Why You Feel at Ease in One Place and Uneasy in Another

In one place you feel calm and at ease, while in another anxiety, tension or heaviness suddenly arises. How can you tell whether the space is really affecting you or the cause lies elsewhere?

In this video, I look at what can affect a person’s state: their own spiritual and psychophysical system, past experience, events, other people, expectations and the space itself. This will help you look more broadly at why your state changes and understand what to pay attention to when a new place unexpectedly brings anxiety, discomfort or, conversely, a feeling of ease.

Factors that shape our state

How does a space affect a person? What does it depend on, and how can you tell whether it is the space that affects you, or you bring your own state into that space and feel it more strongly — or something else? To approach the subject of space, let’s first set out some background: what can affect a person at all? This is needed so as not to draw premature, very quick conclusions about a space, because people have a certain mindset. If, for example, they don’t like a space, they say: “I told you it wasn’t good here.” Or they don’t like the person who rented them an apartment: “I told you it wasn’t good.” Or some guests come over: “I told you it wasn’t good.” So, to avoid premature conclusions, let’s look a little more broadly at the system of what affects a person’s state at all.

A person’s state is affected by a whole set of different factors, and it is critically important to know this set. Of course, people basically don’t perceive this: they derive causes and effects from particular events. Someone calls me now, distracts me, and I’ll say that my state was affected by the person who just distracted me — and I won’t consider anything else.

Clearly there is an overall influence, and the most central influence is that of your entire spiritual system.

By the spiritual system I of course mean everything, including the physical body — the influence of absolutely everything, of who you are as a whole. In a person’s everyday life this influence is fundamental, and it is important to remember that all the time.

Of course, if a lynx jumps out in front of me right now, it will take all of my attention because of my reaction — psychophysical, physical. I’ll be frightened of it, and it will be hard for me.

But why will it be hard for me? Not because a lynx appeared, but because I got frightened of it.

After all, if an ant appears here, I most likely won’t have any reaction at all. Note: there may be a reaction to an ant, but there will be no fright. There will be, for example, a reaction that the area wasn’t treated properly again, or that the ants are back. I’ll have some issues with that.

So a person has reactions associated with certain spaces. All of this is clear, nothing new. But once again: there is your inner spiritual system, your entire spiritual system, and its chain of cause and effect is very specific. You may react to certain events or to a certain person in a certain way not because you decided to. For example, you see a person, and some love for them opens up in you. Or you see a person and immediately tense up. Rather, it is because, from the point of view of the spiritual world, you may have interacted with this person, may have had some experience with them, may have been connected in some way — karmically, for example. Or you will be connected karmically.

Of course, this can cause a whole range of irreversible reactions. And you know very well how strangely you sometimes react to people. You like someone who, it would seem, shouldn’t appeal to you. Or you dislike someone who by all external parameters, social or physical, should on the contrary have some positive effect. Something is off.

So, the foundation. It is very important that there is a foundation — a vast, big one, with very many connections in terms of the causes and effects of your spiritual system. But let’s leave it simply as your world and as the reaction of your bodies, your spaces, your energies to interacting with it.

How a space can affect a person

Take the example of New York, which I described while traveling around it. There was a very distinct, clear, unmistakable influence there. The whole time I was there — four or five days — there was a clear influence of the energy I described. Afterwards it definitely disappeared, it was definitely no longer there, but there it was.

I was in New York a few days ago. From the very first day I felt very clearly this altered space and how anxiety appeared in the space. Anxiety appeared in me. Not in the space of New York — it has always been there and still is — but in me.

It was a very clear feeling — a clear sense that this was connected with a specific location, with the influence of the place. When such anxiety is in the background, it obviously brings suffering. Can you call it suffering? You certainly can. Does that mean that, since suffering is not a necessity, you don’t need to work with it? Of course not.

One could suppose that this state arose only because I was there alone with my wife. Can one say that? Hardly, because we spend time together in other places too, and I roughly understand how that works. So it’s not about my wife.

Then the question arises: what is it, then? You could say it is a question of a certain time. After all, there is also time: your spiritual being exists in a certain time, in the time of events. Were there any events that could have had a short-term effect — like that ant or the lynx I described? A bear can’t come here, but a lynx can. This is a certain short-term influence, and it is very important that it is a short-term event. A long-term event would be if the lynx pounced on me and scratched my whole face: that would have a lasting effect. But right now we are talking about short influences.

