About indifference, expectations, and freedom in relationships with people

AVAlexander Volchek

Can you imagine? They have made the Russian word ravnodushie—indifference—into something nasty and bad. But think about it: what is ravnodushie? It is “equal souls.”

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

If we go to the opposite extreme and say that no one owes anyone anything, okay, then I do not have to take care of my child while he is little, for example, do I?

AVAlexander Volchek

To examine that question, we need to look at the level from which we are considering it. Do you owe me anything at this meeting? The important thing to examine is what you are relying on. Identify a set of principles for yourself about how you relate to people and how you perceive everything. Beyond that, it is your choice. Tanya, this approach leads to the ability to reach proper agreements.

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

Our next subject is indifference. I do not know whether you encounter it, but you probably do to some degree. I think a great many people alive today, especially in certain countries, feel as though the world is indifferent to them, as though people are indifferent to them. Speaking from my own experience, I think it can produce a kind of existential terror. When you encounter indifference, you do not know what to rely on. You are talking to another person, and there seems to be nothing but emptiness toward you. Do you ever feel indifferent toward someone? Or how do you act when you feel it directed toward you?

AVAlexander Volchek

You know, Tanya, there is an amazing aspect here. Simply incredible. Can you imagine? They have made the word ravnodushie—indifference—into something nasty and bad. But think about it: what is ravnodushie? It is “equal souls.” If you think another person is indifferent to you, that person perceives you as being just like them. Essentially, if someone perceives you as being just like them—again, this is how I see it. I understand that if we search online for what indifference means, we get a different definition. But if we take the words and look at the words, look at the words—

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

The word's etymology.

AVAlexander Volchek

Of course. So, I relate to you with indifference. That means I perceive you as being just like me.

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

As an equal.

AVAlexander Volchek

I perceive you as an equal. If I perceive you as an equal, then it is a joy to perceive everyone equally. To perceive everyone in the same way, as people. First of all, what does it mean to perceive them as people? It does not mean seeing an identical soul. In fact, an identical soul would be something even closer. People say, “This is my soul.” My soul: we are brothers in soul. This is mine. So it is about perceiving another person as a person, perceiving them equally, as a person, without raising them above anyone else. Imagine you come and tell me about some quality of yours, and I respond with indifference. What does that mean? I perceive your quality the same way I perceive that quality in other people. I try to give it attention and perceive it in a human way, for real. But I do not get carried away. I do not elevate your quality above other people's, or elevate you above others. I do not belittle you or your quality, or belittle other people, or join your side and say, “Listen, Tanya, I am just as great. I have that quality too. You and I are above everyone else. We really stand out.”

People do not like that. Of course people do not like it.

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

A very interesting position.

AVAlexander Volchek

People want to be—look, it is like a video we recorded. It will appear on the channel; it may already have appeared on my YouTube channel. We recorded a video about asking for forgiveness. For some reason, people think that if someone asks you for forgiveness, first of all, you have to forgive them. And if you forgive them, you are somehow supposed to ask for their forgiveness too. But look at the exchange. Imagine someone did something to you that changed your life for twenty years. They can ask for forgiveness endlessly. It is useless. They will not bring that energy back or change it. And who said I have to ask them for forgiveness? Who said I have to do those things? It is the same as someone asking how I am. Who said I have to ask how they are? This is not some stance I am taking. Someone will say I am emotionless or neutral. No, quite the opposite. It is about giving a person freedom, freedom in their own actions. So when you say you meet someone and they are indifferent, it means they did not respond at that moment to your emotional state about your outfit.

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

It is as though they pretend you do not exist. But talking with you, I am realizing that you can feel both fondness and indifference at the same time. Is that right?

