chosemyshem wrote on 06 Aug 2024 20:59:

I think it is the fact that you are here and being inspired by the rest of the chevra (and possibly you feel that you are inspiring others also), that is what keeps you going.

chosemyshem wrote on 06 Aug 2024 20:59:

I'm sorry, I'm having some troubleover here.
1) Why can't you take a good compliment? Do you really think you are "a slug on legs"? If you do, doesn't that strike you as a problem on it's own?
2) So you are driven to win, but you have no drive, and are basically the worst thing since burnt bread. Huh?
3) Do you really believe everyone who knows you thinks that lowly of you? For real? (Think wife, parents, in-laws, siblings, your Rav....

proudyungerman wrote on 06 Aug 2024 23:32:

Feisty. Since this thread is basically a free therapy substitute I'll address your comment in depth. (Edit: not totally sure why I'm sharing my entire life on this forum, and the comment has therefore been deleted.)

Really great post from Dov on why beating yourself up for feeling lust comes from a very harmful attitude. (Meaning, it's not just that it leads to negative feelings that lead to acting out. Rather, it's a manifestation of a bad attitude towards the struggle.) 

Reinforces a very important point. 

Relatedly, I was thinking about ILH247's powerful share about his issue with his niece staying by him. Very brave share, and it really struck home. 

Of all that I've written on GYE, I think this is the most likely to make my wife rip my head off/jump off a roof. But my wife has a niece or two whom I've certainly taken a second look at on occasion. Not that I'm fantasizing about them or flirting with them (yet?). But oh boy does it feel like a creepy and dirty lust. And I've never been able to admit that even to myself until I saw that post. It just feels so gross.

And whether or not it truly is creepy or dirty, beating myself up for feeling that way and instantly trying to repress it, isn't a solution. I've just gotta accept that I'm feeling that way, be okay with myself for feeling that way, and not act on the lust (either through surrendering it or some other method.) Expecting to not feel inappropriate things is an ego trip that expects me to be like a malach - which I'm not. That's the same (normal) ego that sometimes whispers in my ear that it's not worth getting clean unless I'll be perfect, or unless I save the world by getting clean. 

Some great conversation on the recent thread about incest porn that also sparked these thoughts.

chosemyshem wrote on 07 Aug 2024 17:50:

Thank you for the deep thoughts and reflections.

There is healthy tayva, in the right time and place, as part of intimacy. So, to brushstroke reject desire outright (if that is possible) would have ramifications in your relationship where it belongs. Hashem put the programing in there. We need to learn how to use it appropriately, not delete it.
Hashem created many things that aren't for us, like non-kosher foods. They aren't all b'etzem bad (or gross), they are just bad for us to have.

You don't want to think about it. You can't pretend you didn't think about it. You can't focus too much on not thinking about it - because then you are thinking about it. You need to have other thoughts (or methods) that you can call forward to push those unwanted thoughts away.

You are saving the world. At least the one that matters most. Your world. Your bishvili nivra olam.

I'm sure you've read this in The Battle of the Generation and that it's been shared many other times, but there is mushel of the girl who has a basket of wares. A thief knocks the basket down and starts to take the contents while she stands there in shock. One bystander yells to her "don't just stand there, grab as many as you can - what you take will be yours." It helps me a lot when I find myself losing kavana during davening, to recall this lesson. It also helps for times when we've started down a wrong path, that it's never too late to salvage what the YH hasn't taken from us yet.

There once was a turkey-slug who was a King,
Who slothfully slouched at the altar, 
With a trail of slime he inched his way ever forward, 
Relentless - he still doesn’t falter. 

For the throne he ascends
Is a crumbling ruin, 
Entangled in wildflowers and vines, 
Amidst thorns and a riot of breathtaking colors -
He climbs and continues to climb. 

Oh, we dwell in the shadow of cavernous ruins, 
Where jackals and darker beasts play,
The blueness been leeched from the Gold City’s sky 
To a billion numb shades of gray.

In that blahness that rises like bile inside, 
And the brokenness swift to condemn,
The lone throne that remains at the pinnacle now, 
Is the Malchus to Choose Your Own Shem. 

Circumstance, history, and paradise lost, 
Even hope falters, in face of such strife, 
In the Darkness of Galus and Churban I know: 
If you are still CHOOSING : That’s LIFE! 

בהוקרה, 
מאן דבעי חיים

chaimoigen wrote on 08 Aug 2024 00:08:

Beautiful! I love it. 

Tempted to update my avatar to a turkey-slug king brooding in grim Carcosa.

Body: What are the scariest words in the Torah? 

Soul: Good question. Some may say "yadaychim damim maleiu". Some might reference this week's Haftorah: "gam ki sarbu b'tfilah aineni shomaya" or other pesukim there.

