In the sincere interest of helping you work out what's best for you I will now swing the pendulum back the other way. Not al tzad that you are an addict - for that's probably irrelevant at this point - but just to tame our beloved black-and-white thinking. I do this here a lot and it has helped me and many others arrive at the truth...usually somewhere in the middle-ground of all the 'philosophy'. Here goes:
Your plan is sincere, but let's remember that you didn't come here because you were just trying to be more ruchni. Rather, you were habitually using porn and masturbating yourself - so what really brought you specifically
here was too much preoccupation with sex on demand, too much fooling yourself and others, and doing too much holy but useless 'Teshuvah' - and the fact that with all that, you are still here, desperate
again. And I relate oh so well to all that!
So.
Have you ever sat back and wondered
why success has eluded you and so many of us? Surely just trying the same things again -
'but better this time!' is a mistake. But
why is it failing? You asked for a suggestion to make your spiritual pursuits more tangible. So here is my tangible suggestion:
All the things you mentioned here are done in your own head and heart - all by yourself. All alone.
Sure, sure, some interaction with other real humans
is technically included under the broad rubric of your ruchniyusdikeh hopes and plans you listed above - and I am certain you
do believe in mitzvos ben odom lachaveiro. But using other people to do Hashem's Will is not what I mean. There is a
reason that your basic effort revolves entirely around
inner battles and your
attitude toward Hashem.
It's because isolation is what we know. We 'get into mussar and chassidus or whatever, and use Torah and religion to validate even deeper isolation. But this time it becomes self-righteous isolation. We end up feeling much closer to Hashem -
and more crazy. That's not what you want, is it?
We have searched alone for porn, we have masturbated alone, we 'fought it' alone -
and we try recovering/getting better alone, as well.
The common denominator here, is taking the luxury of
remaining in the comfort of our own heads. Being the ultimate and sole arbiters of our 'madreiga'. Many of us have been doing that for years and know no other way. And 99% of what people call 'the Torah's solution' is assumed to be in the mind. But that path just ratifies isolation - our best friend! Going it alone seems to be the only thing we believe will make all things possible.
Think about it. Few of us see this at all. But in recovery, we discover that there are relationships - and then there are real relationships. Torah clearly creates and even
defines spiritual growth by real actions and real relationships. If you do not see examples of that, I can give a few, but do not want this megillah to become unreadably long...
![](https://guardyoureyes.com/components/com_kunena/template/default/images/emoticons/new/smile.png)
[In short, Kibud and mora av v'eim are not defined by how we feel about our parents anywhere. They are clearly defined in terms of behavior. And the reason the relationship we have with our parents is [i]on the ben odom laMakon side [/i]of the luchos is because the real relationship we all develop with our physical parents is what creates our real relationship with Hashem. (I posted elsewhere at length about the life cycle and how it it designed to create a relationship with Hashem)].
Just because you may be taking a step back from the addiction thing and the 12 steps (and I agree that it may be a good idea for you to step back) does not mean you cannot
learn from the successes of the addicts. And the main thing addicts learn to do from the very start is this: run from the comfort of isolation.
Ruchnius is great, and there is a
ton of room for inner work in recovery, to be sure! But even if you are not an addict, I suggest that the ikkar path you will find all the goodies you are looking for is through making real relationships. Bringiong more realness into the relationships you already have. Find safe, trustworthy people you can talk to without feeling they'd look down at you for being weho you are and having done what you have done. Opening up to real, safe, successfully recovering people and telling them all the truth about your shameful sexual escapades and your desires that keep coming up and bothring you and especially exactly what's doing with you today, is a great place to start! Shame is the enemy.
But that is only a start. For in the process of making those
recovery relationships, you will most likely discover that many of your
other relationships (in family, home, yeshivah, work, etc.) have never really been as
real as you thought they were. Including your relationship with G-d.
Yes, it may sound funny, but our relationship with G-d is not nearly as real as we often think it is. As frummies, we refer to that as 'the madreiga of our emunah is lacking'. But we see that tanno'im had that problem, too.
Rabban Yochanon ben Zakai blessed his talmidim - who were tanno'im!! - that they should feel about G-d watching them, the same way they feel about
people watching them. They were insulted and let him know it. And he said 'Too bad. You ain't there yet, brothers.' He said people take other people far, far more seriously than they take Hashem.
The way out of that is not more time sitting on a mountaintop - nor more time sitting with a chovos halevavos (though they may help a bit, we have already done plenty of those!). The way out is through
people. The 12 steps are first about starting to correct the way we interact with other people, then about rectifying all we may have done wrong to other people, and only then about connecting up well with our G-d.
We addicts first find our G-d in the 3rd step. But we admit we really don't have a serious and proper relationship with Him yet, till we first take real actions to take our relationships with His people (that is
all people) seriously and properly.
In the process of doing all that, we gain a thing we never really had: Self Honesty and real spirituality.
If there is anything I have learned from recovery about ruchiyus, it is that I can't start with honesty to Hashem. It's just more pretend, like the porn is. Fantasy and the power of porn is the sweet, pretend-relationships, right? Honesty with Hashem only comes a long while
after I learn to quit faking out other people and myself. And that takes more than a few weeks or months of real work.
Please don't put the cart before the horse, chaver. This work is simple, simple, simple. Honesty with people leads to more honesty with ourselves, and that will lead us to more honesty with our Only Eternal and Best Friend, Hashem. Think about it and use your seichel, get eitzos if you like - and then just do it.
Instead of starting with t'filloh or deep study of yourself or G-d, just open up to safe real people about yourself and your struggles; look a bit at your relationships with others and take the actions of real love and real connection with them. And go on from there wherever it leads you. You do not really run your life, Hashem does. You let Him do that by getting the brain the heck out of His way. As the Kotzker would say: Hashem is
only found where people let Him in. Our deep thinking and trying to figure it all out and gain his'orerus, is actually one of the main things not letting Hashem in. For it just leads us to more comfy, warm, heiligeh...isolation.