Why You Feel at Ease in One Place and Uneasy in Another | How a Space Affects Your State

AVAlexander Volchek

How does a space affect a person? What does that depend on, and how can you tell whether the space is affecting you or you are bringing your own state into it and feeling it more intensely, or something else is happening? Before we get to space, let us introduce the subject of what can affect a person at all. That will help us avoid rushing to conclusions about a place, because people have certain preconceptions. If they dislike a place, for example, they say, "I told you there was something wrong here." Or they dislike the person who rented them the apartment: "I told you it wasn't good." Or some guests arrive: "I told you it wasn't good." To avoid premature conclusions, let us look more broadly at the system: what affects a person's state in the first place?

A whole range of different factors affects a person's state, and it is critically important to know what those factors are. People generally do not perceive them; they see causes and effects in particular events. Someone calls and interrupts me, and I say that the person who just interrupted me affected my state, without considering anything else. Of course, there is an overall, overarching influence. The most central influence is that of your entire spiritual system. By spiritual system, I mean everything, including the physical body: the influence of absolutely everything, who you are as a whole. That influence is fundamental to a person's life.

It is fundamental to everyday human life, and it is important to remember that all the time. Of course, if a lynx suddenly jumps out in front of me here, it will capture my full attention because of my psychophysical and physical reaction. It will take over completely. I will be frightened, and things will become difficult for me. But why will they become difficult? Not because the lynx appeared, but because I became afraid of it. If an ant appears here, I will probably have no reaction at all. I might react to an ant, but notice the distinction: I will not be frightened of it. Instead, I might react by thinking, "They didn't treat the area properly again," or, "The ants are back."

I will have some issue with that. People have reactions associated with particular spaces. That is all clear; there is nothing new about it. But again, there is your inner spiritual system, your entire spiritual system, and its chain of causes and effects is very particular. You may react to certain events or to a particular person in a certain way without having decided to react that way. For example, you see someone and a feeling of love for them opens up in you. Or you see someone and immediately tense up. That happens because, from the spiritual world's perspective, you may have interacted with this person or shared some experience with them. You may have been connected to this person in some way, karmically, for example.

Or you may be connected karmically in the future. Of course, that can bring about a whole range of irreversible reactions. You know very well how strangely we can react to people. You like someone who, it seems, should not appeal to you. Or you dislike someone who, by all their outward social or physical characteristics, should have a positive effect on you. Something else is happening. The foundation matters: there is a vast foundation, with many connections in the causes and effects of your spiritual system. For now, let us simply call it your world: the reaction of your bodies, your spaces, and your energies to this interaction.

When you enter a particular space, consider the example I described in New York. Perhaps we will insert the part where I spoke about it while traveling around New York. There was a very distinct, clear, unmistakable influence. Throughout the four or five days I was there, I could clearly feel the energy I described. Afterward, it definitely disappeared; it was no longer there. But there, it was present. I was in New York a few days ago. From the very first day, I clearly felt that the space had changed and that anxiety had appeared in it. Anxiety appeared in me. It did not appear in the space of New York—it had always been there and still is. The anxiety appeared in me.

It was a very clear feeling, a perception that this was connected to a specific location, to the influence of the place. That anxiety in the background brings suffering. It clearly does. Can you call it suffering? You certainly can. Does the fact that suffering is not necessary mean you do not need to work with it? Of course not. When anxiety arises in you, it means your perception has narrowed. The external space has taken over part of your own perception. You might consider whether this state arose simply because I was there alone with my wife. Could you say that? Hardly, because we spend time together in other places, too.

I have a general sense of how that works, so it is not a question of my wife. What else could it be? You could consider the timing. There is also time: your spiritual being exists at a particular time, amid events unfolding at that time. Were there any events that could have had a short-term effect, like the ant, or a bear—or the lynx I described? What animal might actually appear here? A lynx, not a bear. That is a short-term influence. The distinction matters: a short-term event. It would become a long-term event if the lynx attacked me and scratched up my whole face. That would have a lasting effect. But right now, we are mainly talking about brief influences.

