Freedom from slavery
Shalom and thank you for your question. Assuming that you are seriously looking for an answer to your issue of addiction to relationships with women, if I understood what you meant by being ‘enslaved’ to them, I will offer a few thoughts, and sincerely wish you success in your endeavors!
The Jewish liturgy – order of prayer – is replete with references to the fact that the Almighty Blessed be He took the Jewish people out of the bonds of Egyptian slavery. The Talmud says “In every generation a person is required to view himself as having left Egypt, as it says in Exodus 13:8 ‘And you shall surely tell your son on that day’…”
This happened thousands of years ago. The population in Egypt today is not the same and the Jews have undergone constant trials and tribulations since then, including the Spanish Inquisition and others, the Holocaust, wars, and unceasing terror atracks. Why harp back to ancient Egypt?
The reason is that when G-d took us out of Egypt, we had to do something ourselves, take some action, in order to merit being saved. In Chassidic teaching there is a concept called arousal from Above and arousal from below. The arousal from Above was G-d’s promise to redeem us through Moses, to which end we were given instructions like taking a sheep and tying it to the bedpost for four days and then offering it as a sacrifice, painting the doorpost with its blood, and consequently eating it… The arousal from below was the actual carrying out of those instructions by the Jewish people.
What do all these seemingly primitive rites mean? Egyptian society at that time was steeped in idol worship and promiscuity which had influenced the Jews negatively, although they had managed to keep their identity by retaining Jewish names and dress code. The Egyptians worshipped sheep, (until modern times the cow was and may still be considered holy in India,) and thus the Jewish people were influenced by this as well. Tying the Egyptian belief system to your bedpost and then slaughtering it can be very challenging if you yourself tend to believe in it. We overcame the challenge and thus underwent a subtle spiritual change that made us more ready and able to be redeemed. This change was encoded in our spiritual DNA and the message is that since then we CAN, with G-d’s help, redeem ourselves from our personal ‘Egypt.’ The Hebrew word for Egypt comes from the root ‘meitzarim’ – meaning constraints. In every generation – if we focus our goal and our prayers and our ability to choose – on leaving our personal ‘Egypt’ – we can!! Only with G-d’s help.
Having said that – in our day there are organizations based on the Twelve Step programs, which have a tremendous success rate in helping people deal with and overcome various types of addiction, including sexual. You can look up the nearest organization to you.
Beyond that – the most important thing is – you can’t go somewhere if you dont know where it is. What do you WANT to do with the life and resources of health and various abilities and/or income, property…? Nobody has everything. One person can see, another can hear, another can walk and another can talk. If you are lucky enough to have most or even all of these abilities, you have the possibility and the obligation to use them for the good. There is a Rabbi who suffers from ALS and cannot move anything except his eyelids. With those, he writes Torah columns through a special computer program which registers the movements of his eyelids.
What are you going to to do with your resources?
