Hi Alessa,

Progressive muscle relaxation or similar techniques are seen as stressful for the body.

He’s actually a big fan of massage and self massage too.

To me it seems a bit counter-intuitive that progressive muscle relaxation is considered stressful on the body, while massage is not. I’ve just looked it up and haven’t found that PMR would be stressful on the body…? Are there some online resources where it is explained?

Hi James,

Mine was congenital heart problem.

Oh I see. I’m sorry, James. May I ask if you knew about it before, or it came unexpectedly?

The core of stress is expectations. For instance, you eat healthy, work out and did exactly what is main media says about “living healthy” and you have car accident and get paralyzed. Won’t it be more suffering for you, because you did everything right, yet everything turned out to be unexpected way?

Sure, there is always a possibility of an accident or an emergency, which throws all our plans out of the window, or messes up with our life in a major way. But should we stop brushing our teeth, just because we might have an accident some day?

You know what I mean? The two isn’t really related to each other…

But am I hearing you right that you were doing everything “by the book” (perhaps related to your health?), and then you had this heart emergency anyway? And you feel it was all in vain?

Hi James,

Controlling the body is cause of stress. Jumping purposely top of the mountain is an example of controlling the body either.

I’m curious about your opinion: are controlled and deliberate body movements in tai chi and yoga also a cause of stress?

What i am saying, how it breathes or heart beat itself, let it walk, talk and write like that.

James, I was wondering about your medical condition, and I hope I am not intruding with these questions. But you said that you had an open heart surgery and have a mechanical valve and a pacemaker. I wonder if you have any physical limitations due to your condition?

I can also imagine (but this may only be my assumption) that you might not want to cause any unnecessary stress to yourself, to make your heart condition worse? So perhaps the way you look at the body is partly influenced by the medical condition you have? Please disregard these questions if you don’t feel comfortable talking about it.

Dear Anita,

I’m happy that you found some good tips to calm down Bogart’s anxiety, and that Alessa, as an experienced dog mom, has plenty of useful advice 😊

I hope that it’s just a phase and he will adapt, little by little, and that you’ll be able to take him both to the taproom and your daily walk 🤞

This never occurred to me, Tee, before I read your input right here, on this Christmas Eve 2025.

Yeah, I’ve never thought of a narcissist being on a pedestal before, but I’ve read that they are jealous of others, and so they have a need to elevate themselves, to feel superior. So equality is not possible, unfortunately…

You too are and have been doing a monumental job reversing the old programming, and having done this work yourself, you’re able to help me.

And I’m happy to be able to do that, even if growing up with such a mother and soaking in those negative messages was pretty dreary. And yeah, it left long-lasting consequences. But, we learn until we die, and we can rise above the old programming… I’m happy we both are doing it! 🤞 🙏

Wishing you a pleasant walk in the snow with Bogart! Perhaps this will be his first snow, so I’m sure quite an experience for him (but as the advice said, take it easy, so he doesn’t get overwhelmed – sorry, just repeating Copilot’s advice, not pretending I know anything about dog keeping 😊) 🐾 🤍

🤍 🫶 🙏 🤍

Hi James,

Body is it’s own. There is no one in control.

I understand this is something you strongly believe. Which is actually pretty amazing, because we use our voluntary muscles to move around and do physical activities – we’re not puppets on a string whom someone else is moving around. Also, it has been proven and experienced by many people that stress and our mindset can actually cause disease in the body (psychosomatic diseases).

It is true that our body has the wisdom of its own, involuntary muscles that contract and relax, internal organs that work without our direct control. So that too is true. However, we do have influence over our body and our health.

Anyway, I don’t want to keep arguing and trying to convince you of that. I am glad that you’ve recovered from your heart surgery relatively quickly. I assume this would cause you to feel grateful to the body for recovering so quickly?

