How to Live Consciously When You Have No Time for Yourself

Children, work, parents, projects, household chores — and at some point a person discovers that the week has gone by and they seem not to have had time even to feel where they are, what is happening to them and how they are living. How do you live consciously when you don’t even have time for yourself?

In this conversation with Tatyana Tsvetkova, we look at where the problem really lies and what to do about it. A person can be busy and still feel life, freedom, joy and creativity. Or they can have fewer tasks and still feel like a slave to everything that happens. How do you stop perceiving your life as a set of obligations and begin to see movement, love and a point of support in it — right inside the busyness, rather than waiting for the moment when everything is finally over?

No amount of work can take away joy and freedom

– How do you live consciously when you don’t even have time for yourself? Someone says: “I want depth, I want to hear myself, to feel life, not to live it on autopilot. But I have children, parents, work, loans.” Is there a way to live consciously right inside all this busyness? I have this feeling that every so often I collect myself, try to understand what I’m feeling, enter some state of awareness. Then the rush begins — twenty projects, three children — and it’s as if I come to my senses: oh, today is already Friday! It seemed to me that Monday had only just started, and in all that time I haven’t been aware of myself or even asked where I am, what I am. I’m guilty of this myself. Do you have some way?

– The thing is, whether a person feels bad or good is completely independent of whether they are busy or not, whether they have many children or few, many businesses or few, a lot of creativity, projects and tasks or little. What does “independent” mean? If children are perceived in life as a social responsibility, if you perceive business as an obligation and a trap — work, money, endless work — then it turns out that you are a slave to everything that happens.

I often tell many people that I consider myself a free person with an enormous amount of time, and I can’t say that I do a lot. But if I actually start listing what I do, there won’t be a single person who would want to hear all of it. People don’t want to hear it; they don’t even want to come into contact with it.

Because I don’t perceive myself as busy. For example, I told you that for the last two weeks I’ve been working twelve to fourteen hours a day. I simply want to work — so I work twelve, fourteen hours.

– So that isn’t a loss of awareness?

– It isn’t a loss of awareness at all. I simply want to work twelve or fifteen hours. And if I don’t want to work, I don’t work twelve to fifteen hours. Why would I? I have that possibility, I have that choice. But there is an enormous number of things where I have no choice. For example, I cannot do without working. My wife, on the other hand, can do without working — that has been my favorite example for everyone in recent years. I cannot do without working. And you could do without working — I mean socially. But inside yourself…

– I’d go crazy.

– Look, that’s the thing. Polina, though, is free of it — can you imagine? She is free of it. And you say: “In theory, normality will bring her to the point of wanting to work.” Not necessarily at all. You are trying to install your own little program there and say: “I depend on this.” But she doesn’t depend on it; she doesn’t have that dependence. There are other characteristics and other zones there.

I can’t allow myself not to work. Someone will say that I have a social responsibility, but I would like to get rid of that social responsibility, because in modern society my children won’t die. I would like to be able to give everything up easily, with a snap of my fingers. I can give up a lot. I can erase my channels, leave many businesses, give up the money in my account, various projects. I can give up flowers, the piano, the dog, the various joys of life — coffee, tea, fish or meat, eggs. I can give up a lot, but I can’t give up earning money socially. Right now I don’t have that freedom inside myself when it comes to this action.

And, remembering this, I know that this problem exists. I keep trying to catch myself: am I making a mistake here? Because in my structure of perception, this is where I can be caught. As I have always said, I can be bought with money.

There is this social construct — I can be bought with money. But whether my wife can be bought with money is a big question. If tomorrow someone offered her thirty thousand dollars to work for three months, a week at a time… Let’s take another sum — a hundred thousand dollars, to work not one week but two weeks a month, twelve hours a day. That’s decent money overall: for a full working month it would come to sixty thousand dollars. She would most likely turn it down. She would turn it down. But if I made you an offer — it depends on the amount, but if I did — you would simply sleep less.

