Uri, the reason it's so hard for you is because you are struggling with something much more powerful than you. We addicts can't struggle with lust. We can only "let go" of it completely. We can't afford to even give lust the time of day. We addicts can't even afford to "work on this area" or try and "change the way we think". It's far too hard for us to focus on "the problem". The only way to succeed is to STOP living in the problem and live in the SOLUTION. Lust is all "me centered". It's all about me. The solution is to live for others, to live for Hashem. We need to train our minds, that when we start to feel lust, we just laugh and say "hey, what can you expect from an addict?" and then painlessly switch "channels" to a channel of "giving" and "gratitude". To think what we can do for the person we want to "take" from, to daven for them to have everything good. To think of all the blessings we have in life, to feel gratitude to Hashem, to think about what can we do FOR Hashem, for others, and to make ourselves more useful to others... We need to change our mode of thinking to "giving, love and gratitude", instead of the "me centered getting" mode that breeds the lust.
By changing the way we think and the things we do - in the SOLUTION, we find that problem goes away by itself!! What I mean to say is, we can't fix the problem. Forget it, it's way too strong. But when we live in the SOLUTION, the problem AUTOMATICALLY goes away...
All this "struggling" with the Yetzer Hara and "working on ourselves" - that's for OTHERS. That's NOT FOR ADDICTS. We cannot deal with lust at all. We need to completely bypass it. And only when we recognize that we are addicts, that we are ill, that we cannot deal with lust AT ALL, and we agree to surrender it to Hashem and GIVE IT UP COMPLETELY - ONLY THEN can we find true freedom!!
Our mind tells us that if we stop lusting, if we don't feed our lust, life will be much less fun... But our mind is LYING to us. It is the OPPOSITE! It is ONLY when we finally GIVE UP on struggling with lust and LET GO of it, that we will finally find true freedom and happiness.
But we can only do this "one day at a time". We can't "let go of lust" for life. It's too hard to think in such terms. We can, however, decide that today we are completely letting go of our "right" to lust. Today we won't give lust the time of day.
(This Yesod I learned from Dov, and I think it is the best advice I ever heard).