AVAlexander Volchek

Take an example. Our families got together this Sunday. I arrived and said, “Tanya, what a beautiful jacket.” You said, “It was actually a dress.” We laughed: a beautiful dress, and that was that. Notice, by the way, that you were not offended when I called the dress a jacket. I went along with the conversation and said, “Yes, I suppose it could be worn separately too.” I said, “You probably ordered it online rather than buying it in a store.” I kept the conversation going. Look, I was interested. Notice that. And when you answered, you did not try to refute my “jacket.” You simply widened my range of perception. We had an ordinary human conversation. When I told you what a beautiful dress you had, was I saying it to look more impressive, more polite, more interesting, or more put-together in your eyes? No. I said it because I genuinely liked your—let us call it a dress.

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

Jacket.

AVAlexander Volchek

I liked the dress, the jacket. I liked your outfit, your look. I liked your outfit. I also liked what you had been wearing before, and then you changed again, into jeans or something else. You were wearing something else. I simply liked it, and I told you so. Completely calmly, in a human way, openly: I saw a certain beauty and spoke about it. Did I exalt it? No. Did I belittle it? No. This is important, Tanya: I did not exalt it. Imagine another situation. Suppose I came and said nothing at all, paid no attention to how you looked. Did I have the right to do that that day? Absolutely. You would say, “Of course you did, Sasha.” I could have been dealing with my own concerns that day. More than that, I could have been caught up in particular impulses that overwhelmed me and took over my whole being. You might say, “Sasha, why are you so indifferent?” I would say, “Tanya, because four of my relatives died the day before yesterday, damn it.” You would say, “Oh, I see. Sasha, I am sorry I came up to you with that question.”

Everyone likes that justification, right? But no one likes this justification: “Listen, Tanya, some energy has been at work inside me since this morning. I do not know what is happening to me. I am being torn apart.” Here is the next question. I would not even tell you about it, because you came with a manipulative complaint. You did not actually do that, but you could have come with a manipulative complaint: “Why are you being so indifferent?” Then we would need to look at that question together. At that moment, in principle, you should not care at all whether anyone notices your outfit, because that is how you dress and how you decided to dress. To be honest, you look that way every day. We met this morning, and I said, “Tanya, you look so good.” And we did not start, “Do I look better or worse than I did then?” Are we going to start choosing? It has nothing to do with that. Or do I look better—

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

So indifference is a kind of lack of resources? The person is occupied with other processes?

AVAlexander Volchek

First, it is an inadequate perception of another person's state. That is the first thing. If someone feels that another person is indifferent, that is an abstraction. Stop—

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

They were expecting something from them, right?

AVAlexander Volchek

Stop doing that altogether, Tanya. Definitely. You are accusing another person of not giving you attention.

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

That is a very interesting shift in perception, actually.

AVAlexander Volchek

That state is one hundred percent ego. It is guaranteed to be ego. If you see that another person is absorbed in themselves, once again, they have that right. We cannot even find fault with them, even if they do not listen to you or look at you. It is another situation if you start talking with them and they stop noticing you. But you can still notice that the person is absorbed in themselves. Stop imposing things on them, and so on. You say, “Well, not today, then.” You turn around and leave. Like arriving at a store and finding it closed: not today, then. You do not stand outside shouting, “Open the store for me!”

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

You do not break down the door.

AVAlexander Volchek

You do not break down the doors, call the police, try to change their hours, or try to change their state or anything else. You take it calmly. That is the point. People call and say, “Something is wrong with your voice.” It is the standard thing. Everyone, absolutely everyone. “Something is wrong with your voice. What is going on? Why are you being rude? What is it?” In my life, I have a wide range of states. I can be very quiet or talk a great deal. I can speak very loudly, very softly, very gently, very roughly, or very sharply. There is an enormous range. Tanya, I endlessly hear people describing what an asshole I was somewhere, or how I fell into some other state elsewhere. People endlessly discuss these states, but they are their own interpretations, without understanding what is happening inside. Maybe I am even deliberately producing this state now to set a certain wave in motion. I have a strongly developed ability to hold five or ten layers at once. I can do that. I can conduct a meeting, talk along one line, and at the same time carry out a manipulative strategy to achieve my result.

