It seems Hashem loves your divine service too much to just let you be happy with your current situation. He often brings us to fall, just when we thought we had it all under control. This is so that we realize that without his help, without true humility in the knowlege that only He can help us, we cannot really succeed. He also wants us to keep taking our fences to a new level. He wants a higher level of purity from us, he wants our hearts.

Sometimes a person was "brought" to fall from heaven, only to see what he will do THEN.

Please make sure to read the Chizuk e-mails every day. Let this be your new "Kabala" on yourself, in light of the fall. This is a life-line for many people, and will keep you constantly inspired and feeling part of the community of Hashem's courageous warriors.

Remember, Hashem doesn't need us to be clean for His sake. He has no needs. He only wants for our best, and He knows that this is the only way we will learn to give Him our hearts so he can truly love us. Lust is all "me-centered". The way to beat it is to start thinking - and DOING - things "out-side" of the self. Doing for others, thinking of others... Doing things we don't WANT to do, because we know it's good for others, for Hashem's sake, etc... The more we strengthen our "outward-focus" muscles, the easier the lust becomes to deal with, and the more pleasure we truly will be able to get from life. Strange, but true. (We've been discussing this a lot in the Chizuk e-mails lately).

You have what it takes to beat this. Full steam ahead!

yesodos12 wrote on 26 Jul 2009 18:50:


Yesodos, really feel with you on the fall. Was about 30 days, is that right?
As you wrote earlier, the addiction is really a gift. You are now in the process of reaching great heights and real levels of mentchlichkeit and avoida from the ascent up. Think I'm exaggerating, read the posts of Dov and friends... I am continuously amazed by what they write.
So, make the fall into a gift as well. Let it increase your anava (not yiush!) and resolve to try again.
Besides, 30 days is absolutely nothing to sneeze at!

Oh, and can I share a novel pshat from R' Wolfson on the pasuk?

yesodos12 wrote on 26 Jul 2009 18:50:


His pshat is... that each yid has a mission, and it is hidden in his name. Just like a malach is named after his mission... refael, etc. Well, the YH's job is to make us forget our real mission here and be busy with distractions.... so his mission is to make us forget OUR NAMES... so guess what he's called:
"why are you asking for MY NAME"

THAT IS HIS NAME!!!! since that is what he tries to make us do!!!

ABSOLUTE GENIUS!

Hi everyone,

I've been gone a long time but thank god I'm back again from vacation, and back to 'real life'.

I'm quite upset about the last fall, but I've put it behind me, and thank God, I've been granted 13 clean days since.

Thanks to all the posters for your support, I'm sorry for not thanking you each individually, but a collective thank you will have to do for now.

Will hopefully keep you all updated on how things progress

Question to the floor:

I find that I best way to deal with the yh in this area is to distract myself. I've done 14 days now by just getting on with life, not updating my wall honour status every single day, etc. But the danger with this is that unless I actively strengthen myself, I will inevitably fall back into sin.

Please advise, I hope that was clear.

yesodos12 wrote on 25 Aug 2009 13:11:


Tayere Yesodos,
In reading your thread, it seems that these 'clean streaks' are there naturally, even before finding the GYE website.
im kain, the goal needs to be not to get clean streaks alone, but to internalize the message that pervades the site...

that 'lusting' is poison. (poison mamesh... no exaggeration, no hyperbole, no metaphor... it is POISON).

The way to do this is to spend time on the site, reading threads and if the words come to you, replying. (I never reply unless the words flow... well almost... if I'm at 99 posts, can't say I didn't 'make up' something to post)

Read the handbooks. A page a day, or even a half a page

The more you read, the more you will come across something that strikes a cord within you.

You will find something that will resonate withing you, and bring out what you already know... that lusting is killing you and me and a lot of other people, both spiritiually and physically


that we are powerless to stop lusting on our own efforts.

We've tried for years, decades... when will we wake up?

We need to really want to change, but do it this time by asking Hashem to do it for us.

What this does is take away the battle from the battlefront and bring the avoda to the realm of ratzon.
If this sounds Greek, check out the shiur from R' BenTzion Twersky in the shiurim section...

It finally explained to me how this works. It is not a 'nais'. It is not a miracle. It has a very clear pathway and mechanism.
It is simply working on the ratzon not to lust, rather than fighting the actual lusting while still wishing it was mutar.

The only way to work to change the ratzon is to realize we are powerless, but we NEED this accomplished, and Hashem CAN do it. This provides us a vehicle with which to channel our energy into the ratzon stage, without focusing on the lust itself. In other words, we distract ourselves  from the actual lust, which is something that our animal side wishes at the moment, and keep our intellect busy wth the ratzon not to want to lust, but only by distracting it from the lust at the very same time, and instead focusing on our relationship with Hashem. We are motivated to do this because we realize the lust is poison. But the actual work is not with the lust, but in honing in on our relationship with the All powerful Creator. It is truly  brilliant.

