gibbor120 wrote:

Good question. I have to think about it.

gibbor120 wrote:


TTS gave an example, that Yitzchok had to see Yaakov's suffering and restrain himself from revealing that Yosef was still alive.

Gevura!

Gevura Shebyesod wrote:

I don't think that really answers the question here, GS. The point of my shtikkel was that the middah of gevurah is restraint itself. So Yitzchok restraining himself is an example of using his middah, not fighting it.

We would have to find an example of him restraining himself from exercising restraint, in other words, picking up and acting when he would "naturally" be inclined to שב ואל תעשה.

That's the way I understand it, anyway.

ועדיין צריך עיון, וה' יאיר עינינו

in the maamar from R' Avraham Eliyahu Kaplan mentioned above he has a similar idea.

Yitzchok dug wells and the Plishtim repeatedly took them from him. Instead of taking a stand and trying to get them back and/or raising the issue with Avimelech, as Avraham had done, all Yitzchok does is give them names (שטנה עשק) and move on to the next well.

Why did he give them names? Usually a person only names items that belong to him. These wells were taken out of his jurisdiction by force.

When Yitzchok saw what happened to the well his servants dug, he looked at it and named it and promptly moved on. That reaction rankled in the hearts of the Plishtim and made an impression on them in a more cerebral way than a conventional reaction, i.e. fighting to get them back. His pithy name-giving, and his dismissal of the entire affair demonstrated something much higher and greater than a simple dispute over a well and hence the name remained and was a testimony to a G-d-driven man.

(I definitely did not do justice to his words, so see it inside if you want to get the force of his words)

Shkoyach Zemmy for that addition. I will bli neder try to get my hands on the sefer to see it inside.

I am still trying to come up with ideas of where Yitzchok was tested to act against his nature of Gevurah. Any ideas welcome.

In other news, today is י"ג אלול, התשע"ג, August 19, 2013. Today I am clean.

Today is Tuesday, י"ד אלול, ה'תשע"ג, August 20, 2013. Today I am clean.

Today is Day 52 on my chart. וה' ברך את טריינגטושטייג בכל.

NO, NO, NO, Stop it!!!! Today is just the 52nd consecutive Day 1! I am still that same guy who is just starting off his journey into the Great Unknown Land of Recovery.

(I apologize for the multiple personality disorder)

(Further Clarification: Maybe I should not have crossed out the part about Hashem blessing me. He certainly HAS blessed me in too many ways to enumerate, and I thank Him from the bottom of my heart.)

Today is Wednesday, ט"ו אלול, ה'תשע"ג, August 21, 2013. Today I am clean. Thank you Hashem for giving me stuff to do today at work besides for browsing the GYE forum all day (not that that is not enjoyable or interesting).

Over and out.

shteiger: Is there anything special that you are doing to be successful? Could you clue us in on it please? Thank you so much

continued hatzlachah!

cordnoy wrote:

Cordnoy,

If you are looking for the picture of success, it's not me. I have not looked at shmutz or m*******ed for all of...almost two months now!!! Oooooooh, Ahhhhhh!!! Does that make me a "successful yid"? A "successful person"? A "successful GYE member"? I don't think it does. It just means that today, I am not rolling in the mud like a pig. But successful? I still have a long way to go, trust me.

Now, you will tell me, "Shteiger, you know all the right things to say to sound humble, but you are doing really well."

The answer to that is like this: It depend on how you look at success. If you say that success is the 90 day chart definition of no falls, then OK, I am still clean. However, I still have very specific concerns.

(1) Do I know or have any guarantee that I am not going to fall again, ever? Could it ever happen that one day I will just be overcome by a thought and go right back to the same junk that I have been trying to distance myself from for the last couple of months, but I actually sat in for years? This is (or at least should be) a concern for every single person here (unless you have some other sort of trick up your sleeve to permanently remove the yetzer hara/tayvas noshim from your life, in which case, please share it!!). I can commit to staying clean for today, but I can't tell you about tomorrow, let alone next year or the next 5 years.
(2) Shmiras Ainayim, outside of actual porn. When I post on the forum "I am clean today," does that mean that my eyes did not see ANYTHING that a ben torah should not be seeing? No, it just means I didn't look at actual porn that day. When I walk down the street in 21st century America and there are goyishe women all over the place who are not dressed like Bais Yaakov girls, to say the least, does those images enter my brain? Yes they do. Do I start actively fantasizing from that? No, but that doesn't mean that they don't have a subtle impact. I definitely have my work cut out for me in this area. I would like to be able to take off my glasses when I am outside, but that eitzah unfortunately won't work for me, because my prescription is very strong and I won't be able to see where I am going.

