The Crisis at Ages 40–50: What It Really Is and How to Get Through It Without Psychotherapy

AGAnna Gurina

The crisis people face in their forties and fifties, and how to get through it. I think this is very relevant to many people. Some have experienced it already; others are watching it happen to someone else. Broadly, I would like us to look at two states people find themselves in. I often see these two. The first is: I have everything, but I feel no joy. People experience a kind of loss of meaning and emptiness. The second is: I am already forty or fifty, and I have not managed to do anything. I would like to understand what we can do about this. You do agree that people most often seem to go through this period around forty or forty-five, don't you?

AVAlexander Volchek

I don't agree.

AGAnna Gurina

It is called a midlife crisis.

AVAlexander Volchek

Of course I don't agree.

AGAnna Gurina

Well, of course you agree.

AVAlexander Volchek

I don't agree—

AGAnna Gurina

How can you not?

AVAlexander Volchek

...for one simple reason: the age at which we see a particular crisis depends on the generation. I think that among today's young people we are going to see new kinds of crises—

AGAnna Gurina

Earlier?

AVAlexander Volchek

...new kinds of crises. And when we talk about a midlife crisis, perhaps it will start happening even earlier. Calling forty the age of a midlife crisis seems a little strange to me. Why? The middle of what? The midpoint of a person's lifespan, or the middle of something else? If someone is going to live for fifty years, is their midpoint twenty-five, or is it still forty—or fifty? This is very important to examine. We also need to examine whether this really is some kind of turning point, or whether the whole idea has been invented out of thin air. At its root, this probably goes back to the age of Christ. People manipulate the idea of age a great deal. That age used to be thirty-three, and people use it to describe how someone matures, for example, or reaches a particular state—or, conversely, goes through certain changes and a crisis. But thirty-three meant one thing two thousand years ago. Today, the equivalent age is about twenty-seven or twenty-eight, or even twenty-six. In general, in terms of their development and their capacity for spiritual development, people's lives now stop developing at about twenty-six. For some it is twenty-five, for others twenty-eight, for others twenty-four.

If you observe a great many people—their behavior patterns, their actions, the way they move through life—you will actually see a person of that age. What happens when they reach forty or fifty? I am speaking here from the perspective of sources in spiritual science, not from basic psychology or some abstract body of knowledge. What will happen to this person at forty or fifty? They accumulate a sense that, inside, they are not actually changing. Their ego changes. Their system of achievement and desires changes. They try to demonstrate all kinds of accomplishments. But in reality, the person remains frozen in that state of consciousness, and they will feel it most strongly after forty-nine. Why? Because the karmic working out of cause and effect will come to an end. That basic period will have been lived through, and they will enter a stage of living and drawing conclusions about life. When they enter that stage, they will feel a certain emptiness, because they receive an impulse, a signal: broadly speaking, you have already lived through a whole set of causes and effects.

Imagine I tell you that you have already lived out your destiny. People want a purpose; they want to fulfill their destiny. Everyone talks about it. Imagine you have already fulfilled your purpose. Tell me, does that add a happy note to what you feel right now?

AGAnna Gurina

Well, not really.

AVAlexander Volchek

What does it add? Sadness.

AGAnna Gurina

Sadness. Is that it, then?

AVAlexander Volchek

That's it, yes.

AGAnna Gurina

Yes.

AVAlexander Volchek

It adds sadness, you see. A certain sense of loss. Why? Because when people think about their purpose, they are looking for something—some exalted feeling that does not exist.

AGAnna Gurina

What meaning is there?

AVAlexander Volchek

They are looking for something that does not exist. They cannot find that point of support in a purpose. They cannot, because they want to find a particular final action, and there is no such final action. It simply does not exist. But again, imagine you had lived it out ahead of time. Isn't it fantastic to get something done early and then sit back and chill? Or isn't it?

AGAnna Gurina

Yes.

AVAlexander Volchek

Everyone dreams of it.