– I can go without sleep altogether.

– See: you would simply sleep less. I hold you up as an example to many people and say that Tanya is an amazing person. Amazingly hard-working, simply uniquely hard-working. She has never once turned me down — not for filming, not for the details, never once. Things to get done, projects — she does them. It is completely natural help. You have a natural life.

The vividness of life is not the number of things you do

But look, this is very important: you don’t do it because you are dependent. Your spiritual being cannot be made dependent. Maybe I could still create some criteria somewhere — and even that is a big question — but I simply won’t do it. With you it’s impossible: I know your spiritual system. You are not a system that can be made dependent — you would devour it right back at once. You simply do it naturally. You say: “Of course I’ll work on it, and I’ll do it.” That is, the many projects happening in your life are simply your life.

And when you get upset, slip into unawareness and scold the people around you or yourself — that is simply your ego wanting bliss at that moment. It is the ego that wants bliss, not your own true spiritual being.

It shows very clearly in you. That’s why in all those moments when you’re told to do something, you answer: “Yes.” That is your spiritual system. You feel life, which is why you have an enormous number of projects, and many people can’t understand you: how can anyone want so much life at once? But it is simply a simultaneous desire to want life and to observe it. And this isn’t connected…

– For me it’s just life. It isn’t that I want something — for me it’s life.

– Simply life. And look, this doesn’t mean you can’t be taken away — you could definitely be taken to a closed retreat for four weeks, I know that for sure. You and I were once in the mountains, on horseback — a completely unpredictable trip. For you that trip wasn’t a normal one, was it?

– Not at all. The most abnormal one.

– Outwardly. Look at it outwardly: you and I crossed Kara-Tyurek on horseback — that’s the highest pass in that region, in the Altai.

– And there was snow there. In August.

– It wasn’t just snow — it was hell up there, until we came down to Belukha. But, Tanya, I don’t recall you having any inner outbursts. Maybe you did, maybe you lost your balance here and there, but I don’t even remember it happening. It seems to me you were quite a happy, contented person.

– It took me a couple of days to accept my fate, because I wasn’t prepared at all.

– You simply didn’t understand where you were going.

– Then I started to enjoy it.

– Mostly, from the outside, you showed enjoyment. Even where you showed selfish aspects, they were full of life — it was as if they weren’t there; I don’t remember them. Believe me, I’ve traveled with many groups, you know me. I’ve made an incredible number of different trips — to the mountains, the forests, anywhere: the desert, rivers, lakes, seas. And I know how people react, what states they go through. And you seemed not at all made for that place, unprepared. I remember when we met at the airport, I opened your suitcase: “Let me check this suitcase.” Lena said back then: “Check her suitcase.”

– I bought everything two hours before the flight.

– That is the essence of your inner state. You perceived that whole trip, to the very end, as life — and you still perceive it that way. You have some memories you tell about that trip, but even they come more from your personality, from the ego of your personality, than from your reality, because you could just as easily be pushed into an even worse trip, and you would calmly get through it.

What I wanted to say is this: the number of things you do can be limited.

I know an enormous number of people who say they are busy. Recently Polina and I were driving, and she says: “I’m very busy, I drive the children to school.” And I told her: “Look, without nitpicking about how busy you are…”

Responsibility, attachment and love

Without nitpicking about how busy you are — but when people tell me they are busy driving their children to school, my social being, Alexander Volchek, says it is complete nonsense, because for me that action in life is simply nothing. It is just an action. Can you build entire worlds on it? You can. But then I can build an entire world on my balcony too. Or on this video, on this channel. I can inflate a whole bunch of spaces out of it, show it off, create a certain importance for myself out of one or two YouTube channels and talk about how busy I am.

But if a person uses phrases like that, then inside they are having a hard time in terms of their own understanding of life.

Does life give responsibility? I have a zillion responsibilities, a cosmic trainload of responsibility. But I treat it simply as life. And I give myself the right to walk away if I want to walk away from it. Some people believe I have no right to give up raising my children. But in general that is an illusion, because — what do you mean by raising them?

