Defend Your Soul, Take Control

A person might be doing every commandment yet still feel something inside askew. This is because the real closeness to Hashem lies within a man’s guarded eyes.

Year after year, we try to improve and enhance our connection to the Almighty. We buy a beautiful Etrog, expensive Tefillin, bigger Sukka and so forth. More important however is for a man to meet the challenge of overcoming his lust for women; I’d suggest using Rabbi Shalom Arush’s The Garden of Purity as a guideline manual for doing so.

The risk of not working on this is exponential. Rabbi Arush teaches that failing to guard one’s eyes and thoughts can lead to birth defects in one’s offspring, Heaven forbid. That alone should shake us to the core. Without addressing this issue honestly, we suffer huge consequences. We lack peace with our wife or can be prevented from marrying our soulmate. In many cases the lust for women has caused religious people to lose all their spirituality. We need to get to work.

Keeping all the Torah externally is not what it’s all about; Hashem desires the heart.  Rabbi Brody once shared with me that the purpose of life is all about having closeness to Hashem. How do we attain it? There are stories about rabbis who painted their sunglasses black leaving only a small part unpainted to see where they were going when in the street. Even in such cases they mentioned that they failed over and over to guard their eyes. The only method to rid lust is prayer. Only Hashem can change a person’s nature. Just like in Alcoholics Anonymous, to improve first you need to admit you have a problem and believe in a Higher Power to help you get through. When it comes to guarding the eyes, only Hashem’s mercy can save us, but it takes a lot of prayer. Let’s begin.

The mere fact that we have this lust causing us to run to G-d for help is a good thing because Hashem desires our prayers. He wants us to merit the salvation through prayer and get to the next higher spiritual level where we don’t have all these lusts. By investing the time necessary to cleanse, a person becomes infinitely closer to Hashem.

For yeshiva students, you might be doing OK in your learning but your inability to go out to the store without flubbing up is what is really holding you back. I know someone who has been praying for 30 minutes daily to guard the eyes for several weeks now and is passing all the challenges he meets in the street. He even told me that when he had to have business meetings with other women, he didn’t feel any attraction for them and could easily tune out the evil inclinations tempts to look at them. And this man came from Las Vegas, not Mea Shearim! If he can do it what about you? He completely was able to nullify himself and pass his tests clean. After just a few weeks of sincere effort.

The main weapon is prayer. Just like in exercise after a few workouts you can feel a change in your body. The same goes with prayer for guarding the eyes. A man who spends 30 minutes a day for five days will begin to feel huge progress on his journey to a higher spiritual level. This brings with it blessings for livelihood, peace with one’s wife and success for one’s children. But just like in exercise it requires discipline, consistency and desire. Just remember that it is a lifelong battle, there are no quick fixes. But that is part of it and this keeps us close to Hashem.

Follows Rabbi Arush’s advice will change your life. One really can erase their evil thoughts and habits thus getting life in a winner’s path. You’ll have enormous blessings, you’ll have children, get married and more. Just start!

Homework:

Commit yourself for three days straight to work on this. Ask Hashem for 30 minutes a day to help you guard your eyes.

If you are super motivated, push yourself to keep this going on a day to day basis till Pesach. Expect miracles!