Why You Keep Suffering Despite Working on Yourself | Why Happiness Does Not Come

AVAlexander Volchek

That is enormously freeing. You begin to enter a state of healthy acceptance. Incidentally, it may seem that everyone is ready for joy, but that is not true. People want stability.

OSOlga Stolyarova

Why is it that a person pursues spiritual development and is generally on a path of development, yet most people still do not stop suffering? I certainly notice this in myself. I would like to understand the nature of suffering, where it comes from, and what a person needs to see—or how to look at it differently—perhaps to change their attitude toward it, to act or think differently.

AVAlexander Volchek

I was listening to someone recently—I think it was the Dalai Lama. He was saying how important it is for a person to be… Perhaps I did not fully understand his point, but he was saying that life is for being happy, for living in happiness. Could that be compared with saying that it is important to live without suffering? That is one side of it. On the other hand, I have always spoken about suffering in a different way, and that is why you are not asking how to avoid suffering. Not suffering is not a person's fundamental task. Being happy is not a person's fundamental task. Living in a joyful state is not a person's fundamental task. All of those words belong to the social world. Can we consider happiness through a spiritual foundation rather than through the social concept of happiness? We can. Of course, it will be a different term, a different aspect, but it will not be the happiness, suffering, or joy people usually mean. When people speak about suffering, they are talking about a state they would like to change, one they do not like.

They do not like that state. So what is suffering? A state the person does not like. When you ask what someone can do when they are suffering—you did use the word “suffering,” right?—when someone asks, “What should I do if I am generally in a state of suffering? Where do I go from here? How am I supposed to live? What state am I supposed to be in?” you must always begin with a calm, clear, conscious understanding that the presence or absence of suffering is not part of a person's task. Then someone might say, “Do these human tasks matter to me at all, or do I matter to myself?” If what matters to someone is themselves as a personality, an ego-structure, as Ivan Ivanov, a particular physical individual, then of course they will say, “I am not interested in any of these tasks. Besides, I set all my tasks myself. For example, I would like to set myself the task of not suffering. That is absolutely necessary for me.” Looking at your life in terms of a true path of development is a completely different way of thinking.

Within that true path of development, it does not matter whether you suffer or not. It does not matter. You can examine it, discuss it, study it, and analyze it. You can even work on it, work seriously on not being in a state of suffering. That is natural and normal. But the foundation must be that this is not your essential need, your important, true task. What does that mean? If it is not an essential need or a true task, it means you may suffer or you may not. It is not the primary choice in relation to truth. It is something to the side, like how it is not all that important whether I film this video on this couch or the other couch here in the room. What would that affect? There would be some local effects, of course. But from the perspective of life—let's be honest—whether it rains right now or not is all very relative. If it does rain, it will spoil our recording, right? Or I will have to move somewhere else, or perhaps my mood will change, I do not know. But it does not affect life.

So from the perspective of your true development, the presence or absence of suffering does not affect life. Someone will say, “How can it not affect life? It affects life directly.” That is the paradox. I was in New York a few days ago. From the very first day, I felt very clearly that the space was different and that anxiety had appeared. I became anxious. Anxiety did not appear in the space of New York; it was already there and is still there. It appeared in me. I had a very clear sense, and a perception, that this was connected to the specific location, to the influence of the place. When that anxiety is there in the background, it brings suffering. Obviously, it brings suffering. Can you call it suffering? Certainly. Does the fact that suffering is not an essential concern mean you should not work on it? Of course not. When anxiety appears, it means your perception has narrowed. The external space has taken away part of your own perception. This is important when we talk about anxiety: the space has taken away part of your perception. Should you work on expanding your perception and restoring your normal consciousness?

You should work on it. Of course you should. But it is not an end in itself. It is very important that it is not an end in itself in life. Can you calmly allow for the possibility that suffering will accompany you throughout your life? Understanding that removing it is not an end in itself gives you an incredibly powerful opportunity to work on that suffering. That understanding is enormously freeing. You begin to enter a state of healthy acceptance of it, of what is happening. Again, there is that abstract phrase: live in the present, accept what happens. It is an abstraction. You need to work out for yourself what it actually means. Healthy acceptance that you may feel anxiety. Healthy acceptance that you may be subject to influences, that people close to you may die, that you may become ill with anything. Healthy acceptance that you may experience the most extraordinary joy imaginable. Incidentally, it may seem that everyone is ready for joy, but that is not true. If you look at it, they are not, because joy is just as much a change. People want stability.