Body: I think it is "b'chol eis yihyu bgadecha levonim."
          B'chol eis?? All the time?!
          G-d, I'm trying to be a good Jew but I can't take a break sometime? Must I always be on, always be making the right decision? Can't I             have just some time for myself??

Soul: But does G-d take a break from giving you breath? Does he leave you alone for a bit so he can relax?

Body: Ah. Way to crank up the pressure. Okay. I'll try my hardest to force myself to always do good, to always make the right decision.

Body: But one second. I've been trying to do that for a long time and it doesn't seem to work?

Soul: No worries. G-d doesn't ask the impossible. Just give it your best and smartest shot and you'll get there one day.


This whole conversation is, of course, a horrific churban.

I truly feel that the posuk of b'chol eis is the scariest posuk in the Torah. And that feeling is maybe the paradigmatic example of the churban beis hamikdash.

Derecheha darchei noam. Chiko mamtakim v'kulo machmadim. Yashkeinu minishekas pihu ki tovim dodecha miyayin.

A life of non-stop avodas hashem should be a delight. Not a pressure, not a payment we begrudgingly shell out to G-d in exchange for another day of life. Not something right-but-painful that we force ourselves to do.

How many of us have tried to go to sleep but somehow stayed up till dawn clicking, clicking, clicking, impossibly drawn after something so fake, so meaningless, and so empty? How many of us have ever meant to go to sleep but somehow stayed up till dawn lost in a sugya??

Torah, mitzvos, our relationship with Hashem. These things of endless depth and beauty should be so much more attractive than the nothingness we fill our lives with.
But we don't feel that. We feel the opposite of how we should feel.

And all we can do about our backwards life is bend down and progress like slugs. [Which is what we are supposed to be doing in our current state and for 353 days of the year we should be delighted about.] But we could've been born with wings.

We could've been born with Abaya and Rava being more fascinating than politics, sports, hock, lashon hara, or women (choose your preferred flavor of narishkeit). Instead of every day being a painful journey of one foot forward, two steps back, we could be purely motivated to become as close to Hashem as possible. Instead of pain we could have had delight.

Ignoring the pain this distance causes Hashem (the highest level of mourning), the physical tzoros that brings (the lowest level), and the lowly state klal yisroel as a whole has descended to. The churban of the individual is so complete and so pervasive that we don't even realize how destroyed we are.

Please do me a favor. Don't say Hashem wanted us down here in the mud. Because while that's true, how can we not cry while we choke on dirt?

It's painful to read the truth, but the truth has the power to set us free, even if it's difficult to accept.

Makes you feel the essence of the nine days... 

chosemyshem wrote on 08 Aug 2024 19:20:

The problem I have with this conversation is that I feel the body gave in too soon.

After the soul argued that, "does G-d take a break from giving you breath? Does he leave you alone for a bit so he can relax?" my initial reaction was, well he's unlimited, He has no need to relax. He doesn't have a creature that's more powerful than Him trying to trip Him up. He wanted to create us. So He did. He wants us around, so He sustains us. It takes nothing from Him.

Don't get me wrong, I appreciate that He created me (Although our sages tell us we'd be better off without it.), but I don't see any comparrison.

Happy Morose Churbaning.

thompson wrote on 08 Aug 2024 20:15:

Excellent question that deserves more thought than I gave it. That dialogue is definitely rough, and what's written below is not particularly clear.

But. Hashem didn't do anything difficult by making me. It didn't cost him anything. zeh nehna v'za lo chasar. 
But that doesn't mean he had to create me. 

When I breathe, Hashem is actively choosing for me to able to do that. Shouldn't I be grateful? 
If Bill Gates dropped 8 million dollars on me so I could retire and pursue my dream of a seven year around the world beer tasting yacht tour, he wouldn't notice the money was gone for a second. But I'd be eternally grateful. l'havdil (kal v'chomer? whatever the right jewish word is) I should be grateful for the privilege of life. 

It gets deeper though. Idk why Billy is dropping that dough on me. But when Hashem gives me a breath it's because he loves me and wants to give it to me. Love engenders love returned. I should experience that breath as a loving gift and return the love.

The Body in the dialogue didn't get that. The Body enjoys his life, and would like it to continue. He doesn't understand relationships with Hashem. He understand gratitude to some extent. Although he may not be particularly moved by gratitude beyond a token amount, when the Soul makes it clear how much he should feel grateful for that motivates him somewhat begrudgingly.
But his main motivation may be that he understands intellectually that Hashem is continuedly sustaining him, and would like that not to stop. He understands that the requirements of mitzvos are 24/7 (as a quick look in shulchan aruch makes clear). He views mitzvos as the token payments for that life, and is willing to do them in order for his life to continue. So when the Soul makes it clear that life isn't guaranteed to continue the Body is forced into working harder to pay the Life bill.

