Hi Yitz
I think someone asked you this 8 years ago - Are you clean / sober because of this book?
guardyoureyes.com/forum/2-What-Works-for-Me/83939-Stop-COLD-TURKEY---How-i-did-it-You-do-it-too#83939
Oh and how could we forget dov??
Dov wrote on 11 Nov 2010 03:42:
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:
Dear yitzi.26,
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!!