How to Hear Yourself After a Lifetime of Following Other People's Voices

AVAlexander Volchek

We live in a world of enormous social opportunities. People have access to an incredible amount of everything. The reason for this search is mistaken. The search is driven by the illusion that something good lies ahead. When someone asks how to stop listening to other people, that means they are, at this moment, perceiving themselves.

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

Social rejection is essentially death, sooner or later.

AVAlexander Volchek

You need to listen to other people too. And it is also an illusion that you are not listening to yourself. The person who asks, “How do I start perceiving myself instead of listening to others?”—the most important thing is that they are not hearing others either.

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

Here is the question: how do you hear yourself if all your life you have listened to other people's voices—your parents, teachers, your boss, the voice of society, the voice of fear telling you what you need to do? People usually spend their whole lives living by someone else's rules. At some point, I think it becomes hard to separate yourself and what you believe is right from what other people say. What do you think?

AVAlexander Volchek

The main thing about this question—hearing yourself, doing what you need for yourself, beginning to fulfill your own dreams—is that the question itself is something of a trap. The central trap is that, first, the person immediately states as a fact that they do not hear themselves. They are stating it as a fact, right? You say the person asks how to hear themselves, how to understand who they really are. There is already a particular doubt in them from the outset. Second, they assume there is something that will give them something more interesting, more refined, more real, more substantial. Some other reality, some other life exists. I was about to say that in recent years, or recent decades, society has reached a point where it is constantly searching for itself, supposedly unlike the past. But I think that twenty, thirty, or forty years ago, judging at least by how people perceived things and analyzed them, many people were endlessly searching for themselves too, trying to find themselves.

It is just that we now live in a world of enormous social opportunities. People have access to an incredible amount of everything. Someone will say, “I do not have access.” But essentially—

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

There are more tools available, right?

AVAlexander Volchek

Yes. Yesterday I was at my daughter's concert, and some of the teachers onstage used very complex English. I thought about how I had attended a school specializing in English. Later, when I was studying programming at university, my English teacher actually told me, “I cannot teach you anything. You do not need to come to class.” I thought, damn, why didn't I sit down back then and study English—interesting specialized things, fashionable words, little tricks, some—

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

Little phrases.

AVAlexander Volchek

Phrases. Then I thought: how could I have accessed all of that? In theory, I could have bought specialized textbooks or books in English, but that is a very difficult way to learn. Now you can go online and ask for fifty interesting phrases in English, two hundred phrases, a hundred phrases about plants, five hundred about children. It will offer you endless variations. There is so much access now. Not to mention access to the entire world of plants, for example, or music, or books.

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

Yes.

AVAlexander Volchek

There is an endless amount. Could I have read Rudolf Steiner the way I do now back then? Impossible. I bought all his books printed in Russian, just as a collection for my library. He has, I don't know, three hundred works or however many, and—

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

Wow!

AVAlexander Volchek

A hundred and something.

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

I did not know he had so many.

AVAlexander Volchek

Yes, a hundred and something published, and I bought around a hundred and something books published in Russian, perhaps. I probably have them all, or ninety-five percent. Listen, Stanford's library alone has a hundred and fifty books by Steiner.

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

Really?

AVAlexander Volchek

A hundred and fifty books in total, yes.

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

In English?

AVAlexander Volchek

A hundred and fifty—I think they have languages other than English too, but those are distinct titles, in four Stanford libraries. I went there once and even took a book to read. But the point is that the Rudolf Steiner library is available online. You can go there and download his books in different languages. They have a very well-structured online library, completely open to everyone. Could I have done that in 1998, or 2001, or 2008? Could my sister have done it when she studied philosophy and heard about Rudolf Steiner at university? Probably not. She did not have that opportunity. So with a highly developed system that makes all of this accessible, many people are constantly searching for something. But look: the reason for that search is mistaken. It is driven by the illusion that something good lies ahead. When someone asks how to stop listening to other people, that means they are, at this moment, perceiving themselves.

If someone is not perceiving themselves in the present moment, the work is not about “finding themselves” socially. It is about starting to listen to themselves and perceive the world differently. This is not a question of listening to others. When you say, “How do I stop listening to others?” or someone asks that question, it is shifting responsibility onto others. It is entirely about shifting responsibility. There is nothing else in it. What else is there, besides shifting responsibility? What else?

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

I think the question is not what else is there, but what is missing. The person asking the question is missing. There are other people and their opinions, but it is as though the person themselves is not there.

AVAlexander Volchek

And responsibility is being shifted. You are saying there are other people making decisions for you.

I know many people who live as though they are not being allowed to do things and feel bad because of other people. You can feel bad only because of yourself. Exclusively because of yourself. I always allow for this, and I always say it: if you suddenly see a bear and feel bad, that is natural and normal, but you still feel bad only because of yourself. There is a very good video. A few days ago, my children saw a snake. I posted it in our chat—a rattlesnake, this thick, quite a substantial one, a meter long.

