B"H

I recently attempted the Taphsic method and was successful for several days. Unfortunately, most recently I had a fall without doing the things that I vowed to do before falling, thus requiring me to do the "heavey" knas i had picked. Unfortunately (surprised I forgot something like this) I didn't write down the things that I decided to do for the heavy knas. I am almost certain I know what they are but not 100%. I also do not live close to a beis bin (like maybe 4 or 5 hours drive) I think that I said I would give 200 tzedaka and fast for two days straight, but it may have been 300. Also, my second concern was that (I'm not bucky on halachos of nedarim) if I fell and had to do the heavy knas, does that mean I was motzai shaim havayah? Thanks.

P.s I'm also worried because I don't know of any tikkun for being motzai sheim havayah and it's fairly terrifying.

Try one of the phone-in rabbonim for what to do.

So how many times have you masturbated yourself so far in your lifetime?

E-tek: whats the number for the rabbonim?

Dov: Certainly enough to completely outweigh this avera I'm writing about. I just have never made an outright nedar using shaim havaya before and am just concerned. But I see (I think) where you're going, and your probably right.

Try this: Lakewood Beis Hora'ah
1-877-451-2021
The hours are 8:30 -9:30 AM EST and 3PM -8 PM EST Sun to Thurs. Fridays are 8:30 AM to 10 AM EST and two varying hours in the afternoon.

It would be better if whomever you ask knows you (for 90% of shailos). If you don't have someone now, go ahead and asei lecha rav.
I was addressing your question; Dov is addressing your life. I would suggest you may not be ready for taphsic. Read the materials, etc. Someone will hopefully give you the welcoming speech soon.
Welcome!
Meir

Yeshurun wrote on 26 Jun 2012 17:18:


My main pont is that you are speaking in generalities, that's all. You may feel like you are opening up here beyond your wildest dreams...but really you are still holding the truth about yourself - the details about your problem - close to the vest.

So I ask in order to give you a chance to get 'real' here on this fake, virtual 'conversation':

So what is the truth about you and your problem? How many times have you masturbated yourself? Start with this month, and then since you started it all a few years ago. And is masturbation it? Are there hours of pornography, too? Or how about porn in the mind - are you fantasizing about sex scenes or women in your mind every day?

If you are, or if you have a porn habit or had one and now are left with the fantasy tape playing whenever you want a little comfort...then why is your TaPhsic about the masturbation? Masturbating and zera levatolah are the last thing in a long line of your behavior, really. Why put a shevuah on the end-game - you and I both know that you have very little (if any) freedom of choice by that point. Right? That is an unfair shevuah, and actually a little childish.

Why not make your shevuah about looking up porn and leave the masturbation to the back burner for now? Or why isn't your shevuah about about the fantasy in your head or the looking you do - then at least the process will be honestly about your true problem instead of only about the 'end game'. To say that Hashem is a guy with a rule book checking you off in the black book for the koreis stuff (spilling your seed) - but basically just rolling his eyes (ignoring) your fingering through the sweet porn in your eyes and imagination...that is putting Hashem in a box.

We put dead people in boxes. G-d is not in a box.

Do you hear what I am saying now?

Hatzlocha with the real fight: the one that is for you. Hashem will certainly accept you in exchange for a little sperm. Your life is probably sick all over, man. It's you He wants to save, not your sperm, my friend. And yet instead here you are making the big stink about an aveirah? This is ikkar choser min hasefer!

Does anyone here get this?

Dov

YUP!! :D

Then hatzlocha running with it, man!

Very direct and correct on all accounts. I appreciated your frankness and as hindsight always seems to be i definitely see why that shvuah was doomed to failure. I am by no means a master of self accounting but enumerating my averios would need to be done in such a way that didn't create the ever so unhelpful false regret/fake feeling of teshuvah which only serve to permit future averios. You are also starting to far down the line and assuming that I search then get an urge, but it always (for myself) that the sexual urge or desire (not necessarily attached to any one fantasy or person) appears, followed by the need to fulfill it i.e. on the computer. So how does one guard against something without a specific trigger?

It helps me, when attacked by lustful thoughts, to remind myself that I am not entitled to sexual fantasy. Once I give up that right, it becomes easy(er) to send those thoughts away without dwelling on them or taking further action.
Mottel

Yeshurun wrote on 06 Aug 2012 00:21:


As anyone who knows me well is aware, "trigger" is a word I do not generally use. To me, it is just a trick word that people (unknowingly) use in order to reduce their personal responsibility for acting out. As in, "Hey, I was triggered." Rather, the underlying assumption in 12 steps recovery is the opposite: As far as we are concerned, it is always our fault, period. Davka if we are addicts . Being powerless to control and use lust successfully, we all eventually figure out that we are not like normal people. Normal people can successfully use lust. They can look at a little porn, they can masturbate a little...it does not wreck their lives and mess with their relationships and lifestyles. But addicts always eventually lose control over it and if we take little drinks (because we harbor and nurse our inner lust), we end up taking bigger risks, lying, hiding, and doing things which we would never imagine we'd end up doing. And we do it over and over again. The addict who has taken and 'has' the 1st step admits that he or she is different from normal people - he is powerless. We are sick because we have a progressive, chronic and fatal allergy to lust. Really.

