by sublimity-001-main | Jan 19, 2024 | 2024, Emergence, Podcast, Purpose, Spiritual Growth, Tools
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In the self-help, self-improvement arena, we put a lot of stock in our beliefs. At a certain level, it’s important to improve your beliefs and thoughts. It’s important to do the inner work, to take back control of your mind and reprogram its patterns and conditioning.
Step-by-step, we can uplevel our thoughts, our beliefs, and our emotional fuel, so that we are ultimately running on high-octane thinking, feeling and believing. This helps us move out of the victim state, where we believe we’re being acted upon by the world of experiences — where we believe life is happening to us.
It’s important to move from being a victim to a creator, where we see that the world isn’t victimizing us — our own thinking and the subsequent habits that come from our thinking is the real cause. We learn certain strategies — the law of mind and creation, visualization, affirmation — as well as other tools to regain control over our beliefs.
This is a critical first step on the path to personal freedom. Without this, we will remain in a perpetual cycle of reaction to circumstances that keeps us stuck — and even makes things worse. At this stage, we let go of being a victim and become a creator. Life is no longer happening to us, we are happening to life.
At this stage, you are controlling your conditions by what you are thinking, believing and consciously feeling, and are now manipulating situations consciously. At this level, it may or may not be for your highest good or for the good of others — you can create all kinds of conditions through the power of the law of mind, but it’s still in the realm of duality, of good and bad, up and down. That’s always the challenge at that level – you’re still operating with your human will and all of the conditioning and value systems that come with that.
Eventually, that doesn’t work as well as it used to. You manifest a things but aren’t fulfilled by them, or it even makes things worse. You manifest a bigger paycheck, but end up just broke at higher income bracket! You get a bigger house, but feel even less at home. You manifest a new relationship, but end up in the same arguments. You get all that stuff, but unconsciously, or consciously, you’re still afraid it could all go away.
To continue to activate your potential, you need to move to the next level, where you realize life is happening through you, that there’s a bigger idea than your human mind can conceive — and you need to surrender to it. This is the realm of vision, visionaries, and true innovation. This is where you become a channel, an instrument for an idea that is beyond your current paradigms, beyond your thinking, and beyond your beliefs.
You open up and become available to an evolutionary impulse that has something to do with the expansion of your soul and of humanity. You begin to develop mental, emotional set-points that are vibrationally aligned with your highest vision. This is where the magic starts happening, this is where Grace kicks in. As the saying goes, “God responds to you by corresponding to its nature in you.”
As you move through these stages, you begin to realize that life is not about manipulating, adding, attracting, or improving anything — it’s about waking up to a wholeness and perfection that is already here, waiting for the right conditions to emerge. We move out of mere metaphysics — which is still often about manipulating appearances — and onto the path of mysticism, which is about touching Ultimate Reality and letting IT govern, guide, and direct our life — because we realize that there is an Intelligence that created everything and It knows how to run the show better than we do!
Unlike traditional success teachings, religious teachings, and most self-improvement or metaphysical teachings — which are based in the world of duality and seek to change appearances — the mystical path is about transcending all thinking, all believing, all identities, all pairs of opposites, all attempts to merely improve our conditions, and to wake up to who we really are, what’s really going on, and why we’re really alive.
The result of that expanded awareness is that we pop out of our stories and beliefs, and all the limitations they contain. The result of that is an expanded awareness that must begin to manifest itself as what the world calls improved experiences and conditions. The difference is that you know you didn’t make them happen, you made them welcome — so you don’t feel like you have to use all your energy to hold them in place. The change is real and lasting.
It’s not an easy path to walk. We’ve been so conditioned to believe we must manipulate appearances to be happy, safe, and free, and that our mind or body is what’s controlling things. But that’s false. There is a larger order, a deeper intelligence, a perfect pattern that is already here, already complete. Nothing we think or believe can improve upon it or make it happen. But when we let go of our agenda and open up to the mystery, this larger possibility can emerge in ways we could never imagine.
I invite you into this next level of living by asking, “Who am I beyond all of my stories, beyond all of my beliefs? Who would I be and what could I do if I didn’t have any story or beliefs? What’s really here, what’s really true, and what’s really possible that I can’t presently see because of my beliefs?”
Contemplate this. Meditate on it. Journal about it. And watch as a whole new vista of possibility begins to emerge!
You can also listen to an in-depth podcast on this subject, where we break it down and talk about how to put it into real-life practice TODAY. This will be a real game-changer!
And remember, self-help is shelf help – you have everything you need already!
Stay inspired!
