I just posted this
blue stuff on MBJ's thread. He is very geshmak, and asked about getting free of viewing women the wrong way.
While it is certainly a great thing to become a Kadosh, and Nekius is certainly a part of deveikus (and part of 'fitting my neshomah' better, which the RMCha"L
defines as being more 'like Hashem'), that does not mean that it is therefore the right way for addicts to go. The Chassidic concept of explaining concepts "al derech avodah" (see the
Divrei Chayim, the Hornosteipeler
Peleh Yo'eitz and other sforim - and Rav Avigdor Miller and Rav Shimshon Pincus's writings - for more of that approach).
Theoretical piety is not necessarily practically relevant, 'al derech avodah'. It may be ignored, actually, if it impedes real progress. And Recovery as I am being shown it is the '
al derech avodah', par excellence. Destination-thinking is really just taking outcomes into our hands...and basic emunah for
everybody is that ratzon and hishtadlus are
ours - outcomes are purely
G-d's. Recovery focuses on that a bit more to the extreme...'al derech avodah'. It's just the way it works for so many addicts. As Chuck C used to say, "You can't
think yourself into right living. You can only
live yourself into right thinking." (yeah, I got that right
![](https://guardyoureyes.com/components/com_kunena/template/default/images/emoticons/new/smile.png)
)
There are many paths to success, harbei drachim laMakom v'harbei sh'luchim laMakom. I have found that the path to some high things is davka through (durch) the lower road. It is the despised road labelled "Mediocrity". Being just a normal, decent Jew - not The Rebbe. By aiming at Kedusha (or more accurately, at what
we label as Kedusha), we often consign ourselves to the same cycle - just on a longer and more bitter track. So:
[color=blue]Messilas Yeshorim: "v'Hachasidus ha'amiti - rachok hi m'tziur sichleinu!" We generally have a poor concept of perfection and piety. And that was written to normals.
Addicts have a
twisted and poor perception of perfection.
The perfection and piety you seek seems to me to be a way to abdicate your more reasonable and more likely Ratzon Hashem: just being OK. No, we need to be great. It seems the only way out for us. But that is a lie our disease tells us. And it always has - that's why we kept acting out and flopping even though we were feeling like we were growing holier.
Sure, in long term sobriety and recovery you may always notice a woman's breasts first, or her figure, etc...but what is bad about that? It's just hard-wiring, and quite meaningless. It does not need to lead you to really
interact with her as though she is a sex candy machine, and that's the point. The old ba'al mussar said on his deathbed that if someone held out money to him right now - he would still feel the desire to reach for it. Was he saying he was a failure? No way. He was saying that he was a success
precisely because he never pretended to himself that he was pure as the driven snow - or deserved to be. He recognized he had the proclivity - but that did not dictate his behavior. He lived a life of success in freedom from ahavas mamon...but having the desire and seeing it operate in him was not a failure.
To you I believe, it would be a failure. And I am here to say that's a pity. It need not be that way. You
can grow up along with all us addicts if you need to, and get freedom from acting out your lust by G-d's Chessed, one day at a time. He gives the reprieve daily - like the monn in the desert - so that we recovering drunks, druggies, and perverts do not ever believe that we beat it and are above it all now. For that pride would make us so holy that we would not need Him any more. And that would be the 'sof pasuk'... :-[
Hey - hatzlocha! [/color]