So we can't afford the first drink. Unlike normal people (including yidden), who can. It is not a matter of morality, but of practicality. Enlightened self-interest. I am the only one to blame for my acting out. Trigger, shmigger. Yeah, there are temptations...but what do we do with them is all that matters. The trigger is not the half-naked jogger out there, at all - it is the 'committee in my head' that uses it for my sweet fantasies that is the only problem I have. Personal responsibility. We are not victims forever.

So, I wager your real issue is not your "being triggerred", but just lust itself. Your lust. Like the rest of us, blaming it on the "Yetzer hora" or on "the joggers out there" is just another way to say we blame it on G-d. Your reference point in living the day out, is lust. It may be the main factor that defines a woman's human value to you, it may be the main candy that makes life worthwhile, it may be what you naturally turn to when you feel sad, pain, or hopelessness of learning, business, relationships, religion. You may think you 'have' Hashem...but maybe - just maybe - your more realistic higher power is sweet lust. It is sweet, we all know that it is precious to us - even though we may hate it so much.

That would be my main problem in acting out. It's not the aveira of it, but the insanity it feeds. This issue is about Derech Eretz, not Torah.

See, aveiros are very bad - but they are part of life as an eved Hashem. Kind of like how areguments are part of a marriage - we grow closer through working through them. It's what Teshuvah is for! Sheva yipol tzaddik - vkom. To a mature person, it becomes clear that 'sheva yipol' is not really a b'dieved - it is human reality for you and me and pretty much everybody else. It's the way it is supposed to work...and husbands and wives are supposed to have some trouble and some arguments - it builds a real relationship rather than a fake one that is entirely based on 'being nice'. Otherwise it's no relationship, at all!

Unlike aveiros/fights indifference negates relationships. In the same way, this addict's escape by living a double life built on a foundation of lies and all the subtle crazy-thinking holding it all up...well, that is not avodas Hashem at all - it is like being a shoteh, who is patur. For Hashem does not give Torah and mitzvos to shotim (crazy people) who are halachically just not 'in the game'. In lusting and acting out, my wife and kids 'become' pretty irrelevant (actually quite a pain in my behind), the Torah becomes pretty irrelevant (guilt yes, but 'a problem' to me), my personal safety...same thing. My big plans take front and center for me. I sacrifice them all in some way, shape, or form, to get out and feed my lust.

The problem with my addiction is more about "motzi es ho'odom min ha'Olam" than it is about "motzi zera".

So...triggered - or just lusting?

Dov, as you would say, thank you for your sweet words.

B"H

certainly on the mark as far as lust goes, and a trigger is not really my issue as I said since the trigger can be anything including nothing. definitely when I see something it my mind attaches but it can be all alone and do the same, joggers or no. Without equivocating, I want to work through myself to the real source or choach of this lust and at least subdue it as much as possible. Either through techniques or some kind of system. you have obviously broken your cycle of lust somewhat, what were some initial steps you made?

I got honest with somebody about exactly what the problems I was having were. In other words, exactly what I was doing, how often, the last time I did it and exactly what I did. I finally gave up 'staying safe' and stopped the typical thing I had done for years of going to Rovs or shrinks and telling my sad shame in a bit here and a bit there, like saying "I came to zera levatola many times because of hirhurim, you know...and I want to stop sooo badly..." - that sort of thing was comfortable enough to tolerate for years - but was way too general for me to get real help and get real better.

So I never got better till I let it all go and opened up about it all with a safe person who knows those struggles himself and is clean.

B"H I found someone who was a ba'al nisayon, as it were - so he understood my problem. Going to a Rov for direct guidance with this is great as a start - but if he is unwilling to admit to you that he himself knows what it is like to be lahut acharei porn himself...well, that's like a young catholic couple going to a priest for marriage guidance. Sure, he may have some wisdom from his books of collective wisdom or whetever - but he has never been married! Something is likely missing.

I needed to speak with a Rov I trusted in detail about my problem - and he had the wisdom to tell me he was out of his league! Not all Rabbonim will do that, for they do not want to imply that Torah cannot save everyone - well, actually it is not "Torah", but his Torah. An ego thing, really. The average modern Rov probably knows that he is not k'Shmuel bedoro for everything, and that there may be some who are indeed better qualified than he to help some people. So they send people to doctors, right? And my Rov suggested some kind of real recovery though he did not know what it would look like at the time. I was not ready at the time to hear it, and let it slide for another year while I got worse...but eventually I was ready. Nu.

Finally, when you say "I want to work through myself to the real source or coach of this lust" I want to say that this is further reliance on yourself to fix yourself. But last we checked, it was yourself that got you this messed up in the first place, no? Ein chavush matir es atzmo mibeis ha'asurim (as we learned in yesterdays daf)...

The ego of finally figuring it out, is just a way of saying "...so I will finally beat it". I want to share with you that I and many others have discovered that, for us, understanding will not save us. For the problem is not in the brain, but in the heart and body. They will win. For what really motivates most people (and we great philosophers and theologans in yeshivah usually believe we are the exception) is the emotions and the body. What we actually feel is what we will actually eventually come back to in the end.

That is why the AA's said they came to see that what they needed was nothing short of a miracle. And they believed in G-d enough to ask Him for one. Just for this one day.

So the initial step I made was opening up about all the details to a safe person. And then joining with others just like me who were clean and learning how to stay clean. And learning - by practicing doing it and not by figuring it out - how to stay honesty and grow in my honesty.

Any sacrifice is worth getting the good life.