Yesterday some adult acquaintances of ours came from Arizona, and we were discussing this in terms of energy. Where do you feel more stability—in America or in Russia, for example? Where is the sense of stability stronger? I was saying that America is an extremely interesting country in terms of understanding its entire system. An enormous number of different processes are happening here, but they are all very measured. There is stability in that. You feel it very strongly in Silicon Valley. You sense an endless amount of what is new, the very newest things imaginable or unimaginable in the world. At the same time, you see so much that is old, and many people do not like that. It bothers them. Someone says, “How can this be? Why has the same cafe been here for fifty years with the same quality or the same service, or the same bench been here for fifty years?” There is economic stability. As we discussed this, we moved on to other countries. Take Russia or Belarus: there is a very strong sense of stability there too, including for the people who live there. The space changed in the 1990s because of the breakup of the Soviet Union.

That was a major change. After that, there is stability. What does it mean to live under the same leader for thirty years? It is stability. People can call it whatever they like—instability, dysfunction, and all sorts of other things. But for a person's physical state, as I was saying yesterday—

For a person's physical state. As I told them yesterday, a disruption of that stability matters to a person's physical state regardless of whether they view it positively or negatively. It likewise makes no difference whether you have a positive or negative attitude toward any particular person. We were discussing the current leaders. I said, “What difference does it make overall? In the big picture, what difference does it make what changes happen?” There is stability in what is happening. People have an inner need for stability, and it is not a positive one. In general, people like things to stop. Everyone has stopped. People stopped developing spiritually when they were young—at twenty-five, twenty-three, twenty-seven, or thirty. Now it is closer to twenty-seven, twenty-eight, or twenty-nine, but obviously there is a range. They stopped developing; their consciousness and development came to a halt. It is not a positive quality, a positive thing, or a positive state. Stability in this case is not positive, because it is a kind of psychophysical stability in the perception of everything that happens. That is why people have an endless desire to know their lives in advance. Why do they want to know what will happen to them over the next forty years?

That is why they want a large amount of capital right away. They want to buy an apartment immediately, so that they have it set aside, so it is there for them. Or they want to remain alone for a very long time, or, on the contrary, have a family as quickly as possible. Or they have no children because that gives them stability. In Vedic astrology, children are one of the most important and significant upayas in a person's life. That means a change in a person's life. When a child arrives, what do they bring? Instability into that stable course of life. People do not like it. So much in society is built around stability. People cannot predict the weather; we know that. It changes constantly. Constantly. Someone will say that you can predict it a day ahead. Recently, my friend Max Grigoriev—we have done several ToTheMoon episodes together—said something about this. I was about to fly to New York, and I said, “The weather keeps changing impossibly: rain, no rain, then something else.” He said, “Well, if it already says rain tomorrow, it will rain. One day ahead is reliable.”

I said, “Listen, yesterday I looked and it said it would rain today. Now there is no rain.” You want to keep taking screenshots to track this complete lack of accuracy. I came outside to film just now, and it was cloudy. I opened my phone and checked. It said the clouds would last until 10:30. It is 9:12 now, and there are already none left. While I went to pour myself something to drink and connect the microphone, you saw how there was no sun and then it suddenly came out. No stability. People want stability for themselves, want to believe in it, want to know it is there. Accordingly, they want not to suffer. They want not to suffer. What suffering?

OSOlga Stolyarova

Yes, I wanted to ask about that. In one of your videos you said that happiness is when each day stays the same. People want a bright, varied life, a series of events, but happiness is when the day does not change. In a sense, that seems to be about a kind of stability too. I would like to clarify when stability is positive and when it is negative. You have just given some examples. Are there other kinds of negative stability? How can we distinguish the motives behind wanting stability?

AVAlexander Volchek

That is a very good thing to be aware of and understand. Otherwise it may seem contradictory: as you say, one video says one thing and another seems to say something completely different. But these are entirely different things. Entirely different things. The desire for change, to alter something, is indeed dissatisfaction with your present life. What is the desire for change? Dissatisfaction with your present life, a failure to recognize that what is here now is life itself. A person's task is to recognize that life is happening now. I am sitting here and may be doing nothing, but extraordinary changes are happening in life. We just discussed the weather, for example, or the trees, sounds, and all kinds of processes. However I sit here, silently or talking, my children continue to grow and my life continues to change. Changes happen regardless. My body is changing right now. An enormous number of processes are taking place in it. The question is whether you are aware of that, or whether you have a constant, endless desire to accomplish something socially—to hurry and make forty thousand dollars in comparable U.S. terms, a million dollars or euros, a hundred million, or billions.

