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Yesod shebi'Yesod

Sunday, 25 March 2012
Part 2/2 (to see other parts of the article, click on the pages at the bottom)

Later, Ano writes again to Ezra:

Trust me, I was in it neck deep. I felt so low and dirty. I looked at so much disgusting garbage. Now when I think about what I used to do, the main emotion I feel is disbelief. I feel like that "couldn't have been me". Maybe someone forced me to do it, or I never did it and it was all a dream. The shift in attitude is really that extreme. Think about how you will feel after you get the brief pleasure of giving in and acting out - and you will succeed. Keep up the great work!!!

Ano discusses the "90 Day" phenomenon with someone on the forum:

The "90 days" is a leap of faith. It really does get SO much easier. I'm 20 years old now. I'd never gone a whole week clean since age 12. I went pretty much cold turkey with the help of GUE and a Rebbi at my yeshiva. The 90 days helps give you something to look forward to, and that already makes is so much easier. Once you get there, it is much easier because you are in the habit of NOT acting out. However, by the time you reach 90 days (it took me a while, but I got there) you should not be allowing lust to take hold of you at all. If you are at 90 days "clean" but you are constantly clicking links which you are driven to by lust, you will not be able to hold out. All the filters in the world won't help if you aren't sincere. The lust is a poison, and once you have 90 days without it, it is much easier to see that. And with the clear realization that it is pure POISON, how COULD you click on it? That is how I see it.

In honor of Rav Shlmoke's Yartzeit, I bring here below a small antidote that was posted on the forum recently by "mgsbms" that can help us understand the phenomenon of addiction better:

I saw in the sefer Mezkeinim Esbonen from the Slonimer chasid Reb Yakov Yisroel Kastenlitz, that he once asked the great Tzadik Reb Shlomko Zvihler zatza"l; why isn't anybody who transgresses the dvar Hashem considerd an apikores? After all, if he believed in Torah m'sinai how could he transgress? But Reb Shlomke didn't agree and he explained with a parable of a person whose hand has to be amputated. Although the person knows it is good for him, he still has to be tied down so that he shouldn't fight the doctors. The same - explains Reb Shlomke - is the person who stumbles in a sin. He know's he is wrong, but often the Yetzer Hara forces him into it. (Not to say that he is not liable for his sins, but to explain that we would need another post.)

Well, since we already brought one post from "mgsbms", I just have to share with you his most recent post:

Today I got my fourth week clean. I haven't felt like this in a long time. How can you compare this sweetness of holiness to the sweetness of taavah? I beg you Hashem, please help me keep this perspective. Since about two years ago when this whole thing started, I have had long clean streaks but never was it with a conviction of avodes hashem as I feel now. Thanks to this site, I feel I may have turned my life around. Just four weeks ago I had this helpless feeling of "where am I heading to?". Well, now I see there is future of kedusha ahead and there is hope. Thanks "rabbi guard"!

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