mails on this page: I quoted 7 such stories from members here just since Sukkos!

I think tomorrow I'll quote yours and another amazing story someone sent me in the daily chizuk e-mail. Altogether, 9 such stories in the last 2 weeks!

I guess front line soldiers deserve a peek at the general once in a while