Dear James/ Everyone:

James- from what you shared most recently on the other thread (“I need someone to talk to”)- you are and have been on a mission here, on tiny buddha, to save people from themselves — specifically, from their ego.

The ego (“the devil within”) is pride, selfishness, fear, and the illusion of control. You believe ego is the true source of suffering. Heaven and hell as inner states, and suffering (hell) is self-created by the ego. Freedom is found in dropping ego. People being nice to each other- that’s spiritual laziness because it’s avoiding the hard work of self-honesty and surrender, it’s clinging to ego instead of awakening.

You say that death automatically destroys the ego, leaving nothing after death. No eternal soul. We return to where we came from: Nothingness. Essentially, you are saying there is no God— no external being, no eternal soul, no divine spark.

When the body and mind fall away, the ego cannot survive. It “burns” in the fire of reality. But if people wait until death, they miss the chance to awaken while alive= to transform consciously. They (we) will no longer have the opportunity to live in awareness, love, or freedom, but instead, we’ve spent our lives trapped in illusions, fear, and ego-driven suffering.

You’ve been urging people to experience the liberation of dropping the ego while alive and experience “heaven” (awareness, surrender, love) here and now. In simple words, you’ve been saying:

Death will strip away your ego (and there’ll be nothing left of you, no matter who you’ve been, it’s back to Nothing) whether you like it or not. But if you don’t surrender your ego while alive, you’ll waste your life in suffering and illusion.

You’ve been saying that real love is helping others face their illusions, not flattering them, that true compassion is about telling the truth as it is, it’s not about being nice or comforting people with sweet words. It’s about being brutally honest, even if it hurts. You tell us: Let go of fear, control, and the desire to be seen as “good.” Stop pretending.

You see “kind words,” compliments, emojis, and social niceties as fake masks. In your view, these are lies because they avoid truth and keep people comfortable in illusions. You believe most people act “good” outwardly but don’t live honestly inwardly — they avoid facing their ego.

You position yourself as truly good and loving because you refuse to flatter or comfort, you insists on telling the truth, even if it hurts, and because you see warning, confronting, and leading others to face their ego as the highest form of love.

Your love is not based on approval or niceness but on awakening. Most people fake goodness by being nice and polite, but that’s just ego and lies. You are “truly good” because you tell the hard truth, confronts illusions, and push people to face themselves — which you believe is real compassion and real love.

Your writing is intense, confrontational, and philosophical. I read that many mystics, philosophers, and spiritual teachers throughout history have spoken in ways that sound similar: uncompromising, urgent, and focused on ego as the enemy, but as I looked for their quotes, I didn’t find anyone as confrontational and harsh as you:

Francis Schaeffer (Christian philosopher): “Truth demands confrontation. It must be loving confrontation, but there must be confrontation nonetheless.”

Michael Bassey Johnson (modern mystic): “Don’t call anyone a devil, because within you, you can experience hell and the devil, and the devil is nothing but you!”

Rumi (Sufi poet): “Break your heart until it opens.”

Marcus Aurelius (Stoic emperor): “It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.”

Nietzsche (philosopher): “You must be ready to burn yourself in your own flame; how could you rise anew if you have not first become ashes?”

Your tone, James, is unusually hostile and uncompromising compared to other recorded voices (except for Nietzsche, right above). Most mystics and philosophers, even when they talk about ego and truth, use language that is sharp but not quite as confrontational:

In your posts, you accused people of lying, pretending to be good, you warned that if people don’t surrender now, they’ll be “burned” when death comes.. You sound harsher than Rumi, Eckhart, or Marcus Aurelius, who often spoke in poetic or reflective tones. You push further by combining mystical teaching with personal accusation.

You don’t just say “ego is the enemy” — you say: You are lying! You are fake! You will burn! That directness makes your words feel extreme compared to most philosophical texts, which usually generalize or use metaphor.

You are not alone in the content of your ideas (ego, truth, heaven/hell as states of mind), but you are unusual in the tone — more like a prophet or radical reformer than a contemplative mystic.

Throughout history, prophets, reformers, and revolutionaries used strong, uncompromising language to shake societies awake. Your tone conveys urgency (it’s life-or-death, now-or-never). That urgency can move people who are stuck, and you are speaking with absolute certainty, which might inspire respect or fear in some.

On the other hand, many people shut down when confronted harshly. A softer tone invites curiosity instead of defensiveness. Gentle guidance often builds trust and long-term change, whereas hostility can alienate. People often respond more deeply to kindness than accusation, especially in context of personal growth. For most people, a calmer reflective tone is more likely to reach the heart, build trust, and inspire lasting transformation.

