How deep can a person's Awareness go?

AVAlexander Volchek

It's very hard to stay aware constantly. Very hard to be aware all the time. Very hard even for an hour a day. You often have an insight or a burst of energy, feel ready and want to act, but within a short time it all gets turned inside out. Even when discussing an event or drawing a conclusion about it, you're already doing so from your new, current state, which often isn't good. I've seen countless situations where people attend an event, training, or program, read a book, or meet someone and feel, “Holy shit, that's amazing! That's absolutely what I need to do. Damn, what an insight! I'll definitely do it tomorrow, or right now. This is my right next step.” My videos probably give many people a clear understanding of what to do, but then time seems to disappear. Two weeks, a month, or a year later, they look back and realize they haven't moved even a fraction closer to that insight. They've moved further away, deteriorated in relation to it.

Why does this happen? Often, when someone has an insight, they're simply happy about an event, about a small opportunity appearing, but they don't make a firm assessment of what that opportunity ultimately offers. Recently, something bad happened to an acquaintance of mine, someone quite close to me, spiritually close as well.

That bad event happened and was resolved. Literally three or four hours later, I spoke with her: she called in euphoria, telling me how wonderfully everything had happened and how good life was for giving her the opportunity to experience it. I said, “That's not how it is. You're creating an illusion of understanding cause and effect. You think you understand why the event happened, how you managed to live through it, and what good things you have. You're building an illusory perception. The most important thing at this moment, with all this powerful, surging energy, is not to fall into your own delusion, an egoistic delusion, that negative state of thinking you understand this insight, this good event, or this good action.” I said, “The best, most important thing you can do now is neutrally observe the past twenty-four hours. What exactly happened? A bad event occurred”—a very bad event—“someone helped you resolve it, it was resolved, and now you're in your current state. Respond neutrally to both the bad event and the good outcome, with the same degree of perception.

“Observe it a little from the outside. What happened to me?” She'd been preparing for this bad event for four months. I told her to take all four months, compress them into one day, and look at the different combinations of things that happened during that day. Draw normal, balanced, clear, understandable conclusions—sound, serious conclusions—about cause and effect. People mostly build an illusion at the very moment of insight. They've read a book and say, “That's it, we know. This is just fucking incredible!”

“This state is just fucking incredible! We'll get the final result.” Or we go to coaching, hear a single phrase, and say, “Wow, what a result we're going to get!” Someone watches a video and says, “That's it. I understand everything. The result will be incredible!” Or the opposite: someone watches and says, “This is crap,” and closes it. Or reads a book and says, “Nonsense. I don't need this. I know everything works differently.” Something happens during the day, and you say, “I won't stay with this. It makes me sick. I won't be in this world.” It's the other side of positive reflection or a positive insight. This happens because a person is actually jumping around inside their own head, within their awareness. They aren't aware over a long period. What does it mean to be aware over a long period? Someone just asked for my three or four favorite books. That's a very abstract question, because no single book will let a person build their life over a long time. “A long time” is present everywhere.

If you're going to die in two days and say, “I need to find the right action now, what to do here and now so I can live these two days with as much usefulness or harmony as possible, or do something necessary that I need to do,” perhaps then you could read a book—if you've chosen correctly—and act on it. But generally, you plan to live a long time. Within that life, life itself and the state you'll live in matter. So when I consider books, a teaching, or teachers, I say it's important to approach them consciously and broadly. If I study an author, I'll read dozens of their books. I'll engage very seriously.

Books. I'll engage very seriously in this study to try to understand everything happening in a broad, comprehensive way, to let it permeate my whole life. So I don't have just one or two insights or negative states, but a sequence of insights or different negative states that I observe over a long time. Watching how I react and make decisions, so that within my system—and now we're really talking about my spiritual system—I develop calm, freedom, balance, harmony, and steadiness. It's the same in business. A partner tells me, “Sasha, sometimes many people can't take in your content. You come into business and say, ‘There are thousands of tools. I know how to perform tens of thousands of tasks. I'm immersed in them. But there isn't one step, two solutions, or three solutions. You work for years, and success still isn't guaranteed.’ People don't want to hear that. They want one magic pill: ‘Here's the best rule for financial accounting.

“‘Implement this report, and you'll be happy.’” That's a system of manipulation. Sometimes I say there are five rules, five signs—the best ones. But listen to many of my videos, and you'll find many of these “best” things, because people can create many points of support for themselves so that eventually they no longer need support. So they can live, and life itself no longer serves as something to lean on. So they don't ask themselves every day, “How can I be happy? How can I be in harmony, in goodness, in calm, quiet, and peace? How can I live through conflicts? How can I live through joy?” So they don't ask every day. When I look at some—

Every day, when I look at some authors who teach other people, they all say, “That's it! In 2024, I've set a goal of spending eighty or ninety percent of my time only on things I want and love to do every day.” What are you talking about? Wait a second. All last year, you told people how wonderful they should feel inside, how everything would be great, how taking these actions would resolve everything. Yet you set yourself a goal of doing lots of things you simply want to do. Is the question about the actions, or about what you want to do? Is it a particular list of actions, or your inner state of doing them freely? Freely, joyfully sitting and waiting for the cameras to be set up. Freely, joyfully speaking for this video. Freely, joyfully having lunch. Calmly, joyfully going to pick the children up from school. Freely, joyfully going to the store for groceries because my wife can't drive these days. Freely, joyfully calling one partner, then another.