For example, could it be that in those days I had some injury, something with my physical health? Or that in those days I lost a lot of money: the stock market crashed, or a problem happened in one of my businesses? Clearly there are external influences that could have overlapped, and you can say: “It’s because of New York, not because of the business.” Or, conversely: “It’s because of the business, not because of New York.” Note: that can happen too. That is usually what people do — they draw this very quick conclusion.

And the question, again, is what you rely on in your life. Remember right away that one of the most important influences may well be exerted, on the whole, by who you are: your bodies, your energy. Certainly not one-off actions, not one-off events, not micro-changes, but who you are in general — on the cosmic plane, the spiritual plane, the physical plane, on all planes at once.

Why do I consider the spiritual being here — all of it together? Because that is the right way to consider it. For a person living in society, that is the right way to consider it. After all, there is a paradigm of dividing things into the spiritual world and the physical world. To understand what I’m talking about, you don’t need to divide anything. You may not believe it, may not fully accept it, but at least conceptually, to understand what I mean, don’t divide — it’s pointless. If you divide, the whole picture collapses and any of your reasoning is useless — I mean the discussion is useless. That is the point of reference in my discussion. Someone may say to themselves, “I don’t agree with this” — no problem. But the point of reference in my discussion is this: the spiritual world is everything together.

To understand it, simply consider it for yourself, and then everything will be okay. It’s like watching a science-fiction film and saying: “But it isn’t real, it’s science fiction.” Or watching any film and saying: “But it isn’t real” — constantly thinking about the events being unreal rather than about the storyline. A film is made not so that you think it isn’t real, but so that you live through and consider a storyline. The point is not whether it’s real or not, but to live through it.

How to perceive a space as it truly is

So you are in this space and immediately remember that there is your spiritual being, your spiritual space, which carries the entire fundamental basis. What happens at that moment? You don’t break the chain of cause and effect in any way. Not at all. You are not mistaken. If you say, “My spiritual being fundamentally stands behind all of this,” you aren’t breaking anything: this is the top level of everything that happens.

Someone will say: “But what if there is an external influence?” It makes no difference — what does it matter that there is an external influence? Your spiritual system, your spiritual being, interacts with that influence, and you have this reaction. That external influence can be the space you are in, or a business in which you have, say, a problem or a stroke of happiness that day, or some event. You arrive in New York — hop, you find ten thousand dollars and think: what happiness! Or ten thousand dollars are stolen from you.

Clearly, such events can alter perception, the real perception of a space. And here the question always is: how do you perceive a space as it truly is? When I singled out New York and said that I see such a reaction from being in the city, from my interaction with it, that was a fairly independent assessment. I separated out a huge number of positive and negative events that were happening at that moment: whether the plane arrived on time or not, whether we got into the city with a good driver or a bad one, whether check-in at the hotel went well or badly, whether we were given a good room or a bad one. My wife and I talked — did any stressful situations arise between us? What was happening at all?

That way you can pin it on anything at all. For example, on that day we are flying, somewhere halfway between San Francisco and New York, and we read online that our dog has run away. She ran away as soon as we left. And at home there are my wife’s mother, who doesn’t drive, and the children. To find and pick up a dog around here, you usually have to drive, because it’s quite hard to get between properties here. That’s it. It seems you should be stressed, and that stress can take over your whole space for the rest of the day — or it may not.

I can say that at that moment this event had no effect at all on everything happening around me. Not because our daughter went out, somehow made her way across the properties and the dog was found — not because of that. But because the event simply didn’t affect me, couldn’t get in and take my attention. Of course, the point isn’t that the event takes your attention: it couldn’t trigger the various energies that are in the systems. Perhaps it affected my wife in some way, I don’t know. I’m describing only the effect on myself right now: on my sensations, my states, my understanding of everything that was happening.

Why the same event affects different people differently

By the way, this is a very interesting effect altogether. For example, when my wife flies, she generally sees the flight in a positive way. Why? Because for her a flight is a kind of rest: she’ll be resting, she’s flying somewhere to see something. For me, a flight is a strain on the physical body, fatigue, tension, time and an incredible amount of everything. If you add some extra perks to my wife’s flight — a good business class, good service, a comfortable setting, conversation — she is even more at ease. But I need those things so as not to have an overwhelmingly negative experience.