Or watch how other people respond, or think about tomatoes, or what I will have for lunch. I have those abilities. I—

I have those abilities. I can perceive many lines at once. You do not understand what states I may be in. To understand, you need to try to perceive me. What does that mean? First of all, it is not a materialist perception, a scientific perception, or a perception based on social aspects. People say, “We will read his facial expressions, his gestures, and do something else.” It is not that layer of perception—not only that layer. Second, you need to know the person, their circumstances, their understanding of life, and their understanding of what is currently happening to them. That makes a huge difference. You need to understand them and their goals: what they are doing at that moment, how they are acting, where they are, what they know, what they are observing, and so on. If, when inviting people over on Sunday, you had made a rule and said, “Everyone who comes must notice my dress,” or, “At today's gathering, everyone must look at one another,” then okay. We could hold each other to it and say, “Listen, those are today's rules.” Then we would be in a position to ask that of each other.

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

That is why we will not come.

AVAlexander Volchek

That is the problem with children. You tell one child to apologize, and they apologize. You tell the other child to apologize, and they look at you.

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

Yes.

AVAlexander Volchek

And do not do it.

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

I have exactly those two kinds.

AVAlexander Volchek

But the point—the point is that, if you look, it is not only children. I used children as an example. Adults do exactly the same thing.

Exactly the same thing.

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

They are just oversocialized children.

AVAlexander Volchek

Of course. They do the same thing. Then you begin to look and understand. You may reach the question: what do I do with these people? How do I interact with them? Where can I be with them? Tanya, we live in a world of extreme ego, a world of extreme self-importance. We live in a world where people want to think about themselves. Unfortunately. Look at our gathering on Sunday: it was a meeting of ego structures, a meeting where people were still in their own states. People were living through their own things. They wanted to say what they wanted to say, choose whose ear to talk off and whom not to talk to, and stay in their own spaces, thinking of themselves first. Thinking of themselves first. Someone worries and thinks about someone else. Someone arrives with small children and starts thinking only about the small children. Someone thinks only about keeping the space clean. Someone starts thinking about something else. Everyone's own impulses kick in. This is important to take into account. I have a friend who thinks a great deal about keeping the space clean. A great deal. There are people who do not think about it.

But I try—

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

An excellent person.

AVAlexander Volchek

With him, I try—

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

We would become friends.

AVAlexander Volchek

To respect that when I am in his space. I try to respect it and remember it. Remember that it is important to him. I will make an extra effort to be considerate of that. I will get up and tidy something, or get up and check on something. That is attention to a person. But some people have the right not to clean up. Some do it, and others do not. What is more, a person may be in a state that day where they want to change something. If we judge people's moods, states, indifference, sensations, and feelings by such absurd things, that is what leads to suffering. You yourselves suffer because of it afterward. You invented it, thought it up, and did it all yourselves, while the other person did not even bat an eye.

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

Did not even know about it.

AVAlexander Volchek

They simply have diarrhea. Of course, they simply have diarrhea. They came over and are standing there while someone tells them about great and beautiful things, and they are thinking, “I have an upset stomach today. I caught something.”

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

“Will I make it in time or not?”

AVAlexander Volchek

“Will I make it or not?” Tanya, why not? Some people can easily say in the middle of a conversation, “Excuse me, I need to use the bathroom.”

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

Yes, and others will hold it in until the very last moment.

AVAlexander Volchek

Others will hold it in. But physiology will take its course. Their mind will switch off, right? Their perception will switch off.

So are they to blame? I do not understand. Are they to blame at that moment?

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

Who owes what to whom? That seems to be the internet's favorite subject. There are constant arguments about what men owe women: diamonds, cars, and whatever else. And women are not supposed to have children, just be beautiful. Others say, “No, I must work at any cost.” There are so many ego structures, as you call them, illusions, and so on. But at the same time, if we go to the opposite extreme and say no one owes anyone anything, okay, then I do not have to take care of my child while he is little, for example, do I? I could just walk away, and that would be it. Of course I could not do that. Why not? I love him, and I also have an inner sense of duty. As always, I am interested in your unconventional view of this situation. Who owes what to whom, and does anyone owe anything at all?