That you sent your child to some school? Or that you constantly watch how you perceive them? Do you really watch how you perceive your child twenty-four seven? Are you conscious with them? Come on! What time do you give them? What do you give this person? How do you actually live together with them? And that’s it — you are already lost, you have already failed to give responsibility. Then I have the right to walk away. It probably turns out that I have the right to walk away.

For example, I can tell you that I am very calm about socially giving up raising children. But there are laws that I observe. I always observe the laws. I always say there are laws of the Universe and laws of countries. If a country has a law obliging me to do something, I always do it; I have no questions here. But I am speaking from the standpoint of my spiritual and soul being — here I am very calm.

What can’t I give up? I can’t accept losing contact with them right now; I am still too strongly connected to them. I feel this attachment. But I allow that I could wake up tomorrow morning and this feeling would transform, turn into an even greater feeling of love.

And where there is love, there is no attachment at all. If you can’t give up the time with your child, or accept that tomorrow you might never see them again, that is not love.

It’s very important to understand this: it is some spectrum of love. Of course there is always a spectrum of love there, but it is not the omnipresent love that you are part of. Tanya, this is the truth — a guaranteed truth. If you aren’t capable of it, that doesn’t mean you have to give anything up: nobody said that. The question is whether you allow it for yourself and whether you look at that circumstance very calmly. That’s all. But it is guaranteed.

You, for example, love your children with an animal passion. Truly with an animal passion — it simply shines in them. Not all parents have this, not all mothers and not all fathers; they divide along different characteristics. I’m not saying it’s bad or good. You have animal passion. And when there is animal passion and you are making a decision about the children, you must know at once that you are impaired.

What does that mean? That you are easy to manipulate, easy to take advantage of — when it comes to the children. By everyone, including them and your own personality. You simply need to be aware of it. You have this animal passion because of a particular structure of your energy, the cosmic nature of your energy, particular states of yours whose causes you are not aware of. If you used those energies and transformed this animal bond into the energy of support, it would be a completely different whirlwind of life. Then you give them endless help.

Because there is a problem in animal passion: you can smack them very hard on the bottom and hug them very hard. It is a constant state, and that is exactly why it will keep arising in you. Every so often you will come home and think: “To hell with all of you!” Not that you don’t love them at that moment — it’s just that at that moment you would like to shut yourself off from them. This problem arises from that circumstance, and you simply need to deal with it from the outside. Even when it happens, the cause lies in your having — you specifically — a particular structure of energy.

Harmony is found only through work

There are mothers who can’t spend time with their child. Whatever happens, for them a child is something very strange. But I, for example, go into the garden to clean up after my dog — and for me it is exactly the same kind of action as drinking water or eating a banana. It makes no difference to me at all. Exactly the same as going to trim the flowers. You know what’s most interesting? It makes no difference to me whether I’m picking up poop or trimming flowers.

For me it is simply natural, normal. I can’t even say that I do it because I have to: if I don’t want to do it, I’ll hire people to pick up the poop. Or I’ll make an area where my dog will go to the bathroom. The temperature here can get very high, the poop will transform very quickly and turn to dust — that’s how nature works here. What’s more, I have twenty thousand square meters of land, with deer and all kinds of animals running around. I don’t pick up after them, do I?

So it is a natural aspect. I’m talking about the garden now — not about the city, where my dog has gone to the bathroom and I don’t clean it up. That is different. I’m talking specifically about my garden. I am very calm about it. But there are people for whom this will cause incredible difficulty, simply some kind of paradox of life. They will think: why should I have to deal with this at all? They will constantly have some doubts, some strange inner states.

The thing is that a person, while doing the enormous number of actions you mentioned at the beginning, is essentially not living in unison with them. And I know an enormous number of mothers and fathers who try to create the impression in society that they work very hard, so that society would confirm it to them from the outside, because they themselves can’t find that balance inside. You can even see it in how people broadcast it. You know that yourself.