Freely, joyfully checking a report. Freely, joyfully cleaning one of my grills because it rained last night and I forgot to cover it. Freely, joyfully putting up a curtain rod because I want to install one for the smart home. I want to do it myself. Freely, joyfully. Freely, joyfully playing chess. Freely, joyfully reading a book. Freely, joyfully entering perhaps dozens or hundreds of events that won't be so positive. But this joy doesn't mean I'm endlessly smiling and incredibly happy, with nothing but sunshine around me. Joy is living through different events: grief and peace.

Peace, problems, and good, exalted states of happiness. But I pass through all these states neutrally, observing, with joy. Observation and joy, looking at every event, absolutely every event, neutrally. Filming a video and understanding how difficult it may be to convey the information, but trying to stay neutral. It will be as it should be. Filming a video and understanding how interesting and incredibly good the content I've made is, but staying neutral because I know anything can happen. Observing my current surroundings: bad weather, my wife being kind at home or angry in the evening, or something igniting inside me so that I walk around wanting a fire of negative emotions to burst out, wanting to inflict something unimaginably incomprehensible on others. What's happening at that moment? Calmly, joyfully getting behind the wheel. Calmly, joyfully planting flowers. Calmly, joyfully cooking dinner. Calmly, joyfully being with one child, two, three, four. Calmly, joyfully accepting the closure of a business. Calmly, joyfully opening a new one. Calmly, joyfully earning money. Calmly, joyfully losing money.

Calmly, joyfully losing money for a long time. Calmly, joyfully being alone for a long time. Calmly, joyfully visiting people endlessly. When we aren't endlessly seeking insights or flashes of realization, but are truly working and paying attention: where is it important to direct my attention now? Where is my own real next step?

There are dozens of next steps in every area. That's the key to continuing to live out what you've planned ahead. Suppose I tell myself that in two weeks I plan to observe my body differently: I won't eat gluten. Then you calmly keep doing it. Or in three weeks, start paying attention to your child instead of constantly saying, “How do you manage four children? We can't manage one, even with a nanny.” It's all about the inner state in which you live. Many people find it difficult to be alone with themselves, with one child, with five children, with sixteen other people. It's always difficult, everywhere, whatever happens. At that moment, you're not a bad person. You're simply who you are right then. You can spend a lifetime looking for an answer to this question. A lifetime trying to find that state of joy in anything at all. There's nothing wrong with that, because a person's life rests not on how great they feel, the blessings they've received, or the money they've earned, but on how they treat other people every day.

To treat other people well every day, you don't need to be wealthy in money. You don't need good health. You don't need to be calm inside. You simply need to start doing it.

Start doing it. To truly, sincerely express love outwardly, you do need to have that love within. But you can come to have it by trying, by making the daily effort of expressing love outwardly and acting with real honesty, value, and sincerity toward others. However we answer questions about good books, tips, or finding personal values, we'll always come back—or at least I will, and at least in my videos we will—to the foundation in you and your attitude toward other people. How do you treat and act toward others at every moment? How do you hear them? Do you allow yourself to listen to them? How do you feel them? Do you allow yourself to feel them? How do you observe them? Do you allow yourself to observe them rather than screaming at them with your entire inner system? Do you allow your thoughts to stay inside you for a while instead of immediately going out to those people, instead of trying to place your own thoughts onto someone else? How do you try to understand that person's world and help them somewhere, even where they're wrong?

Help them take that wrong action because that's what's needed now. Or categorically refuse to do what someone asks because you know it's a deception of life, a lie, a falsehood. You won't move within that lie under any circumstances, even if it threatens...

Even if it threatens your own life. You're on Alexander Volchek's channel. Here, we talk about business, life, and spirituality. I wanted to say today's video definitely wasn't about business, but our whole life is actually based on these principles. The more we develop this state within, develop and see a real spiritual person within ourselves, and see all of this as a true inner core, the more we'll see events around us—in society, work, our profession, business, family, all our different social life—develop and move at incredible speed, with an incredibly rich life. That's much more important than the amount of money, for example. I always try in my videos to help people find and see their next step so they can expand and grow. Someone may ask inside, “How did you live through this yourself? You're in this state now. How did you reach it?” Even if you knew my path to this state and applied it to yourself, you might die, or, conversely, it might be ineffective for you.

I always say it's important to find your own next step. There's no magic pill. Any question seeking how I personally got here only shows you're looking for a magic pill and want a sequence of actions. But a sequence of actions for finding inner freedom and finding yourself is an illusion. It doesn't exist.

It's an illusion. It doesn't exist. It doesn't exist. You won't find it. You can find different actions. You can find different states. You can find different places. You can find different teachers. You can find different versions of yourself in different places, different books. You can see something different yourself, in different combinations, in different steps. People are very similar, but they're all very different. Most importantly, people differ not in how much time they've lived in this life or the experience they've gained in it. People differ greatly in their spiritual dimension. So greatly that often a person can't even imagine how much. If they could imagine it, their ego would be torn apart. See you next time!