AGAnna Gurina

Everyone dreams of it, but what about meaning? In that—

AVAlexander Volchek

Everyone dreams of it.

AGAnna Gurina

...search, there is meaning, isn't there?

AVAlexander Volchek

Because everyone wants to keep anticipating things that do not exist. Everyone wants to live in an illusion—simply to live in an illusion. When you are waiting for certain things, what happens at the age we are discussing? I would broaden that age range. It can happen at thirty, thirty-five, forty-five. In fact, I see a great many young people at twenty-five or twenty-seven experiencing it. Their inner structure and its source are just a little different. You increasingly feel: I know. You can tell me whatever you like, but I have already lived for forty years. I know what it was like before. Do you really think anything ahead will be different? On the one hand, you set yourself up to believe that it will be different. You say, “Of course it will.” Yet you just specifically said that you feel sadness. On the other hand, you tell yourself you know it will be different. Meanwhile, your whole system is telling you, “Anya, there is no guarantee it will be different. In fact, it might only get worse. Listen to Volchek: he is always saying that things can go in all sorts of ways, including getting worse.”

You end up with an endless, irreconcilable imbalance inside you. An endless imbalance. For some, it starts making itself felt at twenty-five; for others, at thirty-five. You talk about a midlife crisis. Why do I disagree? There is the concept of a person's period of karmic fulfillment beginning at twenty-eight. We see a great many people who, before twenty-eight, were in their prime, right at the pinnacle of achievement. Then, suddenly—one went to prison, another died, another became ill, another switched to completely different teachings, movements, fields, or interests. People changed the direction of their lives completely at a certain age. Some simply disappeared from life, stopped living, because they had been interacting within one hierarchy of spiritual beings. At twenty-eight, they began interacting with other hierarchies, but they had not developed for those interactions. Their development had stopped. And then, whoosh—the person was gone. Some spend the rest of their lives just waiting out their remaining years. I often use my grandmother as an example. I think it was on her sixtieth birthday that she bought an outfit and said she wanted to be buried in it. She lived to ninety-three. She was a very kind person, no question, but for all those thirty years she was waiting out the rest of her life.

What happens to people who spend thirty years waiting out the rest of their lives? This is clearly someone who has not developed at all. They have not developed; their energy has switched off, their physical body has switched off, and some connection to it has simply continued to exist. In a kind of oblivion, it has simply existed. The spiritual world has already let them go. It no longer interacts with them; they are simply living out a certain span of time. There may be reflections, certain details, but if these are not stirred up into an exalted state, the person is simply spending a little time with themselves. For many years, her range of activity was quite limited, and her range of interaction was very limited. That is precisely what nobody likes in the modern world. Everyone likes reading and endlessly studying all kinds of things. Lifelong learning: all those books, coaches, short reels and shorts, scrolling through everything, lots of meetings. A training session here, another there, more activity. You cannot just get together; you have to put on a show. Masquerades, outings of one sort or another. Everywhere, all the time, there is this enormous desire to heighten events, to heighten what is happening on the outside rather than the experience within. But the inner experience remains the same. This was someone born in 1926, saying, “You are hardly going to win me over with all these things.

“So I will stay within my own boundaries and live my life.” It is exactly the same process of living through the years and reflecting on them, just without the vivid colors. I did not know her at forty-nine, so it is hard for me to say how my grandmother felt at that age. She turned forty-nine before I was born, in 1975. So I cannot give a detailed account of how she felt then. But by 1975, she had already lost her twelve-year-old son, and ten years later her husband died too. Then all her brothers and sisters died—everyone. If you look at it, you might say her life was uneventful, but at the same time it was full of events: everyone around her was dying. She was the oldest, or one of the oldest, of the siblings. Everyone around her was dying. Her husband died, all her brothers and sisters died. Then other people around her started dying. Then her daughter's husband, my father, died.

Then Polina's father died. She lived through it all and watched everyone die. There is a certain richness of events for you. Look...

