* you view care as an expression of the ego.

Hi James,

isolation and meditation retreats are the best for surrendering the self and body.

Yes, but it wasn’t just a mere spiritual retreat, James. It was living in darkness for an entire year. Here’s what AI says about living in darkness for a prolonged period of time:

Living in prolonged darkness severely disrupts your internal body clock (circadian rhythm), leading to sleep problems, fatigue, and mental health issues like depression, while causing physical problems such as Vitamin D deficiency, weak bones, heart trouble, and altered hormone levels, potentially causing hallucinations and vision changes due to sensory deprivation.

It’s putting yourself through extreme sensory deprivation. Which affects both your physical health (apparently isn’t good for your heart either) and messes up with your mind too. No one does such “retreats”, simply because they are harmful.

Krishnamurti has a say, to die every moment is the only way to live without fear.

You’re mixing two things: there is the fear of the ego, and there is the legitimate care for our body, which stops us from putting ourselves into reckless, dangerous situations, which might kill us or disable us.

Extensive drug use or exposing our body to extreme deprivation (such as living in darkness for an entire year) are examples of reckless behavior that puts our body into unnecessary jeopardy.

Self-care (if it’s reasonable and not self-obsessed) is not a feature of the ego. It belongs to healthy self-love, which is what Jesus was talking about too: to love ourselves. Hurting and depriving our body on purpose isn’t love.

People who reasonably care about their body aren’t stuck in their ego. They just follow common sense and even what’s written in the Scripture, if you will.

In short, there are many forms of ego fear, but reasonable self-care isn’t one of them…

Dear Anita,

it could be that dogs (puppies) come with a temperament, and that even though they are treated the same by the breeder, they behave and react differently? But I hope that with enough love and patience, his anxiety will lessen and that he’d become more curious, open and playful 🤞 🙏

My mother’s MO was to create divisions between people. Thing is, when I tried to be on her side against someone she was against, she didn’t let me in (so that she and I were a team against whomever she was against), so it wasn’t ““us vs. them”, as in me and her vs them. She just wouldn’t allow me to be an “us” with her.

Yeah, “us vs. them” would be more in a work setting, where there are inevitably groups of people. The narcissist thrives on diving people against each other and imposing themselves as the leader of one group.

At home, the narcissist divides family members against each other (e.g. one sibling against the other), and I think the goal is to weaken others and make themselves stronger and superior.

And ultimately, if only 2 people remain: you and your mother, she needs to feel superior to you. So the context might be different, but the need to dominate and put down others remains the same…

But good point, Tee, I need to add something, some daily visualization.. the hug you suggested I give myself.

Yes, I think giving yourself love is really important. A self-hug is good, or when you feel the craving for love that you wrote 2 days ago, to give your inner child that love. To communicate with her and tell her “I’m here for you, sweetie, I love you, I’ll protect you”, or whatever words you prefer to use.

So if LGA starts feeling that emptiness and craving again, to be there to soothe that craving. I think that might be at least as powerful as affirmations. To figuratively pick up your inner child, take her into your arms and soothe her, letting her know you’ll never leave her…

I’m sorry to hear about your cold. I hope it will ease up soon… perhaps stay inside (specially if it’s rainy and no sunshine), to help you recover more quickly 🤞

Take good care of yourself!

🤍 🫶 🙏 🤍

Dear James,

Try to take care your body and cause more stress. You have no idea how free and beauty it is without you.

If by leaving the body alone you mean not using drugs and other harmful substances, or exposing it to extreme fitness/diet/exercise/meditation routines (which might cause more harm than good), I completely agree with you.

A question, if I may: you said that you ended up needing heart surgery because of heavy drug use. After the surgery, you realized that your life is empty and you got determined to find the truth. But in that quest for truth, you were using a lot of drugs again (perhaps a different type of drugs, but drugs nevertheless)…

And the question I have is: how come? Weren’t you afraid of what it might do to your body? I mean, after everything you’d been through and considering your congenital heart condition?

I’m really curious about your thought process and your feelings at the time, and what motivated you to seek the truth via psychedelic (drug-induced) route, at least at first? Of course, please answer only if you feel comfortable talking about it.

