I hope you remember that the real problem here is not lusting, but lying. Few here get it. Most think this is some sort of religious kedusha struggle or something. It's really just being a real human being. Derech Eretz kodnmah laTorah. Once we have sanity, all the rest falls into place. Hatzlocha getting some and keeping it. It's certainly not a thing you are mesugal for doing successfully, so this will be a miracle - as it is with me.

Love,

Dov

Lying/not lying is also a religious kedusha struggle, or something.

Derech Eretz is Torah.

skeptical wrote:
Lying/not lying is also a relgious kedusha struggle, or something.

Derech Eretz is Torah.



It may make you feel nice to see your own struggle to remain honest and real, as falling under the rubrick of Torah and avodas Hashem, but do you see how the connection of this struggle in any way to Torah, Teshuvah, and Kedusha is poison for so many people? And if yes, do you see then that trying to be 'menachem' a person that "yes, your recovery is still Torah/kedusha," can really tempt them to run right back into the very 'holy' mentalities that have been fueling their porn and masturbation habit from day 1, 2, or 3?

Those are questions, not rhetoricals, nor attacks. Just questions.

And have you read my post about "The Nuclear Reset Button"?

The answer (or rather my answer) to all of the above questions is yes, yes, and yes.
That being clarified at the outset (I have a sneaking feeling that this is gonna be a long hijacking ), wouldn't it be fair to assume that the above mentioned "poison" is a distorted view of what Torah, Mitzvos, and Avodas Hashem are all about? They (Torah, Mitzvos, and Avodas Hashem) are NOT about MY oh so exalted levels of ________ (fill in the blank -Torah, Teshuvah, Kedushah, Chassidus, Mussar, etc.); that grain and perspective of humility, is game-changing. A more accurate, less "me-focused" perception and angle of Torah, etc. is indeed a (the?) (by)product of sobriety, no?
All Mr. Skeptical is saying, (I think) is that, if one truly has (something of the) the right perspective vis-à-vis Torah, etc., there is a way of looking at this endgame during the game, that's all; not removing it from the scope of Torah, without having his Avodas Hashem defined by masturbation.
As the saying goes "If the shoe fits, wear it!" Conversely, if it doesn't, (and if it's "poison", it certainly won't,) don't!

Yes, yes, and yes, Mayer. But my point is that if so, then WHY DON'T ALL THESE 'CORRECTED' JEWS HERE JUST KEEP THEIR ZIPPERS UP AND LEAVE THEIR PENISES ALONE!

But they do not.

Why?

Some of these good people (and I mean that 100% sincerely) are still searching for porn, still worshipping it, hot women, and sex with their wives, with devotion and mesiras nefesh that would be high madreigos in avodas Hashem, and are still keeping it private - so they can safely keep doing it (hiding it and using fake names even n recovery here on GYE).

And if they are now enlightened and 'get the Torah right"...when did that sudden enlightenment occur? Did they undergo any real inner change that is a total revamping from the 'Torah' they knew and accepted back in the day (last week?) when they 'were still sinning regularly'? Or was it just a few posts they read that showed them a nice vort or chizzuk of some sort and 'now they've got it all right'? How can I have faith in quick sincerity-fixes rather than see them as gimmicks.

I have seen so many guys insist that they now 'get it', so many speeches from newbies still masturbating their brains out, spewing what they feel with their whole heart is sincere: about how "if you just trust hashem and do xy&z things, you will beat this thing!" And they 'fall' so badly they disappear in shame. This happens over and over. GYE helps a lot. But so many more than it helps, are lost to the denial of religious enlightenment.

Sorry for the rant here. But it hurts.

How is what you are saying any different than that? I just don't get it - please explain it to me, chaver.

Dov is just keeping us real, as he is wont to do. I would like to take this opportunity to thank Dov for his super-valliant efforts to help us all realize that unless there is some serious paradigm shift occurring in the way we see life itself, we can be pretty sure that we've got a lot of work to do. Not to discourage us, chas v'shalom, but real recovery requires real realization. The misguided Torah lives we all live/lived is not the real Torah. We live/lived it because we thought it was about us. Its not. If we could see that as true, more true and real than whatever pleasurable feelings we had when we acted/act out, we would be able to make a little more room for the true and real Torah to have its glorious and uplifting effect on our lives.

