Hey Briut,

Some powerfull and difficult stuff you got here. Just a question: Why cant you do both?

Now here's my take (assuming you cant do both). I know it probably doesnt mean anything but I'll throw it at you and you can do what you want with it.

I think you should take a hard look at the people on this website. How much they cry. How much they (we) pain. Now I dont know if you are on the 'addict' level. But if you are not just look where you could end up if you CHOOSE to continue this behavior. We all have our battles on the level we can handle them. Just be gratefull to Hakadosh Baruch Hu that you have the choice.

Whatever you decide, youre always loved here.

-Yiddle

Yiddle2 wrote on 14 Jun 2010 01:55:


Gratitude to Hashem. Whoa, YEP. Thanks for the reminder; I didn't include that in the earlier posts. Absolutely. The Big Guy Upstairs been very very good to me. Every day.

Even the CONCEPT that I MIGHT have a choice here represents a tremendous chesed from Above... Did I forget that, too? Thanks for the reminder, Yiddle2.

Hi, Briut. Shalom and best wishes.

Briut, everything you have to say sounds like one big rationalization, one big attempt at justifying your indulging. Hey, if you really want to do it, the door is wide open. It always has been. So what kept you from walking through and indulging before? Probably a better understanding of things. Which is the direction you want to go in. And what makes you want to jump in now? Not a measured understanding of priorities in life. No, not that. Pure and simple lust is why you want to jump in. You can rationalize it anyway you want, but it's just lust.

And this idea of an isle of peace with a small, controlled indulgence is an illusion. While lusting, giving in will always seem like peace, relief. But that is only in relation to the tension created by the lust. In relation to our lives, our loved ones and, most importantly, G-d, we find that this isle of peace by way of indulging is a very painful lie.

Stop looking at it like a long build-up that needs a release from time to time and start looking at it like an annoying impulse which you can, with G-d's help, swat away as you continue on your path of holiness. It isn't a train that has built up steam over the last 50 days. Rather, it is more like a fly. It buzzes around for awhile until you deal with it. Is the 50th fly an indestructible mammoth that we must give into? No, of course not. It's just a fly.

You can beat this fly, you just have to want to. And inviting rationalizations to sin is no way to wanting to. That's just the yetzer hara. Let that type of thinking go. 

I read that it's in the Talmud that, The person who tears down fences gets bitten by a snake. Don't think for a minute that you can handle this snake. You'll never know ahead of time how bad its bite is. Like Reb Yiddle said, Do you see how many men are crying on this site? How many men are in pain? Don't turn your back on what you know to be right. It's one thing to fall from sheer lack of control, it's quite another to build a labyrinth of rationalizations to aid in easing into bad behavior. That is madness. You're a lot smarter than that.

Give the matter some thought. You'll soon come to your senses. You are a very intelligent, valuable Yid and you don't need to be thinking that way. I've read in some of your previous posts your alluding to this type of thinking before. So maybe your struggle is to conquer your mind? I've read that the Torah makes a man free. Maybe this is another opportunity, like in so many of our lives, to re-embrace the principles we love deep down inside? 

If I come across rough on any parts of this post, please understand that everything I say is said with respect and love. Briut, I believe you can make it. I also believe that sholom bayis is a very attainable goal for you. I just don't believe that having a mindset of justifying wrong leads anywhere good. I know you're a lot bigger than that.

teshuvahilaah wrote on 14 Jun 2010 02:38:

Thanks for your heart-felt, loving, and challenging post. I mean it.

What hit closest to home is that my struggle might be more in the mind than anyplace else. Compulsive "figuring things out" is certainly part of the package: sometimes useful and sometimes the opposite.

I'm thinking I'll have to give it a try before I can really give up on it. And there I go, thinking again. What's that expression, "let go and, er um..."? OK.

Great Post Teshuvah ilaah!

More on those lines, I have tried so, so many times to rationalize falling.

I need the break / release.
I deserve it, b/c of blank.
My wife's not available, was too tired, etc.
I'm not really searching for p*** I'm just randomly searching for ----

Except it didn't work. I couldn't convince myself. Bottom line is I know it's wrong and none of my excuses held up.

So why did I fall you ask? I decided to shut off the rational part of my brain put it on ignore for a bit to let myself fall and fall and fall.

So just from tips from an experienced faller. If you really want to fall cut out all this rationalization crap it's not going to work!

Turn off that human component of yourself!

Just be an animal!

Come on! Go for it!

Let loose!

Let all the ugliness all the baser animalistic urges rein supreme!

You can do it!

Thinking, thinking, thinking. Briut, I am a chronic thinker. Thinking, reasoning, weighing - all of this has its role to play in healthy living. But when our thinking begins to run contrary to our bedrock beliefs, we have there encountered a problem. It seems to me that the only solution is humble surrender. This is very tough for people like us, but from where else will we grow and heal?

I would take it one day at a time and try to keep the mind together and dedicated to G-d and righteous living. If, cv"s, you fail somewhre along the way, at least you have a healthy mind, without which none of us have any hope.

All of us here in a transition from bad habits. This requires a renewal, often in how we think. I've wrote the below story before on another post. It bears repeating here. My Rov tells the story of a young rabbi who encounters opposition from the shul he was appointed to head. Why? He raised the mechitza. The congregants could not near this. They said, If we allow you to raise the mechitza, we will have to admit that we have been wrong for 50 years! My Rov tells us that self-justification can be one of the biggest walls standing between a person and teshuvah.

