Today's Monday, Day 15 - BEWARE THE IDES OF [the] MARCH [forward]!!!

Now I've got 2 weeks under my belt. No wonder why I'm down a notch. And I thought it was latkes.... :D

INTERESTING moment at my wife's family gathering at our house yesterday (a Chanukah Party Tashlumim). An 11 yr-old nephew came over to me n' asked if he could use my computer to go on the internet. I said no, and after he left, I explained to the family of both frei and intermarrieds (none of my kids were there at the time) that we do not let our kids on the internet, that we have 2 passwords (one to log in and another to access internet and email), and all to protect them from seeing the worst it has to offer. Then I said, it's so dangerous and insiduous, even seeing the shmutz one time can be so damaging, and then I added "I still remember when the scoutmaster's son brought disgusting magazines to Bou Scout camp, to this day i suffer from it, trying to get those images out of my head."

Now you would have expected a chorus of "yeah, it's terrible what this world has fallen into" and "yeah, it's important not to let our kids get exposed, we have filters etc."

But my statement was answered with DEAD SILENCE. None of the 7 relatives looked at me OR EACHOTHER. Husbands & wives, sister & brother, boy friend & girl friend, all looked down at the table. No one even grunted an agreeent with my statement! What I felt they were experiencing was their own guilt at viewing this stuff, but also that they were not fighting against it, maybe it was a part of their "culture" they didn't mind.

WOW. THAT'S SCARY.

Kedusha wrote on 28 Dec 2009 21:17:


I got on for the last 20 minutes, while Yiddle was reading the 10 step promises. I had to stay muted cuz of background noise.

Thought I'd share what I just wrote on OneLIfe's thread, where they were decrying the battle against tiggers....oh, I mean triggers....


It's not the triggers that are the problem. It's what we do after we are exposed to them that is the problem.

The trigs will be there, sneaking up on us, for the rest of our lives. Yeah, we do our best to avoid them, like a nazir wont walk thru a vinyard and we avoid znus on the street, try to walk on the other side of the road, looking or concentrating on something else. We must always be vigilant to avoid them where we can.

The problem is when they call your name, like the candy bar on the kitchen counter or the ice cream in the fridge.

Today's DC Call, beginning the 10th Step, revealed that by leading the spiritual life, our NEED TO RESPOND to the triggers around us will become weaker over time, until it is no big deal to ignore them. This spiritual life is a combo of Living with Hashem AND believing in your own self-worth and goodness BECAUSE Hashem made you and made you good and gave you good things to do with your life, which you do (which is healthy self-esteem thru humility), AND NOT BECAUSE you made yourself and consider yourself the master of your own destiny and success (which is unhealthy self-esteem thru EGO and Geivah).

Once you realise there is so much more to living by striving for real closeness to Hashem, and surrendering AWAY from resentments and EGO, the triggers begin to have less and less meaning to you, almost like an urksome fly you can just swat away. For the first time in my life, I'm seeing the teivah for Znus lookng less like a mountain and more like a molehill. And with each daily success, BH, I get more chizuk that just as I overcame it that time, I can do it again, and more easily.

What am I saying? I'm saying YOU JUST GOTTA GET IN ON THE NEXT DC CALL TEKUFAH. That's what I'm just saying.

Meanwhile, you can get by by thinking that the chocolate bar and the ice cream are milchig, and you just had a nice juicy tenderloin. Doesn't the craving dissapate in real life when that happens?

If it doesn't, just tell yourself you can't have it now, but maybe later. And when later comes, you can use the same ploy again.

Have a super-fantistico-jollygood day!

steve,
as i wrote to you in my thread, YOU ARE AN EXPERT !!!! 
i'm very happy that i made a deal with you since i feel that you are gonna hold me (and haba) to the 90 days... 
you can see there the rest i writed to you.
with a big love :-*
OneLife.

When are these calls? How often? What is the procedure for dialing in? How it workee?

Hubba Hubba Haba - 

Copy this link into your browser:  rehab-my-site.com/guardureyes/forum/index.php?topic=1219.0

This is the first page, the info page, under the thread called "Duvid Chaim's Phone Conference" which is on the home page of the Forum (scroll down a little). It will give you and OneLife some info about the calls, which as of now are at 12 noon EST, whicdh is 7pm in EY.

Also you can look over the daily summaries of the calls that are available on that thread. But be careful not to think that you can read these as a substitute for being on the calls one day. In this case, AINO DOMEH R'IYAH L'SHMIYAH!

Contact Duvid Chaim thru his email on the page, to arrange to talk on the phone. He's very nice and personable, and you'll LOVE his Texas accent. You can find out about his schedule of when he's starting a new group. There are other groups also, see this link:

www.guardureyes.com/GUE/hotline/Group.asp

I'm sure the others are good also, but my experience is with Duvid Chaim, and I KNOW HE'S GREAT!! He's also going for a visit to Eretz Yisroel sometime in January, maybe you and OL could arrange to meet him, if you're comfortable with that.