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Other powerful free trainings in the podcast library:
Why You Can’t Get What You Don’t Have
Stay Rooted as You Rise: The Secret to Unending Progress
Why Going With the Flow is Wrong
Full Transcript
[The following is the full transcript of this episode of the Emergence, A Revolutionary Path for Radical Life Change, with Derek Rydall Podcast]
Welcome. Derek Rydall here, founder of the Law of Emergence and author of the best-selling book, Emergence. It’s just great to be with you on this journey of Emergence, which is really about tapping into that Divine potential, that pattern of infinite perfection planted in the soil of your soul and creating the right conditions in your life so that that inherent good can unfold in your life like never before. You are meant to unfold naturally, as natural as the rest of nature, without struggle, without striving and even without overly thinking. Ultimately, your entire destiny of greatness could unfold without you taking thought for your life. If we could just get clear enough and still enough and connected enough, that which is already true about us would just begin to emerge just like nature. It would show up as inspired ideas. Those inspired ideas would transmute themselves into inspired conversation and compelling right action and ultimate achievements. It would all unfold without the process we have come to know as thinking and cogitating and struggling and straining and trying to make things happen which is not really normal or natural at all.
We are meant to unfold and feel like life is living us. When you’ve been inspired with some kind of idea and you didn’t think up the idea, the idea thought you. It’s like you’ve ever been praying and suddenly feel overcome by this devotional energy, and suddenly you’re no longer praying but something is praying you. You’re like an instrument being used. It feels so exhilarating, and you might find yourself forgetting to eat. You’re at the piano composing or at the computer writing or suddenly teaching, and this information is flowing through you, or whatever the case may be. You could be making love. You could be educating and loving a child. You could be playing sports, but suddenly you humanly aren’t doing it, you’re being done by something. That something is a higher pattern and activity that is always going on, and you’ve suddenly come into alignment with it. There are thoughts that become evident that are inspired, and they transmute into all these different levels: speech, action, expression and condition, but you’re not thinking them, you’re not doing them, and you’re not making them happen. You have become a place that has made it welcome. At the very bottom, that’s really the essence of Emergence. We’re really working to become those clear transparencies through and as which life can fulfill itself as us. We can become like a branch on a tree of life that bears witness to the life of the tree, to the leaves, the flowering and the fruit. You’ve had that experience most people have and imagine living like that all the time. That’s ultimately our aim.
The topic today is why all your beliefs limit you and what you should do instead. Especially in the self-help, self-improvement realm of things and even beyond that, we’ve come to really put a lot of stock in our beliefs. Obviously, there are relative levels. At a certain relative level, it’s important to improve your beliefs. It’s important to improve your thoughts. It’s important to do the inner work, to take back control of your mind and reprogram the patterns and condition your mind. That’s a very important step that moves you out of the victim state. When you’re a victim, you think you’re being victimized by the world of experiences, that things are happening to you, but what you’re really being victimized by is your own beliefs and your own programming. It’s appearing as circumstances and situations and your reaction to them in this perpetual cycle that just keeps repeating itself over and over and over again. That’s the victim state. You just learn to cope, manage and control your way through that. Then, eventually, you come to learn certain tools and strategies, the law of mind and creation, and then begin to adapt visualization and affirmation and various tools to start to regain control over your beliefs. That’s a powerful step. You move from being a victim to being a creator. Life is not happening to you, now you are happening to life. You are a creator. You are a manifestor. You are controlling your conditions through what you are thinking, believing and consciously feeling. You are now manipulating situations consciously.
At that level, it may or may not be even for your highest good or for the good of others, you can create all kinds of conditions through the power of the law of mind, but it’s still in the realm of duality, of good and bad, up and down, and it’s still up and coming from the ego and the conditioning of the mind, parental fantasies, peer pressure, societal conditionings, and the current values of the culture you’re in. If it seems to be that the highest value of the culture is having lots of money in a big house and a nice car, you’re going to use your mind power, your beliefs, and your emotions to manifest those kinds of conditions, which may or may not be for the highest good of your soul, or even the highest good of your family or of those that you care about. It might even hurt other people. That’s always the challenge at that level is that we’re still operating on our human will and all of the conditioning and value systems that come with that. Eventually, that doesn’t work even as well as it used to, or you get to manifest a bunch of stuff and get a bigger paycheck, but you’re just broke at higher income bracket. You get a bigger house, but you feel even less at home. You manifest a better relationship, but you end up in the same arguments. You get all that stuff, but you’re just unhappy and unfulfilled. Unconsciously, or consciously, you’re still deeply afraid that it could all go away. You’re right, because you are primarily the one doing it all.
Eventually, you move into the third stage, which is where you realize life is happening through you, that there’s a higher life. There’s a higher pattern. There’s a higher ideal. This is the realm of vision and visionaries and true innovation. This is where you become a channel, an instrument for an idea that is beyond your current paradigms, beyond your thinking, and beyond your beliefs. You open up and become available to an evolutionary impulse that has something to do with the evolution and expansion of your soul. It has something to do with the real reason why you’re here, because you’re not here merely to move deck chairs around on the Titanic. You’re here to discover, uncover, and express something unprecedented. In some way, big or small, you are an unrepeatable nomina in the mind of God of the Universe. A nomina is a Divine idea, versus phenomena, which is a transitory expression of that nomina. You are a Divine idea that has never happened and will never happen again. There’s something about your life that you’re here to express and reveal that is unprecedented.