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

I have only seen one like that in a zoo.

AVAlexander Volchek

A meter long, a serious snake. They were frightened of it. Then I saw a reel, on Instagram, I think, showing an experiment. Small children were playing around a huge python or something—a big, harmless snake. I do not know snakes, so I cannot say what kind. They played and did not care. The snake did not interest them at all; they were interested in the toys around them. I immediately started worrying about how anyone could put such a big snake among those small children: surely it could squeeze them or do something to them. But the children did not care about it, because this is not a natural fear; it is an acquired fear. There are people who feed bears by hand without feeling afraid. The bear's presence may give them a feeling of awe and calm. That does not mean it will not kill them. Nor does anything guarantee that a car passing you while you stand at a crosswalk will not kill you, or that the plane you are flying in will not kill you. You are afraid of flying, and I am not.

A simple example: you are afraid, and I am not. I do not feel that fear.

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

I know it is completely irrational.

AVAlexander Volchek

Yes, completely.

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

It has nothing to do with planes, actually. My psyche has simply attached it to them somehow.

AVAlexander Volchek

Likewise, someone may feel unsafe or be afraid to go outside, attend a meeting, or record a video. I sit here recording a video now, after some time has passed. I remember a speaker in the Russian-speaking world who originally became very well known for teaching public speaking: Radislav Gandapas. Do you remember him?

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

Yes, I know him.

AVAlexander Volchek

He said it was simple: thousands of hours of speaking, and the fear goes away. But I know that I am afraid of a large audience or an unfamiliar place. If you took me to speak English in front of an unfamiliar audience, it could cause me some anxiety. But that is natural, absolutely normal. If you take it naturally and calmly accept that it is possible and that it happens, then notice it and live through it when it arises, it will be much easier. There is even a public-speaking technique: if you are nervous, go onstage and tell the audience, “You know, I am very nervous. I do not speak in public very often.” You will ease that tension for yourself, not for the audience.

For yourself, not for the audience. Essentially, people do not care how you perform. You could give a brilliant talk, and they will say you are an asshole. That is the society we live in. Someone certainly will. That is the society we live in. Others will listen avidly, and to someone you will be an irreplaceable person. You will change their life. Their life will change, and you will not even know who they are. That is part of the problem, isn't it? I have several channels—three on YouTube alone—with a decent number of subscribers. The ToTheMoon channel we have together is already close to a hundred thousand subscribers. Yet when you read one negative comment, just one, it often affects you more than the thousands or tens of thousands of people who watch you for an hour every week. And they thank you. They say thank you to you. Even if hundreds thank you in the comments, whether regularly or someone writes separately—even hundreds, and every one of them is an individual person.

It is incredible. Sometimes I get comments from people saying, for example, “I live in Odesa, and I am grateful for the love you convey through your meditations.” I open their profile and see that they are over sixty, and I think: this is the real truth. The real thing. So why are you afraid onstage? With a bear, you fear it will kill you. Onstage, you fear social judgments, social rejection, and the social outcome. They say that ultimately people always fear the same thing: death. Yes? Sometimes it comes through something else. Social rejection is essentially death, sooner or later. There is social perception here. You can take death out of the stage example and say, “They are not going to kill you, are they?” “Yes.” “But if they expel you from the tribe?” “That is another question.” But we have not lived in tribes for a long time. Our souls have a different structure. “The brain sometimes still thinks that way.” There are things that remain, yes. But the structure of the soul is different now, isn't it? You have a karmic plan you have lived through. Believe me, your karmic spiritual system influences you far more than your tribal instinct does.

Tribal instinct has a certain range, a layer of genetic influence within your physical body. But the influence of your karmic lives, for example, is far more deeply built into you—from somewhere, at some point, say, ten thousand years ago, if you even had an incarnation then. You may not have. A great many people had no incarnations then. That is interesting too. So what actually influences you? There is a very important aspect to examine: being onstage is similar to saying, “Other people influence me.” When someone says, “Other people influence me; I listen to them; I do not make my own decisions,” the most important thing to notice is that they are expressing their dependence on other people's opinions, on those energies, on external energies. That is a state of being unfree within yourself. The question “How do I start hearing myself?” seems reasonable, but it is framed incorrectly from the outset. You could ask, “How do I begin to truly perceive more of everything that is happening?”

Because you need to listen to other people too. And it is also an illusion that you are not listening to yourself. You listen very closely to yourself, to your psychophysical programs, and judge another person's wishes or lack of them through those programs. Sometimes people tell me things. Recently, a close friend and I were discussing my life. He told me something about how certain people close to me relate to me that completely contradicted my perception. Completely. Given certain traumas of mine and how I perceive some people close to me—this happens to you too—some family members, some people bring up barriers in me. He told me something that was so—imagine someone saying, for example, “This person does not respect you.” Let us use a separate hypothetical example. “This person does not respect you,” and you sit there and say, “All right, thank you for the information.” I thanked him for the information, then left and realized very clearly that I did not believe it. My system would not accept it.