(3) Issues with my wife. I have yet to find a smoother, healthier way to deal with this issue with my wife. When I come home from work, she asks me (sometimes right away, sometimes she waits until we sit down to eat dinner) "How was your day? Were you a 'good boy'?" So if I had a busy day, I am usually eager to tell her the specifics. "My boss had me work on this project, and it took me all morning, and then in the afternoon I was working on this, and studying for that, blah blah blah..." and then she knows that I was really happily occupied that day, and we are both happy. But sometimes the conversation goes something like this:

"How was your day?"
"Good, fine, etc." (one word answer, if I am in a "really honest" mood, I will say "it was quiet today").
"Were you a good boy?"
"Yes I was."
"Really?"
"Yes, really...I have been a good boy for a long time now. I am proud of myself and the progress I have made."
"Well, OK."
[Awkward pause]
At the end of the conversation, does she really believe me? Does she trust me that I am being honest with her? Does she believe that tomorrow I will still be a good boy? If I can take sobriety on a one-day-at-a-time basis, can she? I still get stressed out when she acts as my policeman/mashgiach. I can understand how she has a right to know about my progress, but her interrogating me when I walk in the door just does not sit right with me. And if I try to explain to her that I don't like being interrogated by my wife when I walk in the door, then it just makes me sound suspicious. So I am still trying to figure out what to do about this.

(4) Keeping busy at work. So now, very nice I am exercising restraint (the middah of Yitzchok Avinu ) and NOT DOING really bad things at work. Shkoyach. But what am I DOING to fill that vacuum? I am still not completely satisfied with my time management at work, especially when I don't have any specific short-term projects to work on. I always have some back-burner stuff to be working on, but I can't say that I have been on top of it the way I should. Instead I have been posting narishkeit on the GYE forum! It's fun, and it eases the tension a little, but at the end of the day when I come home, can I say I had a GOOD day, or just NOT a BAD day?

So I hate to burst your bubble, Cordnoy. I know you would like to write a biography of people who have been "completely transformed" by GYE and went from the depths of depravity to the heights of success, with feature on yours truly, the teddy bear in the na nach yarmulka. Wouldn't we all like to write such a book about ourselves. But unfortunately, the only book you can write about me is about how I went from filthy shmutz to...boring old normal life. And you can't even write that until you know that its going to stick, which I cannot give you any guarantees for anything beyond today.

Sorry to disappoint you.

That said, today is Thursday, ט"ז אלול, ה'תשע"ג, August 22, 2013. Today I am clean.

Shteiger:
You did not disappoint me at all
I do hope that you didn't take offense to my question; there was none intended, and I apologize if it wasn't written well.

Everything you wrote resonates with me, almost to a tee.

I have been involved in shmutz for 30 plus years.
I have stopped for over two months now.
Ami careful in shemiras einayim? no.
do I get desires to get back with my friend? yes.
I too have terrible eyesight b"H.
I do not know how to write the book about myself, for I don't know why I have been able to continue this.
do I have confidence about the rest of the day or tomorrow? Sometimes (stupidly) I think yes, but mostly, I think no.
my wife does not know about my issues, so there is a difference there.

if the question would have been asked at me, the only answer I would give, for my issue as of late is one (I so to speak graduated from the regular porn); I am simply not replying to her email. thank God it was only one and she is not persistent. if an email would pop into my box at a moment when im down, I do not know if I would overcome.

thank you again

your post was really and truly excellent.

bhatzlachah

No offense taken. Maybe I misunderstood your first question. I thought you were asking what I did to be successful. The answer to that is... nothing. It's just what I DIDN'T DO to be successful, and that is obvious what that is. I didn't act out, but I don't know if I would label that "successful."

What I AM DOING to the end of the "success" goal is still a work in progress...

tryingtoshteig wrote:

methinks you are making progress. you might not be mr.timemanagement yet, but you are in a better spot today than in the past. quite a good thing. (the nanach kipa is an added bonus)

You know what they say, sharing is caring.

הנני מוכן ומזומן לקיים מצוות עשה של ואהבת לרעך כמוך