For example, could I have suffered some physical injury or health problem during those days? Could I have lost a lot of money? Perhaps the stock market crashed, or something went wrong in one of my businesses. Clearly, external influences could have overlapped, and you might say, "It's because of New York, not the business." Or you could say the opposite: "It's because of the business, not New York." Notice that this is possible, too, and it is what people usually do. They reach a conclusion very quickly. Again, what are you relying on as the basis for your life? Remember that one of the most important influences may be who you are as a whole: your bodies and your fundamental energy. Not isolated actions or events, not tiny changes, but who you are in the cosmic sense, the spiritual sense, the physical sense—in every sense at once.

Why do I consider the spiritual being as all of this together? Because that is the right way to consider it for a person living in society. There is a paradigm that separates the spiritual world from the physical world. To understand what I am explaining, you do not need to separate anything. You may not believe it or fully accept this view, but at least conceptually, to understand what I mean, do not divide it. That division is pointless. If you make it, the whole picture falls apart and all your reasoning becomes useless. I mean that the discussion becomes pointless. This is the starting point of my discussion. Someone may say, "I disagree." No problem. But the premise of my discussion is that the spiritual world is all of it together.

To understand it, simply consider that possibility, and then it will make sense. It is like watching a science fiction movie and saying, "But it isn't real. It's science fiction." Or watching any movie and saying, "But it isn't real," constantly thinking about how the events are not real rather than following the story. A movie is not made so that you can think about its being unreal. It is made so that you can experience and consider a story. The point is not whether it is real, but to live through it. So you are in this space, and you immediately remember your spiritual being, your spiritual space, which provides the entire fundamental basis. What happens then? You are not disrupting the chain of cause and effect in any way.

Not in any way. You are not mistaken when you say, "My spiritual being underlies all of this. It is the foundation." You are not distorting the highest level of what is happening. Someone might ask, "What if there is an external influence?" It makes no difference. Your spiritual system, your spiritual being, interacts with that influence, and this is your reaction. The external influence could be the space you are in, or a business in which you have a problem that day—or something happy happens. It could be an event. You arrive in New York and find ten thousand dollars: "What luck!" Or someone steals ten thousand dollars from you.

Clearly, events like that can alter your perception, your actual perception of a place. The question is always how to perceive a space as it truly is. When I singled out New York and said that I could see this reaction in my interaction with the city, that was a fairly independent assessment. I had separated out a great many positive and negative events happening at the time. Did the plane arrive on time or late? Did we get into the city with a good driver or a bad one? Did check-in at the hotel go well or poorly? Did they give us a good room or a bad one? My wife and I spoke at various points. Did any stressful situations arise between us? What was happening?

You can attribute it to absolutely anything. For example, that day we were still on the plane, somewhere between San Francisco and New York, when we read online that our dog had run away. She ran away as soon as we left. My wife's mother, who does not drive, was at home with the children. To find and pick up a dog around here, you usually have to drive, because getting between properties is fairly difficult. You would think you should be stressed, and that stress could occupy your whole inner space for the rest of the day—or it might not. I can say that, at that moment, this event had no effect on everything else that was happening. Not because our daughter went out, somehow made her way across the area and the properties, and found the dog. That was not the reason.

It was simply that this event did not affect me. It could not get in and take over my attention. Of course, the point is not that the event itself takes your attention. It did not trigger the various energies present in the systems. Perhaps it affected my wife in some way; I do not know. I am describing only its effect on me: my sensations, my states, my understanding of what was happening. This is actually a very interesting effect. For example, my wife generally sees flying in a positive way. Why? Because a flight is a kind of rest for her.

She will be resting, or she is flying somewhere to see something. For me, a flight means difficulty for the physical body, fatigue, tension, time, and an incredible number of other things. If you add some perks to my wife's flight—good business class, good service, a comfortable atmosphere, conversation—she enjoys it even more. I need those things to keep the experience from becoming overwhelmingly negative. For example, my wife's mother flew home yesterday after visiting us.