I wanted to work through it, because I am very open as a learner. I wanted to process it, but I caught myself not perceiving it that way. Imagine the two of us going out onto the balcony with a third person. Today you came out and said, “Sasha, my God, it is so beautiful here, like a hotel,” for example. You used a phrase, a particular association: you associate it with something. Imagine I did not understand what you meant and thought, “Actually, I do not think it is beautiful here,” but kept quiet. But since I was in a state of truly being willing to learn at that moment, you might say, “Wait, Sasha, let us discuss this. Why don't you think it is beautiful?” Or I might ask, “Tanya, could you explain what you mean by beautiful? Why do you think it is beautiful here?” Someone else might find it ugly, uncomfortable, or disharmonious. You know that better than anyone. Better than anyone. The way you came out into my garden today—you are my partner in these things.

And you were like, “Oh, wow!” I do not know anyone who understood exactly what you meant about my garden today. Here is an interesting aspect. Many people like my garden: my mother, for example, or a friend who came to visit, Dima Muginov. Another friend, Vitalik, came. I told him, “When you see my garden, you are supposed to say, ‘Oh, Sasha, how beautiful! So many flowers!’ You have to squeeze it out of yourself.” Because he cannot; perhaps he does not perceive it that way. But he heard what I meant and tried to understand me. That is the important part: really trying to hear and understand another person, what they actually mean. So my friend told me certain things—certain things. I went away and thought: I do not agree, inside myself, that this lack of respect exists. I cannot believe it. Could it perhaps be otherwise? Look, I knew it was true. From the whole way our discussion had unfolded, I already understood that it was true. But I could see—imagine that you know something is true.

And you observe it within yourself. If we look at the human structure, even in terms of energies, we might divide human energy into physical and etheric bodies. In reality, it is an enormous complex of an infinite number of bodies. I would even say infinite, because at some point there is a transition between different worlds and spaces that is not three-dimensional. Even now, I saw how this was expressed. Within my system, I knew—I had checked this information with the spiritual world. I knew he was telling me the truth. I knew it was all true. My brain perceived it from the soul and understood it was true, but I saw part of my system shaking. I could actually see that inner etheric space shaking and shaking. I understood something was wrong there. This is very important, Tanya: I clearly knew it was true. Seeing, discerning that structure within yourself is a separate aspect. “All right, that is accessible to you too.” Let me explain it now. “It is not accessible to everyone else.” We will examine that aspect. Yes. That is why I am giving the example.

I agree that this involves a certain level of being a student, of understanding what is happening, and so on. But we will still examine this example. I came to him and said, “I understand clearly that I am not truly recognizing this.” He said, “Great.” We went walking together. At some point I realized I had accepted it all, completely. It was very hurtful. To acknowledge it—to acknowledge it—felt as though you had been destroyed. “A knife through the heart.” Not just through the heart: as though you had been destroyed. But I accepted it. I felt joy in my soul because I was free. Of course I was living in the truth, because I did not judge that person or anyone else. I do not judge people. I am highlighting a very interesting aspect for you. Look at what happened next. Something incredible. I had realized all of this, and my soul was joyful at the recognition of everything that was happening. We went to another city and encountered someone we knew. As this acquaintance came along, my friend fired off a particular phrase as confirmation of what I had realized.

The other person voiced the absolute opposite view. The absolute opposite. He confirmed the whole truth of what was happening. My friend turned to me and said, “There is the truth for you: exactly the same thing, only from another person.” It was not only someone close to me who perceived it that way, but another person too. In our example, it was disrespect, and this other person showed it fully. Completely. Imagine you and I came in and said it was beautiful. A third person came and asked what was beautiful about it. Then a fourth came and started with, “Oh my God, how hideous!” You stand there and realize you had not recognized this. You tell me, “Sasha, the third person did not like it.” I say, “Not necessarily. Perhaps they did. Maybe we imagined it.” Then a fourth person appears and openly tells you to your face that it is hideous. But when they say it, they do not see a problem with it. People have their own perceptions of reality.

So the person who says—

The person who asks, “How do I start perceiving myself instead of listening to others?”—the most important thing is that they are not hearing others either. This brings us to the essential continuation of the subject: the person does not hear other people. They do not hear the other person, although they think they do. There is something fundamental to look at and recognize. Follow the chain I described until you reach the realization that you do not perceive the other person. You do not fully understand what they actually feel or how they feel, who they really are, what their opinion really is, or what reality they live in. If you start asking them, they will give you the same kind of destructive response. Essentially, they will tell you what they have invented about you within their own system. The only possibility here, the only one, is to expand your own perception and work on feeling and seeing more of life, more of its colors, rather than wishing to change the arrangement, to change your life.

