Hi everyone, after years of reading this forum, and thinking I had beaten my yetzer hara over and over again, I have finally decided that I need to post! (Although that may just be my yetzer hara trying to get me not to revise for my exams). I am in my mid/late teens, and have been struggling in areas of Shmirat Habrit since I was about 13/14. I have never really spoken to anyone about it, so I'm hoping this forum will help me to break free!!!! I have been trying on the ninety day chart for a while now, I had a fairly recent streak of 58 days, but unfortunately I fell and haven't kept clean for more than a few days since I have read the guidebook (well bits of it) and I installed a filter on my laptop and desktop, but I still sometimes get triggered by stuff and find it difficult to control myself. I daven so hard for tahara in this area but I sometimes feel like such a fraud because I've davened so many times and then fallen again.
I'm going to Yeshiva next year, so Be'ezrat Hashem I'll be able to stop for good there, but I really want to stop from now, I have just reset my thingy on the 90 day chart and with help from Hashem I will really do it with all the help and chizuk from everyone on here!
I also have a few questions for everyone: Are there good reliable filters for ubuntu linux, and also for android phones, as I often find that I fall using my phone (Which hopefully I won't have in yeshiva).
Also, I really don't want to talk to anyone in my life about this issue, but I feel I would find it really helpful if I had someone who I felt was checking up on me (apart from Hashem OBVIOUSLY), would anyone be willing to sponsor me for the 90$ for 90 days thing?

Welcome!
Sounds like you've got some good things going on, including amazing motivation and self-control. Direct that self control toward avoiding lust -- lustful thoughts, gazing, images in all settings. Work on staying far from lust. Learn to quickly recognize lust in it's various guises, and when it comes knocking, start davening on the spot for Hashem to take your lust. Tell Him that you surrender your lust to him.

Don't surf aimlessly on the computer. Do your work and shut it down. Surfing is just the Y"H's way of getting you charged up and ready to fall. Again, commitment to extreme avoidance will yield the best results.

Keep at it. You will prevail.

Alex

Thank you very much Alex, I am wary of making sweeping statements but seeing that another yid cares enough to reply is a very good feeling, I know the inspiration will go away, but I'm going to use it now to turn off my computer and my phone, and go and do some work!!

A few questions that have been bothering me about this area in general before I go:
1. I am very familiar with the idea that Hakadosh Baruch Hu gave us everything to use for good: if you have a bloody nature become a shochet rather than an axe murder etc., and he gave us the taivas that we have in order to use them for holy purposes, to become a Shutaf with Hashem. I know I should try and use everything I have Lsheim Shamayim, but I don't understand how it works before I'm married; there is no good outlet for these taivas!

2. How important is it to go to the mikva, should I wait until I am clean for a bit, because otherwise I risk just using it as a make up every time I fall I know I can just go to the mikva and it will be ok?

3. How can I daven properly with Kavanah to stop if I think I might fall again?

Question #1 will definitely be better than my answer.

On a practical level, I heard Rabbi Rietti say once that our bodies mature as young teenagers because sometimes, as conditions demand (such as after a major calamity), it is necessary to get married and start a family at a younger age than we are accustomed.

It may also be that there is wisdom in having us grow up with this battle, rather than start it right when we are ready to get married.

I'm sure other guys will share better ideas. I'm just an addict, not a lamdan.

I have no thoughts at all about mikva, although if you search this site for mikva, you will find many discussions.

If you haven't seen it yet, here's the tefilla that has kept me sober for the past 3+ years. I say it whenever I encounter any thoughts of lust -- immediately and repeatedly as necessary:


"Ribbono Shel Olam, I am powerless over lust and my life has become unmanageable.
Only you can restore me to sanity.
I turn my life and my lust over to your care and ask you to please heal me from this illness of lust. I don't want to lust, I only want You and a relationship with You and Your Torah, (and appropriate attraction to my wife). Take my lust. Please, take my lust."

I also insert a personal bakasha in Sh'ma Koleinu that Hashem should help me guard my personal kedusha.

Hatzlocha!
Alex

First of all, you write:
teenstruggle wrote on 20 May 2012 16:51:



That's number one.

Now, to address your questions:
teenstruggle wrote on 20 May 2012 17:08:


#1 has bothered me as well, but if you look into the gemara, not everything there is available at all times, for instance. "Niddah- Dam Tohar" isn't always available either, neither is "Eishes Ach- Yevamah" (hopefully) or "Kutit- Yefat Toar" (until she gets her hair and nails shaved and cries and wines and whimpers etc.). So the basic idea isn't to give people with Taivos a "kosher outlet" but that every forbidden physical pleasure has some sort of permitted venue (which is somehow mystically connected...). As for the gemara about Shochet, the gemara merely says that certain natures are embedded in a person and he must use it for good, the gemara makes no mention of sexual urges.
The two gemaros are in Chullin 109b and Shabbos 156a

#2 Back in the day "Ezra" who was an awesomely talented Sofer [though not a sofer stam- which he probably was too] decided that after an ejaculation one should not be forbidden to study torah or read the shema unless he first goes to the mikva [basically he instituted this because he didn't want talmidei chachamim turning into hens] later on some rabbis got together and overruled his notion. Even later though, when "Chassidus" came around, its followers tried to follow this practice as much as possible because of various estoeric kabbalistic concepts which I will not explain.

#3 Shaychus?? you daven, you daven! the rambam says that ya'id alav yodea taalumos shelo yashuv likislo od and the meforshim [well maybe not mefarshim but sifrei chassidus] explain that he means that "beoso rega" he wouldn't return