Yesterday my wife’s mother flew home after visiting us. For her, a flight means stress and fear that something will happen. And this stress and fear of the physical body, of the psychophysical system, is in fact so deep, so irreversible, that it’s impossible to simply take it and talk it through: why it happens, how to calm her down, what to tell her, what to do. It is a fear of the entire spiritual system.

Look: my wife’s reaction to flying is socially conditioned, and mine probably is too, because on the whole I can fly in a confined space — if I’m told it has to be a super-small one, I can do it. If I need to do it, I will. But for her mother this is entirely the work of her whole spiritual system.

It’s a huge complex of everything. Whatever happens, whatever you do, whatever seats, class of service, planes, assistance, direct or connecting flights you choose — it doesn’t solve it. Yesterday she flew a direct flight with assistance: they picked her up, put her in a chair, so to speak, took her where she needed to go, helped her. When she landed, she was fully helped there too — one-hundred-percent service. She can’t get lost, nothing can happen to her, yet she is still afraid. And if she flies with three connections, there will be exactly the same fear, exactly the same experience. It’s not that she doesn’t want to resolve this fear — her system doesn’t even believe that it can be different, that it’s possible. Clearly, having lived to such an age, a person will justify themselves. Take a close look at people of a different age.

Obviously, when a person completes a flight under such stress, they then get simply incredible, huge positive emotions. Once they have landed, everything becomes so great, so good, and then comes a very large loss of energy, because a loss of energy really did happen. What’s more, at first you spend even more energy on this positivity, because you have to generate it. A big loss of energy.

It’s the same for me: if I have a bad flight, it can affect all three days of my stay afterwards. Whereas for my wife it doesn’t matter what happens during the flight — there’s no need to spend energy on it. That’s very interesting, by the way: there’s no need to spend energy on it.

A little over a year ago, I think, my close friend Vitalik and I flew to Hawaii. He says: “Let’s go, let’s fly to Hawaii.” I say: “All right.” He really wanted to, and he had just come to visit me in the US. And when we were traveling to a particular island, for me it was a whole ordeal — as are all such trips in general. In what sense an ordeal? On trips like this, I’m affected by which hotel it is, what happens where, where you sleep, how and where you fly. A great many influences, an incredible number. And when two of you fly together, you also have to adjust to each other. That brings even more influences into the space.

I was the one choosing the hotels. That’s another problem: if I weren’t choosing, that would be one thing, but here I’m the one choosing. And at some point my friend says: “Listen, there’s no point overpaying for this hotel. Let’s stay at that one.” There were two hotels along our route. We arrive, I walk in — and I realize I made a mistake.

I can sleep in a tent perfectly easily. Tell me tomorrow that I need to go to a particular place for a week, sleep there in a tent at an angle like this and eat almost nothing — I’ll say: “No problem at all.” There is a certain initial attitude: why you are doing it and what doesn’t matter. But in this case it had such a big effect that for all three days I was there this situation hung in the space.

Can you imagine how important it is to listen to other people and to hear them? Later, by the way, we went to that other hotel for lunch. And my friend says: “Let’s see — it’ll obviously be the same.” We arrive — and it’s a completely different class. And he says: “Hmm, I was wrong.” After all, I had been wrong too, and he says of himself: “I was wrong too. Of course, the difference is huge.”

But the question is always how important or unimportant this is for a person — as in the example of my wife: what matters to her is the trip itself, not the additional circumstances. Look at what a large number of influencing factors there are — simply an incredible number. And there are certain attitudes that a person sets at the very beginning.

When visiting New York, you may have so-called expectations of what it will be like and what will happen. Can you be okay with it raining, pouring, for twelve hours a day in New York? Are you okay with that or not? Or will the city be negative for you in this respect? If it will — then what are the options, if there is such a risk?

Why am I talking about this? Because it is very important for a person — given the circumstances of their spiritual system and the fact that they don’t understand it fully — to try harder to figure out what is happening to them, so as not to get into certain matters. There are things a person shouldn’t get into: it’s not their space. Or, conversely, to get into these things and live through these events in a state of: “I’m ready to look at everything that is happening for real, to look sincerely at what is actually going on.”

It turns out that situations like the ones I have just described can create problems for other people, because some person has simply had an inner psychophysical conflict. And another person may not even realize that for someone else this is a problem, that for them it is an ordeal.