AVAlexander Volchek

To examine that question, we need to look at the level from which we are considering it. Do you owe me anything at this meeting? Essentially, you do not. On the one hand, you promised to come, but you could have stayed away. It is a verbal agreement, with whatever consequences that would have. What is more, we did not discuss a huge number of details fully. We agreed roughly on what would happen and how. Look, you might say, “You understand that emergencies can happen, that the internet might go down.” I could say, “I do not understand why your internet went down. I do not understand why you did not prepare an independent satellite connection with backup power. I do not understand why you did not arrange things so that no one could come into your room,” and so on. Do you see? Those aspects have not really been set out. If we are talking about a house rental agreement, a purchase, or mobile service from a carrier, there is a written contract, and that contract sets out the details.

Not all of them, either. Not all, not all. It sets out most of them. Most of them. Some questions can be worked out verbally and in person. Others are resolved under a particular law, in court, within a country or jurisdiction, and so on. They are laid out and arranged in some way. When we talk about what a husband owes his wife, without documents—notice, without documents—it is not as though people are so highly developed that they spent twenty years preparing to formulate and describe their agreements. Imagine they prepared for twenty years, then approached it and continued to set up the whole system. The system begins to work somehow. But they would have needed to prepare for that. Can you imagine the education it would take? Everyone somehow thinks you need an education to become a doctor. Though then you can make mistakes: you have a license to make mistakes, right? Meanwhile, no one says you need to prepare, to get an education for the most important part of your life, even though that process lasts much longer than your professional career. Prepare, truly prepare, and approach it that way. Not a chance. Zero preparation. Simply zero. In most of these matters, there is zero preparation.

It does not even exist. So when we ask what a person owes—what you owe your children, or what someone owes their husband—the important thing to examine is what you are relying on. With the house, I relied on a contract. Here with you, I relied on a certain social understanding and our personal agreements. But you did not personally make an agreement with your three children, Tanya. What is more, you would not have been able to. They could take you to task for that, by the way, because you did not agree with them. They could say, “I actually wanted something completely different.” And you would say—

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

“I did not ask to be born,” as they often say when they are teenagers.

AVAlexander Volchek

No, they have the right to tell you, “Mom, we did not want a room like this. We did not want to wake up this way or do things this way.” Essentially, when you say you are obligated to be a mother, they also have the right to say, “We would not want you to do certain things.” This is important to understand too: you have come up with a certain set of things, and the person on the other side also has the right to do what they want. When none of this has been discussed, you need to find something to rely on. What does a person rely on? A book by some author, a textbook, a course, or the social norms of a particular country? We know that different countries have different social norms. In some places, you can still have three wives. For example, I was just in Egypt, where you can have three wives. There is some requirement to notify them. Or the marriage contract can state that there will be only one wife. Everywhere has its own social norms, different people, and different perceptions of the parameters. Completely different.

Tanya, notice what that means. This is very important: even within the same society and space, a person may have their own perception of reality and their own impulses about what is good or bad, permissible or impermissible. The only thing I talk about and show everyone, everywhere, is that you need to study the impulses at work in a person when they come into this life, and the causes and effects at work in them. Study them. The only thing a person can do is follow some of the fundamental laws of the Universe. Fundamental laws that are impossible to access. For example, relate to everyone with—

Possibly, for example, relate to everyone as people. Do not single someone out and say that I like Tanya Pirozhkova more than the girl next door. That would be strange. Identify a set of principles for yourself about how you relate to people and how you perceive everything. Beyond that, it is your choice and your framework for understanding everything that happens. On the one hand, you say you owe your children something. But your perception of “owe” is illusory, because your husband has a completely different understanding of what should be done for the children. I have a third view, your nanny a fourth, the grandmother a fifth, your mother a sixth, and your mother-in-law a seventh. Everyone has their own perception. Most importantly, your child has a different one. So when you approach your child, the first thing to do is say, “First, this child chose my family and came into it. I did not simply produce a child and create my own set of rules. Second, we did not agree on the rules.” Acknowledge that to yourself. Third, say, “I understand that this child has their own life and their own set of circumstances, and I will do everything I can not to harm that life. Not to harm that life. Not to harm that life.”

