Meditation Doesn't Calm You Down: Why Emotions Intensify After Practice

GAGalya

That brings up another question. There is a common view that if you meditate, you should get angry less often and be more—I don't know—effective. Is that true? Does meditating really mean that soon you will stop getting angry altogether and walk around being kind, full of love for everyone and everything?

AVAlexander Volchek

What do you think?

GAGalya

From my own experience, I do not think that is true. Well—

AVAlexander Volchek

But do you still feel inside that this should go away, or not?

GAGalya

I think it is something to work toward. Sometimes I get angry and think I should not be angry. I am working on my spiritual development, reading all this, meditating—how and why am I getting angry or losing my temper now? I definitely have moments when I think this should not be happening to me. But there is another side: I realize this is life. That is probably how growth happens. I notice the state and observe it. Sometimes I try not to fall into it; sometimes I do anyway, and afterward I look back and think, “Again.”

AVAlexander Volchek

Why do you think that feeling arises—the feeling that you should not get angry?

GAGalya

Why do I feel that I should not get angry?

AVAlexander Volchek

Yes. Why does that question arise? On one hand, you say you understand perfectly well that getting angry is absolutely normal. So why does it arise?

GAGalya

Because it seems that if you work on your spiritual development and meditate, you should be calm and able to control your state. I don't know—something like that. After meditating, I am more often quick-tempered than calm. And people can reproach me: “Why are you angry? You just meditated.”

AVAlexander Volchek

First, I want to say straightaway that I think being more quick-tempered after meditation is, to some extent, a belief you hold. Certain states are being exaggerated. The question is whether you actually record absolutely every meditation, and what “more often quick-tempered afterward” means: within five or ten minutes, a day, two days, three, five, a week? How did you measure it? I want to be clear that this is an exclusively rational, mental conclusion. If you want to observe it, you need to observe it very rigorously, make notes, mark checkboxes, and introduce some kind of measurement. The question is: what measurement? How will you determine the level? Are you angry and controlling the anger, or are you actually angry? What does that mean? It is a very interesting issue. We were filming a video about this—or I was talking to someone—about what a true state is. Let us call it a true spiritual state, although “spiritual” is somewhat abstract here. A true state would be when someone is angry, sees that they are angry, and tries to work with it so they do not harm another person.

Or they are angry and try to work with it because they were assigned to mark checkboxes and not get angry. Because Alexander Volchek said that if you mark the boxes properly, that is a good indicator. What I want to say is this: if there is any feeling—any, any feeling—that you are holding back anger to be good in relation to the word “meditation” or to spiritual development, because spiritually developed people are supposed to be so good and wonderful, because everyone will judge you and say, “Galya, what kind of practices are you doing? This is all nonsense”—if that is why you do it, you immediately leave the path of truth. Immediately. Just like that, it is gone. Imagine the path of truth as a golden, glowing, sunlit line. You step off it instantly. You immediately leave it, not to mention the freedom you might approach a little, or that is there as you move along. You leave it immediately. But it is different if you work on this because it is true knowledge and you do not want to harm other people. You work on it not because you meditate and this supposedly should not happen in meditation, but because it is true in itself.

It does not matter whether you sat down to meditate as a separate, independent practice or spent the past year doing ordinary everyday things without once thinking of a book or a meditation. When anger arises, you know clearly that you do not want to be angry with other people above all, because you are damaging them. First, this is a very clear indication of what is happening. If the feeling arises that you should not be angry because you practice, you are stepping off that sunlit path. Immediately, immediately, you should think, “Oh, I have switched over at this moment.” It is very easy to recognize in yourself straightaway. It is a good, healthy, simple way of identifying what is actually happening. After getting angry, you might think, “I got angry, so that was not a good action,” or “I harmed someone.” You also added that someone does not like it. So it is all tied to whether someone likes what you do. People often want to be in a blissful state so society will recognize that state. Recognize it.

Not because everything is happening truthfully, but so other people will not crush their faith. They are afraid of losing that faith. When you asked your question just now, it was exclusively a question of faith. If we go to the source and look, as soon as the idea arises that you should not get angry in meditation, there is distrust—your own inner distrust of everything that is happening. If you live with a full awareness and understanding of the spiritual world, that association will not arise. It simply will not arise. It cannot be there; it does not exist there. With a full perception and understanding of what is happening, it is not there. This is a kind of distrust. Is a blind person still blind, or can they see? Blind or able to see? It is distrust. Modern people, given the structure of their soul and the evolution of their development, can easily live in a state of doubt. That is their current basis. I am not saying it is positive, but it is their basis, and they are torn. They are torn. This is very interesting.