You watch an enormous number of bloggers, women and men, talking about something. You watch and think: what have you actually done? If you switch on the social Tsvetkova or the social Volchek, I’ll say: you haven’t done anything. But the person is simply in their own state; it is hard for them. It is hard for them to be with themselves, hard to allow different aspects of being and find that harmony with themselves. And harmony can be found only through work. You have to work.

You, for example, are lucky. You want everything there is — absolutely everything that exists and doesn’t exist. Although that isn’t luck, by the way. You simply want everything. And at the same time you naturally work on an enormous number of things. You are simply lucky that you know how to work naturally, otherwise life would have rolled you into the asphalt.

You compensate for it with your own work, because the most important thing in a person’s life is to work, to do basic things: wipe a child’s bottom, pour a glass of water, write five emails, drive out to sixteen projects, prune the trees.

Or even to do one single thing — work as a courier, run deliveries: doing deliveries, doing them, doing them. Or making coffee. I always think: my God, that’s a whole day. Do you know what kind of work that is? Hellish work. And smiling at everyone on top of it. There are people like that — incredible.

It’s common in California. California, America, has allowed a person to be anyone and to enjoy whatever they like. That is an important topic, by the way. Of course, it is society that allowed it. Nobody tells you that if you’re a sales manager you’re stupid, or that if you work in a factory, it means something. Society here has said: you should enjoy yourself and you can enjoy whatever you like, be whoever you want. And a man stands in a coffee shop in his underwear — and enjoys himself.

Sometimes you come in and talk to him. Or at the market: I was buying lettuce here recently, and an old man was selling nothing but lettuce. He asks what language to speak. Very eccentric, he looked incredible. That’s probably why I bought all kinds of lettuce from him — I bought everything he had. I even took two extra bags of some very expensive lettuce.

I didn’t expect that bill. I think if there had been a price on it, I wouldn’t have bought it. They like not putting prices up at markets here. And he stands there simply enjoying himself. He stands there talking to you — and that’s it. There’s a line of about twenty people, everyone is waiting, and he talks to each of them. I also stood and waited while he talked to each person. And everyone stands calmly and waits. Because here a person has the right to talk: he wants to talk, he doesn’t have to. He likes it that way. And he gets incredible pleasure from it. He is living — and he is working.

And that doesn’t mean he likes all of that work. Do you like every action you take? You just came running in before filming and said: “Sasha, I need to send an email, my computer died” — and something else. You hardly enjoyed all that: getting here, the hot weather. Polina and I also noticed that your car hadn’t been washed. Something else too. You think: how do I deal with all this… — someone called, someone else needs a polite reply. You hardly enjoy that. It is work. And you try to express yourself somehow in that work, but it is work: I’m simply working.

Once again: with all your desires, which from the outside can provoke and do provoke a very strange reaction, you have an enormous amount of work — and you simply have these desires. And these desires have a different cause. They are not connected with the work you have; they simply have other causes. It’s like the example I gave you about the children. If you are aware of this animal side of yours, it will let you both become conscious of it and transform it. It would let you reach another level in how you perceive your children. Because you have this animal side and the children are yours, you won’t eat them alive in the end. But other people you can simply eat alive.

– Yes, I can. Better not touch my children.

– Of course. But look: you can eat someone alive not because of the children, but just like that. Another person — why not eat them? But with the children there is a certain brake; there is a stop there. And this “better not touch my children” needs to be compensated and brought to the point that they are people just like everyone else. And all that energy should be redirected into love for people. As soon as you redirect it, the space will come into harmony, and those huge goals of yours will come into harmony — do you understand?

Beginning to live in truth

And other people, who can’t find balance for themselves, simply need to begin. Begin living in truth, want to live in that truth, want to open up — tell that truth, show these things, open up. But it’s not easy. We live in a social society that stifles and presses very hard.

