Why Meditation Calms You Today and Irritates You Tomorrow

Why can the same meditation feel completely different on different days? Today it brings silence and calm, tomorrow irritation or anxiety, and another time you come across an entirely new state.

In this conversation with Olya, I look at what our state during meditation depends on, and why experiencing the same practice differently does not necessarily mean that something is wrong with you or with the meditation.

Perceiving changes

– Why can the same meditation — we’re talking about your meditations now — feel completely different on different days? The first time you watch it, there’s irritation; the second time, there’s real silence, happiness.

– Every moment of a person’s life is different. If you go into town right now, to a place where you, say, go to a café and drink coffee, you’ll see different people in the café, or the same people will be sitting in different places. It will be a different time; different cars will be driving down the street, different ones will be parked. The sky will look a little different, the sun will be in a different place. You get up in the morning and very often feel completely different. You go to bed in the evening and feel different. Most likely there is a shift in time, and during the night a person also feels different.

So when we come to the fact that I, for example, feel different during meditation — that’s the question, right? — when a person examines meditation, they must approach it one hundred percent from the very start with this understanding: as a person lives, everything around is constantly different. My physical body is already different at this moment, my state is already different, the world is already different.

On the other hand, if you rise higher and look at everything that is happening in a certain scope, more broadly, you’ll see that everything is the same and nothing much has happened — over these ten or twenty years, or these ten or twenty days. You’ll see that not much has changed: the mountains haven’t moved much, a particular stone hasn’t crumbled. The same surname and name are in your passport. The person looks more or less the same. But basically, if you step away from that expanded perception, you’ll see endless changes all around.

What happens when we want to repeat one state

When a person goes and watches a meditation, the question is their purpose. If they want to come and reach a particular uniform state, then they have to create certain conditions for those uniform states. That’s obvious. If you want to always drink coffee in the same uniform state, you probably need to own your own café and go into it. You’ll be alone in it and tell everyone where to stand. Otherwise you’ll get complete chaos. Or else you need to drink coffee at home and make sure everything is in its proper place.

Some people are really meticulous: the figurine, the vase must stand in exactly the right place, to the millimeter. Creating a certain meticulousness in order to land in one and the same state.

And this is one of a person’s big problems: a person gets married and sees one structure, and three months later they already have a different structure of perception. And the question is: what were they looking for? Why did they come in the first place? What were they looking at in the first place?

That’s why, after six months or a year, many people stop being satisfied with their marriage — because, for example, the other person has outwardly, physically aged or changed. A little belly has appeared, for example, or wrinkles, or the person has started wearing some different clothes. And for someone else it doesn’t matter, because they were looking at something else.

For example, a person came and married a spiritual being. Obviously, the spiritual being won’t change at eighty. If only the spiritual being interests them and nothing else, what difference does it make to them what’s on the outside? It makes no difference to them at all: whether the person is sitting with a bottle of vodka, or… By the way, notice this — it’s a very interesting aspect. What difference does it make? There sits a spiritual being — and a person with a bottle of vodka. If the spiritual being is what concerns them, if they were connected with the spiritual being from the start, what difference does it make what is happening here? Someone may say: “No, the spiritual being is deteriorating.” But it doesn’t matter at all whether it’s deteriorating or improving, if they simply wanted to be next to this spiritual being every day and observe it.

And it doesn’t matter to them: they wake up in the morning, and the other person hasn’t brushed their teeth — whether the person looks presentable or not, has gotten dirty or not, smells or not, and so on. But to someone else it matters. To someone it matters incredibly — if they were looking at something specific.

What it means to expand perception

Here the question is a person’s ability to look broadly and to perceive everything that is happening broadly, in full. What does it mean to perceive what is happening broadly, to perceive life broadly? Rarely, of course, do people — men and women — truly perceive each other broadly when they meet: across a broad range, from the spiritual being to how the person feels about style, clothing for example, or how they truly relate to other people and what impulses arise in them about it. Or when a person studies the other person’s spiritual periods and stages, or their past lives. Or at least when a person has truly figured out what the other thinks about raising children — truly, genuinely, sincerely figured it out and looked.

My wife, for example, constantly, endlessly tells me that she has heard something new from me — and protests. She doesn’t like it, she doesn’t agree with it. But it’s still the same spiritual being. It shows that something wasn’t seen. Or I, too, failed to see something, or didn’t look at something.

So when we talk about meditations and about what I share here, on the channel of meditations with me, or when I talk about my meditations, I always say:

Not so that you feel better or worse, not so that you develop socially or don’t, not so that your pocket of money grows or your energy in terms of sensations grows, but so that you come to know what is happening more, across a broader range, try to make sense of it, don’t give an automatic answer without understanding it, but really try to understand what is actually happening. What lies behind it?

