Why Meditation Calms You Today and Irritates You Tomorrow

OLOlya

Why can the same meditation—we are talking about your meditations—feel completely different on different days? The first time you watch it, you feel irritation; the second time, there is silence and happiness.

AVAlexander Volchek

Every moment of a person's life is different. Go into town, to a café where you often have coffee, and you will see different people, or the same people sitting in different places. It will be a different time. Different cars will be parked outside or driving down the street. The sky will look a little different, and the sun will be in a different place. You wake up in the morning and often feel completely different. You go to bed in the evening feeling different, too. The timing probably shifts, and you feel different throughout the night as well.

So the question is why you feel different during meditation. When considering meditation, you need to begin with a complete understanding that everything around you is constantly different as you live. Your physical body is already different at this moment, your state is different, the world is different. On the other hand, if you rise above it and take a broader view of what is happening, you see that everything is much the same. Nothing much has happened in ten or twenty years, or ten or twenty days. Not much has changed: the mountains have not moved very far, a particular stone has not crumbled.

The same name and surname are still in your passport, and the person looks more or less the same. But stepping away from that broad view, we see endless changes all around us. When someone watches a meditation, the question is their purpose. If they want to return to one uniform state each time, they have to create conditions for that uniformity. That is obvious. If you want to drink coffee in exactly the same state every time, you probably need to own the café, be its only customer, and tell everyone where to stand. Otherwise, you will get complete chaos. Or drink coffee at home and make sure everything is in its proper place.

Some people are meticulous about having a figurine or vase in precisely the right position, down to the millimeter. They maintain that precision to enter the same state. This is one of our major problems. A person gets married with one framework of perception, and three months later that framework is different. What were they looking for? Why did they enter the relationship? What were they looking at? After six months or a year, many people become dissatisfied with marriage because the other person has physically aged or changed: a little belly appears, or wrinkles, or they start wearing different clothes. Others do not mind, because they were looking at something else.

Suppose someone married a spiritual being. Clearly, that spiritual being will not change at eighty. If only the spiritual being interests them, why would the outward appearance matter? It would make no difference whether the person was sitting there with a bottle of vodka or… Notice this interesting point. What difference does it make? There is a spiritual being sitting there, a person with a bottle of vodka. If the spiritual being was what mattered and what they connected with from the start, why would the outward circumstances matter? Someone might say, "But the spiritual being is deteriorating." Yet even improvement or deterioration is irrelevant if all they wanted was to be beside this spiritual being and observe it every day.

It does not matter to them whether the other person has brushed their teeth in the morning, looks presentable, is dirty, smells, and so on. To someone else, it matters enormously, because they focused on something specific. The question is our ability to look broadly and perceive the whole of what is happening. What does it mean to perceive life broadly? When men and women meet, they rarely perceive each other across a genuinely broad range, from the spiritual being to how the other person feels about clothing and style, or how they truly relate to others and what impulses arise in them.

Or study the person's spiritual periods and stages, or past lives, or at least truly, sincerely understand what they think about raising children. My wife constantly tells me she has heard something new from me and protests: she does not like it or agree with it. But it is the same old spiritual being. It means something was not seen. Or I, too, may have failed to see or look at something. When I speak about meditation on this channel, or about my own meditations, I always say that their purpose, and the purpose of these videos, is to remain in expanded perception or keep working toward expanding your perception.

Not to make you feel better or worse, advance socially or fail to advance, put more money in your pocket, or increase your sense of energy. The purpose is to understand what is happening across a broader range, to explore it and try to make sense of it. Instead of giving an automatic answer you do not understand, try to understand what is really happening and what lies behind it. If you come to a meditation seeking a particular state, your aim is already different from the aim of this meditation. If you came to expand your perception, the state you are in does not interest you at all.