A person consists of different systems and structures. Part of their system may be in complete trust, while another part is in a forgotten, suppressed state, triggering an absolute lack of confidence. As a result, they experience discomfort in their perception. A trigger keeps arising: lack of faith, lack of faith. That is one side. The other, of course, is the anger itself. If your perception is expanding, this is normal. Expanding perception brings additional emotional tension. That is absolutely normal. When someone drinks alcohol, they often do not even feel pain while drinking. Look, they often do not feel pain; the effects come later. Why? Their perception narrows. When your perception expands, it is normal to begin feeling anger and aggression. You may have suppressed your own aggression long ago and now be feeling it, feeling your own anger. You may also begin to see things you find unacceptable that you simply did not see before. They can provoke anger, very serious anger at everything that is happening. “How can this be happening here?

You said this did not happen here, but it does. You said this was not how things were here, but it is.” That can cause anger. It is like a child in adolescence. Rudolf Steiner describes adolescence very well: why there is a particular period when the child is angry and protests. They protest because they expected to be told the truth about the spiritual world and their bodies, but no one told them. No one told them, and they protest against everything that is happening. Later it subsides, although that protest accompanies people throughout life and will accompany everyone, because they are divided inside. On one hand, they are material; on the other, they believe the soul goes somewhere for forty days. On one hand, they are material; on the other, when someone dies, they go to church and light a candle. They are material, yet when they see an icon, they say, “Oh, an icon.” Even if it is a diabolical icon, or Satan depicted in some visual form—

depicted in some visual form. Galya, this is a very interesting point. On many icons, we can see depictions of both light and dark worlds, at least as we might describe them in words. For example, light spiritual beings trample the dark worlds, and everyone bows before the icon. If something dark is there, how much of the space would it have to occupy for someone not to bow before it? How would they perceive it at all? How do they understand what it is? How do they understand what it is? It is like people going on trips where their consciousness is expanded through particular substances and encountering divine, spiritual energies—great energies. But again, every planet, the spiritual aspect of every planet, has a demonic expression. There is the sun demon that appears every six hundred and sixty-six years: Sorat. If someone on a trip sees a divine spiritual being somewhere, a profound, enormous, expansive energy, they say, “Oh, I have seen!” But what exactly have you seen? This is exactly the same issue when it comes to understanding the energy of anger.

What is that energy? Where does it come from? Where is it coming from? Who is its source, and what is its source? This is a very important part of what is happening. If you take poison into yourself every day through food, for example—someone is slipping poison into it—and you feel a certain state, you will keep feeling it because they keep slipping you poison. Whatever you do, they will keep doing it. You need to eliminate that poison from your food. If your life is arranged so you cannot do without it, you will always feel that state. Always. Absolutely always. It may even become stronger if you stop taking painkillers. Someone says, “I drank alcohol and felt better.” Why better? Because they narrowed their perception. When people begin meditating, it is important to understand that, on one hand, this is an expansion of perception, a movement toward freedom, toward knowing the world, toward truth. Toward truth. On the other hand, it is coming to know truth, and that includes understanding who is deceiving whom, and whom you are deceiving.

Can you get angry because you have realized you are deceiving someone? Your perception has expanded; you have realized it, and anger or aggression arises. Why not? Other people associate it with particular actions. Fine. I spend a lot of time in the garden. I think some people might say I have deteriorated and started spending a lot of time with plants. Could that happen? Easily. Just like that. Easily. To someone else, it would be an incredible miracle. Someone might say, “Now that is development, spending so much time with plants.” Notice where this comes from. From beliefs, among other things. The Soviet idea that if you spend time in a garden, you are a grandmother who has gone off to her country place to garden. This is a very interesting topic in meditation. I had a conversation with my mother about this—the same topic, a direct continuation that helps us see it. She is about to turn seventy. We were talking, and she said, “I feel thirty-five.” I said, “Listen, I feel forty-two.”

By the time this video comes out, I may already be forty-three. I said, “I feel forty-two.” She said, “I said that at your age too.” I saw that energy; she perked up. “I said that at your age too.” I said, “Wait, I want to understand something. What does feeling thirty-five when you are seventy mean? What is that for? Why feel that way?” That energy had genuinely arisen in me, and I wanted to understand it. She said, “All my friends feel thirty-five too,” and started listing them, including my godmother—people who feel younger. Notice something interesting: she said she felt forty when she was forty, but at seventy she feels thirty-five. I asked, “Why do you want to feel that way? At seventy, I would like to feel seventy. I am forty-two now; I do not want to feel fifteen, because I am not fifteen. I am forty-two. I want to feel what is actually there.”

We are talking about life in terms of years, in 2026. But I feel who I am as a spiritual being. Not completely; I feel a certain extent of it. I have a great deal of knowledge, vision, and perception in this area. Of course, I do not feel forty-two. In human years, I am much older. Much older. What I convey and describe, the way I think and look at things, carries an immense age—an incredible age—in different ranges. I can move into different ranges. I can also be in a range of great youth, great youth. Can I drop into the youth of a fifteen-year-old? I cannot, because I would not be able to speak. If we mean the spiritual being. As for being a fifteen-year-old child, I already had a fairly serious perception then. That is obvious, because my spiritual being was there, and the events happening to me were those happening to my spiritual being. Of course, I did not tell my mother all this about spiritual beings.

