Sometimes it is easier for a person to keep managing on their own than to ask for help, even when they really need it. What can lie behind the inner “I’ll do it myself,” and why do we ask for help easily in some areas and with some people, while in others we hit a strong block?
In this conversation with Olga Stolyarova, I look at whether you should force yourself to seek help, where the line lies between independence, openness and dependence on others, and how to tell when it is important to ask and when to get through a situation yourself.
Why it is hard to ask for and accept help
– When someone finds it hard to accept any kind of help or to ask for it — how should we look at that? What might lie behind it?
– There is a fairly precise, clear answer here. But people who have no desire to ask for help will find it extremely hard to hear and understand. The thing is, people ask questions or ask for help in those areas of life that interest them, that lie on their path as the foundation of their own development.
I have a spiritual development group called Life; we work constantly with a certain group of people. And recently someone asked: “Why don’t I ask questions?” I said: “You don’t ask questions because a certain range of development topics is, in essence, not at the center of your life. It is a sideline, an extra activity that perhaps comes up now and then.”
What does it mean when a person is not interested in a particular subject? However much you interact with them or talk with them about it, it will be a kind of ego-computer perception of the question. And what is ego-computer perception? The person has to find reasons in order to, say, ask a question or ask a particular other person for help. In other words, it is a search for reasons rather than simply a natural exchange of energies.
What lies behind being unable to ask
What state is a person in, in this case? They are under a very serious influence in the area where they cannot ask for help. It is very important that there are always areas where a person easily asks for help, and areas where they don’t. There are people who say: “I never ask for help with anything.” And there are people who say: “I ask for help with everything.” This is very relative: the areas are always separate, and you can look into them deeply, within yourself — what do you do easily, and where does a certain block arise?
Fundamentally, if a person does not ask for help, their perception of a certain area is very closed. They are in their ego.
Of course, it all depends on the particular examples, the subjects, what is happening where, and the people who interact and communicate with each other. But on the whole, the person is struck by the ego-computer specifically in this area.
To analyze this very easily, notice: you readily ask one person for some kind of help — I don’t know, to help carry something, to order something online. And there are people you would never ask in your life. I gave you the example of parents. There are things you would ask other people for, but you won’t ask your parents — you simply won’t, and that’s that. Why? “I just couldn’t do that.” Here another aspect arises: there is a division by subject, and there is a division by particular people.
Should you force yourself to ask for help?
And all of this, of course, is based entirely on energies: either you have a clear flow of energy in a particular activity or you don’t. If you have a clear flow of energy to genuinely work, I don’t know, the land, to grow certain plants, if you want it and are ready to do all the work yourself, if you are open and love other people — you will easily ask anyone for help.
If we consider a situation in which a person has noticed, for example, that they can’t ask for help, has seen it as an action, a question may arise: should they force themselves to ask another person for help? Should they engage in this coercion at all?
What I want to say is that the most important thing is not that you start asking for help, because that can become a kind of selfish assignment for the sake of gaining some benefit.
The most important thing, the first thing you must see, is that such a limitation exists in your system. You must see the moment when you stop.
The thing is, not asking for help is an all-encompassing story. And it is not even clear whether there is anyone at all who is capable of acting from a state of freedom one hundred percent of the time, everywhere. Because asking the world for help is an endless act from a state of freedom, an endless openness, the ability to be, in essence, in the role of a constant student on earth. A constant student everywhere, in all aspects of existence. Given that there are various social norms and restrictions, one hundred percent is, of course, always a big question.
What matters more than the request itself
But if you start noticing this and paying attention to it, that is already a step further — toward the idea of being a student.
Being a student of life means understanding that all your life you must study yourself and study everything around you.
It is the only opportunity and ability not just to sort out all causes and effects and karma, but to truly move forward. And being a student in this sense is not a matter of reading books or attending some programs or courses. It is a firm foundation for yourself in terms of values, the meanings you live by, what truly moves you.
Asking for help or managing on your own? How to find the balance
In general, of course, the story of help, of being able to ask other people for help, is a particular one, because you can start endlessly asking everyone for help and slide into a kind of ego construction, a life of dependency and manipulation. Or you can start helping everyone else. A great deal is being broadcast now about how you have to help everyone without limits.
There is a big difference between conveying love as a genuine step toward a person, and conveying love or helping other people out of an assignment, out of a social impulse.
Figuring out this boundary — where you need to stop and do it yourself, or where you shouldn’t help a person at that moment but give them the chance to move forward — is a never-ending task for a person: within their lifetime, they cannot complete it. This is very important to understand for yourself.
A person will not be able to figure everything out one hundred percent; they will make mistakes in any case.
And how could anyone figure everything out one hundred percent? Then you would have to know all causes and effects. Then you would have to understand absolutely all energies at every moment and, by the way, also act automatically. What does acting automatically at every moment mean? It is an interesting aspect. If you want to work out the question of help with your mind, then of course nothing will come of it, because there is no mind capable of making the right decision at every moment, that is, of thinking everything through. After all, you need time to think something over. And impulsive, automatic decisions require an enormous amount of energy. You also need restored energy; you need to be free of an enormous number of different limitations.
That is why this question is meaningless — if someone, in particular, asks themselves: “How do I tell whether I’ve overdone it with helping, where I should act on my own and where not?” I mean — meaningless in advance. You need to look at each specific situation individually, for yourself. And that is what your life is for — to study each specific situation along your path.
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