It is simply a fact, a given. You do not ask why a meditation felt physically pleasant or unpleasant. From the start, you already know that you can feel different at any moment of life. It is logical and clear to you. Your vision can differ; you can perceive many things differently. The very act of expanding perception means that you will always experience different states of perception in meditations with me, because I do not recreate a restricted perception for you. A restricted perception is the only way to have the same state: we have confined it, entered a very definite structure.

Even that is very hard to achieve. Your internal impulse transmitting energy from your soul, for example, or the influence of spiritual bodies such as the astral body, is largely beyond another person's control or your own. The system of the I is particularly difficult to influence. To put a person into one particular state of consciousness, you would have to put them to sleep, kill them, or exert some influence on them. It is like preventing someone from moving their arms even when they want to: you have to tie them, because otherwise they will move them if they wish. In other words, the restriction has to hold even if I want to act. That limiting influence is important.

Then, of course, we enter particular states. Many procedures, even in spiritual practice, do this. Some practices first bring you into a restricted perception so that they can then expand it in areas you were previously unable to see. Do such practices exist? Yes. In fact, this is also true of many meditations on my channel. It cannot be otherwise. Just as here, I am still confined within this room. I clearly understand its influence and its limits, including how it shields me from heat or cold outside, because I am in an air-conditioned space.

Or from noise in certain spaces, or particular dust reaching me, and so on. There are different influences. Naturally, entering one state restricts your perception of other areas to some extent. What does restriction mean? You shift the focus of perception. The question is whether you do so naturally and normally, and whether you are free to shift it. Does the shift become permanent, as though your hands had been tied forever? You agreed, and now they are tied forever. Is it controlled? Is it your conscious choice? Is it really a restriction, or a particular freedom to be in a certain place? If we want to have a private conversation, we will need to hold the phone close in some way—and even then we may still be heard—or withdraw into a room.

In any case, we need to isolate ourselves. Sometimes, to have a private conversation with yourself, you also need to withdraw into a particular space. The main focus from the start is your true purpose and need in entering a space or place. That applies to more than meditation. Why do I sometimes feel good with my child and sometimes bad? Why does it happen with my wife? Why do I sometimes feel good or bad when I come to this place, while somewhere else I always feel good? Why do I sleep well sometimes and poorly at other times? Why do I sometimes want a hot shower and sometimes a cooler one?

It does not seem connected to the environment; the temperature outside appears to be the same. Why do I sometimes want to get up early and sometimes not? Why do I sometimes want to play the piano for hours, while at other times I cannot even approach it and sit down? This is observing outwardly, from the side. What is really happening? But none of this takes anything away, Olya. Please do not think it takes away the option of entering meditation with a purpose such as calming your physical body or gaining a clear mind. Here, I mean a clear mind in the ordinary social sense.

Freeing yourself from external anxiety, for example, or extraneous thoughts. There are many simple physical exercises for redirecting attention. Start looking around the room at everything white. After a few minutes, you will notice your attention shift. In fact, you have not shifted attention; you have expanded perception. As your perception expands, your anxiety decreases. If you expand it further and other spaces begin to affect you more strongly, the anxiety will decrease even more. Can you come to a meditation hoping to calm your consciousness and find that, on the contrary, you do not become calm?

That can happen, too. A person comes to relax, but this meditation is aimed at something entirely different. That is the mistake in social interpretations. Even if you ask ChatGPT about meditation in great detail, it associates meditative states with relaxing the body and something closer to physical exercise. Likewise, a WHOOP band or Oura ring connects meditation with relaxation and rest, rather than effort—considerable effort. We had another experience that illustrates how difficult this can be to understand. I recently flew to New York with my wife for five days. Then we returned to Los Angeles and flew somewhere else again.

There was a series of trips. In New York, she said, "I'm relaxing. This really is a vacation." I said, "For me, it isn't a vacation. It's work." She really dislikes my describing it as work. But I explain that a hotel room is still a confined room, a space smaller than my home. It is not my bathroom, bed, or wardrobe. I do not have the same freedom of access to my kitchen or garden, the same surroundings, noise levels, or contact with particular people. And when I am on vacation with her, I need to support her vacation, because it is a vacation for her. I need to maintain a certain state, go places, look at things, and think.