And so if, when you come to a meditation, you are interested in a particular state, you are in a different connection — even in terms of the purpose of being at this meditation. If you came to a meditation in order to expand your perception, you are not at all interested in what state you are in.

For you this is a fact and a given. You don’t ask why you felt this meditation the way you did, whether the body found it pleasant here or unpleasant. From the very start you know it automatically. To you it is logical and clear a priori that at any moment of life you can feel different. Your vision can be different; you can perceive many things differently.

Why an identical state limits perception

By the way, the very fact of expanding perception means that in meditations with me you will always be in different states of perception, because I don’t recreate a restricted perception for you.

The only place where there can be an identical state is a state of restricted perception. It’s the only possibility: where you and I have restricted it, have climbed into some very definite structure.

Even that is very hard to do, because your inner impulse of transmitting energy — from your soul, for example — or the influence of your spiritual bodies, the astral body for example, is for the most part beyond both outside control and your own control. The system of the “I” is critically hard to influence at all. And to bring a person into one particular state in terms of consciousness, you have to either put them to sleep, or kill them, or exert influence on them. Just as, to make it so that a person can’t wave their arms even if they want to, you have to tie them up, because if they want to, they’ll wave. If I have the will to do something, nothing can restrict me — there has to be a restricting influence. That’s very important.

Then, of course, we will move into particular states. That’s why there are a huge number of procedures that lead to this, even in spiritual practices. Many practices aim to bring a person into a restricted perception and then, from that restricted perception, to expand their perception in the areas where they, for example, didn’t see something. Does that exist? It does. And in fact, with the huge number of meditations on my channel here, this is also a fact. It can’t help but be a fact.

Just as you and I are here: I’m still confined by the room. I understand very clearly the influence of this room, its restriction — even in terms of its influence on me. Warmth or cold from outside, for example — because I’m in an air-conditioned space. Or the influence of noise from certain spaces, certain dust reaching me, and so on. So there are different influences.

And it’s logical that, entering a particular state, you will to some extent get a restriction of perception in other areas. What is restriction? You shift the focus of perception. The question is: do you do it naturally and normally, and are you not forbidden to shift your perception? And isn’t this shift of perception constant — as if your hands had been tied forever? You agreed, and your hands were tied forever. Is it controlled, is it your conscious choice? Is it really a restriction, or is it still a certain freedom to be in a certain place?

For you and me to have a private chat, we’ll still have to either hold the phone close somehow — and even then we can be heard — or hide in a particular room. Agreed? Either way we’ll have to isolate ourselves. And a person, to have a private chat with themselves, also sometimes needs to isolate — to isolate themselves in a particular space.

What shapes our state

So the main focus from the start is what your true purpose and need is in visiting this or that space or place. This, by the way, applies not only to meditation. Why do I sometimes feel good with my child and sometimes bad? Why is it sometimes good and sometimes bad with my wife? Why, when I come to this place, do I sometimes feel good and sometimes bad? And here, a person says, I always feel good. Why do I sometimes sleep well and sometimes badly? Why do I sometimes want to wash in a hot shower and sometimes in a cold one?

And this doesn’t seem to be connected with the external environment: the temperature outside seems to be the same. Why do I sometimes want to get up early and sometimes not? Why do I sometimes really want to play the piano for hours, and sometimes I can’t even go up to it and sit down? This is precisely the aspect of observing from the side. What is really happening?

But this takes nothing away, Olya. This is another very important point. I want to say: by no means think that this takes away your opportunity to come to meditation with the goal of, for example, calming your physical body or gaining a clear mind. In this case, by a clear mind I mean the social construct: freeing yourself, for example, from external anxiety or from some extraneous outside thoughts.

There are a great many exercises for redirecting attention, even simple physical ones.

Having expanded your perception, you’ll reduce your anxiety. If you expand your perception strongly and the influence of other spaces on you becomes more serious, the anxiety will decrease even more.

Meditation doesn’t always have to calm you

Can you come to a meditation in which you want to calm your consciousness and, on the contrary, not calm down? That can happen too. A person comes wanting to relax, but this meditation isn’t aimed at that — it’s aimed at something completely different. That’s the mistake of social interpretations. Even if you ask ChatGPT about meditation in great detail, it will link all meditative states of consciousness with relaxing the body and more with physical exercise. Likewise with a WHOOP band or an Oura ring — in all these external physical devices, the notion of meditation is linked with relaxation and rest, not with effort, enormous effort.

It’s like the story we had again, you know — it’s impossible to understand. I recently traveled with my wife for five days: flew to New York, then we came back to Los Angeles, then flew off again. So there was a series of trips. And when we were in New York she says: “Oh, I’m resting, it’s a real vacation for me.” And I say: “For me it’s not a vacation, for me it’s work.” And she doesn’t like it — really doesn’t like my saying that it’s work.

