Dov wrote on 17 Nov 2015 18:31:
Beautiful post, man. And I'd like to clarify what guarding613 refers to...
The danger in SA is not from 'SA' itself. Rather, it is from the honesty of the people in the rooms. What the Kotzker would plotz for a crumb of, is in plenty in SA meetings.
And that's actually poisonous for many people who don't really need to be honest with themselves. Some may say that's bad, some may say it's good, some may say "They ought to tone down their honesty in meetings so that more of us normal people can visit." But normal people don't come to SA meetings. Normal people really don't need the honesty. Being open about exactly what they have done is unnecessary! Since they are not addicts, they can actually get along OK by sweeping it under the rug...until Elul and Yom Kippur comes along, at least. And I am happy about that. It works for them.
For addicts, it just does not work. That's the only reason we do otherwise - we are not in recovery for Hashem. We are honest and know we are in recovery for our own sake. Even if a proven Novi came and gave a hora'as sho'oh that we should all masturbate or use porn, recovering sexaholics like myself would not do it. We know we'd be completely p'turim from it. Sure we may have as much yir'as Shomayim as a non-addict...but the tum'ah or sinfulness of it is not what we focus on any more. That's for normals. For us, we know we did it for years over and over even though we knew it was assur! And we knew that using the yetzer hora/Teshuvah model we stopped successfully!
...hundreds of times.
Torah was definitely the way to stop, for us.
And to stop again.
And again.
Finally, we had to come to terms with the fact that playing a 'yetzer hora game' was a thing we had to outgrow if we were to have any hope of staying stopped. That is why even if porn and masturbation were somehow mitzvos, we addicts alone still couldn't use them. For a real addict, stopping cannot be for G-d. Even if we'd be doing it for G-d, it'd still be for someone else - sorry. It only works when it is for him or herself. Enlightened self-interest, as the Big Book calls it.
The 'dangerous' people they refer to in SA meetings are just honest people, bH. We sexaholics who attend those meetings every week (or more often) have finally found a precious place where we can practice self-honesty by continually opening up truly to others. Can't do that in yeshiva, can't do it in shul. We found a place to tell the truth without shame and judgement by others, b"H - as the Rebbe R Elimelech of Lizhensk suggested to all normal (non-addict) people to find for themselves. Most of us tried that...and just found people even more confused about lust and sexuality that we were. We found well-meaning people who advised us to 'grow up already', to 'use our self-control', to 'learn more Tanya' (I was advised that), to 'distract ourselves', etc., etc. All the while protecting us from ourselves by encouraging us not to be fully honest and open for concerns of nivul peh, 'tzniyus', etc. They let us get away with just describing our problem as 'shmiras eynayim' or 'zera levatola'...in the mean time we were busy having trance-like, ritualized love affairs with naked images, fantasy sex characters, or real ones...or at least, completing the fantasies using our hands. Things were far uglier and bigger than a 'wasting sperm' issue. Nu. Some even encouraged us to keep hiding behind fake names, usernames, or told us that remaining completely secret from all real people was called 'anonymity', when it really was something else. It was hiding. Only by coming out in a safe place did we find we could start getting free, be"H.
So SA meetings are not for anyone who still needs to hide - or can tolerate hiding. I figure they should probably keep doing that...till they can't any longer. Then they will be ready and will go to it and be fine.
Bump