For her, a flight means stress and fear that something will happen. That stress and fear in the physical body, in the psychophysical system, is so deep and irreversible that you cannot simply talk it through. You cannot just discuss why it happens, reassure her, explain things, or do something about it. It is a fear in the entire spiritual system. Look at the difference. My wife's response is socially conditioned. Mine probably is, too, because I could make the flight in a confined space, even a very small one, if I were told to. If I needed to do it, I would. But for her mother, this is the functioning of her entire spiritual system.

It is a vast combination of things. Whatever happens, whatever you do, wherever you stand, whatever seat, service class, aircraft, assistance, direct or connecting flight you choose, it does not resolve this. Yesterday she took a direct flight with assistance. They picked her up, seated her in a chair, took her where she needed to go, and helped her. When she landed, they helped her with everything there, too. Complete, one-hundred-percent service. She cannot get lost. Nothing can happen to her, yet she is still afraid. If she flies with three connections, she will have exactly the same fear, exactly the same experience. The fear will be there. It is not that she does not want to resolve it; her system does not even believe it can be any different, that this is possible. Of course, a person will justify themselves. Live to that age and see.

Take a close look at people of a different age. It is clear that when someone has made a flight under that much stress, they then experience an incredible surge of positive emotions. Once they have landed, everything feels wonderful. Afterward comes a very large loss of energy, because the energy has already been spent. At first, they spend even more energy on that positive feeling, because they have to generate it. A major loss of energy. Similarly, if I have a bad flight, it may affect all three days of my stay. For my wife, what happens on the flight does not matter in the same way. There is no need to spend resources on that.

That is interesting: there is no need to spend resources on it. Here is another example of how a space affects us. My close friend Vitalik and I flew to Hawaii a little over a year ago, I think. He said, "Let's go to Hawaii." I said, "All right." He really wanted to go and had just come to visit me in the United States. When we were traveling to a particular island, it was a whole ordeal for me. Trips like that are. What do I mean by an ordeal? On trips like that, the hotel matters to me, as do what happens where, where you sleep, how and where you fly, and so on. There are an incredible number of influences. When two of you travel together, you also have to adjust to each other, which adds many more influences to the space.

I was the one choosing the hotels. That adds another problem: I am making the choice. It would be one thing if I were not, but here I was choosing. At one point my friend said, "Listen, there's no point paying extra for this hotel. Let's stay at that one." There were two hotels along our route. We arrived, I walked in, and I realized I had made a mistake. I can sleep in a tent perfectly easily. Tell me tomorrow that I need to go somewhere for a week, stay in a particular place, sleep at an angle like this in a tent, and eat almost nothing, and I will say, "No problem at all." There is an initial understanding of why you are doing it and what does not matter. But in this case, it had such a strong effect that the situation hung over me for all three days I was there.

Can you imagine how important it is to listen to other people and really hear them? Later we went to the other hotel for lunch. My friend said, "We'll see now. It will obviously be exactly the same." We arrived, and it was in an entirely different class. He said, "Well, I was wrong." He was acknowledging his own mistake, too. I had made a mistake, and he said, "I was wrong, too. Of course, the difference is enormous." The question is always how much this matters to a particular person, as in the example of my wife. For her, the trip itself matters, not the additional circumstances. There is an incredible number of factors at work, including the attitudes a person adopts from the very beginning.

When you visit New York, for example, you may have expectations about what it will be like and what will happen. Can you be okay with twelve hours of pouring rain in a day in New York? Are you okay with that, or does it make the city a negative experience for you? If it would be negative and that risk exists, what are your options? Why am I bringing this up? Given the circumstances of a person's spiritual system and their incomplete understanding of it, it is important to try harder to understand what is happening to them, so they can avoid getting involved in certain things. There are things a person should not get involved in. It is not their space.

Or, conversely, they can enter those situations and live through those events with the attitude, "I am ready to look at what is happening as it really is, sincerely, and see what is actually going on." Situations like the ones I have described can create problems for other people because someone is experiencing an internal psychophysical conflict. Another person may not even recognize that it is a problem, an ordeal, for someone else. We had a similar experience in connection with New York. We were in Los Angeles, sitting in a particular place, and my wife said, "What an incredible place.