At the same, perhaps you were blaming yourself (your mind) for causing you health problems in the first place? For being attached to the wrong things? Because you said that after the heart surgery, you desperately wanted to find the truth (After my heart surgery (even if i recover very quickly), i just had to find what is the Truth. So, i dedicated myself to find it no matter what.) So perhaps you felt like before the surgery, you were living a lie?

And then you started your quest for truth, doing psychedelic retreats in darkness and silence:

İ did, 3 months psychedelic retreats within darkness and silence.

I think you wrote about it in your poem in September: that you were desperately trying to find enlightenment, but you were slipping ever further from the truth (Sept 9):

Poor James. He tried so hard. Tried to be good. Tried to be strong. Tried to be someone.
He read the books. Sat in meditation. Chased enlightenment like a hungry man chasing a shadow on the wall.
But the more he sought, the farther he felt.
Poor James. He thought awakening was a prize.
That God was a goal.
That peace would come if he just tried a little harder, fixed a little more, understood a little deeper.

Is this what you felt while in those retreats with psychedelics? You were chasing enlightenment, but it wouldn’t come, and you felt even further from the truth?

In fact, I can understand why you might have felt it, because psychedelics can mess up with one’s head and lead to a period of mental instability, hallucinations and even psychosis (I myself have never tried any mind-altering drugs, but I’ve heard stories about it). Anyway, I can imagine why it didn’t take you where you wanted to go – towards enlightenment.

You say you felt that the mystical experiences you had under the influence of psychedelics were of the mind (so still not the truth), and so you prolonged your retreat to last a full year:

İ did, 3 months psychedelic retreats within darkness and silence. But, somehow i knew that these amazing mystical experiences are still belongs to body and mind. Therefore, i did 1 year retreat.

In those remaining 9 months, did you still use psychedelics?

It seems you wanted to get rid of the mind’s influence, the ego, which is cool. But God and our True Self is often found through the heart, actually…

Like Anita, I too feel like you want us to accept your experience as the absolute truth. And you have a strong need to convince us, being pretty intense in your message.

I think this points to a certain attachment, even if you’re speaking of dropping all attachments.

You end your every post with “Peace”, but to be honest, it doesn’t seem you have found peace in your experience. Because you have the urge to convince us…

Perhaps there is a part of you that is still unsure about it? And so you need to convince us, to remove that doubt?

Hi James,

You can not feel the love, because, you are linked with fears, which are holdings.

When I feel love for the beautiful nature around me, I don’t feel fear since I can’t lose it (since I don’t possess it)… and yet I feel love. Love isn’t necessarily linked with fear. It is me (a part of God’s creation) loving nature (another part of God’s creation). Someone loving something or someone.

But love of course can be associated with fear. We can fear losing the person we love, being jealous of others who might “take away” the person we love. We can love someone who doesn’t love us back, and we suffer because of it. We might fear we’ll never find anybody who will truly love us. All kinds of fears are related to love, or what we think love is.

However, there is healthy and unhealthy attachment. Healthy attachment (which is also called a healthy emotional bond between people) is not antithetical to love. Unhealthy attachment to people and things – driven by all kinds of ego fears – is not true love.

You seem to believe that all attachment is bad and antithetical to love. So it’s better not to care about anybody: İmagine that there is no one to protect or nothing that belongs to you, what could be better than that?

But that’s throwing the baby out with the dirty bathwater: throwing away healthy attachment too, so you wouldn’t feel hurt by love. BTW, the people we love don’t belong to us. True love isn’t possessive. True love lets the beloved be free.

Here is a quote I like: “Where there is control, or perception of control, there is not love. Love only exists where there is freedom.”

I’m curious about your thoughts on this?

Hi James,

But dogma, ideology does.

You’re right. Even the ideology that there is nothing, that God is “total disappearing”:

The reason Being, God or Godhead cannot be claimed is simple: the so-called Godhead or God is total disappearing. There is no “me,” no experience, no awareness, no being, no life, no consciousness, no body, no universe, no state, no enlightenment, no mind, nothing at all exists there.

