Thank you all for your right insight.
I will point my own oppinion.
Indeed, I don't know how many times we have named porn related problems as an "ADDICTION".
Me, through my personal experience, I've come to name it as "AN ERROR WIDELY REPEATED".
Yes, AN ERROR, you can call it whatever way it can fit more to you: an error, a flaw, a defect, a mistake, an imperfection, or whatever.
It is not an addiction, but an error repeated on and on and on and on....
If it is not so, think about the first time you entered into porn. At that far-distant point it was by no means what you consider an addiction, no other time had occurred before, it was only your lust desire at that moment.
But, nevertheless you fell.
ERROR, it was your first ERROR.
You fell for the first time.
After that, you made that error again and again.
You repeated that frame again and again, once and again.
The second time was not different to the first one, neither the third one, nor the fourth, nor the fifth, nor any.
You only repeated that error again and again.
For that reason, as simple as it can sound, we must release ourselves from that burden that we inflict upon ourselves, the guilt that we are under an addiction, because certaintly, we are not.
Only that way we can come out of this bottomless pit in which we now are immersed.

Secondly, we must consider why LUST, PORN and LEWDNESS CRAVINGS are all an error as mentioned earlier.
That is simply because our fleshy bodies and thinking minds are all parts of our God-nature.
Yes, our God-nature is perfect and satisfactory, as the very GOD is.
Lust, lewdness, sex cravings, sex euphoria, sex passion, sex dementia, insanity, animal instint, unstoppable curiosity for sex, all are degenerative and draw us very far away from reality, which is our deep communion with God.
Yes, not contact with God, not only adhesion to His principles, but true and genuine presence of God in our bodies, as an only flesh.
Only by realizing that undoubted fact, which must be beyond any question, only by feeling the Godly nature inside us, as we were created at His image and likeliness, only by means of it we will be able to throw away, to cast off, to expel impure, repugnant and bothersome behaviours.
In that way we will not allow to nest inside us such aberration and degeneration, such lust and rottenness.
Sound judgement and deep believe in God teachings is a proven and sure path to our happiness, which in our case only can come by the overcoming of what is not from God, not from us.
If any doubt arises, I always resort to the same saying:
THE ONLY REASON FOR GOOD IS GOOD ITSELF, THE ONLY REASON FOR BAD IS BAD ITSELF.
It never fails.

Machshovo Tova wrote:


Hey MT, got it...and appreciated...even the nittel thingy.

Chaza"l tell us it's a good idea to run from [the] sin the way one runs from [the] fire - "k'boreyach min ha'eish."

The meaning is obvious to all those who are not addicted. To the majority, regular Jews who now and then fall and masturbate to porn for the normal reason: it feels great, and the desire is there for feeling good things.

Chaza"l advise him to run from the sin - meaning, the sin he already knows ('hei' hayediya), the same way he'd run from a fire (he has seen fire before, and it's scary, hurts and even kills people, etc). He remembers from the last time he got physically burned by a hot stove or pot, that he does not run from fire with a cheshbon, but it's visceral - he just runs...even if it's embarrassing and makes him look weak. It's an instinct. So they say we can try to react to sin the same way we do to fire.

And Teshuva was made for him or her, b"H, and life can go on and get better, even after he falls. Gedolah kochah shel Teshuvah.

OK.

But for the addict, for whom Teshuvah does virtually nothing - or often just makes him even worse (see the Nuclear Reset Botton) - I'd like to suggest a drushy way to apply that Chaza"l, too:

When a person has a fire that's outside him, he can run from it. But an addict is a person whose real issue is not the fire 'out there'. He will sincerely blame and 'deplore' the internet - and then discovers that all the filters in the world do not save him from himself! He may sincerely blame and 'deplore' shiksas and 'the schmutz' - but discovers that by dehumanizing those people he just makes them more like the sex toys he desires them to be! Eeverything he tries backfires. When it comes to sex and lust, he is just a bit of a nut-case. Lusting and/or struggling with lust is part of his lifestyle. It really sucks to be this way if one is frum - especially maried...I know. He has an exhausting double-life. It actually makes little difference for him if he happens to be clean or dirty on a given day, for he is wrestling with porn or viewing women or obsessing about his penis, anyway! The obsession is still there. And why is that? Because the main fire he 'runs from' is on him already. He cannot pretend it is 'out there', to get it off of him.

