I don't get these last posts :-(

These old timers (odaat) are too deep for me, out in the deep oceans בכרכי הים

ben durdayah wrote on 17 Jul 2016 12:04:

I was actually wondering that.
When did you guys get ahead? Pesach!?
And we still couldn't catch up?
Sheez!

The discrepancy began with the last day of Pesach (in chu"l) falling on a Shabbos... So Eretz Yisrael has been a week ahead since then, and those of you in the Diaspora will catch up when you read Mattos and Ma'asei together in a couple of weeks. (We will read them separately).

So it's not about an inside GYE "oldtimers" joke. (Unless you toss a possum in for good measure).

Had a nice chat with Dov today.

It's incredible how he makes himself available to us GYEs. 

I will be joining his calls and am IYH starting to write my first step (with a real pen on real paper) over five years after having signed onto GYE the first time.

The forum, as always is just a starting point for many of us, as it is/was for me. It is a very different forum from the one that I discovered in 2010. I have changed too.

I am not one of those guys who you will see posting here, "Argghh, I'm about to fall, quick --- someone give me chizzuk." That's not my struggle. My lust is the kind that simmers on slow boil and then pounces without a fight. If I don't surrender it immediately, I won't post about it either.

My problem is that I need to find a way of living that will mean that I do not need to lust.

One of the key phrases in the Big Book is, "If you want what we have..."

You really have to look for the guys who have what you want. What are you looking for?

The guys who "have what I want" are the ones who started off here, but eventually came to realize that being here on the forum is not enough. How did they realize that? Because posting online just did not keep them sober in the long term. They started working the steps, going to meetings. I'd been to meetings. It did not do much for me because I was not working the steps. 

Now, with G-d's help, I will work one step at a time.

I'll still be posting here though, but my key work in recovery will not be online. For now, I'm trying Dov's phone conference. From listening to his workshops, he has what I want.

Why am I posting this?

Dunno.

Guess I was just looking for something to post. Because keeping this kretchme open as a dynamic, hopping place is very important. Too often people are on again/off again or decide that posting is a waste of time once they have decided to pursue other recovery outlets. 

Bendy I added this thread to my 'favorites' list

KOT!

Markz wrote on 19 Jul 2016 14:00:


 

So watch your baaaack... ;-)

Another heck of a post and heck of a move.

As an aside, there are people who recover just with this site.

cordnoy wrote on 19 Jul 2016 16:37:

Compliment taken, although I actually thought the post to be more of the "ramble" variety than the "heck of a post" variety.

As far as people recovering just with this site... There may very well be some. And then there are the hundreds who have fallen off the grid over the years, including some "superstars" in terms of forum action. Some were never addicts. Some have moved on to other recovery venues. All too many are just riding the merry-go-round and rollercoaster and wallowing in the muck. I believe that a significant portion of these had tasted what the GYE or 12 step programs or Torah and Chizzuk approach -basically, whatever is available here- have to offer, experienced some amount of initial progress or success, and then fizzled out in the long run because they were in need of more --- whether the "more" in question was real work, as I feel it is in my case, or whether it meant that they could not get any farther without less "virtual" contact and more "real" contact. Whatever...

When you look through the threads, you tend to see that people's recovery is progressive just as addiction is progressive.

As far as my "move" is concerned, easier said than done. 

As I told Dov, it has probably been six years (I really calculated this) since I've written anything longer than my signature (with the exception of a ten line thank you letter) with an actual pen and paper. My keyboard is my key writing implement.

But if you're gonna do it, you may as well do it right.

Also, really entering recovery means to shut up and listen, to take advice from people who have been far more successful than yourself as evidenced by the length and quality of their sobriety. So if the bear says pen and paper, pen and paper it'll have to be. After all, my plan has gotten me nowhere but around in circles...

Talk about powerless...

Here I am, first time on Dov's call, and there are some major technical difficulties. At one point, all I hear is static for two minutes straight, and then, when I decide to hang up and call back, the system doesn't let me get back on (unless the whole call got dropped...).

I am powerless. This is G-d's plan for me today. 

It's hafuch al hafuch, pinkt kapoyye fahrkert to get upset when there's a recovery setback due to a power greater than yourself --- whether that power is G-d or a phone system.

Still, it's frustrating.

I was having a good time. Things were heating up into a great discussion...

Nu nu.

Let go and let G-d means as far as this is concerned too.

It must be His will that I get some important work done, although He knows that I have a proclivity towards procrastination (understatement of the year). The truth is that I avoid living my life, and I am on a journey to try and remove the mesachim hamavdilim between me and G-d, so that I can have a personal relationship with Elokai, ve'dok. And through others I have come to believe that this is possible, and probably the only way that I will fully get engaged with life, and start living life to the fullest. 

ben durdayah wrote on 15 Jul 2016 11:07:

I'm reposting this for the sake of you Chutznikim...

Have a great Shabbos everybody!

Just checking in here.

Busy with my first step inventory.

Writing with a real pen on real paper is hard work. I am so not used to it that my hand craps even after a short bit.

I haven't written anything substantial with a real pen and paper (in English, at least) in so many years, that I do not even recognize my own handwriting as my own. I am starting to doubt that Dov's shtickel about "ve'chosam yad kol adam bo" can apply to these sheets of paper at all. Although I must admit that it's a heck of a lot more tangible than pixels on a screen...

Or is it? For me, pixels on a screen are incredibly powerful and, yes, tangible. When I act out with my computer, I am dead to the world. I see nothing and hear less. I am not hungry, not thirsty, not a father, not a husband, not a Jew. I am nothing... I am totally sucked into the pixels. I drink them hungrily in, but I am not satisfied by what I see.

There's the thrill of the hunt to be satisfied... I've been hunting for that perfect picture, that perfect story, that perfect whatever... And I've never found it. But I've settled. 

And this state of being swallowed into the screen could last for hours on end... until it would end in a sticky mess...

That is why when I walk in the street, I have to remind myself, with any temptation that crosses my path to lust after what I see, that I cannot. Because I cannot control myself after the first sip. The objects of my lust are more powerful than I, and lusting has been making my life unmanageable, as my first step inventory will clearly show, for at least 30 years. Insanity -the inability to see things correctly, to see the truth about where this will lead- sets in. So I need to get a real relationship, with a higher power, that is more powerful than the objects of my lust, who can provide me with whatever it is that I want from them. If what I want from them is simply an escape from my life, with its realities, I need to learn how to live my life in such a way that it is not painful, but enjoyable. This I cannot do whilst living a double life.

So I gotta get to work...

PS -Who enjoyed last week's episode of Bilaam Bashes his Head Against the Wall at their local Orthodox synagogue?

In my Chumash it was his foot.

I have to say that I did enjoy shnayim mikra a lot more with your view in mind. 

Just checking in here.

Have had a tough week, not so much as far as lusting is concerned. My radar still senses the females around me and I still have to remind myself when tempted that I cannot afford to take the first sip. The first glance is on G-d, the second is on me...

However, I am swamped (except for the time that I waste here and there), and have had extreme difficulty finding any time to continue writing my first step. It's like a hurdle that I must pass on my path to real recovery, but it requires serious blocks of time and the actual strength to concentrate and write. It has been tough to find any time this week, even just to post.

Excuses, excuses, excuses.

So if I do not make any serious progress on writing it out over the next week, will someone here please give me a zinger?

Thanks

E