God is the Creator, James. From the singular consciousness, worlds are created. Including me and you. I’m sorry you’re insisting on nothingness, which is indeed nihilism.

I understand that you felt something akin to disappearing in your meditations, but these meditations happened, as Anita said, under extreme conditions, you living in darkness for an entire year, and spending 8-10 hours per day meditating.

I would love to hear more about how you came to the decision to spend a year in darkness… because it is a pretty radical one. I would like to hear more about your process.

I also understand that you went through some pretty tough medical trauma, and that you now feel lucky to be able to breathe (My celebration is breathing.). I know that, because I myself have debilitating health issues, perhaps not life-threatening like yours, but very limiting and causing me slip into hopelessness pretty regularly (but then I bounce back). So I understand when you say “life is suffering”…

Anyway, I’d like to talk about the issues you’re facing, but would not like to subscribe to the idea of nothingness that you’re advocating. I hope we can remain in conversation.

Best wishes to you!

Dear Anita,

I haven’t yet commented on the lies your mother was telling you, sending you the message that you were totally bad, that you deserved her abuse, and that you’re even badder if you try to oppose it or dare to criticize her for abusing you.

In yet other words: I was expected to look down at the floor as she shamed and guilt-tripped me at great lengths; hit, kicked, punched me and NEVER, EVER express- in any way )not even in a look in my face)- anything but TOTAL ADMIRATION for her goodness. Which meant, unquestionable acceptance of my badness.

Yes, a narcissistic person would think in those terms: there is no way they can be bad, under no conditions. Even if they abuse you, they are right, you are wrong. They are the victim, you are the perpetrator 😕

Her message: You (Anita) have wronged me from the moment you were born (bridge birth, low-weight baby, refusing to nurse.. milk duct infection of young mother). You’ve been BAD from your very beginning, wronging the BEST MOTHER IN THE WORLD (her words, “best..)”

Right, she was accusing you for being born prematurely, for her getting duct infection… not thinking for a second that perhaps the stress which you’ve experienced in utero, perhaps even the stress and trauma of her bulimia (or anorexia) could have contributed to any of those problems…

So, her narrative was always this: “I am the best; you are the worst; I’ve always been victim; you all are perpetrators”.

Yes, the covert narcissist narrative: they are the greatest victim, and if you dare to question it, you’re the perpetrator…

It’s good that you’re seeing those things so clearly now, Anita. You really can see through the lies of this narrative, the lies that your mother conditioned you with.

In regard to her message, “you all are perpetrators”- I tried to be on her side by never trusting anyone/ be against everyone (and therefore, be WITH her), but no matter what, I was never allowed to be WITH her. No matter how much I rejected everyone, I was not to be one with her-

It never happened that I was one with her, as a team of two.. no matter how much I desired it to be that way.

Right.. that’s also true for a narcissist: because as much as they need sympathy and people agreeing with them, they need to remain alone on the pedestal, as the single greatest victim. You cannot be “one” with a narcissistic mother, because she needs to one-up you, basically… She needs to always feel better than you.

The opposite of shame would be humility: to admit faults and mistakes humbly, as in: oh.. I was wrong, but I can do better!

The opposite of toxic shame is.. healthy, humble shame, saying to myself something like: I said/ did wrong, but I am not doomed.. I am not BAD. I can correct, I can do better.

Yes! Growing up with a narcissistic mother leaves us with toxic shame. The feeling that we are bad at our core, that something is terribly wrong with us.

But now you’re seeing it clearly: that even if you make a mistake, you are not bad. Your identity is not bad. You are a good person who sometimes make mistakes, like we all do. That’s what being human means.

I am happy you’ve freed yourself (or are working on freeing yourself) from the conditioned thinking that you are bad and your mother is good. The more you practice and affirm the truth of who you are, the better it will get. You’re doing a monumental job reversing that old programming, and I am really happy for you!

🤍 🫶 🤍