Fate: What is it really and can it be changed? We reveal the secrets of spiritual development

AMAlexander Mashrabov / Alexander Volchek

We're making today's video to give people a foundation they can use to make decisions in their lives, understanding whether something has been predetermined by fate or comes from their freedom of choice.

AGAnna Gurina

Sasha, let's start with the central question that troubles so many people. Do people have real control over their lives, or are they puppets of fate? There are several different views. Some believe you can't change your fate. Religious people believe everything is God's providence. Others believe you forge your own happiness, and only lazy, talentless people believe in fate. Psychologists, on the other hand, talk about responsibility: people should take responsibility for their actions and decisions and manage their own fate, their own lives. What would you say? What is fate? Can it be changed or not?

AMAlexander Mashrabov / Alexander Volchek

This is a fundamentally enormous question. Just yesterday I was leading a group—I have a mentoring program called V100—and someone was asking, ‘Where do I have freedom?’ When we consider fate and predetermination, what aspect are we looking at, and what are we balancing it against? We might say part of life is predetermined. When someone asks about fate, they suppose that part of life, or all of it, is predetermined, and there's some area of freedom. The person asking where that freedom was said, ‘I used to think everything was one hundred percent free. Now I think maybe ten percent is free, and perhaps eventually it'll be zero.’ Where is that freedom? After listening to the sessions, some people wrote, ‘If you look at it this way, everything is very complicated and very difficult to grasp in simple terms.’ What does a person want to understand? Every day, they want to define and plan their future life clearly—to map out a trajectory ahead and say, ‘I'll move through certain steps,’ and plan their life.

If someone wants to plan their life, they're saying it's within their control. This isn't a question of freedom. They're saying, ‘I make the decisions and control things myself. I control when I get married, when I have children, how many I have, and what sex they'll be. I control what job I get, what business I have, who my business partners are, and what happens to me.’ That's an absolutely crucial factor. Someone wants to bring everything that happens under their own control: ‘I control how my wife or husband treats me, what relationship I have with my parents, and, essentially, when everyone dies.’ I've listed all these things people want to control, and now I've reached when people die. A person says, ‘Well, I can't really control that.’ Yet look at how many people want to live beyond a hundred, or pursue the fashionable thing called biohacking and talk about improving their health. Again, they're setting goals of control.

What is that desire? It's the deepest desire people with our current way of thinking have always had: to control their own death. There's this element of control in the freedom a person wants. So is setting a goal the freedom I was talking about at the beginning? Or is it an egoistic desire for total personal control? That's a little different from freedom. Freedom is when I know there are limits within a particular choice, and I decide how I'll act within that choice. That isn't a desire for control. They're somewhat different things. Freedom: I'm offered two jobs, and I choose the first rather than the second. Control is when I say, ‘A year from now, I'll have a job where I earn twenty million dollars.’ That's a desire for control. Where did fate enter the picture? It came in when people saw that, whatever goals they set in terms of control—let me say right away that I'm making an assumption here, looking roughly at the past hundred and fifty years—

They said to themselves, ‘We set goals, and those goals don't come true. Why don't we call that fate? Why not bring in the idea of fate?’ They make that assumption. But the assumption is interesting: what premise does it come from? Does it come from the material world, from something proved by human science? Or does this idea of fate come from the spiritual world? On what basis are they talking about fate? If someone treats fate as something imaginary, the thing behind saying ‘Ptooey’ after mentioning something bad, or refusing to cross the path a black cat has crossed, that's all coming from a material perspective. Someone never went to church, but then somebody died and they went to light candles there. Or they go to church on weekends because everyone does and says you should. Or they have to baptize their child because everyone else does, so they'll do it too, although they don't really understand the process. They're acting from a material premise, entirely. They read something in a book or were told that you should sometimes perform certain actions, so they do—and say, ‘It's supposedly scientifically proven, too.’

If we look carefully, what sort of fate are we talking about? In that material framework, fate is essentially something the person has planned themselves. This isn't an easy subject to grasp, so we need to sort things out from the beginning. By the end of this video, we want to understand what freedom people have in making decisions, what they can and can't really plan, what happens without their knowledge, and what is planned to happen without their knowledge. We'll work it out. First we need to clarify some terms. Consider the distinction I just made: what happens without your knowledge, and what is planned to happen without your knowledge. If someone looks at their life, they'll see that they're unaware of a huge part of it. They don't register or notice it at all. You know that perfectly well yourself. A stretch of time simply flies by, and it's hard to remember. This morning we were discussing something Polina said yesterday when she was with us, which I recalled.

You asked, ‘How did you remember that?’ Because at that moment I tried to listen to the other person consciously. If I hadn't, we'd have tossed some lifeless words back and forth, had an intellectual discussion, and then discarded it. A conversation about nothing. Conversations can be lifeless. A living conversation is one in which a person is conscious and aware. If someone is consciously perceiving everything happening now, and consciously perceiving causes and effects, can some events be predetermined from the outset? And can there also be a class of events that isn't predetermined? That's what we need to consider. Again, this is an important point. What position are you looking from? From what position do you want to understand fate? What basically interests you about it? What aspects of fate stand out to you personally?

AGAnna Gurina

How fate affects us.

AMAlexander Mashrabov / Alexander Volchek

But what specifically? What in your life do you think might have been destined? Let's look at it. Having children.

AGAnna Gurina

Yes.

AMAlexander Mashrabov / Alexander Volchek

You see that as fate?

AGAnna Gurina

Yes, I do.

AMAlexander Mashrabov / Alexander Volchek

Your husband. You see that as fate? You do.

AGAnna Gurina

Those major, important events in life.

AMAlexander Mashrabov / Alexander Volchek

What about the small ones?

AGAnna Gurina

They come together.

AMAlexander Mashrabov / Alexander Volchek

What about small events? All right, you'd probably mention your move to America, the business you opened here, your business partner: those were destined. Look at what you're starting to do. You're starting to choose.

AGAnna Gurina

Mm-hmm, yes.

AMAlexander Mashrabov / Alexander Volchek

‘I like the idea that this is fate,’ or ‘I don't like the idea that this is fate.’

AGAnna Gurina

Everything is fate. I think everything is fate, and then comes our choice. But we do have a choice; there are several paths.

AMAlexander Mashrabov / Alexander Volchek

What choice? Again, that most recent business partner you chose—was that your fate or your choice?

AGAnna Gurina

A choice guided by fate.

AMAlexander Mashrabov / Alexander Volchek

What?

AGAnna Gurina

A choice guided by fate. Probably a choice guided by fate. You do still make a choice.

AMAlexander Mashrabov / Alexander Volchek

So you can't accept that it's purely fate. Why?

AGAnna Gurina

I can. No, honestly, I do accept that it's purely fate. I believe in fate.

AMAlexander Mashrabov / Alexander Volchek

Again, your business partner is your fate. Is the house you live in your fate?

AGAnna Gurina

Well, if we generalize everything, it's somehow…

AMAlexander Mashrabov / Alexander Volchek

Wait, you just said everything was fate.

AGAnna Gurina

If everything is fate, it's as though I'm shedding responsibility. I don't like thinking that way. If I say, ‘Everything I've done was fate,’ it feels like I'm shifting responsibility off myself, and then…

AMAlexander Mashrabov / Alexander Volchek

Why do you need it?

AGAnna Gurina

Who needs it?

AMAlexander Mashrabov / Alexander Volchek

Why do you need that responsibility?

UPUnidentified participant

Well, I want to think I made that choice, right? I chose it. I did it.

AVAlexander Volchek

Which choice, specifically? Again.

UPUnidentified participant

Any of them. I chose a partner, a house, a husband.

AVAlexander Volchek

But the partner wasn't—

UPUnidentified participant

I chose my husband.

AVAlexander Volchek

There you go: you chose your husband. Not fate.

UPUnidentified participant

Fate told me how to choose my husband.

AVAlexander Volchek

There's something very interesting here, and I want to draw attention to it. I haven't confused you. This is very useful for understanding today's question. I'm not asking these questions for no reason. I want us to look at the layer we're operating on: how do we really look at this, and how do we assess it? ‘Why did I first agree that my husband was fate, and then disagree? Because we went through the house: the house probably wasn't fate; I simply chose it myself.’ Why? Everyone wants fate to bring exalted, beautiful, major events. As though fate couldn't bring a small event—the flower standing here, say, or the particular pot I bought for it at the store. ‘What kind of fate is that?’ We want to downplay it, or say that fate brings the big events while we create the small ones ourselves. Then your system, your ego-computer, your personality says, ‘No, I create the big ones myself, too.’ This is tremendously important to examine.

We're making today's video so that people can use it for a long time to come. First, I want them to notice where they are now, what questions they have, and whether they want to understand this. Then I want them to gain a foundation for making decisions in life, understanding whether something has been predetermined by fate or comes from their freedom of choice. If a child becomes ill and dies, is that fate or the parents' choice?

UPUnidentified participant

That's a very difficult question, of course, but it certainly isn't the parents' choice.

AVAlexander Volchek

All right. Everyone is riding in a car together, and an emergency develops. You're at the wheel and choose a particular turn. It proves disastrous, and the children die.

UPUnidentified participant

That's fate, yes.

AVAlexander Volchek

The children die. So it wasn't your choice?

UPUnidentified participant

Look, I made all those choices. But people don't know their fate. Only afterward, when we analyze events, can we say it was destined, right?

AVAlexander Volchek

So did you choose it, or was it fate?

UPUnidentified participant

Fate doesn't decide for me. I'm simply moving in the direction that's been destined for me. That's how I see it.

AVAlexander Volchek

Yes, but there was a choice—or apparently there was—and it could have turned out so that the children didn't die.

UPUnidentified participant

But you didn't know they would die, right? You didn't make the choice because of that. You make the decision in the moment.

AVAlexander Volchek

Notice how interesting this is. What matters to a person is whether they knew or didn't know. They say, ‘If I didn't know, it's not my responsibility. If I knew, it is.’ Five minutes ago, Anya said, ‘I want to know that I'm making the decision and taking responsibility. Otherwise, it's as though I'm living without responsibility.’ In your reasoning just now, a person doesn't want to live purely by fate because that would be irresponsible. Yet if something bad happens that they didn't know about, they basically tell themselves, ‘Sorry, everyone, that was predetermined by fate. I'm not responsible, because I didn't know about it.’ That's broadly how the internal system of modern people works, at least taken as a whole. Of course, there are different configurations. It's very interesting to examine your own reasoning here. The questions I ask may seem provocative, but really they're quite reasonable. When a particular event happens, good or bad—and it's especially useful to look over a long period—where am I in it?

Or something unfolds over a long time: part of my character or my child's character develops, or I take certain actions at work, in business, with an employee, or with someone else. Can I analyze it properly and broadly and be honest with myself? This brings us to the importance of understanding true causes and effects. Do I actually understand what happened and the causes and effects involved, or don't I? Today's task isn't to establish whether fate exists. I can answer right away: on the one hand it exists, and on the other it doesn't. It exists and doesn't exist simultaneously. What matters to people, to our viewers, and to us is understanding our own lives—continually understanding the events that occur and seeing their true causes and effects, so we can analyze them and make decisions. What should I do next time? How should I act? Or someone at a certain age might look back over their life and ask why things happened as they did. Why did I arrive at this point? It needn't involve major events. We could look at why you and I moved to America and live in California, why we met, why I found my wife, or why I have four children.

We start looking at major events. It's very useful to begin observing fate—but again, today I'll break it down into its different elements. It's very important to observe fate in small events. This filming we're doing today: is it fateful or not? What's the problem? In Russian, the word ‘fateful’ carries a sense of significance, of great significance. But literally it means something was predetermined by fate. Again, we hear ‘predetermined by fate’ and think, ‘Wow!’ Surely I can't make a breakfast that's predetermined by fate, can I? You might say, ‘If ten million people watch this video fifty years from now, then it was destined.’ What if a thousand watch it? What if five hundred watch it? ‘If only five hundred people watch it, that probably wasn't destined.’ What's the difference? A number? To some people, ten million views is a lot; to others it's nothing. I always say there's always something bigger, and there's always someone richer. We were discussing this at V100 yesterday. Someone was talking about large-scale projects. Imagine that ten years ago, the richest person in the world said, ‘I have fifty billion dollars.’

‘I'm the richest person. I'm so happy. I'm the greatest, the richest person in the world.’ Twenty years pass, and someone tells him, ‘Listen, you're nowhere near the richest anymore. I have three hundred billion, that person has two hundred and fifty, that one has two hundred and forty, that one two hundred and thirty, and that one two hundred and twenty billion.’ Your fifty billion doesn't put you up there anymore. There's a whole lineup ahead of you. There's always something bigger. That's important. When we consider fate and talk about the video, notice how we feel that ten million views would be destined, but a hundred wouldn't. Yet those hundred viewers could change their lives because of this video. You say, ‘Oh, if a hundred people changed their lives, then it was destined.’ What if only you changed your life, or only I did? Or perhaps filming here meant we didn't go somewhere else, and an earthquake happened there? We always need some story. The first important thing when we want to study fate is to stop looking for embellishments in fateful events and simply regard them calmly.

Is this event planned or unplanned? A planned event doesn't necessarily have to bring some great blessing or miracle, or even a transformation. It's simply planned. When you begin to regard planned events calmly and neutrally, you take the first step—without it, you can't move forward—toward truly analyzing cause and effect. Does this event arise from some intention or design? We'll look at which ones in a moment. It doesn't matter whether they're psychophysical, material, divine, Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, associated with particular schools, teachings, or esoteric movements, or the intentions of my spiritual being or spiritual hierarchies. Does it arise from some design, or is it my freedom of choice—entirely free, in no way predetermined, completely random? Sasha, who's filming us, just said, ‘Which of us is lucky?’ That's a purely material statement. Why material? Because if you want to understand it properly, you wouldn't ask it that way. You say, ‘Which of us is lucky?’ and off you go: ‘Yesterday I went to the airport, my flight was canceled, I got on the standby list, waited behind fifteen or seventeen people, and somehow miraculously made it onto the plane.’

‘Now here I am filming you. So which of us is lucky?’ he says. You could approach it with a different question. Which one? Was I meant to be at today's meeting—was that destined? Or was it destined that I'd arrive on this plane? Or did other forces contribute to something that wasn't predetermined by my fate? An interesting point emerges here. Could there be other forces entirely outside my fate, having nothing to do with me, my luck, or my freedom of choice, that arranged for me to be here? When people consider fate, they tie everything very closely to their own personality. They start saying either, ‘I did everything myself, and it's my responsibility.’

Or, ‘I did everything myself, and it's my responsibility,’ or, ‘Everything follows fate—but my fate, not someone else's.’ Today you said your children were born according to your fate. What if they were born according to your husband's fate, not yours? ‘Our fates intersected.’ No, it was entirely his fate, not yours. You made a choice, but it was his fate. Do you like that? No, you don't like it at all? Or you went into a business because someone else had a particular fate. They needed a partner alongside them—their current partner, for example—a basically good woman to be with them, or someone with whom they would go through different experiences, not necessarily good ones. But it's that person's fate, not yours. Yes, you freely chose and made a decision, but their fate pulled you into it. Do you like that? Something very interesting is happening: ‘Now I'm starting to wonder whether this really is how it works.’ It's an important possibility to consider. Are there circumstances in which fate is formed by more than just me?

You're saying, ‘Our shared fates, our shared—’ ‘Not shared fates, but when they meet and intersect. Not shared.’ ‘Yes, but then the events—’ ‘There's no such thing as shared fates.’ Such a definite verdict! ‘There are no shared fates. Period.’ Anna Gurina, 2025. Here's an important factor. If fates intersect, they form a new fate and divide up percentages within it. Whose fate has more influence? Again, I'm bringing these things up so we can be genuinely honest with ourselves when we analyze them. People often say, ‘Enough already. Stop. Let's not go into all this detail. Do we have to examine every action in detail? Buy a chair, go into detail. Eat a banana, go into detail. Make a video, go into detail. Fly on a plane, go into detail. Go to a pool, go into detail. Do we have to do that?’ Yes and no. We need to take it lightly and calmly, while being able to analyze things broadly. If we don't analyze broadly and look at the root—or go straight to the root… At the beginning, when I asked whether opening your business or our meeting was fate, you said, ‘There's some more overarching fate.’

You used a phrase suggesting sub-fates: things arranged within it, a nested structure arising from that larger thing. People might start giving examples here. In fact, write what you think about this, those of you watching. Support the channel and like the video; that really helps. Now that we have the foundation I've described, let's step back a little. From what position are you reasoning about how the world works? Who are you, and how did you get here? If you think you simply came into existence by being born, and your brain and personality then developed within this limited space, then within material logic, fate probably doesn't exist at all. Something exists, but I won't even discuss what, because to me that position is unreal and abstract, and it's easy to demonstrate why. If we consider that a person's life exists beyond this current lifetime, the picture isn't a material life with some fate tucked inside it, or a little point within material life called spiritual development that we look at or meditate on.

We're saying there is a spiritual life, and material life exists within that spiritual life. Within it, a person has developed a certain fate, something they're supposed to do. People use different words and descriptions for it and carry it within themselves. To bring this a little closer, imagine a karmic current a person is in. This is important. People have many associations with karma: do something and get something back, or good and bad things happening. Let's imagine an enormous current, a whole stream—life itself. Karma is the life you're living. A person enters it, is born, and chooses the family they'll be born into. They've chosen that family and begin to live in their current. Once they're in it, the family makes substantial adjustments to their life. That's called heredity. Entire schools of thought deal only with heredity, or say it's all about your lineage, or all in your genes. They dig around in bones, in genetic structure, and all the rest.

That's all they examine. Others say, ‘We won't just dig around in the physical substance of a lineage, in bones or genes. We'll say there's a lineage carrying certain ancestral programs.’ My question is: where do those programs originate? Is there an original source before the lineage? Did someone start it? Did some person wake up one day and begin the lineage? What's the source? So there's this layer of heredity, and an important point to notice: which comes first, heredity or your karmic life? Could heredity be minimal while the karmic life you've entered is dominant? Or could heredity envelop your life so completely that karmic life is absent, its movement blocked? A little may seep through here and there, but the person is moving in a strong stream of heredity with only a small karmic current. Within that stream, a person also creates new events of their own. I want to clarify something important. Anyone who says there are only predetermined events needs to understand that if everything were always predetermined, no karmic current could exist.

If events are only predetermined, there's no concept of having performed good or bad actions, because all of them are predetermined. And if there's no concept of good or bad events, you can simply chill. If you believe a karmic current exists, you must also understand that freedom of action exists—something that isn't predetermined. We could discuss this at length. Someone might ask, ‘Does that mean the karmic current can expand, figuratively speaking, or shrink until only freedom remains?’ Obviously, if we're discussing it in these terms, yes. Can the stream of heredity expand? Yes, while a person is alive. When they die, the period between death and birth begins. Everything is transformed once again into a single karmic current, and heredity becomes part of the whole of life. This is an important foundation to grasp: everything happening now is simultaneously a completely free life and something quite programmed. There are many layers. It's also important to understand that we are all radically different from one another.

People compare us outwardly: male or female, eye color. Two eyes and a nose—so, a human being. Outwardly, as men and women, as human beings, we differ much less. As human beings, we have far more in common, don't we? But if we look at our spiritual beings, we're strikingly different. Strikingly! People don't grasp this. They ask, ‘What experience have you had of these things? Why are you telling us this?’ Sometimes people ask, ‘On what basis do you interpret it this way? What experience have you had?’ I recently wrote a joking question to someone: ‘Tell me a method you'd be happy with for evaluating my experience.’ There are different methods. The number of people who've come my way? The number I've spoken to? The number of employees I've worked with? How many years I did something? What do you need? Or do you want to measure experience by the number of caves I've visited or gurus I've touched? Or a diploma? Yes, a diploma. Four diplomas, fifteen diplomas, or a particular university I attended? What specific experience do you need? I'm interested in experience from the perspective of the actual spiritual being.

For anyone who says, ‘This is all bullshit when it comes to experience,’ here's a very simple example. My wife has four children. She gave birth to all of them without a professor's degree in how to be a mother or give birth. She didn't graduate from Stanford or Harvard, get an MBA, or graduate from Moscow State University. She didn't consult professors, give lectures, or read books beforehand about how to be a mother. She didn't attend million-dollar or trillion-dollar coaching programs. She didn't create a business about giving birth. She simply had four children. She did it: four children. Some women are deeply immersed in this subject and read endlessly, yet haven't even reached the point of having a child. That doesn't mean anyone is stronger or weaker. It means children probably come into being for a different reason, not because you've read books. Similarly, Jeff Bezos built a business worth a couple of billion dollars. Or Trump became president. He didn't become president because he had experience.

What's more, nobody has experience of being president of that country at that particular moment, governing for that many years. Who does? Lukashenko, Putin, Zelensky, Macron, Biden? Who has that experience? Show me that person. Did Bezos have experience creating a company that would be worth two and a half billion dollars—trillion dollars, two and a half trillion dollars? When Bezos started his business—

Half a trillion dollars. When Bezos started his business, I don't think companies like that existed. Companies on that scale didn't exist at all. Did he create it out of experience? That's an interesting point. And we don't yet know what will happen to that business later. Every business will eventually die and end. Just as all children will die, and we will all die. Everything will end, in any case. Some will call it good or bad, depending on the circumstances. ‘What a happy marriage! Look at that couple.’ Then the couple separates. Wait a second: you all said they were happy. So you were deceiving yourselves, acting out of falsehood, out of something untrue and inauthentic. When we consider fate and say a person has a karmic life, a stream of heredity within them, and freedom within that, we understand that some things are predetermined and must be lived through. There are also adjustments that come in. Notice this interesting point: if we examine heredity even a little, we see that it's an adjustment to karmic life.

If that's so, then the other people we meet also bring adjustments to our lives. One of the biggest adjustments or changes to life, for example, is a child being born into a family. What are upayas based on? In Vedic astrology, in the Vedic system, there's a concept called upaya. What is it based on? Making a particular adjustment: narrowing or widening the river, redirecting a current, or rearranging that large stream of yours in some way. There can also be a larger adjustment brought about by your surroundings or your country. Does a country have a fate? Does a nation have a fate? Does that nation's fate adjust your fate or not? There are always stretches of time to consider. Look at how a person lives: ‘I'm living this life, and I'll reach the final goal.’ I say, ‘Wait. You'll never reach a final goal. There will always be something else. If you've reached the final goal and stopped developing, you're a corpse. If you haven't reached it because you died, then you haven't reached the final goal.’ There's always a goal, always something you don't reach.

There is always, certainly, something in life you don't achieve. It's important to hear that, too: a person will die, and there are things they won't achieve.

AGAnna Gurina

Sasha, can we take this further? People often ask why we repeat our parents' fate.

AVAlexander Volchek

If we look at repeating our parents' fate, first we'll see that some people do and some don't. Even those who do only repeat it partially, not completely. People exaggerate and single certain things out: ‘He became a great person, and so did this one.’ Or, ‘He became great, and this one became nobody.’ Or, ‘This one died early, and so did that one.’ The first thing to say is that no complete, total repetitions exist. There are similar aspects. But we could just as well say you and I repeated each other's fate: we both moved to California. Is that a repetition of fate? You'd say, ‘Sasha, wait, our lives are completely different. We're not repeating them.’ But it's a partial repetition of our fates, isn't it? Let's look at it without bringing in parents. If people have the same number of children, have they repeated each other's fate? People love to say, ‘Look, we even gave our sons the same name.’ Or our husbands or wives—

AGAnna Gurina

Were born on the same day.

AVAlexander Volchek

Have the same name. Or they were born on the same day, or in the same month, or have the same zodiac sign. ‘You're a Cancer, too,’ or ‘You're a Gemini.’ People pack all sorts of things into it. What exactly are we repeating? They say, ‘That one drank, and this one drinks, too.’ But if we look for patterns, there aren't any. Look closely at the patterns, and there are none. In some respects we're alike; in others we're not. There's one simple answer here. Since we chose which family to enter as a spiritual being, we wanted from the outset to resemble our parents. Our children resemble us not because we decided or arranged it, or gave them particular food or pills, but because they decided and chose it. This is very clear with children in the same family who are very different. Look at my girls: they're very different in appearance and character, despite having the same parents. They're very different. That's their spiritual beings' choice. So these repetitions are very relative. Of course, some aspects concern how a person develops. If you and I talk every day, all the time, you'll start using some of my phrases and I'll start using yours.

Here's a good example. If you spend every evening with a group of people drinking beer, you'll start drinking beer. If you spend every evening with people doing pull-ups, you'll start doing pull-ups, even if you didn't before. If you spend every day with people who play the piano, you'll start playing the piano. If you meet every day with people who take out a video camera and hold it during the meeting, you'll start holding a camera during the meeting. Ordinary life.

AGAnna Gurina

What would you say to someone who came to you and asked, ‘What should I do if I feel I'm not living my own life?’

AVAlexander Volchek

When someone tells themselves they're not living their own life, fundamentally that's the ego. Allow for the possibility that this question comes from your ego. Why did you formulate it in the first place? How did you arrive at it? ‘Am I living my own life or not?’ Who usually says that? Do people say it when everything is going well—when they have a family, healthy children, good health themselves, and earn a lot of money? What else does society usually judge? When they feel joy and happiness inside? Is that their own life or not? How can we measure it? If there's a sense of joy in your life, does that mean it's your own life? What do you think?

AGAnna Gurina

For me, all of it is my life.

AVAlexander Volchek

All of it, for you. But suppose a person says that. Is all of it their life, or could it be a life that isn't theirs, even if they're happy and joyful? Could someone who says they're not living their own life feel happy?

AGAnna Gurina

Of course, that's unlikely, I think.

AVAlexander Volchek

Of course it's unlikely. Yet it's very important to allow for the possibility that you can feel very good in life while not following your own fate. This is fundamentally important. You can feel bad while not following your own fate, if that's how we're defining it. And if people use that definition, then you can also feel very good while not following your own fate. You need to look at why you're saying this. People usually say it when they don't feel inner harmony, and they connect those things. So the first thing I can advise is to observe why you don't feel in harmony, why the question arises at all. Don't look for an answer in terms of fate; look at why you're asking the question. Of course, I see an enormous, endlessly enormous number of people tormented by the feeling that they're not living their own lives. And honestly, Anya, even people who look happy from the outside and don't explore this subject very often feel inside that they're somehow living a life that isn't theirs, that they're doing something wrong.

Almost anyone can feel something is wrong. But the primary reason someone feels they're not living their own life—do you know what it is? They aren't living consciously. Rudolf Steiner gives a very good description of this in relation to raising adolescents. He asks why adolescence happens, why fourteen-year-old girls and boys rebel and resist. He says that by the time they're fourteen, you should have told them what their spiritual being is, where it comes from, how it came into being, what tasks it faces, how the world and the universe work, what the physical body, etheric body, and astral body are, what the ‘I’ is, what atma and buddhi are, what soul and spirit are, how a person develops and how everything moves, and how it all fits together. You haven't told them any of this, so they clash with it and resist. Their spiritual being isn't ready and doesn't want to live with it. There are inner impulses saying something isn't right. Of course, if someone isn't living with awareness of everything happening, they'll feel they're somehow living the wrong life, especially if they live like a robot.

The aim of our videos is to help people develop qualities that let them, first, understand cause and effect: truly examine different causes and effects and take the structure apart. Second, know what next step to take. That step might be determined scientifically, intellectually, intuitively, through a sensation in the physical body, or on another person's advice. But they know how to decide. They know what to choose at that moment, what is right—or perhaps they use entirely random circumstances: ‘Let's roll a die.’ They know what they've done and how it matters. Although rolling a die raises a question, too. What comes up on the die—is that ultimately—

AGAnna Gurina

Fate.

AVAlexander Volchek

Fate or not?

Yes, write what you think about this. See you on our channel.