A certain richness of events in the course of a life. Had life stopped, or had it not? She bought that outfit at sixty. What was the trigger inside her? What was the energy that brought that about while also showing her, “Listen, you are not going to die yet. First, please live through a whole succession of deaths”? That is no easy thing—to live through a whole succession of deaths. It is very difficult to watch all those people die, to observe what happens to them and what they feel, and to process it within yourself. Again, with that outfit hanging there for thirty years. If the outfit is hanging there, you must be preparing yourself. I remember it very clearly. You would come to wish her a happy birthday, and she would say, “Well, this is the last time. The last time.” Every time, to absolutely everyone, everywhere. My mother could not go away anywhere, because my grandmother would say, “I only have a couple of weeks left,” or “I have a month left,” and so on. In effect, she was also radiating negative energy into the space around her.

Absolutely. She was making it a kind of hell. “So her visualization didn't work.” “What?” “Her visualization didn't work.” “Hers?” “Mm-hmm.” It is not just that her visualization did not work. One of the most important things for people in their thirties, forties, and fifties to examine is the assumptions they carry along like enormous trailing tails, holding them down like anchors. Suppose she had simply switched off that one feeling: that she was definitely going to die. We all understand that I will die, you will die, he will die. Everyone in this house will die. Everyone—and the house will die too. Accept that you will die. Say, “Well, one day you will die, and that's that.” Do not keep thinking about it. What difference does it make? My mother says, “What if I suddenly fall down and you don't find out that I have died?” What difference would that make to you? If you died in your own home, for example, what difference would it make to you? I could fall down too, and nobody would know—or they would find out later.

What difference does it make, specifically to you? What are you worried about—us, or yourself after all? If you are worried about yourself, that pattern needs to be transformed so that you do not project it onto others. Then you will live differently. What do people carry within them at thirty, forty, fifty? An anchor of insecurity, an anchor of inadequacy. The belief that they will not succeed as a woman, as a man, in their profession, or in business. They carry that anchor for decades. But it is important to understand that at forty you may have lived through less than half of your professional life. You still have an enormous amount of time ahead. The crisis comes from failing to understand that this is the middle of life. If someone really, deeply realizes that it is the middle of life—imagine: I am forty-two. I tell myself, “I have lived half my life, and, say, twenty years of my professional life.” All right, I started working in 2001. Twenty-four years. I can reasonably suppose I might work for another twenty-four years.

In other words, I can work for at least as long as I already have. Suppose my career has followed a certain trajectory: I started as a system administrator in a computer club, or we thought about setting up a business selling phones. Then I grew into my own projects, businesses, structures, all of that. Imagine another twenty-four years with that sort of variety. I can suppose I will be able to work not just until sixty-six. Perhaps I can work until seventy-five or eighty—until I die, at least. If I die earlier, what difference does it make? I could work until eighty or ninety. I can allow for that possibility. It means I still have an incredible amount of professional activity ahead. So what crisis? I am happy about it. I am happy: holy shit, there is still so much time, so much ahead! Yet someone says, “That's it. We've already had two children,” or “I have four.” I have four, right? “That's it, then. Four children—probably no more. Better get a dog.” So you get a dog, then something else. But that is not the point.

I still have so much time ahead with those children. “Planted a little tree, a tree.” I will have more time ahead with them than I have already spent with them. I have only had all four children together for five and a half years. Just five and a half years. There is still so much time for me to live with all four of them! Another five and a half, another five and a half, and another, and another—so much more. There is simply an enormous amount ahead. It is about sensing the flavor, the brightness, the light, the life. And that is despite the fact, Anya, that I do not remember the first twenty years of my life at all. They are erased for me. Personally, I do not remember them. I do not have that aspect at all. I could say, “Wait a minute: twenty years are erased, and now I have already lived everything else. I'm done for.” But I am not done for, because there are still an enormous number of circumstances ahead. What is a person's problem? A husband and wife say, “We are alike, aren't we? We should always be together in the same way.” Everyone wants things to be the same all the time.