At the same time, I have ten thousand other matters in my life, and this process begins to restrict me in dealing with them. I do not have access to my desktop computers or certain systems. My time is less flexible; I am in a different time zone and have had to make a long flight. But for some people, staying in an expensive hotel overshadows those difficulties. A female friend told me, "I find it hard to use hotel bathrooms." I asked, "What about a hotel that costs $2,000 a night?" She said, "In a hotel like that, it's easy." So the hotel's quality or price makes her feel freer about using a bathroom that is not her own.

Automatically. That does not mean all hotels costing $100 a night have dirty bathrooms. Of course not. It depends on the country, the hotel, the place, whether you were lucky, and many other factors. The question is always to experience and understand what your state is based on. Do you understand that as you move from one state to another, your spiritual being is with you everywhere? It moves with you. Some places may be more painful for it, others more pleasant. Someone looks out a window, sees a beautiful view, and feels joy and freedom.

Somewhere else, they look out and feel sadness and apathy. We were in Beverly Hills, across from Rodeo Drive, staying at the hotel from the film Pretty Woman, with Richard Gere and Julia Roberts. You are young, so perhaps you have not seen it. That Four Seasons Wilshire hotel is on Rodeo Drive. We were sitting there, and I asked my wife how the space felt to her. She said, "Wonderful." The focus there is shifted considerably. Places are all very different. You seem to have traveled only a short distance. Before that, we were in Orange County, an hour away—Irvine, Newport Beach. You drive somewhere and enter an entirely different space. Come to where we live in California, and it is different again. I said, "This space brings up different feelings in me, including anxiety."

I do experience a particular kind of anxiety. Or I arrive in New York and notice anxiety arising in me, connected with the place. Does it affect me one hundred percent? No, it has a partial influence, but it does influence me. The question is whether you see and understand it. So when you watch my meditation, where are you? In the same room, at the office, at work, in a different café? Who is around you? What have you done during the day? What stream of events are you in at that moment? Imagine, Olya, that our meditation starts in an hour. I tell you, "Olya, I have good news. Your salary has increased tenfold. I've decided that next year you'll earn ten times as much.

You are so lovely, so good." Then you come to meditation. What I have told you will very likely influence you so much that you engage with it with much stronger, positive energy—you, specifically. Someone else might feel panic, fear, or negativity: "What if it doesn't work out?" You would be inspired. Or perhaps it is not about salary; I could praise you instead. If I praise you for thirty minutes, which matters more to you than the salary, you will enter the next experience of a space with inspiration. Imagine it: you are inspired during meditation and think, "What a good meditation. What a good day."

But if your mother calls thirty minutes later and brings up a very particular psychophysical pattern between you, or your boyfriend says something harsh that affects you psychophysically, tells you that you are unworthy or something strange, your mood may immediately become worse than before my offer. This sequence can first create a very expansive, positive energetic experience and then take you below your starting point. The linked surges can produce an even greater negative swing. Could you observe that nothing at all had happened in your spiritual system? During that short time, did your energies really change or become free? Did your karma change, your circumstances restructure, or your perception of other people change?

The external influence, though, is very strong. The question is how you could remain in exactly the same state if I offered you ten times the salary or praised you for thirty minutes, and then someone scolded or attacked you, called you worthless and talentless, and told you to move ten thousand kilometers away. Could you respond in exactly the same way? What does that mean? With love for this day, understanding that this is life and it can be different; wanting to see that people are people, noticing the different social aspects while remembering that the person remains. Whoever they are to me, they are still a person, whatever the circumstances.

Bring curiosity to it: "How interesting that my state of consciousness can move from hysteria to overwhelming joy within two hours. Life is giving me an interesting experience." Observe it, and go to bed peacefully that evening. That is what I wish for everyone.