What happens to one who is actually on fire and runs? He burns even worse.

The firefighters tell us that a person on fire R"l, has a single eitza: Stop, Drop, and Roll.

Step 1= STOP: I have no choice in the matter any more. I must stop acting out my lust now because this way of being is making my life unmanageable - meaning I cannot continue this crazy way of living another day, or even another hour and that is docheh Shabbos, marriage, family, my job, everything. I must stop but I am powerless to...because:

Step 2= DROP: I am obviously sick in the head in some sublte way. I got myself in this mess to begin with - and yes, by using my very best thinking for years and years! Of all people in the world among Jews and gentiles, I am obviously the very last person who could ever save myself from this (ein chavush matir atzmo m'beis ha'asurim). I need a Power far greater than anything I have got right now...for, after all, I got here with everything I already have!

Step 3= ROLL: Take some real (=uncomfortable) and humble steps to practice turning (turning is kinda like rolling, no? OK, that's the really drushy part) his life over to a Power greater than anything he currently has.

Not to turn his porn or masturbation habit over to it...but his real life. The way he lives right here and now, today. The 3rd step of AA says nothing about turning my drinking over to the care of this Power. It talks of turning my life over to It's care, for it can surely do a better job than I can, based on my history. Cuz the addicts problem is not his alcohol or his penis - it is his life itself. The fire is on him. He has powers greater than himself that lead him to insanity. He needs a different Power. One that will bring him to sanity, instead. The powers he fashions actually do not work. He needs something better.

So he needs to turn over - while still on the ground of steps 1&2, without getting up - ever.

The day he gets up, he fails. Like the metzora who is entirely covered with tzora'as is tahor...until he discovers a small area that is fleshy and free of tzora'as ("I think I've got this addiction figured out!") - then he will find he is (very) tamei.

Wow...that megillah came out in installments at a break of work, at lunch, and after work; kind of cooking in me all day and slowly spilling out. May someone find it useful.

It was useful for me; damn useful, as a matter of fact.

Thanks friend!

Dov thanks!
very useful for my soul
specialy the last bit of the day we get up we fall

Hello guys again.
Just to make you know that I keep on my recovery and that I am more successful now.
If all of us in this site were asked about why we are here, I think everyone would answer because we want to get rid of our despair, desperation, struggle, fight, grieving, anguish, moaning, etc.
But one thing that I suppose we never would want to dispose of, would be lust itself.
Because it satisfies us, indulges us, pleases us.
How hard it is to get rid of something that ultimately pleases us!!!
I would say to those who still keep struggling with lust, that lust and lewdness are a mere ILLUSION, nothing that we need in our lifes, nothing necesary to life.
That is so because we ourselves are designed, setted for success, not for failure.
Yes, lust exists, temptation exists, but they don't fit with success, with triumph.
They are not part of this life, they are a mere illusion. THEY ARE NOTHING. THEY ARE NOTHING.
Nor they are DESSIRE, PASSION, ECSTASYS, HEAT, VOLUPTUOSITY...
That is the beginning of everything, that is life itself, that is the main teaching of God. Remember the story of Adan and Eve. It always enlighten me a lot.
They had everything, their lifes were extremely happy, but they dessired to be better than God, they got tempted buy their own dessire, their own passion, their own way. And they failed, they sentenced themselves, they lost everything.
All of that because they didn't realize they were bound from the beginning of creation for triumph, for success, for self-fulfilment.
They heard the voice of what is not from this world, they heard the voice of illusion, they heard the voice of what seemed to be a triumph, the perspective to be better than God.
And actually, they failed, God is unerring, and so is his way.
Every lust craving, unrestrained dessire, longing for sex ecstasy is not part of this world, part of the GODLY purpose of our life on earth, part of our own pattern.
Yes, Adan and Eve passage is indeed the root of our existence in this world.
The teaching is this: PASSION, DESSIRE, LUST ARE NOTHING. Nothing to even take a glance at them. We are bound to triumph, not to please ourselves with those vanities, even as unmanegeable as they can arise.
Hard and tough, isn't it?
Not so much, because certainly they are not part of you, they are outsiders.
Go out and about right now and take pride of yourself and your guiding God.
Because whether you want it of not, everyone of us is designed for restraining passion and dessire.
As certain as that if we do not eat, we die.
We are certainly designed to eat.
May we all grow in holiness.