They want their lives to stay within a picture they have already colored in. The same picture. Everyone wants an ideal image: you work, I stay home and do something else. We earn some money here, take a vacation there—the same pattern. You say nice things to me, I say nice things to you. You have painted that unchanging picture. There you go. Congratulations: your development has stopped. I understand that anything could lie ahead for my wife and me, from the most vivid and wonderful experiences I have never had with her—and she has never had with me—to the absolute hell that is possible in a personal relationship. Just as I understand very deeply that our relationship will end, because one of us will die first. One of us will die first, and our relationship will end. That, too, will mean living for a time alone. Listen: right now, “time alone” sounds bad. But actually, the experience of living alone is a good one for a person. My grandmother, for example, lived...

My grandmother again.

AMAlexander Mineev

What will you go on living through without her?

AVAlexander Volchek

My grandmother lived—look, my grandfather died in 1986. She was born in 1926; she was sixty-two, and she died at ninety-three. She lived for thirty-three years without my grandfather. I might suppose she lived without him for longer than she lived with him—or, at least, for a long time. Perhaps not longer, but roughly the same amount of time. Do you see how we relate to time? There are enormous aspects we do not even understand. We do not understand the configurations that are going to emerge, what is really going to happen, the variety that lies ahead. It is not ten lines, or twenty, or forty. It is a fog. And not a two-dimensional or three-dimensional fog: it is a multiverse. A multiverse—that is the whole point. No scientist can even calculate what lies ahead in our lives, in terms of the intersections of probabilities, details, and everything else. It is impossible even to imagine. This is the foundation we need to keep studying and examining, the foundation for understanding what I, as a person, should do at thirty, forty, or fifty when I am in a crisis.

A person is always in a state of crisis. What is a crisis? It is the feeling and understanding that there are things I want to transform. If you see a crisis as a state of development, that is great. If someone says, “I have no crisis,” then their development has stopped, hasn't it? So what is a crisis? Is it an emotionally invented story, or something real that a person is truly living through? What is it? If we define a crisis as “I'm just having some unpleasant emotions,” then the emotions you will experience over the next fifty years will blow your mind. These are not even that bad. You are destined to find yourself in some very particular emotional states, and you need to live through them. Believe me, this is not a crisis. You will discover what a crisis is later on. The modern social world has invented this construct of a midlife crisis. An overthought, embellished story pulled out of thin air, which a great many people use to manipulate others, make enormous amounts of money, destroy a great many people, kill them, and so on. You must always look for the foundation, the essence. By the way, there is a very good video on the channel about how to get out of a crisis.

Watch it after this video, and please like, leave comments, and ask questions. That gives my channel a great deal of support. It makes it possible to grow and film even more content.

AMAlexander Mineev

How do you tell? Have you already died inside, stopped developing, and got stuck in one place, with no further development? Or is something still happening? How can you tell—

AVAlexander Volchek

That is such an important question for a person: how can I tell whether I am developing or stuck? It is a question entirely from the ego. If you are living, you are developing. That is answer number one. If you are alive—

AMAlexander Mineev

Had your grandmother really stopped?

AVAlexander Volchek

If you are alive, you are developing. Now it is important to look at what is developing.

And what brings about development? What is alive? What do you actually want to develop? People want to develop their own personality. Again: there is a material world, and within it there is a spiritual world. There is a spiritual world, and within it there is a material world. What do you want to develop? That little point inside, some structure of yours within the material world? Or do you want to develop your spiritual world? Always look at what you want to develop: your material self or your spiritual self. Your spiritual self includes your material self; your material self does not include your spiritual self. What matters to your spiritual being is the development of that spiritual being, not the development or deterioration of your personality. Let me remind you: career fulfillment, the number of children in your family, the number of times you have climbed Everest, the steps you have counted with a ring, the hours you sleep, the years you have lived—none of these are direct measures of your spiritual being's development. There is no direct connection; the relationship can be positive or negative. When I spoke about my grandmother, I did not say her spiritual being had stopped developing. I said she had stopped in a certain range of perception. She had stopped in her perception of life.