The above goes for me as well as you, Briut. It's not easy to admit when we're wrong. Even harder to admit our thinking went somehow wrong. But be encouraged. We really aren't all bad. It is just the lust/ yetzer hora that has tried to commandeer the vehicle. Truth be told, the vehicle, "you" and "your thinking", have many pure, pure qualities. We just need to surrender to G-d in order to regain the good of who we are. It isn't so far away, "in your mouth and heart". I am certain all of us on this site, including yourself and myself, will overcome these ordeals.

The medicine is surrender to G-d, something 12 steppers can attest to. I shied away from dancing the 12 steps for awhile, but today I see it like a community that encourages teshuvah/ rebirth. I might be wrong, as I have not yet joined a 12 step group (though I did join a therapy session with various persons involved), but it seems that surrender to G-d is central.

Hang in there. Don't give up the homestead in olam haba. Fight the good fight and keep your head up, my friend.

Me3 wrote on 14 Jun 2010 14:17:


Reb Me3, this almost sounds like an encouragement to fall! A how-to manual when presented with a particular type of difficulty!

But I know your aim is true. We need to see how ugly and animalistic we can become in order to value the bedrock of our beliefs which keep us and elevate us. As Hulk Hogan would say, Amen, brother!!!

Hey Briut,

First of all, I want to apologize if my comments earlier were misunderstood...I was being a leitz and absolutely did not mean anything seriously about "trashing" you. I have nothing less than amazing respect for you and everything you have accomplished in this field.

In fact, look at your words: "I'm at least willing to stop the plans for the superfall marathon until I have a good good answer to that question. Otherwise, I'm a hypocrite. Which would hurt me much more than losing my count."

These words are so inspiring. And I daven for you every day...personally...and I am NO ONE to talk...but I have absolutely stopped thinking about anything else other than making it through today. Piling up the numbers absolutely makes me feel good...but when I have an urge...like I had this morning and I have almost every hour of the day...I just ask Hashem to help me through today. All I care about is surviving today...it absolutely helps me keep the RID down.

Anyway, this junkie is rooting hard (figuratively...can I still joke here???) for you!

Keep up the amazing work, my very dear anonymous friend;

Y

I

Aaargh!

Don't listen to them!

Fall!

Fall!

Shut the brain down!

Just be a 2 legged animal!

Wow. All the posts I see today are amazingly personal, inspiring, insightful and relevant. I hope you can see, since I'm not finding the right words, what the right words at the right time can mean. For want of better words... THANKS.

[For those who apologized for being assuming too much about me, or for too much trashing, or anything else -- don't worry. I think that right now is exactly the right time for that "slap in the face; thanks I needed that" approach. Even you, me3: I know you're just taunting me that my mother wears army boots. Feh!]

I confess, all my "logical" thinking has been clouded by a LOT of irritation. Example: my wife has made decisions in the past week/s that will cost the family Hundreds Of Thousands of dollars, and never consulted me and never told me. Instead of looking at why I might be so scary in her eyes, I'm looking at how unreliable and irresponsible she is. The irritation is squeezing me pretty hard, and I feel a need to take a few pounds of stress off my back.

The easiest place I know to release stress on short notice... need I go on?

I can't say that knowing this will make it easy to find some other routes for reducing stress. (Like, examining my own anger triggers and healing them into patient and universal love? Yeah, right....) But I can see that there MIGHT, just MIGHT be some avenues for RIDding RID that are more compatible with Torah.

In my case, I had rationalized for decades that my se*ual acting-out was really all that G-d had equipped me to do. So that the aveirah wasn't an aveirah, since He gave me no way to do anything different. These last few months have shown me that maybe, just maybe, Hashem is now giving me the path to move beyond those old patterns. And if He has, then future acting out won't feel so guilt-free. So it might not even work the way it used to.

Ouch.

So at the risk of putting my head through too much of a work out (I mean my cerebellum, of course ), I have to see whether all this knowledge (the RID, the SSA, the sholom bayis, etc) changes the cheshbon on planning a couple of days of superfall.

Thanks, guys.

DON'T FALL!!!! I just did...It is a lot of pain! don't do it! there is no rationalization! Its all a lie and fake! as soon as you're "done" you're going to wish you never did "it"! It felt good at first but then...It felt terrible!

Me taunt?

Me?
Me?
Me?

Me3 wrote on 14 Jun 2010 16:23:

L'Moshul: All the parts of the body had a meeting to decide who should be king. The brain spoke up first: I run all the systems; I have the intelligence; obviously it's me. The heart spoke up next: I pump the blood that keeps you alive; I'm the center of human emotion; it should be me. And pretty much all the body parts spoke up after that with their own merits.

Finally, the rectum spoke up: how about me? And all the body parts started laughing before he could even make his case. They made him feel terrible. He got so upset that he just stopped functioning. Completely. Bad stuff started backing up. But he wouldn't let up.

Finally, after several days of discomfort, the other parts all relented and made him king. He went back to work and everything was good again.

Which just proves: "you don't have to be a big brain to be king. Just an a**hole." [ed.: or, to be a little more pareve: just a pain in the rear.]

So, if I say, "Thank you, oh King mememe, for all your sharp comments," I know you'll take it in the most loving of ways.

PS: I thought about deleting this, but figured someone might use a good chuckle today.

Hey, if you dish out the **** you have to be prepared to take it too.

Too funny. Makes you wonder where all those power players get their training. This world really is upside down when the rectum gets to the top.