God made us with lust.
It is real.
Some received extra portions.
Some got it along the way.
To believe otherwise is dillusional.

Bhatzlachah

Yes, cordnoy, God made us with lust. I am with you.
He also made us with wickedness and evil.
But that doesn't mean we can behave viciously.
There must be a measure of self-restrain in all of our actions.
It must be so because He made us for self-fulfilment on Earth, not to let ourselves go after mundane passions.
To let oneself be carried by those mundane passions is disillusional.

pomodoro wrote:


I don't really get it but that's fine.

The thank you was for the disillusional.

Today I have found myself again browsing the internet in search of new nude images.
Nevertheless, in the last recent months I've been experiencing a tendency towards an improvement in my sex-related problems, and now I roughly relate.
Never had I imagined that the way of getting out of this painful world could be something in no way related to the traditional methods, which are praying and spiritual contact with God (which are completely valid too).
It is to consider women as what they really are, human beings placed there to meet our honourable expectations.
As a kind of test, I've downloaded on my cellular phone some images of women who are inspiring to me, who are beautiful to me. Not undressed, not bare but dressed.
Now I look to them to her face, because no nude part is exposed to me and I understand how worthy they are, how worth they have.
I've come to consider every woman by the value she has, as a woman, not as a nude woman, but as the opposite, feminine sex who are here in real life to be talked and approached to, to be considered by me with attention and affection, genuine affection and interest towards that person.
Yes, all these women I've been previously watching inch by inch in so many years of struggling with porn, they have tought to me how much I appreciate them by the only fact that I am a man and they are a woman.
Now I try to show a genuine regard to them and I look to them as persons, not as unclothed figures of excitation.
In this way, porn and nudity are meaningless, out of context and a non-sense.
So much porn eventually ended up in appreciate the real sense of the opposite sex.
Women are in this world to be adressed and approached to by us in the right direction, not to be denied and then to be enjoyed and taken as some savage beasts for our pleasure.
It is the way I view women now, and that is the way I find real freedom, and by means of it I think everyone can find real freedom.
I want now to feel free and find time and energy to live a better and meaningful life.
One last thing I would like to tell to those who struggle, and that I repeat to myself frequently in my personal fight is TO PORN YOU GET IN, AND FROM PORN YOU GET OUT WITHOUT A DOUBT, and finally EVERY LITTLE STEP COUNTS.

Hi

Is your truck low on gas?

What tools have you been using until today

It's been a while pom, what's up? It seems as if you're still struggling.

Markz, simply the tools I've been using until today are this forum, a supporting wife who knows about my struggle (but, naturaly in no way accepts it), plenty of time to think over, and mainly trying to lead a natural, normal life with the opposite sex.
Porn, lustfull images and explicit sex and temptation are neither natural nor normal.
It is the reason why we feel so compelled to resort to them. It is the thrill of mixing in something out of this world.
Women in themselves are significant enough in real world, without showing any kind of nudity, and they deserve our honest attention and respect as a whole.
They deserve to be deatl with honestly and with real attention towards them.

Is your problem women or is your problem you? You seem to be answering questions about the value of women. In my experience the problem never lied anywhere but it my own brain.

When will be the glory of the moment wherein we understand that the ecstasy, the heating and the search for sexual pleasure are such bad things for us...
It isn't "part of this world".
It isn't part of the purpose and funtion by which we live in this world.
Those who don't stick to this fact are condemned to live miserable on earth.

pomodoro wrote on 16 Oct 2014 21:14:




Hello PD, I would like to say a few things.
1. You are doing good. One Second At A Time is what I say.
2. Temptation is human nature. The tree of knowledge was tempting to Eve, and because of it, she caused herself and Adam to sin. Tell yourself "Today, I will NOT be like Adam and Eve."
3. Keep up the great work. If you need anything, please PM me or chat me if i'm online.

Shmuly