Part of her had stopped perceiving further. She put a period there and held it in place for thirty years. But her spiritual being said, “No way. We are going to keep moving for a while, because I need to live through something completely different.” Her personality, her state, gradually deteriorated. She was not developing.

AGAnna Gurina

Spiritual deterioration?

AVAlexander Volchek

Not spiritual, of course. Of course not spiritual.

AGAnna Gurina

Not spiritual, right? So the material world—

AVAlexander Volchek

Of course not spiritual.

AGAnna Gurina

...just the physical body deteriorating, right?

AVAlexander Volchek

Look at this connection, Anya. Tell me: are you interested in spiritual or material development?

AGAnna Gurina

Spiritual. It's just that I—

AVAlexander Volchek

Spiritual development can interest you in only one sense: if you know for certain that the basis of every minute of this life is spiritual. Then you can tune in to it. But if you tune in that way, you will approach every task in life from that basis and start examining everything, absolutely everything. “Listen, you told me that if I start this business, I am guaranteed to make money. Could you tell me what will happen in the spiritual world?” How often do you ask that question?

AGAnna Gurina

To myself, inside?

AVAlexander Volchek

Yes. Just don't lie to me. How often?

AGAnna Gurina

Not very often, of course.

AVAlexander Volchek

How often?

AGAnna Gurina

In everyday life?

Well, not often, of course.

AVAlexander Volchek

What percentage, out of a hundred?

AGAnna Gurina

I can't really—

AVAlexander Volchek

How much? You can. How much?

AGAnna Gurina

If you are here and I am somewhere else, then rarely. If we are together, often—

AVAlexander Volchek

We are not together. You live separately; I don't live with you.

AGAnna Gurina

Yes, of course, I—

AVAlexander Volchek

What percentage?

AGAnna Gurina

A small one.

AVAlexander Volchek

How much?

Give me a percentage.

AGAnna Gurina

I can't.

AVAlexander Volchek

Name it.

AGAnna Gurina

I do ask that—

AVAlexander Volchek

How much?

AGAnna Gurina

...question, though.

AVAlexander Volchek

How much—one?

AGAnna Gurina

How it affects things—I just—

AVAlexander Volchek

One or three?

AGAnna Gurina

No, ten or twenty, I think.

AVAlexander Volchek

Ten percent.

AGAnna Gurina

I mean, I think—

AVAlexander Volchek

Look—

AGAnna Gurina

...about how it affects my... Maybe I don't formulate it that deeply, but I do think—

AVAlexander Volchek

All right, let's take twenty.

AGAnna Gurina

...about what result it...

AVAlexander Volchek

Anya.

AGAnna Gurina

Yes, twenty.

AVAlexander Volchek

I'll give you twenty percent.

AGAnna Gurina

Thank you very much. Twenty is good.

AVAlexander Volchek

Although I could tell you it is one.

AGAnna Gurina

No, twenty.

AVAlexander Volchek

Look, let's leave you with twenty.

AGAnna Gurina

Thank you.

AVAlexander Volchek

We'll leave it at that. The material being wants twenty.

See? The material personality wants twenty. But do you know what is interesting?

I would choose the smaller number. I'll explain why. It is amazing. Personally, I would choose the smaller one.

AGAnna Gurina

For yourself?

AVAlexander Volchek

Do you know why? Why I can tell you that your development is proceeding from the material world? Do you know why?

AGAnna Gurina

I know that my development is proceeding from the material—

AVAlexander Volchek

No, do you know why?

AGAnna Gurina

I'm not—

AVAlexander Volchek

I'll tell you based on your answer.

AGAnna Gurina

Let's.

AVAlexander Volchek

Your choice of twenty rather than one. If you are developing spiritually, you will always choose the smaller percentage. Do you know why?

AGAnna Gurina

Less than a hundred?

AVAlexander Volchek

Any smaller percentage, any smaller one. Zero point one. Zero point one. Do you know why? Because it is a joy—

AGAnna Gurina

I understand.

