Hi BB!

Perhaps you should blacklist the sender.

Ur doing great, KUTGW & KOMT!!!!!

Gevura!

I'd definitely suggest calling someone esle over to close the email with or for me. Just not a woman, though. But you are on the right track that at times like that, "being misgaber over it" is almost as sick and dangerous as looking at it would be. Cuz once I have the power, I will no longer need G-d, no matter how many times I parrot the "Hashem gives me the power" line... In my own gut, I will not really believe it. I will eventually take the power as my own...exactly what I did a hundred times in the shower....and eventually masturbate again, and worse. Pride guarantees I will eventually pay dearly, for I am not a regular yid with a 'yetzer hora', but an irregular yid with an addiction.

Just the facts about me. Not necessarily about you...just me.

I agree whole heartedly. These are the facts about "ME"!

Should I have put my PM to you here, instead, BB?

I just want to apologize to you Blind beggar if I came across a bit strong with the last post. Sometimes I feel I need a good kick in the Tu---s and so I respond to others that way but that is wrong.  Mussar is for oneself, not others

You are doing great in your struggle and way past me. 

BTW the goyim have a saying "Beggar thy neighbour, beggar thyself" which means when you try to take down another person near you, you take yourself down with him, so nobody wins in the end.... Not sure how that fits with your name though....

Hatzlacha, Keep on trucking !!

HY

The name "Blind Beggar" comes from the stories of Rabbi Nachman of Breslov zt"l. In the story called "The Seven Beggars" the beggar of the first day is really a tremendous tzaddik who has nothing to look at in this world of sheker and gashmius.
  I hope to be able to be guard my eyes so I thought it was a better name than No-Hope נואף or Lost Lusting Loser.

Blind Beggar wrote on 07 Nov 2011 15:45:



Well, a lot has changed since that post. Since most of the women do not have any reason to talk to me even for business (we use IM's all the time), they are becoming objects again. Never mind Sarah who seems do have been designed to push all of my lust buttons; about a dozen of the women are now major triggers, mostly from no fault of their own. I need to go back to basics of shmiras einayim and be a kosher Jew.


19th Adar Sheni - 20th Kislev is 9 months sober by SA's definition. I am 149 days on the GYE Chart.

Have a peaceful Shabbos. 

much love, you can do this.  Chazzak, chazzak, etc

Joe

Wow 149 days, shabbos will do the 150, and then your on your way to a half a year !! amazing !!  KOT 

I envy you, and hope to match and beat that soon, but i also am looking at the floor when i pass women at work so maybe that will help you...

I find that daveing either for the woman herslef ( to be loved by her husband, not to be stuck in traffic etc) or for myslef (Dear G-d, let me find in You what I'm looking for in these women) of great help.
Also, immediately after being triggered I acknowledge verbally that I am powerless over lust.
Hope this helps.
Gut SHabbos.
Mottel

I really don't care about other people much. They can get stuck in traffic of yelled at by their husbands as far as I am concerned so it is insincere if I pray for them.
I can pray for myself and guard my eyes - that is what I intend to do.


150 days on the Chart.

Blind Beggar wrote on 17 Dec 2011 17:09:


Ch"v this should be interpreted as you being selfish, which I know you are not.  I read this as, "I need to keep very focused right now."

Major progress, despite your knuckles.

Gutte voch

Joel

I don't care for strangers enough to pray for them sincerely. I love fellow strugllers on the forum and I don't wish any harm to anyone but to daven for someone who happens to wear a tight skirt is not going to help me because it is not real. I have tried to do it and it did not work.

Today I am working on Handbook Tool #2 especially the 3 Second Rule.

Ok mybe your אהבת ישראל is a little dull, try finding a לימוד that would promote it, mybe shir hahsirim with mefarshim. If you can see the beuty of am yisrael, you will find it in every jew.

Or try davening for a realy helpless case, a real trauma. There are too many sick people to truly care about them all. And personaly i can't daven for other people unless i know what they're going through. the deatails really help me feel for them, without it they are just another name בתוך שער חולי ישראל.

This discussion has nothing to do with ahavas Yisroel, which is a much higher part of the issue here.

Blind Beggar wrote on 17 Dec 2011 17:09:


I have no interest at all in 'getting you' to daven for these people, here. All I want to do is suggest that you may be mistaken. When 1daat wrote "Hey, this might make it seem that you are selfish, which you are not..." I believe he was right - but perhaps not a bit differently than he or you might expect.

I suggest to you that as cloistered as you might be, you do care about her - and anyone's - well-being. That is all I wish to demonstrate here, not that you "should" pray for her (even though you and I already do in many parts of davening! [" b'riyos" in [i]"boruch merachem al hab'riyos"[/i] refers to her and her parents, too, as well as to all the wonderful birds, fish, and reptiles]. And I think it is plain that caring for her well-being does not make you more goyish, but l'havdil actually more like Hashem (which is a mitzvah to try and do, according to many rishonim). And I will demonstrate that, be"H:

The following questions are not moral ones and they do not belong in a RMb"M somewhere - they belong in your Jewish heart. In this dorr, at least for people like you and me, our power of imagery seems to only become powerful, visceral and real when it comes to porn - but can you try to put yourself into any of these situations emotionally (real) rather than just philosophically (fake)?

If you saw a little black child sucking in air desperately, drowning, flailing for help 20 feet away from you, and no one else is there - how would you react? I am not talking theoretically, but practically. How would you feel and what would you need to do?

If you witnesses a hispanic child being brought up into a strange Jewish man's apartment and saw that he was going to smother the boy, killing him and then cut him up....and you saw the unmasked terror on the child's face reeling as a scared animal, scratching at the door to get out, GET OUT! - how would you react? If you were right there and the only one there? What, if anything, would you have do to try and save this little boy?

If you saw a woman, her arms laden with kratzmoch presents, falling down a flight of stairs - not theoretically, but were right there -  and you saw she'd likely die when her mouth and skull cracked on the next stair in a bloody mess - how would you feel and how would you react? Would you jump to try to save her? Do you know what suffering is?

Would you try to figure out if these person might be Jewish before trying to do something to save them? Or would the reality of the blood and pain make you feel the horror of what these people were about to go through and awaken anything in you do something?

I do not wish for any answer, and do not hope you have a certain answer. All I am doing is asking.

And I firmly believe that those of us who see within themselves that they'd feel no obligation to do for these people - to need to save them - are among those who are still inexorably stuck using those peoples' bodies and images for porn and sex fantasy. I believe it is a sign that they are able to pretend they can "shut off their humanity" long enough to "shut off the humanity" of the women - long enough to use the fake people for their fantasies.

Rav Shmu'el Yaakov Weinberg zt"l left a certain chassidic group that he was born into, because he as a teenager witnessed a woman burn to death with chassidim standing around her. The men refused to jump onto her and roll her body on the ground because - she was, after all, a woman. He said to himself something like, "any Jews who do not use the halocha to see - but are blinded by it - I need to get away from." He saw the Derech Eretz he had within him and knew...

I am not criticizing anyone, nor am I daring you, BB! I really love you, or I would not be here posting this (after the crazy night we had here last night!). I am just pointing out that when push comes to shove, many of us do indeed care about these strangers.

I propose that if you'd try to save them from death, then you do care. And if we care, then we are not lying when we daven - we are just a bit blind to our own hearts. And nothing blinds us to our own humanity like porn does. Cloistering and elitism come in a distant 2nd and 3rd...

Hope we are still buddies.

Much love,

Dov