It does not matter. The desire, the endless desire to get something done in time. Endless rushing, instead of awareness of what is actually happening now. There is stability in your consciousness, your purpose, your intention to perceive, your system of perception. That is different from your opinion changing every day: liking something today and disliking it tomorrow; wanting one thing today and another tomorrow; deciding one person is right today, someone else tomorrow, and another person the day after. That is not a sound way to perceive things. So do not undermine your own perception and understanding of what stability actually is. One thing is the stability people devise for their own existence: having an apartment, money, friends, a stock of food at home—and being dependent on that stability. The dependence is very important. As I always say, we need to be reasonable. If we say anxiety is not a central concern in a person's development or life and is not essential to it, that does not mean you should not work on your anxiety. Or if we understand that having an apartment, money, buckwheat in the cupboard, a certain number of friends, or a dog is not significant in the overall understanding and movement of life—

That does not mean you should not buy food in advance or prepare for disasters, difficult problems, or difficult moments. It does not mean you should not make friends and acquaintances. Otherwise it becomes mere populist rhetoric, a very strange conversation. A calm, steady, even course of life is indeed a blessing, if you perceive it that way. But a varied, uneven life full of all kinds of events is also a blessing. Again, it depends on how a person perceives it. In essence, absolutely any life is a blessing. Any life. Whatever we discuss or look at, we will arrive at that conclusion. So yes, calm is extremely important for people living in endless stress and all kinds of wild illusions. And people whose lives have stopped, often frozen somewhere forty years ago, need to shake things up, expand their consciousness, and expand their perception. Both groups have narrowed perception. That is very important. Both the first and the second group have narrowed perception.

OSOlga Stolyarova

This question also relates to the previous video and partly to what you are discussing now. Remember, we talked about what would happen to a person, and you asked me, “What would you do if you had a hundred days left to live?”

AVAlexander Volchek

Adults are often asked, “If you were going to die in a hundred days, what would you do?” What would you do? Would you do what you are doing now, or something else? I am not talking about practical details, like giving your wife or husband the passcode to your phone, the PIN for your credit card, access to your bank account, transferring an asset, or drawing up a power of attorney. All right.

Transfer something, draw up a power of attorney—let's put those formalities aside. What would you do in your life overall? Would you spend each day exactly as you do now, or differently? What would you do if you knew you would die in a hundred days? Would you keep filming my videos or not?

OSOlga Stolyarova

Yes. I would just change the location.

AVAlexander Volchek

Do you think you would keep working in the same way?

OSOlga Stolyarova

Yes. With you, yes. I would see… I would need time to accept that I was going to die in a hundred days. Although I do not know. I think it might be easier for me.

AVAlexander Volchek

Why am I doubtful when I ask whether you would continue? Why do I doubt it? I can imagine a self-interested motive: you might realize that it was important to prepare for the transition now and begin discussing that with me. I might be the only resource you trusted to learn about it and prepare yourself properly over those hundred days. But that is a somewhat different task from simply coming to work and making videos, writing briefs, thinking about whether a reel will take off, or making a short. That is a different kind of work. You would continue interacting with me, but you would not continue your current work. That is why it gave me pause. Would you really—

OSOlga Stolyarova

Right. Since then, I have genuinely been thinking about it every day. What have I been thinking? I really would like it to be this way: if I had a hundred days left to live, I would not want to change anything about my life. I would want to live exactly as I had been living. So my question is, what kind of perception of life—or what within a person—would allow them to have that ability, that possibility of not wanting to change anything, of continuing life as it is now? And most importantly, not suffering from knowing that there are a hundred days left.

AVAlexander Volchek

It would have to be a developed system, a very substantially developed system: developed bodies, spiritual bodies, and the person's developed spaces. Can we describe it when you ask what kind of person you need to be to be in that state? How could we describe it right now? You already have a description of the destination you would like to move toward and the understanding you would like to have. That is not a bad way to approach this question: to become aware of what is happening and how you feel when the question of a hundred days comes up. When you describe those hundred days now, there is still a sense of loss. You are a person with an appropriate level of consciousness, an appropriate degree of expanded perception, and you say you would like to reach a point where you would not change anything in your life. But there is a reason for that desire. You see ninety days as an abyss, as a problem. If you begin to examine it, you see that you would not want this to happen.