Why a place brings up certain states in us

By the way, we had a similar story connected with New York. We were in Los Angeles, sitting in one particular place, and my wife says: “Oh, what an incredible place! It’s the first time in my life I’ve sat in a place like this.” For some reason she had such emotions, such a state — as if she were sitting in a place like this for the first time in her life. Although, of course, it wasn’t the first time she had sat in such a place: she had been to better places and worse ones, all kinds of places. But that was exactly how it felt.

And I say to her: “And I feel uncomfortable here.” And when I started telling her about my discomfort, we immediately slipped into a very negative exchange. Because I wanted her to understand my discomfort, and she certainly had no intention of understanding it or even getting into it. She had her own comfort, and my discomfort didn’t interest her in any way. It’s a tricky story in terms of reaction, when you interact like that. And a tricky story — what both people should do at that moment.

How to interact consciously with the energy of a place

So, New York of course has an energy of place. Every place has an energy of place. The question is: can you sense this energy of place even if it doesn’t affect you?

Sometimes you can even do this in advance, understand it in advance. What matters is precisely understanding this energy.

If you understand this energy, its influence will be fundamentally neutral.

Of course, you may feel a little less good or a little better, but you need to look at what this actually is, what this place carries.

New York obviously has its own energies — the energies of a great many people, of a big city. On the one hand, these energies are independent of me. On the other hand, they evoke energies of a certain type in me, raising such energies quite seriously. Those are what I was observing, because they had risen and were functioning, had some power — perhaps ten or fifteen percent of the influence. And then, when this energy began to grow, I tried to really cope with it, because it was gaining more and more momentum.

Once again: that doesn’t mean the momentum was somehow extremely negative. But on the whole I didn’t want to live through these states that day — I didn’t want to be in them, didn’t want them to affect me. I wanted to stay in the environment or in the states I’m probably used to on such trips.

And here, by the way, a very interesting question arises, Olya: if I had come to New York for business meetings, on a business trip, would it have affected me the same way or not? If I had come to live in New York for, say, a quarter of a year, would it have had the same effect or not? That’s a big difference. A very big difference.

And by the way, many people like certain spaces simply because certain energies are triggered in them. How can anyone enjoy a six-hour flight? Yet my wife does. Certain energies are triggered there. Many people say it’s great to eat on a plane. And not only in business class — there are people who love eating in economy. They say it’s great to eat. But all the food — in economy, in business and in first class — is old, pre-cooked, damn it, food. Roughly speaking. Of course, a good first class may do something a little differently.

Some food, sometimes you’re sitting there practically in your underwear, in a small confined space, unable even to move, being shaken about. But there’s this effect of uniqueness. And that is social conditioning. Social conditioning.

So of course, the kind of trip it is has an incredibly strong influence. Let’s put it this way: for me it’s not rest, but for my wife it is. You know, I’ve talked many times about how differently people perceive rest. And once again, on this trip my wife says that for her it’s rest.

And I say: “For me it’s not rest at all. Look at this room.” A beautiful hotel room, but micro-small, with a micro-small bathroom, with limited space. You both have to be together all the time, you can’t get away from each other anywhere. You find yourself in completely different conditions. What kind of rest can that be? It’s definitely not rest. You keep walking into a hotel where a huge number of other people come and go. And all of these, by the way, are energies of influence.

But imagine how the social energy of the notion of “rest” affects people: it amplifies the effect of anything at all.

People get pleasure in places where, in essence, there is no pleasure. And they get joy in places where there is no joy.

And often a person begins to strive for this even more and gets a distorted sense of cause and effect. Remember how I told you that my wife’s mother, having lost energy on the plane, then rejoices but in reality falls into an energy slump? It’s the same with a huge number of people: they wait for their vacation, dream of it, can’t wait for it, get into some space, then come back and say: “Damn, it’s already over.” But in fact this is an effect that comes from your expectations — from the bet you placed, from the attention you gave to certain types of energy. You gave certain types of energy influence, you put an incredible amount of effort into them.

And these energies are a social dependency, and very often these are dependencies that are certainly not of a values-based orientation, not of a light order. Even if we don’t call it a dark order, these are nonetheless dependencies of the dark side. And you get very deeply caught up in these dependencies.

It’s like the problem of a person who can’t fall asleep at night and starts worrying that they’ve lost time, that they couldn’t fall asleep. How do you keep it from leaving a negative mark? That is something worth thinking about.

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