– At the beginning of this year, you and I talked about stability. You gave me an example of how you help create stability in my life. This year, when I was filming weddings, I felt what stability is: I know how many events I will film, how much money I will get, I will be able to pay for housing, and so on. That removed some anxious thoughts from me. Now it’s coming back again: stability is gone. It affects my emotional state.
– Where did stability come from? It appeared at the moment when I said that you don’t know how to separate your inner processes, that is, stability is truly important to you.
I gave an example. It would be much better for you to get a job at an American company and receive a stable salary there, even if a small one. But you want to receive a large salary, have a lot of free time, depend on no one, do what you want, and live in the city where you want. I’m telling you that I’m not against that, only first create stability, and then, while being in it, think about other tasks. Get into a stable zone in which you will gain strength for decision-making. And while you have no strength to make decisions, it is useless to be in a huge number of different illusions.
Also, you can’t admit to yourself that nothing may work out for you in life. You just need to calmly acknowledge this: you can lose contracts, you may not find work related to videography, and you will have to take another job. You must treat this normally: “Okay, what job?” – and we will start sorting through various options from barista in a café to a security guard. We will start sorting through them with you. The question is how you relate to it.
Polina, my wife, doesn’t work, and she says: “And who could I work as? I wouldn’t be able to work as anyone at all. Should I go work as a sales clerk?” This is a very interesting aspect: there is insecurity, a lack of understanding of who a person can be, and they choose a profession that they consider negative – for example, they start working as a salesperson. In this case I propose the following choice: “It seems to me you can go work as a nanny for 500 dollars an hour.” Because she can set the price for a nanny at 500 or 1,000 dollars an hour. Someone will be surprised. As one doctor I knew used to say: “If in Moscow your nanny is a Filipina, then the children will speak not English, but Filipino English, and will develop within the education of that person.” What do you want to give your children? What kind of person do you want to have next to them?
There are people who look for a coach, a strategist, or a consultation, and say: “No, it’s expensive.” Excuse me! So you want to earn 100 million dollars over the next three years and you can’t spend 5,000 dollars an hour on a consultation? What are you talking about? You probably want to get consultation from people who are above you in level in certain aspects.
There was a very interesting case about a hotel chain. They hired a manager for a million dollars. Of course, they were asked: “Why are you hiring someone for a million dollars if the market salary is 150 thousand or 200 thousand dollars a year?” To which they received the answer: “We want this person to earn the same amount of money as the guests earn, so that when communicating with them he understands their problems.” Otherwise the person will not understand and will think the other is just trying to invent a problem that doesn’t exist.
The same thing happens when I come to an American restaurant and ask for room-temperature water – and each time they bring me cold. They tell me it’s not from the fridge, therefore it’s not cold. I say it is cold. The person doesn’t understand what it means to drink room-temperature water because they simply don’t drink it themselves. They look with a confused expression: “Well, it’s water. There’s no ice in it, so it’s not cold. There is ice, so it’s cold.” You say: “Water without ice is not necessarily warm water. Yours is from the fridge.” There is no understanding.
So, returning to the nanny for 1,000 dollars an hour. When my wife mentions the job of a sales clerk, she speaks negatively about her capabilities. And I say the following: “I want to relate calmly to the possibility that I might work as a sales clerk in a café.” If suddenly in life I would need to work as a sales clerk, I would do it – it’s just unclear why, how such circumstances could come together. Because even if I needed to earn money, I wouldn’t go work as a sales clerk in a coffee shop. There are other places and professions where I can earn money. I have a certain qualification where I can do some things, just a bit more expensively.
But overall, I relate very calmly to the idea that I would work in a café as a sales clerk: we have no idea how the situation will unfold. Maybe it will be the only job in the world in principle; or maybe in a café they will pay the salesperson 100 thousand dollars a minute, and it will be very prestigious to get hired there. One of my employees says: “I will agree to work as a barista.” I ask how a barista differs from a person who pours coffee at a gas station. “No, the atmosphere is important to me.” And who told you that a barista works in a good atmosphere? That is, a barista is not just the one who makes coffee, it is also a certain entourage. So choose the atmosphere you need. How else? It’s like the feeling of being an assistant. After all, there is a difference in what kind of assistant you are: an assistant to the President of the United States of America or an assistant to a dockworker in a village? And we load a huge number of negative meanings onto it.
It makes sense for you to sort this out calmly, without tying it to your personality. Many people are afraid to lose this. Recently Polina and I watched a movie where a girl tells her boyfriend: “Girls on the street said you’re not dating me, and for me the most important thing is the opinion of girls on the street”.
