Lev tahor  b'rah lee elohim. The words and tune repeat themselves in my head and on my lips as I read and reread through the postings on this site. So many yidden. So many truly pious jews, hanging on for dear life, begging for a chance to move on. It's been a huge struggle for all of us, hasn't it? Is there anyone out there that can understand each unique place all of us come from that leads us to where it does, while we struggle to tear ourselves away? It seems we've tried so hard. This upward slope, ridden with pitfalls. Pushing through the rough terrain, we have those times that we see the meadows. But much of it is spent in the darkened forests of a world which threatens to drag us in....to destroy us at the very core of what make us jews. kedoshim t'hiye. It's who we are.  But built in, is the yetzer hara! What does he truly want? I believe it is R'tzadok hakohen, but I will b'n clarify, who writes a song of the yetzer hara. It is his job to take us away from our true potential, who we can be. But silently, the yetzer hara himself hopes that we will win over him. Even as he turns his power on us, and we fall to his wiles....All that time, he is silently rooting for us. To beat him. Lev tahor. That's the goal here. It's what we all want. And yet, as we promise ourselves and Hashem, day in and day out, we attain levels, and sometimes there are slips....falls....r"l.....but in all of us, all the while, our hearts are crying and screaming to Hashem that we just want him. IS THAT TOO MUCH TO ASK??? can it be? will Hashem turn us down, when all were doing is requesting his presence, requesting his closeness, his embrace? It is the life we've been given, and it's a gift we've been given to even have the will to combat it in the first place in today's world. What does he want? he wants the same thing....asei ritzono kirtzonecha. we've done just that. Our wills are in congruence with each other. We want to find Hashem and Hashem wants us to find him. Through the struggle, through the temptation....in the darkness.....through the tfilla.....we find Him.  All we can do is keep asking Hashem.....Al tashlichayni milfanecha....v'ruach kadshecha al tikach mimeni. Al tikach? dont take it away? Where is it? we have it. We have Hashem's ruach hakodesh, being that we are asking him not to remove it. It is with us. It always has been. It's who we are. No matter what we can't let anything tell us otherwise. We just have to keep asking for what we want. Because merely by asking for closeness, we are therein, attaining that closeness. Let's ask again.....together.....right now.

Im so glad youve started posting

What you wrote is beautiful, and I see we are all going to gain tremendously by having you here iyH

Keep climbing.

Once you let him in, he's in. Not very happy right now. its so easy to keep slipping! I consider slips to be falls. One second its so easy to tear your eyes away, the next second you forget all about it. help! you'd think your brain/the yetzer hara would get the idea after practicing for months and years, but he finds his loophole and there he is again. wth just get away from me!

Really quiet in here.....very relaxing.....peaceful.


Guard your eyes Starts internally. Guard your mind. Triggers only work if we haven't trained our minds to do what we want. Just as triggers trained us one way, we can reprogram, train our minds to react in a different way. Sometimes it doesn't seem that complicated. Sure, seeing something sets you off, but what the switch actually does is for us to decide. Personally, I'm going to insist to my own brain that seeing someone doesn't have to mean anything it to me. Its about perception. So there is a human being that looks a certain way in front of. Now what? Its irrelevant to me. I'm going to react and keep looking or let my mind get carried away? No. I choose instead to be in charge, to turn to hashem, to focus on anything else, to not dwell on it. Your brain doesn't know much besides for what you tell it, and I'm telling mine that there's a lot better stuff going on elsewhere. And I'm not even kidding myself, its absolutely true. You can disagree though. More than happy to argue about it. 

