Welcome to the Guard Your Eyes community, a vibrant network and fellowship of Jews of all affiliations, struggling to purify themselves and break free of inappropriate behaviors. Our network is comprised of a hotline, a website: www.guardyoureyes.org, a pulsating forum, weekly phone conferences, daily Chizuk e-mails, therapists and live 12 step groups. We also help people find accountability partners and sponsors, and we have a 90-Day chart where our members can sign up to chart their successes and keep a log of their journey to recovery.
For the first time, Jews have where to turn to for help in this area, as well as an entire network of services, tools, tips and group support to help break free of the insidious grasp of this addiction. All our work is free of charge and we zealously protect the complete anonymity of all our members. On our forum, charts, hotlines and the phone conferences, only nicknames and non-revealing e-mail addresses are used.
The Guard Your Eyes network has helped over 5,000 Jews get back on a path of self-control and healing, and has touched the lives of thousands more.
1) Experience: The tools of our recovery program were developed with guidance from the best experts in the field, such as Rabbi Dr. Avraham J. Twerski, and through the personal experience of hundreds of dedicated Jews who successfully broke free of their addiction and are determined to help others in our community.
2) A Novel Approach: Our recovery system is not only unique for the Jewish community, but unique in the world, in that we address the many different levels of addiction with a program that uses progressively more “addiction oriented” tools based on the level of dependence.
3) Anonymity: All the tools of our network are strictly anonymous. This is one of the greatest secrets to our success, because the desire for anonymity, especially in these sensitive areas - and all the more so in the religious community, is one of the main inhibitions of people reaching out for help.
4) Accessibility: We harness the very power of instant accessibility of the internet which has fueled this epidemic, to reach and help thousands of Jews throughout the world that conventional therapeutic approaches would otherwise not be able to reach.
5) Providing Hope: The inherently pure Jewish souls caught in this addiction are often just yearning for a helping hand to give them that extra push they need to break free. By finding that we are not alone and that hundreds of others have succeeded through our tools, we are instilled with the determination and courage to change.
This handbook can be used by individuals who struggle with lust at any level, if they have tried to stop on their own and have not been successful until now. It can also be used by Rabbis, Mechanchim, Mashgichim, therapists and community leaders, who can learn to help others who struggle in this area. Unfortunately, this issue has reached epidemic proportions in the religious community today, mainly due to the privacy and accessibility that the Internet provides.
Part 1 provides the practical steps that we can take to break free of these addictive behaviors; starting out with the most basic steps to try, and continuing on through the more intense and life-changing steps - if necessary. Part 2 of this handbook focuses on the proper attitude to maintain in this struggle.
Our sages have called Shmiras Habris "Yesod", meaning "Foundation". The foundation of a building is "underground" and no one sees it, yet it holds up the entire building! Shmiras Habris is the hidden part of a Jew, it's the real you. If the foundation of a Jew is weak, his whole spiritual structure is in danger of collapse.
With the proper guidance, we start to see genuine changes in ourselves that we never believed were possible. At GYE we are finally joining together, for ourselves and for all future generations, to strengthen the Yesod - the very foundation of our people.
Help us spread the word. Download this handbook from our website at www.guardyoureyes.org and share it with others, either in PDF format or by printing it out.