You do not particularly like the idea of having ninety days left. You do not like that idea. A hundred years is fine, but ninety days is not. Once you look at ninety days differently, from a state in which it is the same as a hundred years, the question of whether to change anything will not even arise. Do you see what I mean? The question will not arise. What is the difference between ninety days and a hundred years? A very big difference, right? An almost unimaginable difference. It seems unimaginable. Four hundred times, or whatever it is. A very big difference. What is the difference between ninety days and ten years? Smaller: forty times. It seems smaller already. What is the difference between ninety days and a year? Four times. But a year does not seem so good anymore. Even ten years does not seem so good, unless the person is seventy and another ten years seems like a long period to them. But if you look at it, it is simply the same kind of period.

What is the difference? It is the same kind of period. Besides, in life absolutely anyone can die at any moment. The point is not the ninety days. It is not about preparation, but about how you relate to that number. Can you hear that question and say, “What is the difference?” I have never heard anyone ask what the difference is between ninety days and a hundred years. What is the difference? I talk about this a lot, in videos and in classes. You hear it, right? I keep bringing up this topic, this line of thought. What is the difference? If someone came and said, “Alexander, what is the difference?” that would be the answer. There is no difference. If you understand that there is no difference between ninety days and a hundred years, you do not even need to turn over in your head what events or actions you would or would not undertake. It is an abstract comparison. Compare ten years and a hundred years. But reaching that understanding involves a different sense of time, a different understanding of life overall, of your approach, the values guiding your goals and tasks, and your own balance.

A completely different understanding of everything that happens. People do not want to come to terms with these understandings. Yesterday we were discussing something, and I said that I had never had any inner conflict or argument about moving to the United States. Someone told me, “Well, you moved four years ago. Give it another ten years and your opinion will change.” People always want to change your opinion from the outside. My opinion could change tomorrow; I do not need ten years. All sorts of different energies could arise in me. But right now I am aware of the past four years. Now, a year ago, three years ago, two years ago, I was aware. I was very clearly conscious of my perception of everything. I recorded an enormous number of videos and other materials, wrote texts, told stories, and discussed the details while in all kinds of different states. Not once did I experience that inner conflict. How could that change retroactively? Do you see the problem? How could it change retroactively? My perception in the present could change. I could say, “Right now I hate everything. Right now I cannot take any of it in.

Right now I dislike everything.” But nothing changes retroactively. My present opinion can change. That is a fact. Is it possible? Absolutely. Right now I feel calm in this space. Tomorrow I could begin to feel anxious forever, and the calm might never return. That is an important possibility to allow for, an important understanding of the state: calm can disappear and never return. Or, on the contrary, anxiety can leave, and you may never experience, feel, or even remember it again. There may not even be a memory of it. You will not be able to tune into it or live through it. To perceive all of this, you need to be in a state of constant work, perceiving everything around you. Constant work. It is an enormous amount of work. It is much harder than going to work every morning and swinging a hammer, talking on the phone, or holding meetings. Remaining in perception of everything that happens is a complex, multifaceted, incredibly varied activity.

Everything that happens, everything around you, constantly. It is an incredibly complex activity. You are not doing two things at once, or three. For the human brain, it means doing thousands of things simultaneously—not just continuously, but simultaneously. Doing thousands of things at once, holding thousands of conversations at once. You cannot get tired, switch off, or take a break. You cannot do that. You have to remain in a state of perception constantly. In this case, fatigue would simply mean a narrowing of perception. It is not connected to being in a state of perception; it is simply a narrowing of it. Everyone knows the experience of sleeping all night, waking up, and then being unable to think clearly all day. Or twenty thousand hours of activity have passed, and you can still think just as clearly, as though you have done nothing. Then it depends on the day, the space, the details, the energies, and your interactions. So many things, an incredible number of things. The question is finding the root. Can you see the root of a particular state—irritation, anger, anxiety, apathy, or joy? Do you see the root? It is incredibly important to see it in all the beneficial things too. Today, when I led the meditation—I do not know what number it will be, sixty-one, or what?

Sixty-one, yes. I said that people can make decisions from truth or from their own damage, misconceptions, and limitations, as well as from external influences. Can beneficial events happen in your life because of external influences? Obviously. Right? You may feel joyful because of external influences. Your money may increase because of external influences on you. You may become happy because of external influences, not because of yourself. Should you observe that? It is just as important to observe it as any problems that arise. Otherwise you will not be able to study all of this. The task is not to be in joy or happiness, or free from influences. The task is to learn to remain aware, to perceive all of this. It is not even a question of points of view, of having different viewpoints. It is broader than that. It is the simultaneous absence of viewpoints, because having viewpoints is also a kind of compromise. We discussed this recently in one of the videos, on one of the channels. I think it was my main personal development channel.

Having viewpoints is also a kind of compromise.