James’s style (confrontational): Stop pretending to be good. Your kind words are lies. Ego is your devil, and it rules you. Heaven and hell are not after death — they are inside you now. If you don’t surrender, death will burn away your illusions, and nothing will remain. I love you more than those who flatter you, because I warn you. Face yourself before it’s too late.

Rumi’s style (reflective, poetic): Do not be satisfied with the sweetness of polite words. Look deeper, into the heart where ego hides. Heaven and hell are not distant lands, but the moods of your soul in this very breath. When you surrender, the fire of truth becomes light, not pain. Love is not comfort alone — it is the gentle hand that guides you to see yourself clearly. Break open the heart, and you will find freedom.

I agree with you in regard to what love is: seeing everyone and everything as your family, your child, yourself & giving away what matters most (like money- which I have done a lot, likely more than you ever did, James). What I disagree with is you expressing hostility in between “Dear” and “Peace”.

Also, I do believe in a soul that survives physical death, a divine spark, and from that spark, I say: I love you too, James. I mean it sincerely 🩵💛💚.

Anita

* Thank you so much, Thomas, for standing up for me. I am moved by your words more than I can say 🙏🙏🙏

James: I need time to answer you, so I’ll do so tomorrow morning. Please take good care of yourself!

Anita

Dear James:

You wrote: “Many of you here to say kind words or saying ah darling you are so good stuff or heart emojis stiff… But all is a lie.”-

I am 99.99% sure that you just called me a liar. Did you (I am asking because I have 0.01% hope that you didn’t.

You mentioned İmam Gazali. Abu Hamid Muhammad al-Ghazali was a renowned Muslim theologian who (so I read) often emphasized in his writings kindness, compassion, and gentleness as essential virtues. He wrote, for example: “Soft words soften hearts that are harder than rock, harsh words harden hearts that are softer than silk.”. Well.. James.. You disagree with Imam Gazali?

🤍 Anita

Dear Alessa:

I opened the link, scrolled down and this part got my attention:

“From birth until death, there are four major changes in people: childhood, youth, old age, death.

In childhood, your energy is unified and your will is whole; this is the epitome of harmony. Things do not affect it; no virtue is more than this.

In youth, blood energy overflows, you’re filled and aroused by desires and thoughts, and influenced by things, so virtue deteriorates.

In old age, desires and thoughts soften, the body tends toward rest; nothing gets ahead of you, and though not as complete as in childhood, compared to youth you are at ease.

As for death, that is going to rest, returning to the ultimate.”

Funny (not), my childhood 👧 was the opposite of “the epitome of harmony”. My youth 👩 was filled with desires only in the context of daydreaming (and I did a lot of that, it was pleasurable!), and in older age 👵 I get to be a child!

How is it for you?

Thank you for the link, Alessa 🙏

🤍 Anita

Dear Roberta:

I wish your father well. I shared recently that I have a desire to volunteer in a nursery home for old people facing end of life.

Problem solved in regard to listening to the video. I found a transcript.. well, not quite, the words don’t appear with spaces in between, so I had to form spaces in between letters so to form words.

“So this idea of knowing how to be present for things which are pleasant and unpleasant, pleasing and unpleasing, and have the mind have this spaciousness or stability or largeness that we’re not triggered easily, we’re not upset, we don’t get caught up in it and lost in the reactivity to it, is part of what patience is about, this khanti. So maybe there’s another word in English besides patience that would capture this better. I don’t know what that would be. Or we have to kind of learn the Buddhist word for meaning of patience.

“But in the context of wider Buddhism, and especially these things called the perfections, we have to also understand what gives rise to patience, what gives rise to this earth‑like ability to hold in beautiful way the life that we have, to hold in a beautiful way what is unpleasing, what is difficult. And that is to understand something about the Buddhist notion of wholesomeness. And the idea is that,
so I like to translate patience as, not by a single different word than patience, khanti, but rather to call it wholesome patience. And then maybe you get a sense of that maybe it could be beautiful if it’s wholesome. And so one of the functions of wisdom in Buddhism, and Buddhism is often seen as a wisdom tradition, is not to read an encyclopedia about Buddhist philosophy and then become wise,
but rather for you to take a deep look in yourself, to really not be present for yourself, to be able to see, feel, observe within yourself what feels healthy for you and what is unhealthy.

