Shkoiach.

KOKO!
(Keep On Kochvei Ohr-ing!!!!!)

Next shtikel
interesting point. not sure what the chizzuk is yet.
Reb Itzele says that the svara should be that it is easier to have charata on an aveira than it is to make a kabala on the future to no longer be oiver the aveira. because after the fact you no longer are fighting the yezer harah, but for the future you know you will be fighting the YH so it should be harder.
But in reality we see that it is the opposite. We find that it is easier to make a decision to stop (How many times did we try that before coming to GYE) while having real genuine charata for the past seems impossible.
His explanation (Bekitzur) is that once we sin twice it becomes like mutar to us, and therefore to have charata is to erase the feeling that it is muttar and go back to when we really felt that it was assur.
But as far as a kabala for the future, just as we can easily make a kabala for a midas chasidus that we didn't have to keep until now, so too when we make a kabala for an aveira that has become like muttar, we are feeling that even though it is like muttar we will still stop.

Gee i relate to this vort so well. I feel like I am the biggest tzaddik because i didn't watch porn or act out for six months. My fall the other day? NU Nu . I have done much worse. I am still a tzaddik. I guess I have to work on bringing myself back to how I thought about looking at porn before the first time I was oiver on it.
Maybe, one day. In the meantime I am still working on stopping.

(i posted this on 2 other threads, wanna get the message out)

i would like to share a sentiment that i saw in mishpacha magazine...

because of my struggles with sa and ssa, many times i would look up to hashem and ask, WHY ME? why do i have this problem? what is the reason? i saw a peice in mishpacha that had a great impact on me...

sorala krigsman was a great woman who unfortunately died young. while she was sick, her son asked her,"mommy, why you?". she responded, "When I first started dating and immediately found the love of my life, I didn't ask 'why me?'. When I became pregnant in the first year of marriage when so many of our friends struggled for years to conceive, I didn't ask 'why me?'. When I was fortunate enough to never struggle financially as my husband was blessed to be making a good living, I didn't ask 'why me?'. When my older children got married with the same ease and started their own beautiful families, I didn't ask 'why me?'. So I'm not going to start asking now!"

everything hashem does is for our good, just in our feeble mindsets we sometimes can not see it. if we look back on our lives then we will realize all the greatness hashem has bestowed upon us.

for me, even though i have sa and ssa, im not gonna ask "why me?" anymore. did i ask "why me?" when my wheelchair-bound friend died and i am healthy? did i ask "why me?" when i was named captain of an international science project? did i ask "why me?" when i am a sensitive, caring person with a lot of friends? am i going to ask "why me?" now? no of course not.

a moshul to this is about a poor person who won the megamillions, he was so overjoyed that he climbed to a roof of a building and threw down dollar bills to the passerby. because everyone was busy collecting, no one noticed him. he began to throw 20 dollar bills, but that just increased that havoc of the collectors. finally, he threw rocks. then everyone noticed him.
not to say we understand the ways of hashem, but sometimes when there's something that we are dealing with that is very painful, it may just be a wake-up call.

rosh hashana is tonight and we will be begging for mercy from hashem, if we realized the true magnitude of our ineptitude in relative to the greatness of hashem, our tefillos will have even extra meaning. hashem doesn't owe us anything and yet he still showers us with brachos, even in dark times.

we should all take inspiration from a great woman and hopefully this will be the last rosh hashana before the geulah.

heard a nice thought
העבר חלומות
העתיד דמיונות
וההוה נסיונות

unanumun wrote:

Hi Una,

I have a question on this. I have heard from my Rav the concept (I forgot where he got it from) that sometimes we don't have a ratzon, but we wish we had a ratzon, i.e. we want to want, and that too is called wanting.
I want to suggest applying this to kabala lehaba.
If I was c"v onetime nichshal in kashrus, that's foreign territory, and I would expect of myself to make an iron-clad azivas hachet and kabala lehaba.
But if it's an aveira that I have been nichshal in repeatedly over an extended period of time, it's not realistic that I am one day going to turn over a new leaf and be a new person. It will take time, and a gradual process of change. I guess it's possible to do it the other way, but very uncommon.
So I am making an ironclad kabala lehaba to commit myself to this extended process.

Just the 2 cents of an am ha'aretz. Does this sound like emes to you? Perhaps we're even saying the same thing.

I think you might be misunderstanding the concept of kabola lehaba and how it differs from azivas hachet.
Azivas hachet is stopping to do it. Not wanting to stop and not hoping to stop.
I think (and I believe that this is part of the of Reb itzile's yesod) that kabola lehaba is worthless of you haven't actually done azivas hachet. In other words, if you are mekavel that you will no longer do an aveira that you are still doing on a regular basis, it is obvious that being mekavel not to do it is not a real kabalah.
Only once you actually stop doing the aveirah can you make such a kabala. (And then the point is, if you already stopped doing the aveira what is the point of a kabala? And the answer is, it is a din in teshuva like viduy is)
You are not really referring to a kabala lehaba in its truest sense. You are looking it as a commitment. Yes you can commit to try. But lechoyra that is not the kabala lehaba of Teshuva.
If you were nichshal one time in kashrus, then you probably have the charata and azivas hachet as an automatic reaction. In which case the kabala is a valid kabala lehaba.
In your latter example, you are not making a kabala to no longer do the aveira. You are making a kabbala to be active in recovery (or stopping to do the aveira). Like in our case if one was mekabel to post on GYE every day for example (a bad example because rarely do we see such a commitment followed up on) or to join a daily call, then that is a kabala to make the call or post. It is not a kabbala to stop acting out or lusting.
It is a requirement for charata and azivas hachet it is not a kabbala.

Are you saying that if you have an ingrained habit, the 4 parts of teshuva per the Rambam are not in your "choice box". All you can do is be mekabel to start the recovery process, so that one day you will be able to do a complete azivas hachet.

This is not only for lust, it may be even more true for an ingrained habit like Lashon Hora which doesn't have the same guilt factor.

it is in your choice box. but it takes work azivas hachet and charata don't come easy. that is the main avoda of teshuva. teshuva is a mitzvah that is difficult to do.
after those two are accomplished then the other two come easy. (the only chiddush is kabala. viduy is obvioisly easy)
maybe the work is a hechsher mitzva.