But I explain: when I’m in a particular hotel, in a confined room, it’s still a room — our space is smaller than my home. It’s not my bathroom, not my bed, not my wardrobe, not my freedom in terms of access to the kitchen, the garden, the view, the noise, contact with certain people. Also, when I’m on vacation with you — for you it’s a vacation, after all — I need to support your vacation and a certain state: go somewhere, look at something, think.

And I have, I say, ten thousand other questions of my life going on in parallel, and in this process I begin to be restricted because of them. For example, I don’t have access to my desktop computers, to certain systems. I’m not as free in terms of time; I’ve shifted into a different time zone, I had to make a long flight, and so on.

But for some people, staying in an expensive hotel overshadows the other difficulty. As a female friend of mine told me: “It’s hard for me to use the bathroom in hotels.” And I asked: “And in a hotel like this — for two thousand dollars a night?” She says: “In a hotel like that it’s easy.” It turns out that the quality of the hotel, or its price, automatically increases the freedom to use someone else’s bathroom. That doesn’t mean that all hotels at a hundred dollars a night have dirty bathrooms. Of course not. It depends on the country, on the hotel, on the place, on whether you got lucky or not — on many factors.

What affects your state during meditation

So the question is always one of experiencing and understanding: what is your state based on?

Do you understand, for example, that as you move from state to state, your spiritual being is with you everywhere, it moves with you everywhere? And somewhere it may be more painful for this spiritual being, and somewhere more pleasant. Somewhere a person looks out the window, sees a beautiful view, and a feeling of joy and freedom arises in them. And somewhere they look and see sadness and apathy.

We were in Beverly Hills, across from Rodeo Drive. We stayed in the hotel from the film — you’re young, maybe you haven’t seen it — there’s a film called “Pretty Woman” with Richard Gere and Julia Roberts. That hotel, the Four Seasons Wilshire, stands on Rodeo Drive. We’re sitting there, and I ask my wife: “How does the space feel to you here?” She says: “Really great.” And the focus there is shifted very strongly; the places are all very different. You’d think you had only driven a short way. Before that we were in Orange County — an hour’s drive — Irvine, Newport Beach. You drive off — and it’s a completely different space. You come to where we live in California — yet another space. And I say: “This space brings up different feelings in me, and anxiety arises.”

I really do get a certain type of anxiety. Or I arrive in New York and see that a certain anxiety has arisen in me. And I understand: does this anxiety connected with the place act on me one hundred percent? No — it has a partial influence, but it does have an influence. And the question is: do you see this and understand it?

So when you watch my meditation: where are you — in the same room, in an office, at work, in some café? What people are around you at that moment? What did you do earlier in the day? What stream of events are you in at that moment?

Imagine, Olya, that we have a meditation in an hour. And I tell you now: “Olya, I want to give you good news. Your salary has gone up tenfold. I’ve decided that next year you’ll earn ten times more. You’re so lovely, so good.” And after that you come to the meditation. In all likelihood, what I tell you will influence you so much that you will engage in the meditation with much more serious, positive energy. You specifically. In someone else, panic, fear, negativity may switch on: what if something doesn’t work out, and so on. But you will engage with inspiration. Maybe not the salary — fine, I’ll praise you. I’ll praise you for thirty minutes — which matters more to you than the salary — and you’ll enter the next experience of the space with inspiration, can you imagine? You’ll be in the meditation inspired and think: what a good meditation, what a good day.

But if thirty minutes later your mother calls you and comes out with some very definite psychophysical construct connected with you, or your boyfriend comes out with something harsh, psychophysical, says that you’re unworthy altogether, or something strange, your mood may immediately become worse than before my offer. And this construct may in the end first create a very broad positive energetic phenomenon for you, and then take you into the minus from where you were. Out of the chain of these surges, create an even bigger minus.

Will you then be able to observe for yourself that nothing has happened in your spiritual system, nothing at all? Did your energies really change over this stretch of time, did something get freed, did your karma change, did some circumstances get restructured, did you start perceiving people differently? But the external influence is very serious.

And here is the big question: how do you make it so that if I offered you ten times the salary or praised you for thirty minutes, you would remain in exactly the same state you were in? And then someone scolded you, laid into you, said you were worthless, talentless and that you should move ten thousand kilometers away — and you reacted to it in exactly the same way.

Arouse interest in yourself and say: “How interesting: the state of my consciousness changes from hysteria to mind-blowing joy within two hours.” Say: “Life is giving me an interesting aspect of experience here” — look at this experience and calmly go to bed in the evening. Which is, in fact, what I wish everyone.

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