I don't kow if I even deserve to post here but for me a full blown addict the most important thing is not even the twelve steps but what they should bring me to. the promises a sense of fullness and harmony with hashme so that I wont need any lust any more this does't mean I wont have to work and aid others if I do'tn I will relapse but the point is nautz techiloson be soyfon , I have no control Hashem does
I am nut Hashem is not. mind the kefira ....
SO I must get to him make myself a keili this is done through the steps... for me.
FOr others let them find there way maybe they aren't addicted yet I don't know...
I am and I am sick the only cure that has even begun to help is the 12 steps!
Everthing else is icing on the cake will help in the short term dealing with the small battles .
When your sick you go to the doctor who gives you the medicine, for the record I am physicaly emotionaly psychologicaly sick, the medicine which works if you work it is the 12 .
The rest is important, the neshoma needs some rest to after being ripped up burned cut to shreds etc

there is a lot of room for people to get help who are not at the point of  saying they have lost all bechira in lust . a person needs to come to terms with this shaylah and see if he is out of control or not . sometimes a little bit more does help . and openness and positive thinking and a good attitude and a hobby etc .  theres more to say on this .

Just read this for the 1st time.. Simply wonderful!

Welcome aboard !!

are there any gemaros that discuss the extremity of this aveira or the praise of the one who conquers his yetzor hara that any one  knows of? please share

I'd suggest subsribing to the emails.  There is plenty of material there.

I can find you sforim and exact mar'ei mekomos to learn this.

But what good do you think that knowledge would do you? You obviously already know that it is a very serious aveiroh, and yet you are still doing what brings these 'drops' you are finding.

Exactly how bad does the punishment have to be, for you to get scared or guilty enough to (somehow) be able to stop?

Whoever guards his eyes when faced with a nisoyon, is zoche to be mekabel pnei hashchinah when moshiach comes. (midrash I think parshas achrei)

Your sincere concern for Yir'as Shomayim comes through here, and the quote is important. I love those Chaza"l's.

...but I have sweet a question for you to consider when really trying to understand what they mean. Imagine:

A guy (say you or me) stands on a street corner and lifts his eyes or closes them when a perfect-bodies girl walks by. Wow. He is in that sug of people who will be mekabel p'nei haShechinah....or is he?

The same guy masturbates at home that night to the same old familiar fantasy images in his mind...is he still among those lucky good people who "will be mekabel p'nei haShechinah"? He bitterly cries over his masturbation. Is he reinstated?

He goes to the mikvah and says the proper Tikkun Klali. Is he now in the mizrach vant of those people?

Oh, but the next day he masturbates after fantasizing his brains out - with a struggle, of course (as we all put up) - or exposes himself - or listens to a sex phone call or looks ate porn on the computer...is he sitting outside again now?

And an hour later - with sincere feelings of great self-sacrifice - this sweet yid closes his eyes when she walks by....or he closes his eyes at the last image after watching porn for twenty sweaty, shallow-breathing and shaky minutes of inner hell - ...is he back in the same sug of people now who "will be mekabel p'nei haShechinah"?

Can even G-d Himself figure out what category to put this guy in? I mean, is he in, or is he out? Or...does it all boil down to what he ends up doing the very last day of his life - then he is kept on the list of "mekabel'ers....is that how we figure it works? A big scorecard in shomayim with lots of erasers or white-out...no wonder so many yidden are accountants. They need them all up there to keep those "status" books straight! :o :

I am trying to point out that the entire way of thinking - "am I in that sug of people, am I not, etc...how Hashem looks at me, am I in, or am I out...it is all nuts. NUTS! It is nothing but a sick holy roller-coaster.

And lived in it for years. Do you understand what I am getting at?

It all makes for a good, frum, sincerely religious....self-centered and self-absorbed goofball. In recovery Hashem gives us something very different, b"H.

dov wrote on 24 May 2012 20:43:

Great quote!

