o man todays email sucks.
shver.

Uri, with all the pain you wrote before about your parents and your situation, I thought Yechidah's piece would talk to you... Maybe it was too long and you didn't read it well? It's beautiful. Read it again.

Yechida once wrote me that he doesn't think they'll let him into Uri's 4 Amos one day in Olam Ha'emes, when the truth of what you went through and overcame is revealed to all...

Uri, looks like you started cutting and pasting directly from your brain!

BTW, regarding a post 50,000 words ago--we drink Shmuel Adams here.

Yesterday,
All my troubles seemed so far away,
Now it looks as though they're here to stay,
Oh, I believe in yesterday.

Suddenly,
I'm not half the man I used to be,
There's a shadow hanging over me,
Oh, yesterday came suddenly.

Why she
Had to go I don't know, she wouldn't say.
I said,
Something wrong, now I long for yesterday.

Yesterday,
Love was such an easy game to play,
Now I need a place to hide away,
Oh, I believe in yesterday.

Why she
Had to go I don't know, she wouldn't say.
I said,
Something wrong, now I long for yesterday.

Yesterday,
Love was such an easy game to play,
Now I need a place to hide away,
Oh, I believe in yesterday.

There are places I remember
All my life, though some have changed
Some forever not for better
Some have gone and some remain
All these places had their moments
With lovers and friends
I still can recall
Some are dead and some are living
In my life I've loved them all

But of all these friends and lovers
there is no one compares with you
And these memories lose their meaning
When I think of love as something new
Though I know I'll never lose affection
For people and things that went before
I know I'll often stop and think about them
In my life I love you more

Though I know I'll never lose affection
For people and things that went before
I know I'll often stop and think about them
In my life I love you more
In my life I love you more

Hi Uri - I'm gonna let someone else edit that one, and while the appropriate folks are getting out the Windex, get out your trusty little dovish Jastrow thing and enjoy your very own, private (chizzuk?) email, in green!:

I don't buy the "I am doing this to get attention," thing. Sorry. Actually...no, not sorry!
Of course it feels great to get attention and positive feedback, but I feel strongly that the good stuff that you do is getting derailed by the great demon: ASSociated pleasURe. Who gave you ruach hakodesh to know what your true pivotal motivation is? Do you have all that much self-honesty and clarity yet?
I don't know, but I'd bet that the pivotal motivation for much of the stuff you (and we all) do is to feel connected to something even greater than you - to others and to Goodness. Not "being loved", but Loving. The Hope that we all see that "maybe, just maybe there is something worthwhile in me and out there", is what. The love and attention we get is really just a really nice side-effect. Almost everything has side-effects, right? They are planted there to help people do them more often. Like chesed. Hashem wanted it to feel good, but that's not it's purpose. It's purpose was to give us a chance to realize we are actually like G-d. And that connection is the best it gets.

"Coincidentally", another thing that we naturally crave for the experience of connection past ourselves that it offers is also accompanied by a pleasant side-effect, and chazal spell out for us that it was added to it in order to encourage folks to keep doing it. When it's power was weakened by chazal (like the desire for avodah zara was), people (and chickens) stopped procreating...right? Again: just a side-effect.

A major part of our disease is our innocent but stupid tendency to completely confuse pleasant side-effects with the main objective itself - where the main pleasure rests. 

So I don't buy your anti-altruistic angst. You, of all people, are filled by giving to others. All the addicts I know have double-helpings of that "love-sickness". So, to heck with me. What can we do for eachother?
- another lucky Uri fan 

Wow Dov, just when I thought I knew everything you had to say.
Now, for me, you need to spell things out clearly and simply, in big letters (Guard sometimes does it for me, and sometimes Bardy.)
Are you saying that the true nature of addiction to this stuff is the need to give to others, being misplaced?
It sounds too simple.
Lets all join Tomchei Shabbos and be free of this.
But, I think that the Baal Shem Tov says something like this on "chesed hu".
Thanks,
kutan.

R' Dov, that post deserves memorizing.
Its the exact  opposite from what Ive heard elsewhere, but makes much more sense to my neshama than other explanations.
I once asked Rav Shlachter and he said the alterior motives are the real motivators eg praise, feel good etc.
Thank you!

Uri, this is by far the saddest thread...

kutan shel hachabura wrote on 06 Dec 2009 21:48:

Kutan,
First off, it's not me. It was first brought to my attention in the chapter on the 4th step in "12 Steps & 12 Traditions". And, lehavdil, the Gm' in A.Z. spelled out the reason the Borei added ta'avo into sexuality. And lehavdil again, having to learn how to train a dog taught me operant conditioning (which is natural): all gufim naturally learn to do the stuff they are "supposed" to do because the behaviors are associated with pleasure. It's not about right or wrong, it's just inescapable reality. Of course, it's not the only way to learn what to do, but perhaps it's the easiest. Rav Noach, zt"l built his whole "5 Levels of Pleasure" thing on this, and also said that we liberally use rituals ("say thank-you to the man, yankleleh", b'rachos, etc.) in yiddishkeit to encourage learning healthy behavior - and he warned us to remember that the ritual is not the tachlis but only a heicha timtzi to become people who live with natural gratitude, humility, etc., otherwise our davening and mitzvos eventually become empty. Our young people see right through the charade and get sick to their stomachs, of course...and we wonder why they are "going off the derech"...what derech? They'd respond: "the derech to what?"...(but I digress)
Messilas Yeshorim says it in his hakdomah, when he writes that while we were created for pleasure, we are tricked to accept petty and temporary pleasures rather than going for the Big One.
Now, all that "higher pleasure" stuff was just "the phooey mubo-jumbo, goody-goody stuff that greaseballs were made of" to me, until I got sacked by lust addiction and ended up in the toilet.
From down here, b"H, the view is a bit different, even being out of the toilet....
It ain't so bad, actually, especially going with you, Uri, Guard, and the rest of the sweet GYE-maniacs.
So, yeah, that's it. Sometimes it just takes a really big ego-breaker like addiction and recovery to really admit that we really are that stupid to go for the pretty box, instead of after what's inside. Ha!

dov wrote on 06 Dec 2009 23:16:


Dov,
So I understand you correctly in that recovery means finding enjoyment in the giving to others. But please explain the last part you wrote, quoted above. How did ending up in the 'toilet' of lust addiction teach you that this is really real and not just goody-goody greaseball stuff?

(Uri, I know you HATE having your thread hijacked into discussion of some side point... especially just when you make some really emphatic statements. Its happened before...
Can I beg your indulgence? consider it a  chessed to kutan :D ;D)

Like Dov posted so beautifully, it's all about ego, ego, ego... or as Uri would say, letting go of "control" (which is the same thing, by the way).

I apologize to the whole chevra here for last night's miserable performance.
I am having a very hard time now that I am letting go of control and I am feeling alot of pain and fear and insecurity.
I am,unfortuantely,lashing out at the only people who can actualy help me out of fear of trust and love,and feel the urge to run from everything constantly.
I have been attempting to take control of my fears and life and it is getting me nowhere as usual,just hurting me.
I have been resisting the control of authority on all fronts(as usual) and I will try to behave better in the future.

Apologetic and fragile
-uri

We forgive you, now forgive yourself!

it's ok...
we all worry about you either way.

it's hard to let go of control.
there's bound to be some crazy stuff going on when you really try to fix yourself.

it's ok.