The Ideal Daydream

Editor’s note: The Shovevim period is the time of the year especially conducive to strengthening personal holiness on all three levels of deed, speech, and thoughts.
 
The battle against immoral thoughts is a vicious one. It’s among the very few sins that nobody can catch us doing. Unlike excessive drinking or smoking, there are no physical traces that we’ve engaged in it.
 
The Evil Inclination knows this and uses our imaginations as a primary point of attack.
 
Baruch Hashem, I have just discovered two very potent ways of reducing, and G-d willing, even eliminating this dastardly habit from our minds.
 
The first approach is to stop watching all television. There is something bad about TV. For whatever reason the images stay with you even after you turn off the set. There is an impurity which exists on the screen and the more we watch, the more of it is transferred into our souls. Like a bad meal, it takes time to travel though our system and be expelled. Even if one’s intention is to see something relatively harmless, there is always something we didn’t plan on viewing which makes a surprise appearance. It could be a series of commercials designed to get our attention, a news story about something immodest that is put center stage to get the network higher ratings, or it could be a family show where the main characters go to a non-family oriented place to give the program a little “pep.”
 
The shows end but the images don’t. The only way to distance ourselves from these impurities is to go cold turkey. This is not my opinion – it’s my experience. Try it for a week and see if you come to the same conclusion.
 
The next approach is to engage the fantasies. What is a fantasy really? It is dreaming about something a part of us wants. Dreaming is a part of life. It is where we map out the next step of our reality. It is where our long term goals are developed. Fantasy is an integral part of our existence.
 
What if the best approach is to continue dreaming, just think of a better fantasy? Is there something we can spend our “spare time” concentrating on that does not involve immorality? What is it in life that we want most right now? What is the ideal situation we yearn to be in? What is the best setting for the perfect personal daydream?
 
For me, it’s a financial position where I don’t have to worry about money – ever!
 
It’s a fantasy right?
 
We all have an ideal “number.” Many of us know to the penny the amount of assets we possess. We also have a number of what we would like to possess, and we also have a number of what we would be “really comfortable” with. The last number is probably right in between a reasonable reality and complete fantasy. Why not envision a reality where we have this amount? Why not think of all we can do with and for our loved ones if we had this number available to us? It is a dream made sweeter by the fact that it could very feasibly happen to us in real-time.
 
What about adding to our dream life without any debt? How about no worries about work? How about living in the perfect neighborhood in Israel?
 
Now that we have a proper stage, we can promise ourselves that for every moment we feel the urge to go to mental immorality, we can immediately start imaging our ideal life and create all sorts of lovely scenarios where our family, friends, and colleagues play exciting roles.
 
Granted, a true master of emunah already knows that he never has to worry about money. He knows that all of life’s uncertainties are merely a catalyst for a great improvement Hashem is asking him to make right now and when he makes it all of the illusions for dread in this world will vanish without a trace.
 
Even the greatest tests of our emunah involve periods of stress. Our minds are at work every second. We feel something all the time. There are simply intervals where we just need a quick breather from all of it. This is when the mind instinctively seeks escape and often turns to the red light district in our consciousness for a vacation. Fine. We can accommodate our urges by engaging in a fantasy and getting a similar rush, but on our terms and in a holy manner.
 
If we can pull it off it’s a miracle. We are taking the worst darkness within ourselves and instantly transforming it into nothing. The Talmud states that if we restrain from doing something wrong, it is considered as if we performed a mitzvah. Merely fighting off these immoral thoughts is a great Divine Service – even if it is only to a stalemate.
 
The payoffs are huge. We clear our minds and enable ourselves to think straight. Our ability to concentrate on anything becomes razor sharp. We throw a big measure of impurity off our soul. We leap forward in our performing the mitzvah of Guarding the Covenant, which is very powerful and brings down to us tremendous spiritual and material abundance.
 
The Zohar states that dreaming brings spiritual agents to the world that can help make these wishes come true! The more we dream, the possibility of Hashem blessing us with their fulfillment in this world becomes very real.
 
May it be Hashem’s Will that we eradicate all unholiness from our being, enjoy great happiness in coming closer to our Creator, and celebrate a life where of our dreams come true.
 
 
* * *
Dovber HaLevi is the author of the financial book, How to Survive the Coming Decade of Anxiety. He writes for Breslev Israel and The Middle East Magazine. He lives with his wife and two children in Eretz Yisrael.