Thinking-

Not from this weeks parsha, but when hashem tells avraham avinu to leave his fathers house, I think tells us a lot about leaving our own past behind. Lech lecha. That's the first thing people grappling with shmiras habris issues have to do. Get out of where we've been. Where to? Well, there's so many answers to that, a lifetimes work in fact. Its an interesting ride too. We will definitely need to fill the space left in our lives from the past that we are leaving- emotionally, physically, spiritually, mentally, even our schedules change as we perfect ourselves in this area. We fulfill 'lech lecha' by getting our mind away from those things, but automatically, we now need to focus on something else- where we are going. Our days now have so much room for more positivity. Many self help methods include the concept of 'fake it til you make it', which I believe is built on the premise of 'attitudes follow actions'. A very powerful psychological concept is 'cognitive dissonance' which means that if we act in a way that is not in accordance with our thoughts, our beliefs actually change, in order to make our acts not be contradictory to our  thoughts, which would cause us to feel distressed. This can be a negative thing- but in our case, very positive. Many times we look away from something we shouldn't see, or hold back from something we shouldn't do, and we think to ourselves- who am I kidding, I'm no tzadik, for this one time I look away, I look so many other times. But you know what? - its untrue. Every act builds a small connection in our brain which says- I'm not the guy who looks at that- we've built a backward lech lecha process. By becoming, even in act, who we want to, we have inherently left the past we were accustomed to. We find that by having filled ourselves with positivity of focusing on a davar shebikdusha (I.e. Think of hashems name, something else enjoyable, k'dusha or just distraction), we have achieved an automatic lech lecha, because our mind is now trained and is in a new place, having left the negativity behind. I should add, for singles like myself, when I say negativity, I don't mean that sex is a negative thing. Quite the opposite. It is because it is such a powerful form of kedusha, and bond in relationships, with spouses, as well as hashem, that there is such room for misuse of sexual acts. It is a gift that we have thew ability to work on such areas, which then can enhance our relationship with our spouse, and leave a negative past to enhance our relationship with hashem. It may feel tedious and difficult, but let's recognize it for the gift it is. We get to work on ourselves in such a difficult area, which moves us to new unreached heights. The views are breathtaking. I think were lucky - or rather blessed, to have the ability to perfect ourselves in this struggle. Hashem as given us a wonderful opportunity to draw close to him. That is absolutely awesome.

All I can say-  keep your distance from Manhattan until December. And think twice about going then. If you take this as a suggestion to go I'll be extremely annoyed. Seriously, do not make me come down there, you don't want to see me angry.

Oh, and whoever's in charge here, can you do something about my "newbie" status? Here's twenty bucks, just make it go away.

shmiras wrote on 29 Jun 2010 01:52:


Hey Shmiras,

Your "newbie" status changes automatically when you reach 50 posts, so hold on to that twenty bucks and keep posting. 

Great

feel free to head to manhattan whenever you like. your profile pic looks dangerous

shmiras, your thread is so inspiring. Keep it up!

P.S. No, marriage doesn't help at all. If anything, it makes it harder. So get it under control NOW.

Have you read the handbooks? It's all in there 

Hello guard,

Wow, Im really looking forward to the bigger struggle   (al tiftach peh, bli ayin hara, chas v'shalom etc.)

I went through the handbooks when they came out, but havent been through them in quite some time.

Why does marriage make things more difficult? I am discussing it with 'installed' over in the posting "singles - were in a different boat". Doesn't having a healthy outlet get it out of the system somewhat? Is it more difficult only if there is a lack of shalom bayis or always? I think singles need a lot of hadracha as to the mechanics of marriage and what it does in these areas and why.

Thanks

Help! I think im developing an addiction to GYE forums. Seriously, if theres a website for me to work through this it would be really helpful  ;D I find myself checking the forums throughout the day and its seriously interfering with my life. Especially tayva.

shmiras wrote on 04 Jul 2010 07:28:

AWMAYN!! Thanks for the bracha. May it come true, and may we all know how to use it wisely when it does.

great stuff thanks for the great chizuk ,

i saw here on the forum somewere ,what do we learn from pincus , so he teaches us to take the yh that builds big Illusions in our mind that we think is a big mountin and put a whole tru it and all the hot air comes rushing out of it .stab it kill it degrade it and it will wash away ,its all a dream we have to wake up and see the real world ,what is good and what is bad