a short tefilah:

Ribono shel olam - look at us with mercy - we don't want to transgress, You see everyone crying here? we are not reshaim - the evidence is we do everything else - we learn ,we keep shabbos, kosher, etc. we have a problem - we have an addiction - very hard to break.please look down from shamayim and forgive us during this holy time of the year.

Omein!!!!!!!!!!!! :'(

ok, i was sitting there before neila, and the rav was saying his 5 minute drasha 'rabosay, the heavens are about to close, if not now, when?' so iput my head own on the table and i said to myself 'jack, with what will you go into the next year? DO SOMETHING! you klapped on your chest 3000 times today - that's not enough!!'so i thought, i have to come up with a kabbala that i can handle - not too big and not too small.so i did - no more secular newspapers.that's it.finito.nigmar.i can and will liasten to this kabbalah.
getting lust out of my head? that's not for now,yet.too hard - i'm sunk in this for nearly 45 years.one small thing at a time.i finally have something to add to this thread - veiter.
thanks to all once again for listening to me - you all are the backbone of my struggle and i couldn't do anything without you.
jack

GEVALDIG!

I can just picture the Baal Shem Tov zy"a telling his talmidim how the great kitrug was lifted from Klal Yisroel because of a simple Jew who did a simple act of self-sacrifice...

Thanks for tipping the scales for all of us.

MT

on hoshanah rabbah i wanted to make the big plunge - get all lust out of my head.but i just couldn't.i'm not ready.a little at a time.i just hope it's not TOO little.

How would you know it if you really did get all the lust out of your head...until you lusted again and remembered what it was like?

And what would happen if you succeeded - and then had a machshovah that was even a little tiny bit lustful? Your standars would be risen so high by then that I bet you'd fall emotionally so sadly...that might lead to breaking apart. No?

Maybe Hashem is looking out for you here, keeping you more even tempered.

Maybe.

No?

Seeya, friend.

i know what you're saying - it's like a protective mechanism sort of.i've thought of this before.but you know what? i'd like to take the chance.and as for how would i know it - believe me, i'd know it - i see the question though.

dov, here's what i'd love - to walk in the streets w/out thinking about it.to wake up, to learn, to daven, to ........just about everything, w/out thinking about it.after 45 years of being sunk in filth, this just isn't easy.

It is. The idea of "finally doing it", "beating it" or "getting there", are yellow flags for me. To me in myself, they spell "fantasy". Or a funny kind of lust, actually. And they feel self-centered - for then I surely will not need G-d or other people any more. Yeah, I know we imagine that once we beat this and are "free at last", we will start to have that really great relationship with Hashem. But I don't believe that nonsense.

It seems to me that real life is not about "arriving", but about the trip there.

They ask you, "tzipisah lishuah?" Apparently it's all about tzipisah, not the yishuah at all.

dov wrote on 11 Oct 2012 15:18:


Wow!!!

I LOVE this vort!

dov, are you saying i should give up the desire to get lust out of my head? isn't that what we're trying to do here? please explain as i value your opinion. (also, please speak to me like someone who does NOT have 14 years recovery experience)

It's 15 years.

;D

Oh....I am indeed agreeing that having lust in our heads is a bad thing. It makes happy living harder and interferes with kedusha stuff. But how are we to know if Hashem actually wants us to have lust in us - and yet not follow through with it? What gives you the idea that complete comfort - not having any lust to deal with - is a valid tachlis in life at all?

Perhaps chasing that is going the wrong direction and dissipating energies that we could otherwise be using to be great...of course, once you and I decide we know exactly what "greatness" means, we have ruined it! As Mesilas Yeshorim puts it: "hachassidus ha'amiti - rachok hee mitziur sichleinu" Why is that? I suggest that if we had the clear picture in mind, we'd have to be there already. And since we are not, then we must have a very twisted view of it and would necessarily be going in the entirely wrong direction! It's gotta be a mystery to us.

And what gives us the idea that people who were great and did great things and had tremendous madreigos - did not have any lust in them? I do not believe this is the way it is. Fantasy is more poisonous to me than lust is.

I am not arguing , just suggesting.

Love you, Jack!

dov, if i could understand what you mean, i just might be inclined to listen.but i dont know what you're getting at. i want to be FREE of this for once and for all!not to go around with these thoughts in my head!

That may be just lust that you have, that's all. Wanting something out of your reach is not a virtue, at all. Some lust for nudes and orgies - others lust for religious perfection or serenity. It's the same thing. That's just lust for something else, rather than the grasping of real life. Real life is exactly the same as G-d's Will itself.

If you think I am being insensitive, you miss my point. And I am not speaking for you - just for me.

"We are like men who have lost our legs," Bill wrote, "we will not walk again." There is a certain acceptance inherent in the kind of success that I and others know - and that success is stymied by slipping back into demanding natural purity and spontaneous freedom.

Sorry.

I choose having desires and frailties, yet learning how to life sober and be part of the game. The other way, of demanding total natural freedom from struggle and pain just led me ever deeper into self-centered kedusha-mongering. I may have dies a kadosh - technically. But still a ten-year old kadosh, not a man.

Again - just for me.

ok, another insight - maybe, just maybe, our struggle with this inyan is really a bracha.how is this possible? because for those people on this forum, who are trying to heal themselves, the process of trying to find a way out of this mess will lead to a stronger person.so, let's say we discover that in order to take our mind off shmutz we have to learn more in order to concentrate on other things (something i just discovered), maybe we wouldn't have learned this lesson any other way.maybe only through our hardships we learn what we should know anyway, but we don't.this is all, of course, if we learn from our falls. and we must start with that all-important 90 days.those 90 days are what give the impetus to all healing that comes after that, in my humble opinion, of course.
jack