Idea #14- When Push Comes To Shove
Until now we’ve been talking about facing down the Yetzer Hara in the ‘standard nisayon’- the last idea (#13) was my approach for doing that. Which brings us to dealing with the ‘overwhelming nisayon’ (idea #3)- when it’s not just rationalization pushing us to do it, it’s out-and-out torture. When we know we don’t want to do it, but it’s painful to resist.
So what do we do with that? It’s not enough to decide not to do it, because that leaves us with the pressure, the pain. It’s possible to resist, but resisting is a huge effort- and it has to be done over and over again constantly, because the nisayon doesn’t go away by deciding not to do it. Not very sustainable.
What can we do? We have to push back, fight it, get rid of it.
What I’m going to describe is a very difficult avoda. Not a five-minute thing, not a question of focusing on the right ideas like we said for the standard nisayon (and that’s certainly not easy either). This is really heavy stuff, requires lots of time, lots of emotional muscle-flexing. And it’s (probably) not going to work every time, or most times. I only managed it a handful of times in a full-blown overwhelming nisayon. But even trying for it and missing is a huge and meaningful experience. And if you get there even once it can change your whole experience with the nisayon.
Ok, enough with all the preamble. Here it is:
The way to fight this kind of Yetzer Hara is to outweigh its power with positive drive. You have a ten-ton pounding overwhelming desire to do it? So have an eleven-ton pounding-er overwhelming-er desire to not do it. And then the Yetzer Hara goes away. Vanishes. You won’t have the slightest desire to do it anymore.
A moshul is in order: Imagine you’re in that overwhelming nisayon- let’s say you’re by a computer with an alarm-5 nisayon pushing you to search for XYZ. And then in walks your wife/rebbi/rav/mother/father- someone you respect and want to have a relationship with and who doesn’t know about your nisyonos. What do you do? You close the computer as fast as you can, jump up and try to keep your cover. Look at that- you’re resisting the overwhelming Yetzer Hara! And is it hard? No. You forgot all about it. You’re in crisis mode covering your tracks, XYZ is the last thing on your mind.
Or a simpler moshul: You’re having an overwhelming nisayon, and someone comes and puts a gun to your head and says “If you hit search I’m gonna shoot.” Do you do it? No. Is it hard to resist? Not anymore.
Why? Because you have something more important that you want. You want to stay alive. Desperately. You feel that desperate want when your life is threatened, and it overshadows the nisayon to the point that there’s no challenge. You want to not be embarrassed (or divorced etc.). When that’s threatened it’s an overwhelming drive, and it also blocks out even the strongest nisayon effortlessly.
So the want to stay alive, the want to not be embarrassed, can outweigh the nisayon. What about our other wants? We have many wants pushing us away from aveiros (see idea #11). But they aren’t naturally as strong (yet) as the want to stay alive- or else we would never have a nisayon.
But we can build them up. Not permanently, that’s a life’s work and more. But in the moment. Build up that want, fuel it, feel it. Make it bigger, stronger.
How?
The first step is the REWIND process from the standard nisayon (idea #13). Go through the steps to recognize that you do want to resist it, decide on that as your course of action- i.e that you want to resist the temptation.
Then feel it. You know how great it is to overcome the nisayon. That it’s a tremendous mitzva, a huge accomplishment and will make your life much more pleasant in the future. You know it, but you don’t feel it. Not all the way.
So focus on it. Imagine how great you can become if you overcome this. Imagine going before Hashem in olam haba and being recognized as one of the few who stood down the nisayon hador. Imagine the life you can live without the havoc of taavos. Really imagine it, make it real, tangible. Feel that resisting is the greatest thing in the world, that it’s your life. That you need it, you’re desperate for it, like the desperation of the greatest passion.
You know how much damage the aveiros do. So feel it. Imagine, feel, the pain that comes on the low days. The loneliness, the sadness. Imagine, feel, the shame of discovery, feel the shame of standing before Hashem and having to own up to all this. Make it real. Feel the pain, the damage, of doing what the nisayon is pushing you to do, to the point that you shake from the fear of it. Like it’s a fire that’s chasing you.
You know that you’re better than this. This is garbage, it’s so low. Feel it. Imagine how you would look at someone who was publicly involved in this, who has no shame. A lowlife. [You’re not a low-life, you know it’s wrong and you’re trying to stop. That’s a tzaddik.] This stuff is low, it drags us down. Feel the disgust, cringe at it. Scrunch your nose like it’s the kind of port-a-potty that doesn’t flush (if you’ve never been in one, you can imagine that as well
.
[I have a Lashon Kodesh formulation for this, which I find very useful. I say these words a few times, feeling them through, and that gets me towards this point. In case anyone else would find this helpful: שירגיש הרוממות שבמניעת החטא וישתוקק לה וישתעשע בתקותו אליה כאהבת דודים, וגם ירגיש פחיתות החטא ויקוץ בה כנמאס מן המגואל, וירגיש ההיזק שבתולדת החטא ויפחד ממנה ויהא נרתע לאחוריו כבורח מן האש.]
And that’s it. Go somewhere where no one can see you, and work to feel all that. Sing, cry, daven, punch a tree. Whatever helps you bring out these emotions.
It’s not easy, not even on a good day, to pull up the right emotions. Least of all when we’re under serious attack from the taavos. But give it a try, do what you can- it’s not all or nothing. And when you’re at rock bottom, you’ve got to do what it takes. This is what it takes.
And if you can pull it off, there’s no better feeling in the world. You go straight from the torture of the overwhelming nisayon to full release from all that tension- and you feel amazing about it, because you just did the greatest thing you could do. It’s like you’ve never felt before (at least I haven’t), physical relief and emotional high- real authentic happiness high, not cheap thrill high- all at once.