I've never sat anywhere like this in my life." For some reason, that was how she felt, as if it were the first time she had ever been in a place like it. Of course, it was not the first time. She had been to better places, worse places, all kinds of places. But that was her feeling. I said, "I feel uncomfortable here." As I started telling her about my discomfort, our conversation immediately became very negative. I wanted her to understand my discomfort, and she had no intention of understanding or even getting into it. She was comfortable herself, and my discomfort did not interest her in any way. Reacting to each other like that is not simple. It is also not simple to know what both people should do at that moment.

Of course, New York has an energy of place. Every place does. The question is whether you can sense that energy even when it is not affecting you. What is the main task? Not to feel its positive or negative effect, but to sense what kind of energy is there at all. Sometimes you can do that beforehand, understand it in advance. Understanding the energy is what matters. If you understand it, its influence will be fundamentally neutral. Of course, you may feel a little worse or a little better, but you need to look at what it actually is, what the place carries.

New York clearly has its own energies: those of many people and a large city. On the one hand, those energies are independent of me. On the other, they evoke certain types of energy in me, bringing them up quite strongly. I observed those energies because they had arisen and were operating, exercising some power—perhaps ten or fifteen percent of the overall influence. When the energy began to grow, I tried to really work through it, because it was gaining more and more momentum.

Again, that does not mean it was becoming overwhelmingly negative. But I did not want to experience those states that day. I did not want to be in them or have them affect me. I wanted to remain in the environment, or in the states, I am probably accustomed to on trips of this kind. This raises a very interesting question, Olya: if I had come to New York for business meetings, would it have affected me in the same way? If I had come to live in New York for, say, a quarter of a year, would the effect have been the same?

That makes a very big difference. Many people like particular spaces simply because certain energies are triggered in them. How can anyone enjoy a six-hour flight? My wife does. Certain energies are triggered. Many people say it is great to eat on a plane, and not only in business class. Some people enjoy eating in economy. They say it is great, but all the food in economy, business, and first class is food that was cooked some time ago, for goodness' sake. Broadly speaking, of course: the better first-class services may do things a little differently.

You are sitting there eating something, sometimes practically in your underwear, unable to move in a tiny, confined space, being shaken around. But there is that feeling of something special. That is social conditioning. So the kind of trip it is has an incredibly strong effect. Let us call it a trip, because for me it is not rest. For my wife, it is. I have spoken many times about how differently people experience rest; I think we will highlight some of those videos here. Once again, during this trip, my wife said that it was rest for her.

I said, "For me, it isn't rest at all. Look at this room." It was a beautiful hotel room, but a tiny little room with a tiny little bathroom and very limited space. You have to be together all the time and cannot get away from each other. You are in completely different conditions. How can that be rest? It certainly is not. You keep going into a hotel with huge numbers of other people walking around. Those are all energies that influence you, too. Imagine the effect of this social energy around the idea of rest: it amplifies the effect of everything else. People take pleasure in places where, essentially, there is no pleasure.

People experience joy in places where there is no joy. Often they strive for that even more and develop a distorted sense of cause and effect. Remember what I said about my wife's mother: she loses energy on the plane, feels happy afterward, but actually falls into an energy slump. Huge numbers of people do the same with vacations. They wait, dream, can hardly wait to get there. They enter a particular space, return home, and say, "Damn, it's over already." That effect comes from your expectations, from what you have invested in and the attention you have given to certain kinds of energy. You have given those energies influence and devoted an incredible amount of effort to them.

Those energies are social dependency, often dependencies that are certainly not grounded in values or aligned with the light—even if we do not call them dark, although they are dependencies of the dark side. You become deeply caught up in them. So there is nothing wrong with arriving somewhere and feeling a negative state. The question is how to avoid being left with a sense of disappointment. It is like the person who cannot fall asleep at night and starts worrying that they have wasted time because they could not sleep.

How can you keep it from leaving a negative mark on you? That is something worth thinking about.