You need to understand that the opinion of “girls on the street” must not be important. Because if it is, you will make very big mistakes. Calmly sort out who you can be.
Then the question “why do I need to earn more?” becomes completely different. I need to earn money not because “that’s how it should be,” because it’s prestigious, correct or rational. I want to earn more money and understand why exactly.
And in this “why” there cannot be a reason like “so that I have a good mood” or “a good state.” That cannot be there. Look at a huge number of businessmen who earn billions of dollars and work 20 hours in the office. Look at that. What kind of state is being talked about at all? What kind of 18 hours in the office? It looks more like sacrifice.
– May I ask a question?
– Yes.
– Self-sabotage, for example. This is a topic we almost didn’t bring up, maybe in another form. If a person really has opportunities, talents, certain skills that can help them earn money, but they sabotage themselves? They sabotage themselves: don’t take orders, for example, or talented people but not confident. There is something to monetize, but it doesn’t work out. Why is that? Where does this self-sabotage come from?
– By self-sabotage do you mean that the person is great, but doesn’t do something because they sabotage themselves?
– Not necessarily great, but they have skills that are definitely in demand.
– This is an egoistic justification: “In fact, I have super-knowledge, a super-profession or skills, but I don’t earn because I engage in self-flagellation”.
You don’t earn because you have no strength. You don’t earn because you’re lazy. You don’t earn because you act incorrectly. Or because circumstances have developed that way. Who said this is self-sabotage? Who said you want to make yourself feel bad? Maybe you want to make yourself feel good and simply not go to work but lie on the couch. Maybe you want to make yourself feel good and get a certain freedom.
This is what we talked about with you, in particular about stable work. Stable work takes time and takes away from a person that freedom that they seem to have: work when I want, do when I want, reflect when I want, suffer when I want. That is, to be in the state of “when I want.” And employment does not allow you to live like that, there every day is very clearly on a schedule.
So maybe you don’t want permanent work not because you sabotage the system, but because the system doesn’t want to work постоянно? Because you want to express ego, different constructions. Because you don’t want to tell anyone that you, for example, got a job as a programmer or a project manager. Maybe you just don’t want to talk about it – and that’s why the person doesn’t do it.
Although overall doing it would be useful. But from this point of view people don’t look, don’t talk, don’t communicate, don’t study. Because in this position you step away from observing your ego-space, from your personality, look from the outside and admit: here you were simply lazy. And that’s it, you stop inventing psychological descriptions for it, creating a huge layer of untruth.
Someone says that it is important to be in a state of creative crisis. Why do they say it’s important? Because they give an example: the person was in a creative crisis, suffered, and then became incredibly happy, found their work, and became a star.
But could you have not suffered and become a star? Here you need to look at the causes of suffering, at the causes of the person being in this or that state, at the presence of strength to be in this state. And when a person stopped suffering and found themselves, maybe they just had other strengths turn on, new resources appeared.
Many people will choose suffering rather than a result. I know a huge number of such people, I see endless examples when people choose suffering, pride, and ego rather than money. You look and think: “So here you are simply choosing to suffer.”
Then decide. Do you do business in order to suffer? Do you do business in order to be in constant conflict with yourself? Then just do business for that and stay in it. Or do you do business to cause harm to other people? Fine, then just say that you work for that, it will become much easier.
What difference does it make – consciously or unconsciously? This “consciously or unconsciously” is just a scourge of modern society. Did he do it on purpose or not on purpose?
A woman gave birth to a child. He has an energy of irritating his mother, therefore she is angry at the child all her life: scolds, yells, doesn’t understand why; says it’s his fault. And he creates such energy, but not because he wanted to. This is an uncontrollable construction. Who is to blame? The child or the mother? Who consciously did what? No one consciously did anything.
But then the question is: what awareness are we talking about and what guilt? Maybe there is no guilt at all? Maybe this is simply a karmic path, a karmic layer, living through a certain experience for learning?
If there is no guilt, then no one suffered. The spiritual being said: “I want to be in this situation and at 20 commit suicide, I do not suffer.” For him it is just a path of movement. And the person looks for a solution: did he do it consciously or unconsciously?
People commit a huge number of ego-actions consciously. But everyone wants to say: “It was unconscious – so it’s okay. So we won’t punish.” So will we or won’t we? Life says: we will. A person, in a burst of stress, killed another – he will go to prison. There will be mitigating or aggravating circumstances, but those are details.
The question is different: when he made this decision, was it conscious or unconscious?
