Surrender

From GYE Members

• So recently I had an opportunity to spend some time with dov and just wanted to share one amazing insight I learnt from him. #surrender, there's plenty of definitions to that, but this is how I understand and how I apply it my life. When I see a pretty woman in the street, I tell myself "I'm never going to have her, speak with her, have anything to do with her" "she doesn't want to have anything to with me, she's not trying to please me". As dov puts it, "a pretty woman isn't lust"! I'm just using her to feed my lust and I really love that line because that totally changed my perspective, as in it used to be me telling myself that she's causing me to lust, so to separate her from her lusting activities (her pretty clothes etc) was hard for me and made it a impossible fight, now that I know it's just my lust I'm imposing on her, and I realize that it's not about her, it's just me then I can tell myself to take a chill, live life and surrender that desire, and try stop objectifying her. Although it's still a fight for me to go into my personal surrender mode, nevertheless it's not unbearable as it used to be, but there's still a long road ahead to recovery, and BH past 6 weeks that I've been clean I consider it clean not "dry drunk" @Shnitzel and kugel
• Saying a tefillah to surrender the thought to Hashem: This is a famous one from SA (I think) I'm going to quote alexeliezer: "Guarding my mind from fantasies and mental images was, and continues to be, the greater challenge. This would include the thought that I feel like masturbating or doing even worse. For this, I have found tefilla -- immediate, repetetive, and incessant tefillah, the only hope. I use the following nusach every time a lustful thought or images tries to take a seat in my mind: Ribono Shel Olam, I am powerless over lust and my life has become unmanageable. Only You can restore me to sanity. I turn my life and my lust over to Your care and ask You to please heal me from this illness of lust. I don’t want to lust. I only want You and a relationship with You and your Torah (and appropriate attraction and interaction with my aishes chayil). I surrender my lust to you. Please take my lust".There are many different versions of the tefillah and some people find it helpful to make up their own version.

Torah Sources

• שומר אמונים דף תס"ט: בספר הקדוש עבודת ישראל ראיתי עצמה להמחשבות לבטל ממנו הבחירה, דהיינו שיאמר להשי"ת כביכול, "רבונו של עולם, הריני מבטל רצוני לגמרי אי אפשי בו ולא בשכרו רק רצונך", ואז השי"ת יבטל באמת רצון אחרים שהם כוחות המסיתים ע"כ. והגם לגבי דבר אחר אינו רשאי לעשות זא, אבל לבטל ממנו מחשבות רעות אשר הוא פגם עצום ונורא וסכנה גדולה מותר לעשות הכל.
• תניא פכ"ח: ...ואם יקשה לו להסירם מדעתו מפני שטורדים דעתו מאד בחזקה אזי ישפיל נפשו לה' ויתחנן לו ית' במחשבתו לרחם עליו ברחמיו המרובים כרחם אב על בנים הנמשכים ממוחו וככה ירחם ה' על נפשו הנמשכת מאתו ית' להצילה ממים הזדונים ולמענו יעשה.