AVAlexander Volchek

...to realize, right now, that there is still so much else. But Anna Gurina wants to say, “Of course I understand that there is joy there, so much more, but could I, Anna Gurina, personally get a check mark on this little sheet saying that I have not lived my life in vain?” At that moment, the spiritual being says, “What Anna Gurina? What are you even talking about?” “I haven't lived it in vain.” Here is how to identify the spiritual dimension easily: if spiritual significance matters more, then in our everyday, ordinary actions, Anya, we will always rely on a spiritual source. I live in this house. What does that mean spiritually? I can easily give you a whole list of questions you do not ask yourself. Look: you spend fifteen or more hours a day in your home, and your children spend time there too. Have you asked yourself that question? Perhaps vaguely, somewhere along the lines of fortune-tellers—something abstract.

AGAnna Gurina

Well, yes: how I feel in this house.

AVAlexander Volchek

People live in various places, yes. But to study the question, examine its foundations, consider it thoroughly, and make decisions on that basis? No. There is something very important here. People ask all kinds of questions about which bad things they may or may not do. May I drink alcohol? Smoke cigarettes? Set traps and kill mice in my home? Masturbate? Hit someone on the head? Hit a dog or other animals? Think badly of other people? Steal? Lie? People do all sorts of things. May I leave something unsaid? Push a little further with manipulation? Get divorced? Sasha is calling out that you can. May we do all these different things? May I not work? Not work for a year? Take a break between university and work? Take a break between university and work at all? Could I stop working for a whole year right now? You can stop working. The whole world can stop working for a year. Look at the upheaval: it feels as if an earthquake is happening, everything is crumbling and falling down. But can you, or can't you? Could lunch be longer than an hour? Could our days off be Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, rather than Saturday and Sunday?

Could you never have a day off in your life? Can you, or can't you? The most important thing to examine is what we are using as our measure. From the perspective of the spiritual system, of spiritual life, and of me as an individual in my particular situation, what exactly should I do? While understanding that a great many events are predetermined and will happen in any case. They will happen in any case. That is the point: to live in balance. Some people will not be able to stop working—not because there is shooting outside and they have to feed their children. Some cannot stop working because that is the energy they have. Recently I saw a blogger and entrepreneur write, “I have the option not to work. I work because I want to develop.” You simply cannot stop working. You cannot do it. You cannot stop. Stop. Put on the brakes. Or someone says, “The worst thing I did in my life was not spending more time with my children.” I especially love those statements from businesspeople.

You think, “Wait a minute. Why are you listening to all these businesspeople? We listened to them before, and they misled us. Now they themselves say they were wrong.” Then you listen to that same businessperson saying something new. Perhaps he is misleading us again. Why did we listen to him if he changes his mind? The main point is that you could not spend time with your children. That is your essence, the essence of your life. If you regret it, you are now out of harmony with your life and yourself. There are things you can analyze and examine: could I have spent time with my children? Was that situation possible? Would it have changed anything? If so, what? What would it have changed? All right, you would have spent time with them. Perhaps you would have spent it with a beer in your hand, while they were just hanging out, doing their own thing, and paying no attention to you. You might not have found a way to connect. You could have spent time with them and been aggressive, leaving your children deeply selfish or... There are so many of those videos now.

They might have ended up going to psychotherapists. You see so many videos like that now. What would have happened if you had spent time with them? That is the point. Why even talk about it? What could we have done? What could we not have done? Endless arguments and discussions, while people miss the most important thing. They miss what matters most. Endless comparisons with other people, comparisons in life—astonishingly endless. Everyone is rushing somewhere. You came to visit us. You live in Southern California, and we are somewhere in the central part; I live in Silicon Valley. We were walking together in Palo Alto, where houses stand close together and cost four, five, six, eight million dollars each. Here, they are farther apart and cost seven, ten, fifteen, twenty million. There they are quite close together, so a lot of people live there. Zuckerberg lives there too. We were walking on a Sunday, and there were no people at all. Nobody was out walking. Where were those people? What were they doing?