– That takes strength too — to open up, stand your ground and withstand the reaction.

– And all around live people who don’t want to perceive who you are. Everyone around, absolutely everyone. All people don’t want to perceive you: children, wives, husbands, mothers, fathers, relatives, acquaintances, the social world. But there are people who do want to perceive you — and it turns out you don’t notice them. As in the example I’ve given: people often write to me under my videos, and I look at them and think: who are these people at all, how did they find me?

It turns out that when I visit even many of my acquaintances and they try to assess my audience, I realize they don’t know my audience, because they don’t know me. They don’t even know the audience, because they don’t know what kind of person you really are. You post a lot of interiors. And every so often, in some group of people, I hear someone refer to you. And I understand that they are talking about you, but from their own understanding of you. If you looked at it, you would say: “Actually, that’s not what I meant.” Or: “Actually, that’s not my style.”

– People often send me things: “Oh, I saw this — it’s so your style.” I answer, “Yes,” while thinking to myself: that’s not my style at all. Why did they decide that?

– Why did they decide that? Why did they decide that you meant it? Because there was some particular color there?

A bathtub in the middle of the room

Listen, I had an interesting story recently — I want to tell it in this video too, since there’s plenty of lifestyle here anyway. My friend Vitalik came to visit me — you know him. We drove to Orange County, walked around the stores and went to buy a suitcase. As we walk, I’m telling him about a reel you posted: a woman talking about bathtubs — if your bathtub stands in the center of the room, you are a rich person.

And if the bathtub has three walls, you are a pauper. Two walls — a little better. One wall — you are wealthy overall. And if there are no walls, you are a person living in luxury. I’m telling him about this. At first he listens — and he is a very developed person in his whole structure — and he says: “Nah, I don’t need a bathtub in the middle.” We walk on — and at the moment he’s generally quite a free man in his life — and literally five minutes later he says to me: “I need a bathtub in the middle; my next bathtub will have no walls.” We discuss all this, and then he says: “Tanya really is an incredible person. Tanya is just incredible.” I think we kept bringing you up for the whole two weeks.

Our whole group — my third friend too — kept talking about you endlessly for two weeks. And then we are all driving in the car. I had been ordering suitcases for myself, and one of the ones I wanted to buy was from Rimowa. I bought it. But I didn’t buy only Rimowa — I won’t go into that in the video. For my carry-on I wanted something a bit more high-end — and I bought it. And I’m looking at Rimowa and saying to him: “Listen, I’ve always wanted to buy myself a suitcase that’s a cube. Why don’t I buy one?”

I had met a friend of mine in Cairo, and he had a Rimowa. I’m generally quite relaxed about buying nice things. But about suitcases I used to think: why spend money on a suitcase? And then my friend in Cairo simply opened my eyes. I stand there, look and think: I’m making some kind of mistake.

So we’re driving, and I say: “I want to buy a Rimowa — that cube.” And he turns to me and says: “Exactly, a cube. It’s like a bathtub in the middle of the room.” That is, there is Rimowa — and then there is this particular Rimowa. I don’t know if it’s right to call it a cube — it’s more square on top, in its shape. And Vitalik fully felt what a bathtub in the middle of the room is. He lived it completely.

– Do you know why? The feeling from a bathtub in the middle of the room and from that suitcase is the same. It’s your sense of what luxury is.

– We were driving just then — he and I made a lot of trips together, I don’t know how many thousands of miles we covered — and that time it was just the two of us, somewhere near Malibu. And in that same car I played him your video about how people kill and destroy themselves by living in ugly surroundings, how it has even been proven that surroundings affect a person. You had a whole series of videos. I played him one of them straight from the feed — about how important your surroundings are. They simply matter, even if you don’t want to understand it, even if you’ve told yourself they don’t matter.