Anyway, yesodos tayere, I've been rambling at the expense of your thread.

point is that you are worried about thinking about this too much, as you are going clean anyway. But you know that this will not lead to true improvement....

so, need do something. More of the same 11 years will not work!!!

Do you read through the forum? Pick a thread, until you find one that talks to you.

Do you read the handbooks?

How do you find them?

I agree with Kutan: Simply distracting yourself and letting the natural streaks happen on their own is not enough to beat an addiction. What's most important is that you deeply integrate a strong attitude within your mind and heart. Like in the post above, I'd recommend carefully reviewing the material found in the attitude handbook. Once you have a strong attitude in place, the distraction technique might actually work to help you get past this.

Hope you stick around and continue posting your progress! We want to know! 

2B

Thanks guys for the thought provoking responses.

I definitely agree with you that you can't beat an addiction by basically doing nothing and hoping the yh just leaves you alone.

I do read the guidebooks although I've been slacking off from that recently, but still I think that the ideas in the guidebook are subconciously working in my head and changing my attitude slowly.
I read the daily email, and I used to read the threads and browse around the site, but now I haven't had so much time to keep that up.

In short, I've often heard people say that when they first start learning hilchos loshon hora, they feel like suddenly they want to speak loshon hora even more. Probably this is a combination of the fact that they are more conscious of what they are saying, and probably it is also a function of the fact that ppl feel the need to rebel against a restraint.
I guess that I'm going through something similar at the moment. I don't want to dwell on the addiction for too long, for fear of starting to feel like I'm missing out on something.

I know its not so logical, but then again the entire addiction isn't logical in the first place, so what are you supposed to do?

yesodos12 wrote on 26 Aug 2009 12:33:


Sound like you are doing great then.
But do try to put in time... it is an excellent investment in your future, as person as well as an ovaid Hashem. As you said, change does not happen overnight. But sometimes, if we slacken off, we are rudely reminded about it... with a slip ch'v.

About L'H, reminds me of something R' Pam used to lament about... people focus too much on the minutae of L'H, and do not work on the root... looking at people with a ayin tova. He used to talk about his mother, from whom he said he NEVER heard a negative word about others... she did not work on the rules, she simply loved people, so why in the world would she WANT to speak bad...

Reminds me of what the GYE message is: work on removing the ratzon to lust...

k

I like it! Good answer.

I now have a filter at work for every computer there. This hopefully is a strenthened fence against the yetzer hora, which I'm proud of. Also, it now means that I can't waste time at the office reading online newspapers, which even though they hardly ever incite lust, are a big waste of time. 

Ditto to much of the above - distracting myself is a good tool to get past a particular compulsion, but the problem is not addressed at all by the running or hiding. On the other hand, I'll never succeed at learning sanity and sobriety if I regularly act out, so I need to do whatever to not act out right now. It's always "lechatchila" not to act out!
But the goal for me, and probably you, too, is a positive ("getting healthier"), not a negative sobriety ("not acting out"). 
Mesilas Yeshorim says the goal is "Chassidus and Avodah Hatemimah". Then he says that "the real Chassidus is so far from our experience that we can't even visualize it"! How and why do we have a goal that we can't relate to?! The answer may be that we need to have faith and to remember that what we can visualze will change as we grow. What direction do we want to go in? That's the only question before me today. The step I take today is admittedly not "chassidus ha'amiti". But it's what I have to do to get there and that needs to be good enough. Just the nature of the "beast" (sorry).
We may not see the end, at all. But we know what direction it's in and we take the steps ahead, often quite blindly. I'll never get any better by looking at that girl at the seat next to me on the bus, etc. Right?
So we need to take the next tiny step, and we need to keep the faith that what we really want is what we may not even be able to visualize. 

Yismechu hashamayim vesagel ha'aretz. The captain is back!

OK I CAN TAKE A LITTLE BREAK  :-*

Shkoyach Dov, that was a very interesting insight into the words of the Mesilas Yeshorim.

bardichev wrote on 27 Aug 2009 19:51:

...err...rebbe. I don't think so. GYE News reports that there is no nutritional supplement available yet for "berdichever deficiency syndrome" (bDS), a serious spiritual condition. Symptoms of not having enough berdichever include malaise, drooping of the edges of the mouth, and a general feeling of uselessness. Recent work on a vaccine have also proved fruitless. So, not so fast..... ;D