Thank you, OneLife - knowing that I have the support of people like you, helps tremendously.

Feel free to share your opinions on the new avatar...

Had a bit of a rough day today, but came through OK, B"H...need to remember to give the fight to hashem...and that it will NOT make me happy...

Keep up the good fight.  I know you will succeed!!! 

As for the avatar, fits your name good.  Don't know how IT25 will feel.  He always wanted to hook your fighter jet up to his walker for some reason.

silentbattle wrote on 19 Jan 2010 01:27:
I don't know, I guess I'll have to get used to it. I sort of relate the old one to you...
New avatars are always hard for me :'( :D

Hey silent, why have you changed your picture?? i really liked your last one. 
sometimes just your picture gave us chizuk...  8)

silentbattle wrote on 19 Jan 2010 01:27:


Baruch Hashem, that you still "alive", sometimes it happens and we are here for that.
as i told you  before, you are the bomb in that forum!  :-* :-*
if you give us chizuks all the time so all the more you are already strong.  ;D ;D

for the theory that we "need to remember to give the fight to hashem"  ( i think its the third step of the 12)
i think i have a little objection on that theory cuz in other word this step says that we return our Y"H to hashem that gave it for us when he created us.  i see a paradox in that manner. 
its like we say to hashem  "no, thank you. you can keep it beside you, i don't need it"

i don't know what to think about that as i know that the 12 steps do work.

any ideas??

Thanks, Sci - appreciate the vote of confidence. Its OK, , I've still got the fighter jet...it's just camouflaged, and fit with stealth technology  ;D So now IT25 can have a stealth-fighter/walker!

KG - I know, I've gotta get used to it, too! What was weird was that soemtimes, I'd be looking through old posts on the forum, and I'd come across my old avatar - but with a different username! It confused me!

OneLife - Think of the ninja as your bodyguard. After all, ninjas were the assassins of feudal Japan - this Ninja's target is the yetzer hora.

As far as your worries about giving over the fight to hashem, here are a few thoughts, please let me know what you think:

1) as KG (I think) pointed out a while back with a beautiful mashal, hashem gives us that option - Guard, can you airdrop in the link to that chizuk email (I believe it's #667)?

2) We always daven that hashem should remove us from temptation (v'lo lidei nisayon...).

3) As R' Yeruchum points out (from the ramban on the meraglim, I believe, as well as numerous gemaras that say it pretty much straight out), without hashem's help, we'd never succeed against the yetzer hora - we wouldn't even have a chance! We have to enlist hashem's help!

4) Another way of looking at it is that we're being mevatel our own will (ratzon) to hashem - we're taking ourselves out of the picture, and letting his ratzon shine right through us.

Does that make sense?

silentbattle wrote on 19 Jan 2010 15:00:


You always have a good answers (i'm talking about the ninja if you havn't understood yet  :D :D)

1. B"H i'll see that.
2. thats absolutely legitimate prayer, but its still says that we have the Y"H.
3. see 2.
4. this claim is the most that i am OK with, but this is very very high level of emuna. and the problem is that not everyone (especially us) can get to that level. it demands tremendous of AVODA.

my opinion is a little mix, when i have a temptation (except of describe you and haba standing near me  :D :D)
i tell the Y"H that i don't have any chance to overpower  him, and try ways to escape from the danger area.

i hope that the admit in powerlessness can feed the Y"H and its enough for him then he would live  me alone.

when he will go ?? hope to the hell.  :D :D



moreover

We're not trying to give away the yetzer hora - that's still there. What we're saying (I think - I'm far from being an expert) is that we're giving the fight over to hashem.

In other news, I'm open to ideas for my 90-day celebration. Any suggestions? I might post a new thread for this...right now, my basic idea is to get a bottle of Woodford, if there are enough people interested in sharing it with me. I don't drink very much by myself!

I was recently reading a kuntris on shovevim by the slonimer rebbe...lot of good stuff. One issue he talks about is a three-pronged attack: 1) learning torah, 2) heartfelt davening, and 3) doing chesed.

I see those three as 1) living, 2) giving the fight over to hashem, and 3) getting out of our own heads, our own selfishness.

Clearly, these weeks are an ideal time to work on this, and so I'm going to try to work a bit more on each of these three areas, every day. Some more focus on davening (for me, during shemonah esrei), a little extra learning (at night), and an extra act of chesed, every day.

Anyone want to join me? Certainly can't hurt!

Life continues to go well, B"H, although there is no shortage of stress. But at least some of the stress is coming from positive developments.

Hey SB. I have to say i missed you. And i missed your chizuk. I also missed seeing all the beautiful things you write. But im back now. And i gotta just let the past be the past, right?? :D

Love ya bro.

I'm sure you grew during this experience...and I look forward to hearing all about it! I'm super-glad to have you back!

In other news...as we all know, there are two aspects to chinuch - planting and building (see the sefer/book by R' Volbe). In short, building is the concrete framework, planting is the inspiration that grows. There's been many books written on this, but to look at it one way, for a grapevine to grow, it needs support - so you build the support, and the grapevine grows around that support - so both the building and planting are necessary - without either, there'd be no grapes.

Chinuch isn't just for children, it's for ourselves, too - everyone needs to use both of these tools to help themselves grow. Here's a bit of how I'm thinking this applies to us...

The planting - that's inspiring ourselves, learning, getting closer to hashem. Figuring out our issues and slowly but surely making changes to who we are on a deep level.

Building is practical things we do - installing a filter, going to sleep earlier, walking out of the room when we feel an urge, taking of my glasses when I'm walking in the street.

Here's what I think, though - if we allow it to, the building shapes the growing. And so I find that after taking off my glasses in the street, so that I'm not even tempted to look at women, even when I do have my glasses on, it's easier for me to not focus on them. It's like I've already been trained to not look.

Or maybe that's just the result of building, plain and simple.

Either way...I like it!

me too!

SB, you do an excellent job in chizuk of us.

me too took off my glassess from my eyes, but the Y"H returned them on my face again tell me walk with your head down its enough. 

now, cuz you, ill try it again take off my glassess. :

silentbattle wrote on 21 Jan 2010 15:55:


This is a gevaldik observation.  This supports that idea that utilization of internet filters helps rather than creates a backlash in other areas.

Gotta love how the yetzer hora does that..."don't be an extremist, etc." Don't make a big deal out of it, and it doesn't have to be all the time. I don't do it all the time...but when I can, I do.

Mekubal - men darf vissin (I think that means "you have to know"). I certainly think that filters help. But I also think that it has to come with a desire to change, and actual work in general towards being healthier.

Without that, would there be a backlash? Don't know. But irrelevant, because everyone on here is hopefully not just putting a filter on and hoping that's the end - we post, we give chizuk, we get inspired, we read the handbooks, call DC, etc.

So it's part of growth, instead of just being stifling.