The initial urge is an automatic reaction to external stimuli. That is something we don’t have control over it it’s not lust and it can be ignored. If it is not ignored it can turn into lust.

The urge that I believe Shem is talking about is lust or desire. It is when someone is craving something sexual. That feeling can be addressed with the method I referred to above

Terrific discussion. 

I truly think that y’all are in almost total agreement. I’d isolate the separate points. 

1. Initial urge. There’s a biological and psychological component that’s part of having a physical body. A pop-up pops up and you want to pop up and pop it. That can  truthfully be externalized as your “Nefesh Habihamis”, “Carnal Instinct”, “Physical Essence” and not the higher you. It’s exactly as shameful as is the need to defecate. Meaning to say it’s not nice, but it’s a fact of life and the fact that you have a body ought not to be all that embarrassing. This is Vehkam’s point. 

2. When a guy feels a “need” to go looking it’s usually an expression of a deeper need.
Meaning- he’s “looking” because the lust will “do something for him” (besides feeling good). Behaviour has  a function.

In other words:  If you did it, there was something you were getting out of it. If you choose to put yourself into the situation where you would be overcome with lust, there was something you were looking for.

This is so often unrecognised, and unacknowledged by the guy who is struggling. The guy says “I was only on YouTube, and I was bored, and it got late, and i was overtired, and then I found a loophole, and then a fall happened…. I’ll get a better filter tomorrow.”  But that’s not the genuine truth. 
Cause the guy had a reason he went looking. You can call it a trigger. But it’s really something you wanted to get out of the fall. Something it does for you. Maybe you’re feeling lonely, or impotent, or unfulfilled, or unloved. Turning to porn will fill the hole… it’s critical to admit that so you can change the pattern. This is Shem’s primary point, as I understand it. 

This is shameful to come to terms with. It’s much easier to blame the falls on something that happened. 

3. Simchastorahs point, as I understand it, it that it’s still honest and true for a guy to dig deeper and say: “Yeah. I felt unloved. And unmoored. And I let myself turn to a sick pacifier that give a fake shell of the feeling of being loved and caressed, in order to assuage my pain. But is that what I really WANT?  Hell no.”  

This understanding can be liberating. Working against the urge to break through, to isolate the shamefulness and discover where you can be, nay where your core is already above it , is beautiful.

Cause you can learn and live to know that you never wanted the falling , you just wanted what it did for you. And when you learn differentiate the two, you can choose to choose what you really want. 

And get trucking down the holy heartbreak highway to true SimchasTorah 

Love, 
Chaim

הלכה כדברי המכריע

I just want to clarify that from my point of view there is a commonality between the vekham urge (urge 1) and the choosemyshem urge (urge 2).

Urge 1 is a straightforward experience of an awakening of the kochos haguf
Urge 2 is an experience of the kochos haguf hijacking a deeper need. The guf 'interprets' the need for love etc as a need for baser things.

So in both cases the urge itself is a התועררות of גוף, but in one case the catalyst is (more) purely גוף and in the other the catalyst is less גוף.

There's more to say here as even those things which are 'purely גוף' are not so simple. For example I saw in a sefer of Rav Yisrael Elya Weintraub z'l that the reason we say אשר יצר את האדם בחכמה after doing our needs is because in אדם it is the כח of חכמה, which is a כח of בירור, which is the inner driver of the דחייה of פסולת which is עשיית נקבים.

And on the other hand, the deeper inner need for love is also not so purely 'not גוף' as inasmuch as the need stems from an unhealthy character trait, like low self esteem in my case, but I'm sure there are others, to that extent the need is a need of גוף as the קלקול of מידות is rooted in the נפש הבהמית

Day 37 ב"ה

vehkam wrote on 09 Dec 2024 22:46:

This is one of those rare debates where everyone is saying something true. I also like how this side point is taking over the main point.

Vehkam, I was waiting for you to chime in with the opposing perspective. I totally agree that it is important and helpful to separate what the intellect wants and what is a desire that the intellect doesn't want. I also am experiencing some sort of shift from "I enjoy and want porn/lust" to "I did not want those things ever" as I got further out of the hole, and this is helpful.

I guess I disagree with externalizing the desire onto a yetzer hara. You are your yetzer hara. You are also so much more than your yetzer hara. And while one the one hand it is very helpful to externalize the urge and that can help someone fight against it, on the other hand long term we do what we want. And while some people may be able to change what they want by externalizing the urge, other people may just be fooling themselves and that suppressed "want" will pop up again later.

I like CO's formulation. I would just add that on a very base level, in addition to the emotional/spiritual need being filled with lust, we just like lust. And that is an emotional/spiritual drive that also needs to be acknowledged. Maybe then it needs to be completely rejected. But denying it exists is not helpful.

As always, the golden rule is do what works for you.

I suspect a large part of the debate here is people coming from different places. I was somehow denying that I had an issue for many years. I would tell myself I don't do this, I don't like this, I don't want this. And then of course I would "mysteriously" find myself binging for entire day (multiple times a week). I vacillated between telling myself "I don't want this" and telling myself "this is all I want". It's amazing how we can confuse and delude ourselves. And I was so locked behind the wall of shame I couldn't think about it clearly at all.

It wasn't until I was on GYE for a while that I was able to acknowledge that I liked lust (and/or that lust filled some emotional holes). Once I acknowledged that was I able to work on not giving in to it. But until I acknowledged that, I kept on getting ambushed by lust because I would just try to deny and reject that it existed. My impression from reading Vehkam's thread, is that you were in a place were it was obvious you liked lust. So then you had to work on stopping it from becoming part of your identity. And for that avodah, dissociation is very helpful.

And now I'm very late for work. But this is an interesting topic.

-

I shared the following a few weeks ago on this thread and think it provides some insight for this particular discussion.

https://guardyoureyes.com/forum/17-Balei-Battims-Forum/424325-Chizzuk-Needed?limit=15&start=90#425576

The intellect will only get you so far if there isn't sufficient will behind it. I believe TBotG Ch 16 is talking about a similar approach. My yetzer hara helps me rationalize and ignore - impairing my ability to choose with a clear mind. By projecting the choices in front of me, I can see them better for what they really are. In this way we can try and escape the influence of our yetzer hara which tells ourselves to just forget everything else and pursue the momentary desire. 

This could perhaps be a combination of the two thought processes?

I don’t suggest suppressing what we want. I suggest getting in touch and clarifying what is is that we really want. (To paraphrase tbotg whatever the yetzer hara wants- I want the opposite.)
When that is clear and we regularly reinforce that idea it cannot and will not pop up again. Every time an urge happens we can quickly recognize that this not what we really want.

Day 38 bh

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Day 40 ב"ה

simchastorah wrote on 13 Dec 2024 07:19:

יצירת הולד! 

Day 41 ב"ה

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Struggling with tayvah today