Dov wrote:
Yes, yes, and yes, Mayer. But my point is that if so, then WHY DON'T ALL THESE 'CORRECTED' JEWS HERE JUST KEEP THEIR ZIPPERS UP AND LEAVE THEIR PENISES ALONE!

But they do not.

Why?

Some of these good people (and I mean that 100% sincerely) are still searching for porn, still worshipping it, hot women, and sex with their wives, with devotion and mesiras nefesh that would be high madreigos in avodas Hashem, and are still keeping it private - so they can safely keep doing it (hiding it and using fake names even n recovery here on GYE).

And if they are now enlightened and 'get the Torah right"...when did that sudden enlightenment occur? Did they undergo any real inner change that is a total revamping from the 'Torah' they knew and accepted back in the day (last week?) when they 'were still sinning regularly'? Or was it just a few posts they read that showed them a nice vort or chizzuk of some sort and 'now they've got it all right'? How can I have faith in quick sincerity-fixes rather than see them as gimmicks.

I have seen so many guys insist that they now 'get it', so many speeches from newbies still masturbating their brains out, spewing what they feel with their whole heart is sincere: about how "if you just trust hashem and do xy&z things, you will beat this thing!" And they 'fall' so badly they disappear in shame. This happens over and over. GYE helps a lot. But so many more than it helps, are lost to the denial of religious enlightenment.

Sorry for the rant here. But it hurts.

How is what you are saying any different than that? I just don't get it - please explain it to me, chaver.


There is but one difference (and although it mat be dismissed as mere semantics by some, it drives others up the wall) and that is the insistence that for some people who are deeply mired and entrapped in porn, masturbation, etc., Torah is NOT the (an) answer.
Yes - certainly, their Torah ain't - real Torah is. I think we all agree on that one.
The point of divergence is whether one can begin to live that while still entrenched in the dirt. Just as saying "I'm powerless", without truly recognizing it is merely a lesson in self-delusion, so too is the " sudden enlightenment" of "get the Torah right"; Torah is not a lesson in mental gymnastics or enlightment, but in action. Just as any other mode of recovery is a process, so too is this. One must be honest - difficult, very difficult.

If I had to formulate a program for recovery from addiction based on sifre mussar, it would be word for word the 12 steps.

I never said that Torah was the problem, period. Ever. But in part 2 i will be"H show precisely in what ways our yiddishkeit fueled some of our problems, and some reasons why we who are versed in Torah still fail and continue failing.

I'd much rather have this discussion on the phone, so can we please set up a conference to talk this out? We could use the same number the DC's call and the Desperados' call use for their phone meetings, and get this done far more efficiently and honestly than here with the fake names and the hiding voices. This topic is huge, and very real. So please consider doing it with a bit more realness. Just let me know and we can arrange it for as many people that r interested.

OK. But here we are. Be"H, I will express some ideas as succinctly as I can. Amen. (More like, hal'vai!)

A disclaimer: (already?!)

There are people who may be unable to understand what I am writing because it does not apply to them at all. And some who it does apply to will keep seeing things through their rose-colored glasses and hope for the frum-sounding party-line. And some are in so much denial that they will say 'apikores'. So good luck to whoever reads this. And if you walk away thinking I am an apikores, I respect right to your opinion, disagree, and seriosuly wish you good luck.

None of what I am writing applies to the typical guy (Jew or non-Jew) who discovered that when he rubs his penis he gets a pleasant feeling, or that nudes are fun to look at, and does so - struggling with his religion and values every time, sometimes winning, sometimes losing.

