L'sheim Yichud Kudsha brich Hu uS'chintei b'dechilu urechimu, hareini muchan um'zuman l'kayem mitzvos asei shel v'ohavta l'reiyacho komocha, v'nikdashti besoch b'nei Yisroel:
I love Hashem. I love hisbodedus. Boruch Hashem I am sober today and have been sober one day at a time for some years know, which gives me the ability to learn how to love Him more than ever, and I know that He loves me. It gives me the ability to learn how to truly love my wife and family and many other people, as well.
And I sincerely want you to know that every single time I escaped from everyone else in my noisy life, to sit alone in a bathroom and masturbate, I was misboded.
I was alone, quiet, focused, and sincere...with the thing I trusted the most in the world: fantasy and masturbation. That was my hisbodedus.
And every time I messed up by doing that, I felt super close to Hashem and begged Him to take me back b'Chasdo. I felt I was with Him...in pain, but still clearly with Him!
And then I did it all over again.
And again.
And I got worse and worse and worse...and all the time I believed I was on a mission to finally really do teshuvah the next time I had the tayva.
My yiddisheh brain knew that Hashem has the only real love, the only real sweet beauty, and the only real hope for me - lo ayacheil!....but my body believed otherwise. It knew the experience of real pleasure from the things I was doing for escape and pleasure. Pleasure does not lie. The body cannot be easily fooled. Unfortunately, saying and learning good things does not make them so - especially when they are competing with a firmly entrenched insanity like lust dependence.
For you, the hisbodedus - done in the right way (with Hashem) - is working. That is a beautiful miracle. For me, focusing on Hashem in hisbodedus was a complete waste of time because true Emunah was only in my mind...my body already had a very different god. And it's god demanded daily service. It was a jealous god. It had its own rewards and its own punishments. It really did, to me.
So I caution you to consider that although the Torah is true - period, and although Hashem is the only real Beauty, Love, and Value that there is...there are yidden who need an 'access ramp' to the stuff you are talking about.
Mikvah and Tikun Klali are 'magical' and powerful, as you describe - and Hashem can do anything. But for many sweet yidden (like me) banging our heads for just a few more weeks or months on the Aron Kodesh can cost them their marriages, the mental health of their children, and may cost them their sanity, as well as their Olam Haba.
It seems to me that what matters to you most here is the terrible aveiro. I respectfully disagree with that perspective, particularly for addicts.
I do not know what you mean when you say the word "addict", but for the addicts who I know (like me), the ikkar problem with the habit of these aveiros is not mainly the aveiros, but that we are unable to really live as long as we are medicating with tayvo. Our relationships are filled with faykerai, our davening is a silly 'ratzo vashov' between "I am horrible and evil" and "Hashem take me back!". That is not avodah at all. It is shtuyot. Unfortunately many have made a business out of it and many consider it the ikkar avodah of their lives. Well, I believe that they are hiding in a sweet little corner of Torah and missing the entire daled amos of a Torah life. But who am I, and who besides me should care what I believe?
Before saying that your way is guaranteed, or the only way for serious yidden, please consider that many people will find hatzlocha and brocha in a completely different derech than yours.
I agree 100% with a lot of the tachlis of your derech. For me, the solution is to find out that Hashem really is my Best Friend. For me, hisbodedus with Him is a gift from Hashem and I cannot survive without hisbodedus. But many people need to come to it on a completely different path than you suggest.
Hatzlocha!!
People often ask why Yiras Shamayim is not enough to stop us. Here Dov responds to one such claim.
(Note: What Dov writes here is strictly for real addicts):
As far as I am concerned, an addict has the right to keep using his drug - and no one can tell him he can't - it will not stop him. He needs to learn yir'oh from the pain of using his drug, be it masturbation, alcohol, gambling, heroin, rage, whatever. He needs to come to the point that he discovers that he cannot use his drug any more. Not because Hashem tells him so, but because he himself discovers it.
To me, the fact that it is an aveiroh is actually a distraction from recovery and prolongs the agony and destruction because it fools a person to think that he is experiencing a struggle to be good vs bad - to do Hashem's Will vs the Satan's will....and in truth his is a battle between losing his life to insanity and sickness vs living life by getting sanity and wellness.
The sforim are there. The aveiro is well-known. I do not believe that learning the gravity of the aveiro is what I needed. It was a mistake, actually. I did that and learned the entire sefer Yesod Yosef (not the one about mussar and avodah by the talmid of the Kav haYoshor , but the one that the kitzur suggests that is strictly about hz"l), and all it did for me was to get me horribly guilty and confused because I could not stop. I also read the English of Shivchei haR"N about Rebbi Nachman, zt"l. I went to mikvah. I did what I knew at the time, and sincerely. No go. It was horrible.
And I do not believe more yir'ah is what many need. We have yir'ah - it is just not effective. Maybe we do not really have the right yir'oh? Really, I am sure we do not have it....do any of us ever get it? I do not know. All I know is that ein chovush matir es atzmo mibeis ha'asurim.
We need mesiras nefesh to open the door to get well, period. And more than anything else - more than any sefer or mikvah, it was my acting out - my aveiros, you might say - that brought me to the point of mesiras nefesh. I lost myself to lust - I nearly gave it my nefesh - and had no choice but to ask Hashem to get me back. There was nobody else around to ask. And he led me to recovering sex/lust addicts who learned about recovery from drunks and shared it with others. I followed their direction and here I am, with you and with Hashem. So far, so good.
Perhaps you are talking about yidden who can stop, and I am talking of addicts. Perhaps you are only talking about yidden who do the aveiroh and it has not invaded their lifestyle yet. My business is in addicts; hopeless losers to lust who have tried everything. So by all means, I hope whoever wants to try your derech does it exactly. And the ones that lose and are finally convinced that they just can't do it and give up completely will have me as their friend at the other end of the mikvah hall...