shavua tov.

i was up to my 5th day and then i fell on friday. i had a beautiful and inspiring shabbos with some holy people and i hope and pray that this will be a good week. i was thinking of sitting down and reading through both handbooks tonight, but the hour is late and im not sure that's going to happen. i read the preface of the handbook and it says that i am supposed to accept the fact that i have a problem. what is my problem? im so unclear about that. lets say i have low self esteem, dont most people have low self esteem? why am i succumbing to my yetzer hara? i should be able to fight. i have emunah, do i not keep on falling because i am not being strong?!

i want to go to sleep, so i am going to stop here. i did post on the forum asking about a partner/sponsor if someone can address that. also, "me" wrote about a filter and that i should get in touch with Reb Guard about a password. i downloaded something for K9, but im not sure about this password thing. Reb Guard, if you can let me know how we arrange that...

i guess that's the close of day 1.

kol tuv,

Dovid

Reading the handbooks is a very important step. Many of the questions you ask are answered there. But don't think you have to read it all in one sitting. Take your time and go through it carefully. Share your questions, thoughts and comments on this board, that we created especially for this purpose.

You ask, what is your problem? The problem we all need to accept is an addiction to Lust. This is a spiritual disease, that will destroy us if we don't deal with it. You could have been predisposed to addiction because of low-self esteem of any other HOST of issues. But it doesn't really matter what exactly might have brought it on. The bottom line is that you have the disease, and although you should not consider yourself responsible or guilty for getting it, you are 100% responsible for your recovery.

It is not an issue of Emunah. As you will see in the Attitude handbook principle #10, fear of heaven is not sufficient in dealing with addiction. It can only PUSH us to take the steps that ARE sufficient for dealing with addiction.

For a partner, please see here.

As far as how it works with K9, please follow the instructions here Tzadik.

Keep strong and may Hashem be with you!

Gut Voch David. You're absolutely right that everyone has problems. What's so important to realize, is that you have an addiction.
An addiction is a vicious cycle that can't be dealt with in the same way as a regular nissoyon. Once you realize that you have an addiction, you are ready to learn how to deal with it!

Rabeinu Guard, I think you need to make a correction on that page. It says to set it to high. But in the present version of k9, if you set it to high you'll get totaly stuck. (It happened to me and I had to travel pretty far to get to a different computer in order to access gmail...)

It even blocks gmail??? Whew... Well, to what level should one set it? (I don't have much experience with K9 myself).

The next to highest setting which is the default. So actually you don't need to set it at all!

What you really need to do is to set it to the "custom" settings. Here you check all of the boxes that you want to block. Don't check the "email" box.

But you need to be honest when doing this. It is not enough to just check the "p..." box. You must check everything that can lead to "p..." such as people's private" blogs", "private pages" etc. etc. Also, check under the "advanced" button, the "use the new Beta version".

If you don't this, than k9 will prove not to be so effective.  I have tons of experience with it!

BTW,

You will need to check the "forums" box. There are plenty of forums dealing with you know what. So, then you will need to go to the "URL exceptions box". There you can "add" the GYE forums, add the urls for both of the sites, as well as the forum.

That's good to know!

Dear David-

I am not giving a professional opinion just commenting from my own experience. It does not really matter that everyone else has problems. What does matter is that you have decided that you are willing to improve yourself. This itself puts you lightyears ahead of many others. The key here is to understand that which you are trying to change in order to properly address it. (call it an addiction or whatever you want) When I internalize the idea that I am not in control of my addiction, I am in no way saying that there is nothing that I can do about it. All that I am saying is that attacking it with direct will is not the way to go. The proper approach can be in ways harder than a direct attack of the YH with will. But it works. This makes it vastly different than the hundreds of other ways that I have tried to fight the YH that got me back to where I started from (or worse). So yes, the GYE approach can require a small leap of faith in the beginning, but just look at how many people were like us (or worse) and have totally changed their lives in ways I can only dream of.

Wishing you loads of Hatzlacha,

Your fellow warrior,
Hoping