Day 29 ב"ה

simchastorah wrote on 01 Dec 2024 06:51:

Lots of good stuff here. 

Yeah, the חיים is found in the working along the way.
There’s no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. The rainbow is the gold.   It’s a road that’s beautiful in a breathtaking sweep of colors and in its graceful arc as it leads forward, a way to travel over the horizon… 

​It’s also smart to realize that feeling desirous is what happens through exposure. It’s also ok to feel a pull onwards the negative. Good people have a Yetzer hora too.  It’s acting on those feeling that would be wrong, and you’re not going to. 
Because you are in a קרן אורה.

Here’s a admiring hand,
חיים

Day 30 ב"ה

This was the goal , to post daily till 30. Since it b'h helped me I'm making a קבלה בלי נדר to continue daily until I have 60 ואני תפילה

Wow. What an amazing accomplishment 

Day 31 ב"ה

Day 32 בעה"י

I kind of wish that I had something I felt I needed to post about because posting becomes a catalyst for connecting with others here, but while as always there is a lot going on inside I'm not sure what is appropriate to share. 

I will say that in the last few days I have become re-in-touch with a deep inner feeling of self rejection which while I have been aware of it in the past I have not brought up to my conscious mind in a while. Every day for the last few days I have been taking time to turn my focus fully inward in search of painful suppressed emotions, and each day I come to see myself as a young child of maybe 8 and find myself unable to feel much beyond contempt for this child, and have a lot of difficulty feeling compassion for him, כ"ש adoration.

It is clear to me that this inner dynamic is a facet of something which is at the root of many of my problems including p* and m*. Be'h I'll continue to bring up these feelings and try and find a way to heal. Like I said I have spent much time in the past on this but there's still a long way to go. I have tools for working on it alone having gone to therapy multiple times with multiple modalities, and I find myself sometimes more able to work on things alone than together with a therapist, but maybe I just haven't found the right therapist yet.

Day 33 ב"ה
גל עיני ואביטה נפלאות מתורתיך

Day 34 ב"ה

Day 35 ב"ה

Day 36 ב"ה

Feeling an urge right now. I feel alone with it. If I think about what it is that I want to do I find the thought disgusting. The disgustingness also means I'm not comfortable to call someone up and say "hi i have an urge" that feels too vulnerable and embarrassing. Like calling someone up and saying "hi how you doing i'm making some diarrhea what's up". it seems to me that the urge itself bears within it a message about how i'm disgusting and i should just do it because the fact that i have it itself means that i'm lowly. i have to be able to see past it and maintain a sense of dignity and being above that behavior, looking at the urge as a confusing message being sent to me by someone else who is not me, who knows how to trick me into thinking that it's my own thought.

simchastorah wrote on 09 Dec 2024 15:09:


I'm almost insulted! Calling us all here disgusting!

All jokes aside, a true friend is someone you can count on during the hard times. They may lend you money during a moment of financial despair, or they may bring you a clean pair of pants if you get yours soiled. 
I've called friends here about some weird stuff. They didn't judge me or make me feel bad. They uplifted me and gave me chizzuk. 

simchastorah wrote on 09 Dec 2024 15:09:

My Brother, it may not be easy to call . . . but embarrassing? So you've got a yetzer hara? #MeToo, and so does everyone else - courtesy of His Majesty the Ribono Shel Oilam. We are Am Echad and we are fighting together. Especially here more than anywhere, we can relate to your feelings. We've all been low, but that's not who we are. Reach out to a fellow, because we rise together. 
Kol tov

Part of the poison that we fight
is the pain of having to deal 
with the shame of what we are dealing with. 

Breaking out of the Bastille of shame and into the Light, is good. Easier said than done, friend. 

Here’s a thought: 
Your urge is a compulsion to do a shameful act. 
Not acting shamefully is noble.  
Your urge is a calling to the nobility that is to be found on the other side. 

You deserve that prize. 

המצפה לראות החיים

It's true that everyone has a yh. And mine may not even be particularly distasteful (thankfully). Still the thing itself is a gross thing. If you'll excuse my revisiting the analogy - it's healthy to need to use the facilities. And under the right circumstances you may even need to discuss it. But I'm sure as hell happy when that conversation with the doctor is over. 

Some people ל"ע can't control their bowels when they reach old age. And they may stink. And if they do I'm sure they're embarrassed, even though it's perfectly natural that someone with such and such a genetic makeup, with such and such conditions, would develop a condition where they can't control their bowels. Still they will be embarrassed if they smell bad.

For me this is similar. Sure everyone has a yetzer hara. And I have no problem talking about it in an abstract way, and truthfully even in a concrete way when I'm talking about something in the past, because that's just 'past me'. But when right now I feel a desire to do a shameful thing, speaking about it is saying "hey i have this aspect of me which is really quite shameful!". And that's embarrassing.

The yh itself is the definition of חסרון. Mamash in the most chasardike way possible. Whether in the לשון of the מהר"ל who calls it העדר, or the רמח"ל who talks about רע as חסרון. And the source of embarrassment too is חסרון. (So I heard from my Rebbi שליט"א many times, one example I heard him translate כל קוויך לא יבושו as "... will not be חסר")