Elyah, you're on the point, and repeated three times, too!
Would the thread meister give a listen?

obormottel wrote on 29 May 2012 07:24:


I'm hoping. Perhaps I should be more direct?

Dear brother TCM!
I'm afraid that your falls (which we all can relate to) may be pre-programmed in your name.
You sound like a determined guy, with strong resolve and a desire to control behavior that you find objectionable.
But...its a wrong set of tools for what you're trying to accomplish.
Quote: "it's not more resolve that we need. It's more help".
Perhaps, this concept is hard to digest...would you at least acknowledge this and ask Elyah for elaboration?
Mottel

obormottel wrote on 29 May 2012 14:40:


I agree 100%.

--Elyah

Eye.nonymous wrote on 15 May 2012 21:04:


And


But "tocontrolmyself" - I ask you what gives you the idea that you "want to be free", at all? As your name says: you just want "to control yourself". Kishmo, kein hu. It is a power struggle with your own penis. And it has not been going very well for the past few years now.

Soldiers tell us: "Freedom isn't free". There is a price for it.

Fell so many times recently? An accident? Nope. I suggest that you (like all of us) just love the way fantasizing and masturbating feels. Simple. And you are not ready to let them go yet. Please tell me if what I am saying here is wrong. You won't be the first!

Two things I'd suggest you consider - because the alternative is not working for you(even though you asked for no suggestions from me and may not even want me to post to you at all, now that I opened my big, fat mouth...) :

1- Please consider quitting to counting the clean days, at all. It is poison, poison, poison, especially for a person like you, for some reason. It's poison for me, too, so I don't count. That's it. Just don't count at all. Just mark your calendar and forget it all till the next Yom Tov or six months or whatever...then look back and recognize and be grateful for what Hashem did for you! Whatever success you are given, iy"H, it will be more than you will get while poisoning yourself with counting the days like money.

2- Please consider giving up using the term "motzi zera". I believe that it carries with it a whole litany of poisonous implications for you. Perhaps you can bring the battle lines back a ways, as I do. Make the real issue: giving up staring at women and undressing them with your eyes. Make the real battle: giving up abusing the internet and giving up abusing women's images in your mind. Nobody forces your fingers to click onto the schmutz, and nobody forces you to unzip your pants, either. And there is nothing evil about enjoying the way porn or orgasm makes us feel - it is just a fact of nature - it feels good. So does eating T-bone steaks and yayin nesech. So? The RMB"M says this, not me: The fact that we like it is not an aveiro - G-d is not a fool. He knows what we like! Why would He ever be angry at us for liking it? No. Doing it is our problem, and is the aveiro. Doing it is your problem. Right? So...

Once you have primed your motor to be already running full steam by seeling and using the fantasies in your mind and by staring and follwing the women you meet and by villifying the women you meet who are half-dressed by thinking they want to sin with you, etc...all these things make you and me dead ducks. So lets be honest - the battle is not at the zipper level, nor even at the mouse-botton level. It is our mental habits.

By opening up to other struggling-but-clean people about the really silly thoughts we have at any given moment, and by letting go of the staring and following - actual and mental - we are truly "fighting" this problem we have. If we just keep our eye on the sperm that comes out - as you are by calling your problem "zera levatola"....well, that is holding onto the lie. The sperm is not the problem, we are. It's not in our hands, but in our minds. How can that be called a battle? Wishing we were just free of masturbating is just not the reality of what's going on.

Our problem is not the aveiro - and it is not "the diffuculty we have controlling ourselves", It is follishly thinking "this time will be different". We keep thinking we can enjoy her face, her body, the fantasy...just a little...and not end up with "zera levatola". It's a touch of insanity, not a touch of evil.

Even if one is not an addict.

Freedom is not free. Are you ready? If not, it is OK! Many are not ready, so they romanticize the battle and call it something else than it really is.

But at least admit it and call a spade a spade.

dov wrote on 29 May 2012 17:21: