Why You Keep Doing What You Want to Give Up | What Really Controls You

OSOlga Stolyarova

Dependence as a form of suffering, including when someone struggles with an addiction—whether smoking, alcohol, coffee, or the most serious addictions. Why does a person become dependent? What energies influence this? What can someone who is trying to cope with a dependency do? How should they look at it?

AVAlexander Volchek

Yes, but of course we will examine this from the spiritual side. There are a great many psychological methods, solutions, and explanations of this subject. I always encourage people to look from another angle—or rather, to take a slightly broader view of what is happening. I have a close friend who is also a student in several of my programs. He devoted a great deal of time to coffee, particularly dependence on it and the difficulties that brings. He told me he read books on the subject and developed a whole way of looking at coffee.

He visits me often, and we have seen a lot of each other in recent years. We have been friends for thirteen years, probably. At least while we have been in America, he has been one of our family's most frequent visitors. He disliked how casually I drank coffee and said that it really was not important. It genuinely irritated him, because he was constantly struggling with it. He would arrive and say, "I don't drink coffee." I would say, "I'm going out for a coffee now." I would go, although I do not drink much: one coffee a day, sometimes two, but usually one. I can go without it entirely. Yet it is definitely a dependency in my case, without question.

Let me explain. What we mean by dependence matters: physical dependence or spiritual dependence. Usually, when my friend visited, he would start drinking coffee, and I would say, "But you don't drink coffee. Why are you drinking it?" He would say, "I'm doing an experiment for myself." He was always experimenting with drinking or not drinking coffee, but remained in a state of endless anxiety. The kind you describe: you buy coffee and feel anxious about it, dislike the action, and feel irritated by it. You see the problem. You know my frequent example of someone who wants to quit smoking, struggles for several years, quits, does not smoke for a month, then starts again and continues smoking.

What do I always say? "Why did the person suffer? They could have avoided suffering for those two years, afterward, and from then on." At some point, I gave my friend what I think was a fairly good explanation. I said, "You are greater than this dependency. A dependence on coffee will never consume you, your spiritual being, or you as a human being. Never. Even if you drink fifteen cups a day, it will not consume or take you over. This dependency cannot take you over. Will you feel bad? Of course fifteen cups will make you feel bad. Some people feel very bad after one." The question is whether you understand the level of its influence on you from the perspective of the spiritual world.

People talk about the problems with coffee, then immediately drink a Coca-Cola with ice at six in the morning. Or mineral water with ice, knocking back a glass full of ice. Or they replace it with watching a TV series. Or they grumble all day about someone or the world, dissatisfied with their boss. Which is better: having a coffee or being unhappy with other people? Probably having a coffee, right? At least then, the question of dependence or otherwise concerns you alone. As for coffee, I think it has already been proven everywhere possible: a basic cup a day is medicine, provided you have not added milk, sugar, and everything else.

It is medicine, with a great many benefits. Does it have certain effects? Yes, but so do many things, including bread and bananas. The question is how much you eat, consume, or drink, and how much enters your body. Which does more harm: a cup of coffee a day, or living in a city with the window open while a thousand cars pass every day, in terms of air pollution? Or does leaving things unsaid with your husband or wife affect you more or less than a daily cup of coffee? What do you think?

Does worrying about your children every day affect you more or less than a cup a day? Is that daily worrying a dependency? Is wanting good weather a dependency? Wanting a vacation twice a year? The constant need to work? What is true dependence? These are enormous dependencies. You know I grow many plants and spend a lot of time in the garden. Is that a dependency? You have worked for me for almost two years. Are you dependent on me, my content, or being with me? This is a very important question. I will repeat what I told my friend: you, as a human being, are greater than this. You need to understand that calmly and clearly.

Do not give it endless importance or significance. Learn to see the many dependencies in your life. Believe me, Olya, they are far more numerous and broader than the obvious coffee, tea, bread, sugar, or anything else. At the very least, there is dependence on the very notion of life, or on being in good health. What does coffee have to do with that? Just the state of good health itself. You can stop drinking coffee very easily. What you need to understand calmly for yourself is whether it is easy for you to do.

If you do not know your own answer, test it. Go without coffee for two weeks, if you can. If you cannot, you have tested yourself too. Say, "Starting tomorrow, I won't drink coffee for two weeks." If you do it, everything becomes clear. Could you feel different without coffee? Of course, because it affects the physical body. It is like stopping eating. Or suppose someone has constantly eaten fatty and sweet foods, desserts, different drinks, and had sugary tea with meals. Switching to plain food, eating foods separately, and greens will be difficult. Their body will want something else. There is a passion for it, and that is already spiritual dependence, a very high and serious level of dependence.

In the whole subject of food, coffee is a tiny part of what is happening. I suggest stepping back and looking more broadly. Suppose you see that you cannot give up coffee or cigarettes. All right, say, "I can't give this up. I'll live with it." But do not describe it as a wonderful, essential thing for you to do. That would be like saying, "Coffee is so enormously beneficial, so I'll keep drinking it." There are benefits and harms. It matters that there is harm. Then the nature and degree of that harm matter.

If you acknowledge it calmly and let it simply be part of what is happening, without telling everyone that you are fighting it, trying, or have overcome it, you can observe it as a natural course of life. Imagine going outside and having negative, violent thoughts about harming someone else or yourself. Many people constantly have quite specific thoughts. Someone may repeatedly think about cheating on their husband or wife. The thoughts simply arise. Another person has a thought and says, "I don't want to do that," but it keeps arising. They have filled every diary with "I don't want to" five hundred times.

Yet the thoughts keep coming. Someone says, "I'm not going skydiving. I definitely don't need it." But the thought comes: "You need to jump." Someone says, "I'm doing fine at this job. I'll stay for the next twenty years." But the thought says, "Quit tomorrow. You need to change jobs." It keeps returning, constantly in their head. We have often discussed that the first priority is not to eliminate it or fight it. The most important thing at those moments is to spend more and more time observing, remembering your first, fundamental task. Simply observe from the side and allow yourself to stop fighting it.

Again, I am talking about a situation in which you recognize a problem. Many people do not recognize problems at all. However much you say, they remain unaware. A person can easily close their eyes to it and not acknowledge it. In this world, people are prepared to destroy billions of others for the sake of their own state and ego. Their own opinion and state matter most, not anything else. But suppose a person recognizes a particular problem or destructive perception, or simply does not understand where these thoughts come from, and begins observing them from the side.

It is the same with observing coffee. What should you do? Stop fighting coffee and step back to look at where the desire to give it up comes from, and why. Look for the energy behind it. Why did it suddenly occur to me in the café this morning to worry about whether I would buy coffee? Where did the very thought of worrying come from? Most likely, your worrying has done you far more harm than the coffee itself. Moreover, we know that this worry can affect you for hours, days, and nights, through poor sleep, disrupted eating, and other things. It can affect your work and spread to other people.

Your worrying can cause other people additional harm. Imagine: worrying about coffee can itself harm others more. As I told my friend, "Enough worrying about coffee. You're driving me crazy with it. You're doing it to yourself and now to other people too. Forget the problem for a while. Stop worrying, let it go, and make a choice. If you don't want to drink it, don't, and forget about it. Why does it matter what others do? That's their choice. Think about yourself." Then observe where this concern and anxiety came from. Was it brought by other people in the café, the people around me, my friends, or someone else?

Did the internet bring it to me? Is my spiritual system in a state of agitation? Or is this an impulse of agitation that has crossed over from another plane and has an entirely different cause? The task is simply to observe it from the side, not even to find the cause or a solution, but to look at it this way. That is one of the simple actions. There are complex ones, too. Finding a cause is always complex: it may seem easy, or it may be impossible. Either can be true. What matters most is looking from the side. What is this energy? Why is it present in me today? It is the same when you begin thinking about a person or your relationship with them.

Why is this person present in my space? Where did they come from? Did I bring them here, or did they come into my thoughts? Did someone else bring them? Why am I thinking about this today? What is it? This is not a search for a problem or a solution. It is forming a stable pattern of behavior and a habit of observing everything that happens. Then you will not be dependent on coffee at all. If you understand that your worry comes from seeing that coffee will make your side hurt, or lead to a particular operation, you will begin to relate to all of it completely differently.

It will no longer be an abstraction—"Is this good or bad?" Of course, you must not forget psychophysical dependence, the dependence of the physical body. You need to find different solutions for yourself. In my case, a fairly common habit is buying coffee not because I want to drink it, but because going to a particular place is part of my life. Whether it is a ritual or simply sitting somewhere, you may find yourself in a space where there is no option other than buying coffee.

There seems to be nothing else to buy. You can probably always drink water—although not always, because it may only be available from the refrigerator. I do not drink cold water, for example. That brings up another level of the question. I understand that perhaps the issue is not coffee, but encountering certain spaces. Again, the example I gave is only a tiny aspect of anyone's life. A person lives within the causes and effects of karma, their whole spiritual system, heredity, and actions in this life. The dependencies there are of an entirely different order.

There are things you will never overcome. Never. But one thing will be replaced by another. Imagine a current of energy in your system whose function is to carry darkness. That darkness will express itself socially through certain events in your life. What difference does it make whether it appears through coffee, cigarettes, or something else? Obviously, I am speaking somewhat abstractly here. What is coffee in this example? The energy expresses itself through something specific, a particular state. The issue is not to deal with coffee or cigarettes, but with that current of energy.

Then you will have the strength to switch off any dependency at any moment. For example, I have never smoked in my life. Never. Why? Because I read certain books or was clever? I watched people around me smoking cigarettes constantly. For me, nothing. Or take the reverse: I never drank coffee until twenty—what am I saying, twenty? Until thirty or even later. I do not even remember the exact age. I did not drink it at all. What coffee? It almost seems to me that people did not drink coffee before thirty. You are simply of a different age.

You are under thirty now, and probably thinking, "Alexander, what are you talking about?" A young woman under thirty is asking the question about coffee. But it seemed as though coffee did not exist in my youth, as though it was not sold anywhere. My parents did not particularly have a coffee-drinking tradition at home; I do not remember our family having one at all. Yet coffee machines have been around for a very long time, I think. We got a drip coffee maker in 1991, I think. I cannot remember anyone using it. Perhaps they did, but it appeared a long time ago—1991, or maybe 1992. I think no one used it; perhaps the filters ran out at some point and nobody used it after that.

Back then, I was much less aware than I am now, yet now I drink coffee. Is that not strange? There are your different energetic influences: different energies, circumstances, combinations of circumstances, and influences. Similarly, I know people who have never tried alcohol. There is nothing good in alcohol, nothing at all. It destroys immediately; even a tiny dose destroys immediately and remains in the astral body. What state does a person need to be in to understand this? They need to be aware, or simply not have this energy influencing them.

So it is not just about awareness. On the one hand it is, but on the other, we know many people who have never consumed alcohol. They have never had an impulse or motive to do so; this energy has not manifested in any form. That does not mean they are exceptionally developed or immensely wise. The energy simply did not manifest. I always suggest noticing that I know such people who are very narrow-minded and closed off. There is no question of true development in their lives. Yet they have not drunk alcohol and do not want to. Not because their bodies cannot tolerate it, but because they have never had any impulse to do it.

Or the circumstances. There are also combinations of circumstances. Some people began using drugs on their own initiative; others began because they were forced, for example. The circumstances can be entirely different. It is not a matter of having read books, intelligence, or consciousness. Again, of course, someone with expanded perception, who is aware of what they perceive, will make decisions very differently. So you should remain calm toward people who drink coffee, including those with expanded perception. You never know whether it is a dependency for them or simply an action they take.

What impulse are they acting from? Be truthful with yourself: are you doing it from strength or weakness? From a complete understanding of what is happening, or from self-centered certainty? Can a person in that self-centered certainty recognize it as such, rather than as a sound understanding of the truth? That is the problem. It takes serious, constant work to become aware of a great many things and recognize these patterns. It is a major difficulty: continually noticing the different states arising within you—anxiety, envy, doubt, irritation, anger, and resentment.