Looking at another person from the spiritual world

Now imagine what happens to a person when they don’t perceive their own life. A suitcase and a bathtub are just a tiny flash in a person’s life, just a little puff. But how do you build a relationship with your child so that it becomes a bathtub in the middle of the room? How do you build a relationship with another person? How?

After all, a man and a woman can create love for each other. If you showed boundless love to your husband, and your husband showed boundless love to you… That’s probably impossible for you: because of your spiritual beings, karma, all the circumstances, you definitely can’t create that right now.

But if you did show boundless love, you wouldn’t need anything at all. Look: you wouldn’t need anything at all — not a bathtub, not a suitcase, not emotional experiences, not projects. You wouldn’t need anything at all.

But it’s hard even to think about. You want to swallow, because a lump forms in your throat. You think: how do you even feel this, how do you create a relationship like that? Imagine: I would look at Polina, she would look at me, and…

– And the world would disappear.

– And the world around would disappear. Can you imagine: every time you see each other, it disappears, and you simply move in the energy of happiness and love. That is the supremacy of energy. There is a higher energy.

– Perhaps some people have access to that.

– I tell everyone that these are not the highest energies, because from the standpoint of spiritual development it is still a kind of hook and impairment. The task of a human being is that the energy of the sun lives in them — the solar energy of Christ, the energy of light. It has settled in their soul, and its beginnings are in their I, in their astral system, in their etheric world, in their other bodies. It is in the etheric body of planet Earth, in the physical body of planet Earth, in the astral body of planet Earth. This energy lives, but it needs to be developed further.

And of course, within this energy you don’t need anyone. No one at all. That simply doesn’t exist there. It doesn’t mean you have to be alone. It means that to feel this, you don’t need a second partner. But when there is a second partner — and in fact not just a man and a woman, a husband and wife, but each and every person…

If people look at another person from the spiritual world even slightly, with just a glance, everything disappears. Everything disappears, everything. You looked at another person — and that is harmony.

I lead a fairly large spiritual development group. And all I have to say there is: “Let’s all look at each other from the standpoint of the spiritual world” — and there is one hundred percent calm. You can’t fail to calm down. You can’t. You just need to look a little higher.

A point of support in anything you do

So if a person is in a state where they tell themselves: “I’m terribly busy, I have an enormous number of things to do, I can’t break free of them. What should I do, where should I be? I’m in a total lather. I can’t blink, I can’t take care of myself” — at that moment they should look at their spiritual system as a whole and try to behold it.

You believe it should be accessible, but I believe it doesn’t need to be accessible.

Of course, Tanya, this is great, enormous work. Remaining calm and accepting any states is work. If a missile falls in front of you or someone close to you dies, you need incredible energy to be calm and to help people at that moment, rather than crying the way everyone cries at funerals — to respond to it out of love for the movement of the world.

Why do you cry? Because the world is wrong. Wrong in what way? That is the very essence of the world — that people die. That is the essence of the world. Moreover, everything has causes and everything has consequences, however bad or good they may seem to us. And everything has an essence.

The notions of bad and good are a socialized story. Do higher truths of bad and good exist? There are higher truths of light and dark, white and black, good and bad, good and evil. And there is a higher space where even that division doesn’t exist. But that is too high a level of truth. Below it, white and black are very easy to separate — what is bad and what is good. But the fact that people died is natural. Period. It is natural.

It is not up to you to choose the balance of life as it happens. And if you want to choose the balance of life as it happens, start by watching how the blood flows in your body. Just observe it, try controlling it.

And what do you want to control? Death, events, the interconnections of the planet? Look at how cars drive along the street: millions of cars drive and don’t crash into each other. And that is a socially created, controlled structure. Can you imagine what happens from the standpoint of the spiritual world? What kind of interconnections are there at all?

No brain, no artificial intelligence — no one at all — has power over that. I’m talking about artificial intelligence in the sense a person puts into it. What is meant by artificial intelligence or by the word “metaverse” in the spiritual world is something else. We see distorted projections — and projections of dark worlds at that. Alas.

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