We live in a world where people do not reach that level of causes and effects. And I suggest looking at these causes and effects and stop deceiving yourself.
If you are in a bad state and don’t know why, just say: “I don’t know why I’m in this state. I don’t understand at all.” Everyone tells something, and you look and don’t see a pattern.
For example, at night I usually need to sleep a lot. No matter what happens, no matter what I do, I don’t see a pattern between how well I sleep at night and what I did before that. Sometimes I worked very hard, was excited, lay down – and after six hours I slept enough. And sometimes I did a huge number of things, and after eleven hours of sleep I still didn’t sleep enough. I tried a huge number of methods, tests, techniques, analyses. There is no pattern.
And now people also wear bracelets and rings that supposedly measure everything. Look at their accuracy level. It clearly says: 76%, 78%. And the remaining 20% – where did it go? Why does the ring say that I woke up four times during the night, but I know for sure that I woke up fifteen? “Well, margin of error.” Wait, that margin of error matters to me. Because all of this is abstractions, just background, noise, which may not help sleep, but destroy it. For someone, of course, it will help. A person will say: “Thanks to the ring I realized I go to bed late.” Oh really, you didn’t know before that you go to bed at two in the morning?
There are actions you shouldn’t do in life
Did you notice that there are people who open a business, earn well, and then go to prison? Or they open a business, make money, and then their partner kills them? Or they earn a lot, and then their client dies? There is a risk zone.
As my sister’s driving instructor told her when she got her license: “Know that every time you get behind the wheel, you can hit a person.” That is true. If you don’t get behind the wheel, you cannot hit a person. And that is also true.
You get into a certain probability. So maybe you don’t need to get into this probability? It is not needed in your life. There are people who earned money – and they were robbed and killed. So don’t get there. Or you will get a job, earn a lot, but spend little time with your wife – and the relationship will end or the family will start developing in a completely different way.
There are a huge number of circumstances of very different character. An endless number of movies have been made about this: money, fate, everything else. But the person continues to crave. Not to live by the law of the Universe, not to live because it is natural and true, but to want for themselves.
Like a grandmother who used to say: “The main thing is that there is no war.” But no war where? In her country. But in the world people die endlessly, on insane scales, including at the hands of other people. “The main thing is that children don’t die before their parents.” But in the world a huge number of children die before their parents. So what is the main thing? Are you talking about all children or only your own? Are you talking about the whole situation or only your own?
One of the most important questions that a person must ask themselves: if there are three children, and among them one is yours, and someone needs to be saved – who will you save? If there are three women, and among them is your wife – who will you save?
– You can answer beautifully, but I know that I will not act the way I say. Most likely I will choose my person.
– This is a question of truth with yourself. What will I really do? How will I really act? Not beautifully, but truly. And here it is important to sort this out for yourself. Where is the truth at all? What is it really? Not to be in delusion.
In a number of traditions there is a principle of non-harm to any living being: you cannot kill a mosquito, a spider and so on. And there is a description of one yogi to whom the teacher speaks, and then takes and kills a mosquito. The student says: “But there is a rule – not to kill living beings.” And the teacher answers: “The rule exists, but the question is different. Do you have a desire to kill or is it the natural flow of life? You don’t want to do it, but now it is necessary.” In that description it is said that life is arranged hierarchically, and in this case the mosquito is killed to preserve one’s own life.
Even from the point of view of laws: if a rattlesnake attacks you and you kill it, you will not be put in prison. They will not investigate intent. Maybe they will issue a fine. Or maybe not – they will say: “You were defending yourself.” And here it is very important not to fall into endless self-deception: “That’s it, we don’t kill any living beings.” Then you can’t vacuum a carpet – a huge number of mites will die; or the vacuum can accidentally crush a spider. What then to do? Not move at all?
Not to deceive yourself. Not to deceive yourself with false cause-and-effect constructions. To remain as much as possible in a state of truth. This is the hardest thing a person can do today.
The hardest thing is to be in an understanding of the structure of the world. But a person doesn’t want that. He says: “A hundred years ago they didn’t know this, but we know now because we are the smartest. And they were idiots.” And then he goes on a retreat, takes a substance, and says: “This is an ancient practice, it is two thousand years old.” You just said they were idiots. Where is the logic?
This is absolute ignorance, closed perception of reality. You want to do only for yourself – get problems. A huge number of unjustified problems. And then live, not understanding why you are in such a state; why you suffer for one person but not for another. Start inventing explanations: relatives, money, time, attachment. Invent, and don’t understand the essence.
What is the essence of what is happening? What is the truth? What is it?