That means understanding and figuring out what their life is meant to be, and trying to understand that life. This person you have now, who is two years old, will be exactly the same person thirty years from now. We will recognize them in a different visible form, but it is the very same spiritual being. Exactly the same. It has not changed at all. They may be able to express themselves more or speak less, develop certain illnesses, or have illnesses go away, or something else. But spiritually, it is exactly the same being. It is still what it was. Everything is the same. Why decide that at eighteen you owed me something, but in another situation you did not? Another aspect is that different norms exist. We understand that if you do not look after a small child, the child will die—for example, if you do not feed them. We also understand perfectly well that there are many other constraints that are simply normal human laws of perception. So to say, “Oh, then we do not owe anything, so I will not take care of the child at all”—well, in principle, you can choose not to.

That is why some people spend fourteen hours with their child, take them to activities, or homeschool them. Others do not look at their child at all. The child grows up on their own, and the parents do not even know how much they weigh, for example. Who said you need to know a child's weight? What is that—the main criterion of assessment? The main criterion of assessment. What is more, there is no such law. But there are laws beyond that, Tanya. Look, there are laws. If you live in a particular country, at the very least you must obey its laws. We live by society's rules, and each country has its own laws. If that country says you must treat a child in a particular way, that is how it is. We see how many people dislike this. They say, “Did you know that in that country, a child can go to the police, say something, and be taken away? Whereas here, you can hit a child's fingers with a hammer and no one will take the child away.” That is a very common subject of discussion, by the way. These are simply laws. This is not a question of your inner impulse of perception. It is a question of the laws in the country.

You live in a country with those laws. If you live there and chose that country—or sometimes you have no choice, but you are there anyway, you were born there—that is your karmic path. You are meant to be there and act according to those rules. They are simply rules. Simply rules. We have been forbidden to move freely around the world, Tanya. We have been forbidden. Once, you could travel wherever you wanted, whenever you wanted. Then someone came along and said, “You cannot.” Just as someone later said, “You can take ten thousand dollars across the border.” In 1990, or around then. In many countries, you can still take ten thousand dollars across the border. You think, “Prices have changed. Come on, reconsider the amount.” It is simply a decision someone made at some point. But it is a prohibition. It is a prohibition, yet at the same time it is a norm that came about that way. On the other hand, there were things you could not do before. You and I live about a hundred kilometers apart. In the past, it would have been difficult to see each other.

We would have had a long ride on horseback. Now it is very easy to see each other. If we want to meet, we can say, “Tanya, let's have lunch together here in two hours.” You say, “Sure.” Thirty minutes for you, thirty for me, and there we are having lunch. Those hundred kilometers no longer matter at all in terms of time. Or people could not communicate with each other this way in the past. Now they can communicate easily. So, Tanya, when it comes to what people do or do not owe, it is very important to start paying attention and studying what is actually happening. Why does this arise in a person? Why do they say someone owes them something—that they must sleep together, for example? Are you willing to consider that it may not happen that way? Are you willing to consider that, at one point, I may adore you, have endless love for you, and be absolutely crazy about you, while five years later I may look at you and think, “Who even are you?” If you can take that calmly and understand that it is normal, that it can happen because my impulses may change, that is a healthy state, Tanya, from which you can move toward discussing who owes what to whom.