Hi James,

Drugs accumulated calcium in my vein. But, clot happened by itself and wasn’t related to anything.

Okay, so drug use caused the accumulation of calcium in your veins. I’m reading that calcium is the main component of plaque, which causes atherosclerosis (narrowing and stiffening of the blood vessels), which can lead to severe cardiovascular problems.

It also says that plaque buildup can lead to blood clots:

Plaque buildup (atherosclerosis) in arteries can directly cause blood clots, as a rupture in the plaque’s surface triggers clotting; these clots can then block blood flow, leading to heart attacks, strokes, or peripheral artery disease, making plaque a major cause of serious cardiovascular events.

So in theory it is possible that accumulation of calcium causes plaque buildup, which can lead to blood clotting. Or your doctors told you that this wasn’t the case and that your hidden blood clot was caused by something else?

But regardless, if we step back and look at what happened, it’s that your heavy drug use and buildup of calcium/plaque lead to heart surgery (İ was doing so much drugs and that’s what one of the biggest reason for my heart surgery.).

Perhaps due to your congenital condition, the surgery was a more complicated one and lead to more severe consequences (mechanical valve and a pacemaker), but nevertheless, it was still caused by your heavy drug use. Would you agree with that?

So I don’t quite understand your conclusion that drug use actually helped you, and that it’s better that you didn’t live a healthy lifestyle? (if i took care myself as you said, i was dead because of the clot, which was about to explode.)

Because this is the conclusion you’ve drawn from this whole experience, if I understood you well?

Hi James,

İ was doing so much drugs and that’s what one of the biggest reason for my heart surgery.

So, if i took care myself as you said, i was dead because of the clot, which was about to explode.

And the clot didn’t have anything to do with you taking drugs? I’ve just looked it up, and yes, blood clotting in e.g. cocaine users is fairly common:

Cocaine use has been linked to the formation of blood clots in the renal, pulmonary, and coronary arteries as well as in the aorta. Arterial thrombosis can lead to myocardial infarction – also known as a heart attack – even in individuals without having a build-up of plaque

As I read, cocaine can increase the risk of both arterial and deep vein thrombosis, whereas heroin is related mostly to deep vein thrombosis.

So could it be that you using drugs caused blood clotting, which caused a health emergency and you ending up in hospital? And that’s when the doctors discovered the congenital problem with your heart (as well as the hidden clot in your heart, which wouldn’t have been discovered otherwise)?

Just trying to understand what happened…

Hi Alessa,

My TCM acupuncturist says the same thing. Forcing muscles to relax is not the same thing as genuinely relaxing.

How do you force the muscles to relax? You mean by various devices, like a massage gun? Or perhaps by pressing certain acupuncture points, which cause the muscles to relax but the person is still holding the tension in their body (e.g. they are holding their breath)? And so it’s not true relaxation… Is that what you had in mind?

Hi James,

As i say, wanting or not wanting is already controlling. To do something try to protect to heart is more stress to heart.

Really interesting view, James. On Oct 10 you wrote something similar:

the biggest health problem is stress, including that “I am eating healthy, running and taking care of myself”. Even this, is so much stress on body.

That’s a pretty radical view: that even doing good things for your body can be a cause of stress.

But I can see how it might be true: if one is afraid that if they don’t do everything perfectly, like eat the perfectly healthy food, exercise perfectly, follow some healthy routine perfectly – they’ll mess it up. That really can be a cause of stress. Perfectionism and obsession with doing everything right is definitely a cause of stress.

Still, I would argue that eating reasonably healthy, exercising moderately, having healthy habits (but not obsessing about sticking to them perfectly) can actually help our body. Because it does matter what we eat (if we only eat junk food, our body will feel it after a while…). So I guess moderation is the key, as with everything.

The one who had surgery wasn’t me, it was the body.

James, I don’t want to ask intrusive questions, but still, I’d like to better understand, since we’re talking about the impact of stress on the body. Do you think that stress might have contributed to the onset of your heart condition, or it was caused by a different cause? I read that in young people, it’s not really caused by stress, but could be congenital or an infection. Again, please disregard if you find this intrusive.