I heard from Rav Yitzchok Berkowitz, B'Sheim Rav Meir Chodosh ZTZ"L,

"Our problem is that we think Hashem gives us schar for narishkeiten. He doesn't."
He (Rav Meir) was quoting plenty of mamorim such as the one that got Reb Dov mad, and laughing at them. And he basically finished by saying, of course Chazal are right- but they don't mean it literally, they only mean it if the action taken was WORTH something to Hashem. The scenario above is not worth nearly as much as the award- so obviously Chazal are talking about a bigger nisayon than that, and whatever that tremendous nisayon is, that will allow a person to be ro'oh pnei haShchina.

dov wrote on 24 May 2012 20:43:



Two great quotes. "sweaty, shallow-breathing and shaky minutes of inner hell"

Beautifully put E-Tek. The nahrishkeit of the totally self-absorbed roller-coaster needs to end... or it doesn't, I guess. But I don't get mad at all about any of this stuff, really. It just means a lot to me because of where I have come from (the nauseating holy roller-coaster) and where I am going (the mishor He makes for us in the desert, when we get out of His way).

One day about twenty or so years ago, I was (again) preoccupied with meeting women in 'certain venues' (keeping it PG, here) and arranged for that with one. I came to her office and she led me upstairs, around a hallway through a few doors (by this time it was yichud, I guess, hmmm...) and into a little room, where we discussed the plan for the next hour. I was clear about what i wanted, and paid her....

But as I was getting started with the early preliminaries, I stopped. I of course, had removed my tzitzis before I got in the building, so it was not my tzitzis that slapped me in the face or anything like that. But I stopped. I just couldn't go on with it.

I told her that I could not do this, that I was a married man (she obviously figured out that i was a Jew, by then, cuz of the beard - boy, how stupid we figure all these people are! But we like to think we are fooling them so it is not a chilul Hashem...oh boy, how sick in the head I get...) She told me she admired me for that (sheesh, how two-faced all parties here were!) but that I would not get my money back for the time we spent, but did get dressed back up and left the room...walked to my car and drove back home, shaking.

I was the RMB"M's baal teshuvah gemurah! I was with a similar woman in the similar place for the similar purpose...and overcame it! Hooray. I had apparently 'arrived'. The sun was finally rising.

The only trouble with all that was that nothing changed in my behavior, and nothing changed in me. I kept acting out my lust worse and worse for about another four or five years. YEARS. So, for the next few years I was not just a tzaddik, but even better than a tzaddik, and not just a ba'al Teshuvah, but a ba'al Teshuvah gemurah...and masturbating to nudes in my porn.

Wonderful.

The thing that made for a real difference in me was when I finally acted out enough to see that I was beaten, and really got the help I really needed. I was really ready to do anything necessary. Since I had tried everything else already, for me that meant going to (live, of course) SA meetings every single week for a few months - never missing one even if I was sick or even though my wife threatened to lock the doors when I got home (cuz she really did not want me to go). It also meant begging everyone there who was sober to teach me what they did - even if they were goyim - it did not matter at all. I needed to stop.

And after a few months, it became clear to me that I would need to do whatever it took to stay sober the rest of my life, if I wanted to keep this thing I got (a few months of sobriety). So I still go to meetings every week today, and learn from others rather than try to teach them what to do...

The first step is to want to develop such a relationship. That means to come to understand how miserable it is to be distant from Hashem. How utterly foolish it is to do things that distance us from Hashem. How everything else out there, is nothing more than an empty illusion.  
We have a head-start in this, because we saw where it leads to. We experienced how fake it all is. We learned the hard way how desperately pathetic “life without Hashem” is.

A few of the English lines I have a start, in the above words, the heartbeat of my purpose as a human, seed of knowledge understood, and measure by our Maker to me, so He will help me understand how to apply to me, and where and who I live with, that all may be abundant. blessings of relationship with HaShem.

amazing short to the point torah chizuk.
drive.google.com/open?id=1RWzKuOGjFpgxDgcnVgPOjJ1417Bz2WJ0