When “I'll Do It Myself” Becomes a Limitation | What Lies Behind Being Unable to Ask for Help

OSOlga Stolyarova

When someone finds it hard to accept help or ask for it, how should they look at that? What might lie behind it?

AVAlexander Volchek

There is a fairly precise, clear answer here. As a rule, people who do not want to ask for help will find it extremely difficult to hear or understand. How do you even make sense of an answer like this? People ask questions or ask for help in the areas of life that interest them, the areas that form the foundation of their own development along their path. I have a spiritual development group called Life. A group of people work with me regularly, and recently someone asked, "Why do I not ask questions?"

I said, "You do not ask questions because this particular area of development is not really at the center of your life. It is something on the side, an extra activity that may come up occasionally." What does it mean when a person is not interested in a particular subject? It means that however much you interact with them or talk about that subject, they will perceive it through their ego-computer. What does that mean? It means they have to find reasons to ask a question, for example.

They have to find reasons to ask a particular person for help. They are looking for reasons, rather than simply allowing a natural exchange of energies. What state are they in? They are under a very strong influence in the area where they cannot ask for help. It is important to remember that there are always different areas. In some, people ask for help easily; in others, they do not. Some people say, "I never ask for help with anything." Others say, "I ask for help with everything." This is very relative. There are always areas where a person does not ask for help, and areas where they would ask very easily. You can distinguish them by looking deeply within yourself: what do you do easily, and where do you hit a block?

As a rule, if a person does not ask for help, their perception in that area is very closed. They are in their ego. Again, that is the general principle. Of course it depends on the particular examples, the subjects, what is happening, and the people interacting with one another. But broadly speaking, the person is under the influence of the ego-computer in that specific area. There is an easy way to examine this. You might readily ask one person to help you carry something or order something online. Yet there are people you would never ask in your life. I gave you the example of parents.

There are things you would ask other people for, but you would never ask your parents. You simply would not. Why? "I just could not do that." This adds another aspect: distinguishing between particular people. There are different subjects, and there are different people. Of course, all of this is based entirely on energies. You either have a clear flow of energy in a particular activity or you do not. If you have that clear flow toward genuinely working the land, growing certain plants, if you want to do it and are fully willing to put in the work yourself, if you are open and love other people, then you will easily ask anyone for help. Now suppose someone notices that they cannot ask for help and recognizes it as something they do. They might wonder whether they need to force themselves to ask another person for help.

Should they engage in this self-coercion at all? What matters most is not that you start asking for help, because that could become an ego-driven assignment aimed at gaining some benefit. The first and most important thing is to see that this limitation exists in your system. Notice the moment when you stop yourself. Not asking for help is an all-encompassing issue. It is not even clear whether anyone can act from a state of freedom one hundred percent of the time in every area. Asking the world for help is an ongoing act from a state of freedom, an endless openness, the ability to remain a constant student here on Earth.

A constant student everywhere, in every aspect of existence. Given the various social norms and restrictions, whether that can happen one hundred percent of the time is a big question. But begin noticing it and paying attention to it. Begin seeing the essence of being a student, because this takes us further into that idea: being a student of life, understanding that throughout your life you need to study yourself and everything around you. That is the only way to work through not just causes and effects and karma, but to truly move forward. Being a student in this sense is not a matter of reading books or attending programs and courses.

It is a firm foundation within yourself, in your values, the meanings you live by, and what truly moves you. Understanding help, how to ask others for it and how to be able to ask, is a very particular issue. You could start asking everyone for help endlessly and move into an ego structure, a life of dependency and manipulation. Or you could start helping everyone else. We hear a great deal today about how we should help everyone without limits.

There is a big difference between expressing love as a genuine step toward another person and expressing love or helping because it is an assignment, something socially motivated. Understanding that boundary—when you need to stop and do something yourself, or when you should refrain from helping someone and let them move forward—is a task that never ends. A person cannot complete it within their lifetime. That is very important to understand. You will not figure everything out one hundred percent. You will make mistakes regardless. How could anyone understand everything completely? You would have to know every cause and effect.

You would have to understand absolutely every energy at every moment and, incidentally, also act automatically. What does acting automatically at every moment mean? It is an interesting point. If you want to work out the question of help entirely with your mind, it will not work. No mind can make the right decision at every moment by thinking everything through. You need time to think. Decisions that arise from an impulse, automatically, require an enormous amount of energy. That energy also has to be restored, and you have to be free of an enormous number of limitations. So the question is meaningless if you ask yourself, "How can I tell whether I have gone too far with helping, or where I should act on my own and where I should not?"

I mean that trying to answer it in advance is meaningless. You need to look at each particular situation individually, for yourself. That is what your life is for: studying each specific situation along your own path.