What I am writing applies only to the fellow (or gal) who has really lost the battle, but just pretends to himself that he (or she) is still 'struggling'. He sincerely thinks that he is fighting because of his religion or allegiance to Hashem (because it's an aveiro). He often sees himself as a tragic figure, with just too much yetzer hora. He may see himself as an '(as yet unholy) very holy man'. He may keep thinking that Teshuvah is the answer for him...yet discovers himself doing Teshuvah and getting worse and worse over the years. He may see his swings from extreme goodness to extreme out-of-control-evil-ness getting more intense. He may see his very deep religious feeling as proof of his basic OK-ness - he just has 'a problem'...maybe he will open up to his Rebbi about it one day. He may see that his religious feelings are actually intensified by the pain of the adventures he is having running after the porn, or after the sex he is having with himself (or with others). His wife...well, he usually sees his wife as seriously undersexed and is often struggling with feelings that he married the wrong woman. That pain and doubt is terrible and best dealt with using the only thing he can really trust to distract himself from deep pain...you guessed it: sweet porn and risky sex adventures. When he does open up to someone (or even here on the anonymous and virtual forum), he may only do so partially: "I struggle with zera levatola," or "with the internet." [...he is really spending desperate times masturbating himself in a mirror a few times a week, watching porn with shallow breath and stolen minutes saving the precious images for after the bedtime Sh'ma, fantasizes intensely about specific pretty women habitually, goes through his sisters clothes when he visits home and masturbates - [i]but he can't tell the Rebbi that!![/i] So he calls his issue, a problem with tayvos, or the internet. Blames it on Hashem (for the yetzer hora He gave him), or on Al Gore (for the internet he made ). More obfuscation due to shame. Nu. No wonder he doesn't get very far.

OK. So. I am referring to addicts, not stam to what Chaza"l and the sforim call the 'yetzer hora'. I believe that they have the answer to the Yetzer Hora, as RMCh"L writes "hein", only through Torah can we be freed from the YH and achieve true yir'as Shomayim. But Chaza"l were clearly not speaking of addicts. And many guys on GYE are not addicts! (as I have written many times before) They simply need to open up honestly and explicitly to their Rebbis, and stay doing so. As the Tzetl'e Koton says, in #13 - "without hiding a single thing out of shame." Read it carefully - R' Meilech is surely not talking about addicts! He writes this for every yid. And he surely did that eitza for himself, perhaps with his brother.

The fact that our behavior of sex-with-self (masturbation) and consumption of porn are issurim, is an irrelevant detail. The pattern of behaviors is the same as alcoholics. When a broken and beaten-down sex and lust addict like me reads member stories in the book AA, or speaks to a bleeding alcoholic or heroin addict (as I have many times), he sees himself! It's quite chilling.

Once a person sees that his pattern corresponds almost exactly with that of a heroin addict or alcoholic, where issurim and religion are not factors, he will know that he is not a "struggling Yid"...he is just a drunk. Or more accurately, a pervert.

"Ooh, if I take a name or label to myself, I will get even worse! Slabodka teaches "we need to focus on the gadlus ho'odom"! The Rebbes tell us "a person is where his thoughts are"! So I gota think positively. If I call myself an addict or even worse a pervert, I will lock myself into the bad behavior forever!"

Sounds very dramatic and politically correct. But is the guy a mess, or not? What will it take for the regular habitual masturbater to recognize that he has lost? Is it only the divorced who are a mess? The arrested? The dead? Who? Does he need to find himself a bochur at the age of 30 (because he is 'waiting until he has this YH under control before starting shiduchim' as the Rebbi advised him?) before he admits "This crap is ruining my life!"? Or maybe 35? 40? Or does he need to do really, really baaad aveiros to 'qualify'? What will it take? I see and hear so many guys calling me with wreckage. Wreckage. Why didn't they call a year or five years ago, when they were not caught yet? Answer: shame. Where did they get the shame from? Who told them to keep on fighting, that it is just the Yetzer hora, that Torah must be the answer, that "meshaneh mipnei haShalom is mutar, so hide it!"? Not me, b"H.

Do you hear me so far, at all?

Part 2 tomorrow iy"H, about religion and how it often relates to our acting out problem. My wife and I going for another late-night walk now...

Good night and Gut voch all.

...I have been working on this problem consistently for about 18 months. I was watching porn and masturbating every day and now I tend to go about 3 weeks without porn or masturbation before i fall. (Why i keep falling at all is very much on my mind but not relevant to this topic. or maybe it is?)... Which would help me more, 12 steps or shaarei teshuvah?...You're absolutely right that no amount of masturbation is OK, but of course no amount of chilul shabbos is either. So am i addicted to tearing off dead skin on shabbos? Clearly even if a slight transgression is a transgression, there is still a point that's called addicted and a point that's simply called sinning?