Keep Smiling!! ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D :D

Okeedokee, Day 16, let's make it a SWEET 16!!

quickie a&w's - an unknown someone borrowed the space heater from my office & didn't return it, so my feet were freezing for the last 2 days. kept workin' on being dan l'kaf zechus, but lost a lot of good work hours because of fretting over it, and hard to concentrate with frozen toizen. Left my office early to go buy a new one, while waiting at the end of the block for traffic to get out of the way, a car turns onto the block and pulls into the office driveway. i tturned around and went back to ask that person if they knew anything about my missing heater, and he was holding it in his hand. His heat had broken 3 days earlier an hour before Shabbos, and he called the boss to ask if he could borrow the office heaters for the weekend. He didn't know it was my own personal one, or he would have called me.

So I got to avoid an unneccesary expense and lost time, and was able to eat dinner with my wife & kids (we try to do that every night), plus I had the zechus to keep a family warm over Shabbos.

What did I learn from this? - That the RID I experienced caused by deep down resentment over having frozen toizen was stupid and not worth it. And Hashem was showing me again how he is in control of my life - this time from the bottom, up.

Have a Supercalifragualisticexpialidoscious Day!

habaletaher wrote on 29 Dec 2009 05:41:


Steve gave you the basic information.  I think we're in week #11 out of about 13 weeks, so the cycle is almost over.  The next one should begin in February.  Feel free to call in during the remainder of this cycle, but to really benefit from the program, you want to start from the beginning in February.  And, if you have the opportunity to meet Duvid Chaim, go for it!

Keep up the good work!!  16 days is great!!

Steve did i ever tell you that i think your absolutly nuts i mean awesome. Thanks for the posts. The earlier one was sad. But what could you expect. keep up the nuttyawesome work. And great hug there too. I really enjoy reading your posts. Thanks man.

Wanna share with you folks something:

Duvid Chaim's email today contained a really cool question & an A&W answer:


Some of us may be wondering "How can I - such an insignificant person make any meaningful changes in my life or others?"

Your comments have also been bothering me and I have been wanting to find the right words to give you the encouragement you need to be brave and embark on this amazing Journey of Growth.

And then, (here's my A&W moment), I sat down to lunch at a Starbucks with my lox on "poppy seed" bagel sandwich.  Of course, the little tiny poppy seeds were falling off the bagel onto my napkin.  Nothing unusual about that!

But then I looked down and I saw something totally amazing - (here he included a cell phone photo of his napkin, with the tiny poppy seeds casting long shadows in the sunlight, at least 4 times longer than the diameter of each seed).

I looked down at the poppy seeds on the napkin and noticed that these little tiny and rather insignificant poppy seeds were casting a huge shadow - much larger than the individual poppy seed itself.

And then it made me realize that no matter how small or insignificant I feel about myself of my little tiny actions in life, that I too have the potential to cast a huge and far reaching shadow across my "Daled Amos" - my personal world around me.  Not only to grow in my own appreciation of my "minor" changes but also in my ability to make a "major" impact on those around me.

Beautiful, as all of DC's comments are.


I had another thought regarding this question, how we the "insinificant" can help the world. (besides the obvious - like how many people throughout the world can be helped by one post on this forum!)

OUR DALED AMOS effects so many more people than it contains. First of all, our good actions bring down shefah beracha, which comes from Hashem but is catalyzed by our positive actions of Torah, Avodah, and Gemilas Chasodim. Hashem will send that shefa down to where it's needed, for sure to yidden somewhere in the world who need inspiration, maybe even to feed a hungry child in Biafra.

But on a more down-to-earth level that we understand, just as the wrong thing can spread, like a virus, my goodness can infect others and spread. I smile and make someone happier, I do a chesed, the recipient and/or an onlooker gets chizuk and pays that forward, and so on. Then all those cumulative acts of chesed in the world are based upon that first act that I did, however insignificant at the time, in the end my act was so great, and of much more benefit to the world than the one person I did it to.

So it's really true that we can change the whole world, one person at a time.

AS LONG AS WE START WITH OURSELVES...

Uh... I'm shy to say this, but with limited time to invest in catching up on the forum, I'm behind the times and need a quick fix.

What's all this about Uri leaving? Where's he leaving and where's he going to?

Steve wrote on 29 Dec 2009 19:37:
First of all thanks for sharing. Second; Uris leaving the holyland next week and joining you chutznikers. So we made him a goodbye party/kumzitz. Hell be going to school there.

well, except for you few guys that actually MET him or know where he worked, he's not really leaving, cuz this site's internationally accessible so he's only a click away. Just like the rest of us. So I don't feel the loss, unless he's dropping out of the forum due to lack of time. in which case, we'll all feel
TERRIBLY HEART BROKEN
cuz it'll be VERY hard to live without Uri in our lives.

Just saying "hi Steve".
So glad you've joined us in GYE-land.
Love your thread.