We see people around the world making laws and then breaking them themselves, changing their minds, and being persuaded otherwise. Today they say they dislike a certain president; tomorrow they turn up with the vice president. Today they say this action is needed; tomorrow something else needs to be done. Look, I take that calmly. But then that person should do the same. I say, “Then you should take it calmly too. You were saying something completely different. I understand why it changed. The factors changed, your mood changed, and you no longer like green, so you removed all the green chairs from your apartment.” Did you have the right to do that? You did. It is absolutely normal. We may stop talking to each other. Or could it happen that, a week from now, my children will never see me again? Easily. First of all, I could die. This is what a normal, healthy perception is about. First, I could easily die. That will happen to everyone. It can happen to anyone. It always happens. In any case, this will cease to be.

Tanya, look: at some point, everyone's obligations end. Then there are an enormous number of circumstances—illnesses and everything else. People are always looking for them. This approach, Tanya, leads to the ability to reach proper agreements where agreements and signed documents are needed; to study things properly where they need studying before a document is signed; and to understand in advance that, in a certain situation, a person will let you down or change their mind. I once had a very difficult business partnership, because I was up against not one elephant but an army of elephants. This person decided to protect himself from me. But when he sought that protection through legal documents, he did not take into account that, when I prepare documents, I always make them ten levels better. I prepared them and provided not only for his protection, but also very strong protection for myself. That saved me. It personally saved me. This is an approach, an ability to understand that people can behave in different ways. From the very beginning, calmly understand that someone can always come along and break a contract, change a law, or change the circumstances.

That is natural, Tanya, just as the weather can always change or a hurricane can begin. “I think a contract takes some of the weight off and makes a relationship easier.” Of course. But at the same time, everyone needs to understand that someone who says one thing about a contract today may act differently tomorrow if the law allows it—or even act differently elsewhere—and say something else. There are businesses, Tanya, where I do not sign any documents in a partnership. None at all. I sign nothing. Why? And there are businesses where I will eat the lawyers alive, turn myself inside out, and go through every last detail. Why do I not sign certain documents? Because in some situations I see an enormous risk with that person, and signing documents will stop them from taking certain actions. That will bring us to different questions and allow us to live calmly. In other situations, I know it makes no difference. If the person decides to change something, no document will save them. Nothing will. Everything will fall apart and be torn apart anyway. We live in a world where we constantly have to make decisions like this. Very much so.

One important decision to make when having children is to reach an agreement together. For example, when we were getting a dog, our family made an agreement. You were involved in that process when I wanted a dog and agreed to get one. My wife agreed too, and we decided what kind of dog it would be. We had a rule. I said we would have a dog on the condition that we spent a great deal of time caring for and working with it. The dog would not, for example, lie on any of the beds. Imagine: we agreed. Time passes, and someone thinks the dog should lie on the bed.

For example, my wife thinks the dog should—or may—lie on the bed, because that is her opinion. What do I do then? It is a very interesting situation. Could her opinion have changed?

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

But in a relationship, certain crises happen anyway, you know. They are a signal to renegotiate and rebuild things. You cannot do it once for the whole rest of your life.

AVAlexander Volchek

Maria, look, let us consider this as a part of ordinary life rather than as a crisis.

It is ordinary life: everyone's state changes.

Just as, if I understand correctly, I could find myself in a state tomorrow where I come in and tell everyone, “There is no dog in the house anymore,” and remove it.

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

Of course.

AVAlexander Volchek

Yes. Within my capabilities and authority, that impulse can arise, and I have the right to make a decision—for example, if I have the will to do it. My children could have that impulse too, but they would not have the authority to make that decision, although they might set it in motion. The point is that if you agreed on something and your state has changed, and you relate to all of this freely and openly, the first thing you should do is go to the person you made the agreement with and say, “My opinion has changed here. I suggest we discuss it.”

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

Mm-hmm.

AVAlexander Volchek

With the understanding that the situation may remain unresolved, and that not resolving it can lead in different directions.

You are right, Tanya: it is about people's ability to negotiate situations that cannot be resolved, while understanding that another person always has a different opinion and has the right to keep it. Negotiate these aspects without reproach, and continue discussing the whole range—the whole range of perception.