Why would I?

I said, “Mom, can you explain why you do not want to feel seventy at seventy?” She said, “Physically, of course I feel seventy. I understand that in terms of my body, but inside I do not feel seventy.” I asked, “What does that mean? What is feeling thirty-five?” This is a very important topic—an incredibly important one for awareness of your age. It is simply understanding reality. Understanding reality. She said, “I have so many interests, so much vitality. I want all kinds of things to happen.” I said, “Do you mean people do not have that at seventy, so you associated it with a particular age?” That is exactly what happens. People perceive age itself as a problem. So enormous numbers of people suffer at forty because they see their age as a problem, a missed opportunity. They suffer at forty-five, at fifty, even at thirty. At twenty they are happy, but by thirty they suffer, looking at those ten years—whether they are alone, for example, or not earning a million.

That is it: they are already traumatized. They do not have an apartment, or something else is missing, and everything has been missed. Life is over; life has passed them by. At seventy, they begin to feel this absolute lack of freedom. Again, it is not about seventy, eighty, sixty, or ninety in particular. There are books about it. I once gave my mother a book—I do not remember the author—describing older people doing various things. Someone practices gymnastics, someone becomes known for their paintings, someone does something else. It is called The Age of Happiness. It seems like a good book, but what does it do? It tells people that happiness can be experienced at this age. But the material and social worlds created that perception. Why did that happen? Because people stopped developing. People used to develop. Thousands of years ago, they continued developing at fifty and sixty. Later, development continued to thirty-three, thirty-two, thirty-one, thirty, twenty-nine, twenty-eight, twenty-seven. Now people stop at twenty-six or twenty-seven. Their development stops. They do not develop. They do not develop.

That is why, for people, this is an age of unhappiness. A book called The Age of Happiness is published to show that joy is possible in this state. But a healthy body, a healthy situation, a healthy spiritual system means being in a state of very great wisdom at this age. That is the point of this age: you are wise. You say, “I am glad I am seventy. I am wise. I feel seventy; I do not want to feel twenty. At twenty I was not wise. In this life, I certainly was not wise at twenty. I was not wise. I did not hear or perceive. I did not perceive the world.” People say perception of the world closes at seventy, but perhaps it expands. On the contrary, perception of the world expands. After a certain age—after forty-nine—you enter a stage of life's movement in which you study what has happened. Decades of opportunity to study what has happened. Of course, if at seventy you remain nervous and still want to prove yourself and build a business, that is one thing. Or if at seventy you are in exactly the same state as twenty years earlier, with a certain utopian quality to it—of course that has an effect.

But it is worth examining.

Can we rephrase this question? If my mother is seventy and feels thirty-five, it will be quite difficult for her to begin feeling seventy. More precisely, she does feel seventy, because she feels her physical body. It becomes much worse when you begin feeling and existing outside the reality of the present. If you are not in the reality of the present, things will only get worse for you, not better. Only worse. This is very important. Not better.

GAGalya

Can you be spiritually mature and still want power and influence?

AVAlexander Volchek

That is a very big question, enough for a separate episode. Let us look at it briefly, because it is a very large question about people's desires within their system. Of course you can be spiritually mature and want power. Take Lucifer, the fallen angel: a spiritually developed being, spiritually developed, who wants power. Someone may say he is not human. But if there are systems of the spiritual world, great spiritual hierarchies that shifted from serving truth to their own significance, their own importance, as that spiritual being requires, then clearly you, as a human being with what seems a very serious spiritual consciousness, can shift too. You can. Theoretically, you can. In terms of energy and all the descriptions of the world, of course you can shift. You can move into a system of wanting power and feeling superior, wanting to control people. That is guaranteed, Galya. Such a shift can happen. The question is that people see spiritual development as a box checked in society, a material box. Like graduating from school or university with honors, or graduating from Stanford. A checkbox. Or creating a unicorn in the tech startup world.

A checkbox. Or making the Forbes list. Being the father or mother of ten children, or serving in a war for ten years. These are checkboxes. We are talking entirely about social checkboxes. If you regard spiritual development as another one, we need to say clearly, straightaway, that this checkbox says nothing about a person's kindness. Just as none of the boxes we listed does. Someone may have graduated with honors, be a war veteran who served forty years, or have forty children: none of that shows their level of anger, malice, arrogance, or desire for power. Nothing at all. It shows nothing. It is also important to understand clearly that people in the world do very bad things and kill enormous numbers of people after gaining power, secretly or openly, while possessing a very substantial spiritual structure. Possessing a very substantial spiritual structure. This is very important to understand. The question is what that structure is connected to. What energies is it connected to? What energies is it connected to?

So the question is: what do you choose? Do you choose someone who graduated with honors and has a billion dollars, or someone who is guided by truth? That is the question.