When we look at the garden, instead of trying to prove that it is beautiful or ugly, try to understand why another person finds it beautiful, or why they wanted to create it. Or ask yourself: why do I find this garden ugly? Try to recognize that. Or ask why I find this balcony beautiful while someone else finds it ugly. Try to understand that.

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

That also requires the person to have the inner capacity and be honest with themselves. That is a rare quality too.

AVAlexander Volchek

It is an enormous task. You asked how to do it.

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

Yes. Someone might come and say your house and terrace are ugly because they would like a house and terrace like that themselves, but cannot even imagine achieving it in this life. The thought does not occur to them. Instead of seeing it as a goal, they think it is all ugly and bad: “I would not even want it for free.” I think that is very common.

AVAlexander Volchek

You need to allow for different possibilities. A couple of days ago I was walking in town—actually, sitting in town, conducting a consultation. I had bought a coffee and sat on a bench, talking through my headphones. Suddenly I thought: why not open some kind of store in Los Altos, perhaps for my wife? The thought just came to me. From a business perspective, you could hardly come up with a sillier idea than opening a store, right?

For me, that is easy, absolutely straightforward. You know that perfectly well. But what do I need a store for? I sent Polina a message: “Polina, would you like to open some kind of store in Los Altos?” She wrote back, “Great idea.” For my wife, writing “Great idea” instead of immediately shutting down is progress. When I got home, I asked, “Why haven't you asked what I meant?” She sat beside me and said, “What did you mean?” I explained why it had occurred to me that we could open something, and even told her what. She said, “Oh, how great!” But when I began to explain some of the particulars, she started putting up barriers. I said, “The only way to carry out an idea like this, the only way to do it, is to remove absolutely all the barriers.” First discuss the structure of the thing, without blocking it. Allow for different possibilities. Approach it calmly. It is like commissioning a design from you—to return to beauty—and being offered all kinds of options. I would start by allowing them and saying, “If this person is suggesting it, I will allow myself all the possibilities instead of rejecting them.

I will sit with this and think about why the person suggested it to me. They made that proposal; they put their soul and time into it.” Unless you went to the wrong place from the outset, into completely the wrong situation—

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

The wrong address.

AVAlexander Volchek

The wrong address. Then why did you go there? That is a different question. Do not go to Home Depot and ask them to make you a sofa—I mean, a design. Or ask what furniture to buy for your new home.

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

They can give you advice, but it will be a Home Depot design.

AVAlexander Volchek

Yes, what kind of design will that be? What, specifically, can they suggest? You could go and ask, “What paint do I need? Should I paint the walls red or green?” You could probably ask that question. I do not know what you expect from it. But the issue here is not the paint, right?

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

Yes. Design brings up so much—

UPUnidentified participant

From the depths.

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

From the depths of the subconscious.

AVAlexander Volchek

So the only thing you can do in opening yourself up and coming to know yourself, the one thing, is to understand that things can unfold in any way at all.

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

That is remarkable. Even as I listen to you, I have realized that I behave similarly in some situations. I limit the possible ways events could unfold so much. It has only just occurred to me that I will never guess how everything will turn out. Why not give it room and allow the thought that anything could happen? Most likely, it will be something I could not even imag—

AVAlexander Volchek

First, it definitely will be something you cannot imagine. That is what we were talking about off camera, about—

Our own goals or projects, part of what we were discussing. The point is that, first, it definitely will be something you cannot picture. In any case, the main shape of your life will be something you cannot imagine now.

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

Sasha, could we have imagined, six or seven years ago, when we used to talk in Moscow, that we would be sitting here?

AVAlexander Volchek

Impossible.

We could not even have imagined it. Even if we had decided to—

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

Let our imaginations run wild?

AVAlexander Volchek

Even if we had let our imaginations run wild, we still could not have pictured it. We would not have seen the full picture.

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

No chance at all.

AVAlexander Volchek

No chance. We might have come up with some kind of example, but it certainly would not have had the structure of our present lives here in California, with our families—

Our work, actions, all the details and circumstances, and so on. It would have been completely different. Nothing like this in any way. You brought up an interesting point: “When I interact with someone, I am the one causing damage from the outset because I have imposed a limit.” That is an enormous aspect of perception. By closing yourself off and saying that you have been restricted, that you cannot accomplish something, or that another person is to blame, you have put yourself in a complete prison. You have completely restricted yourself. That does not mean everything is available to you. That is the whole point: not everything is available to you. Not at all. Although that is a subject that—

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

All of YouTube is about this now: you can get anything you want. Honestly, I think it is a complete distortion.

AVAlexander Volchek

You will not get it at all.