Thompson, you changed the conversation to focus on the imponderable, which is the part of the conversation that is less relevant to the practical, I think. Although you can talk about whatever you want, of course. 

Shem, 
great, excruciating point. 

I’ll share my thoughts. 
I don’t know about others. But at the risk of sounding arrogant, I have actually had many times that I stayed up lost in the Sugya. Those were/are the best nights of my life.

Falling asleep in the embrace of Eiruvin or Nidda or Chezkas Habattim, with drool on my desk, these have been the sweetest nights of my existence. 

I’ve had times where the words of Tehillim or Tefilla suddenly open, incandescent and alive. Times when Shabbos or Yom Tov are aglow with an otherworldly sense of Kedusha. Times on Yom Kippur night that were rapturous. 

I don’t think the problem is with G-d’s gift of life. 

The problem is with us. We ruin ourselves. 

We get lost.
We waste the gift of life, by exchanging the currency of our interest, enthusiasm, pleasure and passions. 

We develop the taste for: Sports, politics, video games, movies, endless scrolling, dumb news, empty literature, foolish and foul music,  lusting over not-so-naked or naked curvy corpse-flesh.

The demon lurking in the shadows at the corner of the study laughs to see us burn the currency of our interest and delight for empty shards of broken pottery. 

We burn out and corrupt, we pollute the pleasure receptors in our living, and then we want to know why our Yiddishkeit is a difficult drag.

It’s much like how we can engage in behavior that eventually trains ourselves to ignore the warm, loving woman waiting in the bed upstairs while we betray her for the ghost of a two dimensional false fantasy image that gives us nothing but empty self loathing back. And then we wonder why our marriages aren’t working, why she doesn’t initiate, why it’s not satisfying….

Laugh, Lilith- how much have you taken from us? What have we paid you? - for what?!?!

Yeah, I cry over the nauseating Churban.
I think it is we who have made it.

Yeah, living in a world of Churban sets the stage for all this. 
We live in a world of Hollywood, Washington, the city street, and the damned phones and tablets and computers and whatever. But the edge and joy of life has been ruined by the false version of life and living  we have adopted. 

See the Ramban on Vichai Bahem. חיי האדם במצות כפי הכינותיו בהן…. מיני חיים הרבה… עי״ש ואכמ״ל

That’s why I choose the Shem of Chaim Oigen. 
Because i am learning to look for and see what life is really all about. 

And it can be beautiful, if we don’t cast shadows all over it.

chaimoigen wrote on 09 Aug 2024 00:03:

Masterpiece, thank you!! No one says it like you, R’ Chaim, straight and complete….

Muttel

Powerful R' CO. Very powerful. 

Unrelatedly.

I was meditating on what it means to be a turkey-slug king and it came to me that it's takah a very apt metaphor for life.

We say the yetzer hara is a melech zaken uchsil. A king who is old and foolish. 

And so this is a real boich sevara, but maybe we can say that the posuk is describing the process of falling into the traps of the YH. First you're a king. Then you fall a little and slow down. Stop growing and start degenerating - aging and becoming weaker. Till finally you're a fool, who can't tell wrong from right and is utterly lost. But even as the old fool, we retain our innate malchus - even in the worst lowliness we retain our identity as a melech but it's just buried under the oldness and the foolishness.

And to get back we need to progress backwards through this process. Now we're a foolish turkey. Then we get some brains but we're an old slow slug, barely able to crawl through a clean day. Just doing the minimum is difficult and painful. Until finally with Hashem's help we eventually reclaim the malchus. But even after regaining the malchus we haven't lost the experience of being a turkey - for better or worse at all times we remain
The Turkey-Slug King

Had an interesting experience Friday afternoon (idk why my Friday afternoons have been so interesting the last couple weeks.)

Ended up having the house to myself for a few minutes before shabbos. A thought popped into my head to act out. I pushed it out, but it popped back in.

I felt like I could've white knuckled through, but I had the yishuv hadas to deal with it better. I paused, acknowledged and accepted the urge, davened for help, decided I didn't have to give in, and felt the joy in not giving in.

I felt amazing. It felt like I was going into shabbos with real purity.

I left the house to walk to shul (about a ten minute walk) and was mamash singing as I went. I was almost at shul and I was looking at the clouds (very pretty stormclouds going on) when a woman in a tight bright dress walks out of her house and bends down.

I didn't take a second look (and barely a first look except for the motion that caught my eye). I turned back to the clouds. But instead of feeling pure and good, I felt uncomfortable and squished. Once I got out of the vicinity, I felt better and mostly back to that pure feeling.

It was interesting to me how overcoming one urge felt "pure" and overcoming a different one felt uncomfortable. Life is weird. Open to hearing pshat if anyone's got it.