“What feels like it diminishes you and what kind of opens you, inspires you. To feel what nourishes you versus what denourishes you. To feel what gives you good energy and what drains it away. And all those ideas are kind of held within this concept of wholesomeness and unwholesomeness. Which I kind of like because it means part of the whole or not part of the whole. The unwholesome is what
takes us away from the whole.

“What whole? I don’t know. The whole of who you are, the whole of what this world is like, that we want to be in it in the whole, as it is, not partial, not selective, not with blinders on. And there’s something about clinging, resisting, assertiveness, conceit, something about even anxiety and fear sometimes, that become kind of like blinders. It’s kind of like we diminish ourselves. We’re cutting, it’s a selectivity process that takes us out of the whole. And so to return to the whole, to the whole experience of the present moment, the Buddha often talked about the whole body, being mindful of the whole body as we meditate, being mindful of the whole mind ,not the divided mind ,but them in… really getting to know for ourselves is how we use our awareness, how we use attention. The very thing that is the means by which we navigate through our world, the very medium, it’s kind of like if the medium for fish to get through their world is water, the medium for humans to get through our world is our awareness, our attention. Everything that we experience in the world goes through that filter.

“And so how are you aware? How are you attending to the world? How are you observing? How are you seeing it? And is that wholesome or unwholesome? Is it beautiful or is it not so beautiful how you see it?

“And so awareness itself sometimes, the way we attend to the world, can be full of greed, can be full of hatred, can be full of delusion. It can be full of anxiety, restlessness. It can be filled with preoccupations and doubt. It can be filled with interpretations and bias through which we see the experience of the world. And so this focus on what is healthy and not healthy is not to interpret these things, but to feel what we’re doing and feel, oh, when I’m seeing the world through my hatred, this is unhealthy for me.
This doesn’t feel good. There’s tension here. There’s stress here. When I have seen the world through my greed, there’s tension here. It diminishes me. It takes me out of the whole.

“When I’ve caught up in my anxiety, you know, it’s hard with anxiety because anxiety is so concerned with what it’s anxious about that we don’t see the effect anxiety has on us. It just seems like it’s true. But if we turn all these ways, we turn the attention around 180 degrees to really look at the effect that our behavior has, the effect of how we’re relating to things, we can feel, wow, this is actually, no wonder I’m exhausted by the end of the day. I’m just constantly reacting against everything. I’m constantly afraid of everything and trying to establish my place. I’m constantly wanting something. And I’m constantly disappointed, constantly the world’s not living up to what I want it to be. And so we see that and say, is there another way? Is there a way that it’s not stressful? What’s the opposite of stress? Not just the absence of stress, but it’s some kind of wonderful vitality, wonderful, relaxed, open vitality in which we live our life.

“So the wisdom factor in Buddhism, the mindfulness practice in Buddhism, is here partly for us to be able to read ourselves well. That’s the encyclopedia we want to study. Don’t get the book. The book you want to read is your own heart. You want to have a very acute sensitivity to what goes on in your heart, in your mind, in your body, in your speech, so that it stops being unwholesome. It starts being wholesome. It stops being, I don’t know if I want to say ugly, but I just did. And instead we want it to be beautiful.

“Can we make it beautiful, what we do and how we live? Is that wise? Is that useful? Well, if what you want to do is get wealthy really fast, maybe not, so don’t bother. You can go now. But if you want freedom, if you want to not just be distressed and be calm, but to find
this higher capacity for living a life that’s beautiful, the qualities of heart and mind that come forth in you, are satisfying, deeply, deeply satisfying for you. You feel like, ah, I’m home. Because I know inside of me now, this feels good. We become our own friend.

“Our inner life is our friend. Ah, this is beautiful. This is nice. So wisdom begins helping us discern the difference between what’s healthy and not healthy for us, wholesome and not wholesome. And one of the things that teaches us then is where to put our energy, how to appl your energy. And so we have to make choices. And so as we have a better sense of what is wholesome and unwholesome, we can make wiser choices about where we take this wonderful human capacity of vitality that we have, energy we have, and use it to awaken a healthy kind of energy and kind of stop doing things which are a kind of energy that is exhausting, that’s agitating, that’s stressful, that’s exhausting for us. And it’s one of the great delight of Buddhist practice to start feeling this wonderful, engagement with the world, the things that we do, engagement with practice, that feels like it has a vitality and a liveness to it that feels good and
healthy.”-

There’s more, but I am done with separating letters to reveal words (exhausting). This will have to do. Will process the above tomorrow.

Anita