You noticed there were no people either on the street or in their yards. There was no life around the houses. Today is Monday, and there is life outside our house. We just have a large lot—20,000 square meters—so nobody can see it. But there is life in the yard and around it: children running around, other things going on.

Children running around, things going on. And it is summer, isn't it? There was absolutely nobody there on Sunday. Nobody. It was Sunday, and not the morning. Someone might say, “They probably all went to church.” No, it was the afternoon. People live within their own rhythms, their crises, their states of consciousness, their feelings, their mental difficulties, their desires, trips, tutors, training sessions, and courses. They live within their own programs. They have to go somewhere, do something. Here, it is amazing: you go to the ocean, and there is never anyone there. You have people at the ocean where you live; we do not. Very few people. Though perhaps you do not have many either—fewer locals, perhaps, with a lot of tourists. Here, there is nobody at the ocean. You are amazed. You say, “Look, you have all made a lot of money, or you earn a great deal.” Hundreds of thousands of people have salaries of half a million or a million dollars. Everyone makes so much money, and there is so much nearby. Happiness. I can sit here right now and feel happy, or I can sit here worrying that something has used up all the electricity in my house, or that a lead at work did not convert, or that some subscribers unsubscribed, or that profits in one of my businesses fell by five percent.

Someone is bound to say, “That is how it is for you in California. Where we live, somewhere else...” That is not the point. I am showing you that the people here in California are exactly the same. Someone is in a hurry. You run into my neighbor, and it is always, “Oh, I'm so busy! Everything is a disaster!” Other people say, “Four children—your life must be crazy.” Polina looks at them: “What are you even talking about? What are you talking about?” People keep saying, “You have it great, but we don't.” They project themselves into it: “I don't have it great.” The problem in your forties or fifties is when you start saying, “Look at my life. You all have happiness and so much else, while I have ended up in this situation.” You ended up there. You chose to end up there. It is your own choice, and it is your life. If you had known in advance that you were destined to live through decades of crisis, it would not be a crisis to you. It would simply be ordinary life, an ordinary day.

You would not even know that anything else existed. Do you really think someone born in Palestine thirty years ago, who has never left, who moves around roughly the same area and has no internet and has never been online, knows that something else exists? To that person, there is nothing else. There is a certain space, and they do not know there are other possibilities. Similarly, a friend came to visit me in America. He had visited fifty countries but had never been to the United States. He spent the whole week walking around saying, “Where is the dirt? Where is the dirt? Where are the ugly people? Where is the bad food?” It is very interesting. Everything is inside. It is all about how you relate to a particular moment in life. Things can always be infinitely worse and infinitely better. There is no limit to how much worse they can get. For some reason, people more or less accept the possibility of “infinitely worse,” but not “infinitely better.” Things can be infinitely better, everyone. Infinitely better. There is no limit. Some people say, “That's enough meditation for now. Enough spiritual development. I already feel too good.”

Just understand who came up with that, who is spreading it. Listen to politicians. It is fascinating to hear what they convey: who conveys a lot of good, who conveys a lot of bad, and why they do it. Listen to them. Religions have essentially said, “You cannot feel infinitely good, because we will decide whether we transmit higher energy to you. Here, you are not allowed to receive communion; there, you are not allowed to have your child baptized. We will decide.” It is very important to notice when a person—some politician, a company owner, a boss, a husband or wife—imagines they have the right to control other people's lives. Support my channel, do not miss the videos, and be sure to subscribe. Every like and every comment helps a great deal. And please ask questions. We use those questions to choose topics and look at them individually. A reminder: I have a Telegram channel, where I share a lot of focused information, especially on spiritual development. I also have a personal mentoring group, V100. In that group, I examine personal development, professional development, business development, relationships in the broadest sense, and spiritual development. These are the things that help people truly grow, see the real causes and effects, and know their own right next step in every action throughout the day.

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