In stage one and two, you can’t access that, because you are either being a victim in a consensus state of self-defense and self-preservation and reaction, or you are a creator and you are constantly trying to manipulate conditions to create a life based on your current beliefs, your current conditioning, value systems, etc. In stage three, you are now becoming a channel for something bigger, a channel that is beyond your thinking, beyond even your own identity, and beyond your beliefs. Ultimately, you even let go of the idea, because there’s still a sense of a personal self. There’s still a sense that you are doing it for your own good or for the good of those that you care about, and there’s still a level of a personal self. You still believe, on some level, you have a separate life to protect, to preserve, to perpetuate, to prop up, but, eventually, you have to let go of even that, even that sense that you have any separate life apart from the one life.
You’re moving to stage four, where you realize that life is no longer happening to you; you’re not happening to life. It’s not even merely happening through you, but life is happening as you. You are life expressed. You are a branch of the tree. You are not separate from the tree. You are a ray of the sun, a wave on the ocean. You are a unique individualized expression of life. You are the way life expresses itself. There is no you. You have no life separate from the one life. That’s the purest, most complete space in which the true glory of life, the Christ consciousness, the Buddha consciousness, and the highest ideal can begin to manifest and unfold as you. There’s no end to that, because it’s infinite. So it’s forever unfolding, and perhaps has even greater and greater stages. Those are fundamentally the core four stages we move through.
While it’s important to work on is our beliefs. The next level to working on creating strong beliefs is developing beliefs that are congruent to our highest vision. You begin to move out of merely having strong beliefs, religious beliefs, spiritual beliefs or cultural beliefs and beliefs to try to merely survive, like believing that all of your needs are met, or believing that you’re abundant, or believing that you’re rich or healthy or whatever, and instead you begin to move to, Well, here’s the vision that’s seeking to emerge through me, this higher idea for my life. Now, let me develop my beliefs to be congruent with that. That’s the next level with your beliefs.
You begin to develop a belief system: mental, emotional, vibrational matched points, or vibrational match, to this highest vision. That allows you to tune in to that vision and become vibrationally aligned with it. God responds to you by corresponding to its nature in you. Now you are becoming as it says, Be perfect even as your Father in Heaven is perfect. In the Biblical context, what that means is to get a little bit closer to thinking and feeling and ultimately acting the way you would act, think and feel if you were God, if you were Divine, if you really were whole, complete and perfect, a unique infinite individualized expression of life. You begin to shape your beliefs to be even closer and closer to that. That’s a more refined version. Again, all of this is wonderful, powerful and usually necessary, but it’s still a staircase. It’s still the scaffolding in order to paint this great painting or paint the house. Eventually, this scaffolding also has to be removed. Your beliefs are scaffolding. They’re valuable to get you to the place where you are vibrationally really close to your highest ideal. Ultimately, it’s important to know that even your best belief, your highest thought, is not truth. The belief that God is all there is, or love is all there is, is not truth. It’s a belief pointing to the truth. The truth behind that statement is infinitely greater. Your belief that you’re abundant and all of your needs are met abundantly and everything is working together for your good is a great belief, but it’s not the truth. It’s still just a container, a context of scaffolding. The truth of you is infinitely more than that.
Ultimately, who you really are is an isness that you can’t add to or diminish. As it says again in the scriptural context, Who by taking thought can add one cubit to his stature? What God has wrought, no man can put asunder. Jesus said, Take no thought for your life, but instead seek first the Kingdom of Heaven, which he said was within you, and all the things you’ve been searching for will be added onto you. He’s not saying do a bunch of affirmation and visualizations and create a better belief system. He’s saying quite the opposite, let go of all that and just make contact with the truth of your being. Know the truth, and this truth will make you free. Buddha taught a similar thing. He taught what we understand as the releasing of all desires, but it’s really what was called craving and aversion. In other words, it’s the incessant drive to get or get rid of something in order to finally be happy or free. In that mind structure, that’s constantly craving something more or seeking to get rid of something, or what’s also known as the pain-pleasure mechanism, is really fundamentally what the false self is made of. Most of our belief structures are built on that. In other words, we’re establishing belief systems I’m rich, I’m abundant, I’m healthy, I’m wealthy, I’m happy, I’m in love, everybody loves me, etc., etc. as a response or a reaction to this pain-pleasure mechanism, because those beliefs move us to greater sense of pleasure, versus our lesser beliefs, which move us towards a greater sense of pain.
Again, relatively speaking, it’s all good stuff. You’re stepping up the ladder. It’s the staircase to Heaven. Step-by-step, you’re upleveling your thoughts, upleveling your beliefs, upleveling your emotional fuel, so that you are ultimately running on high-octane thinking and feeling and believing. It’s great thing to do that. In fact, in my experience, it’s often necessary, as I said, because it’s very, very difficult to just shoot that gap. Even a lot of people in a lot of teachings that are very absolute teachings about just realize your oneness with God and that’s all you need to do, the problem with that is that because the mental, emotional, astral, etheric bodies are so full of static, there’s so much static on the line between you and your soul, you and the truth of being, that it’s very, very difficult to make direct contact. Unbeknownst to you, you could spend years and years meditating and praying and seeking that direct contact and actually be driven by a lot of these beliefs and be going in circles not even realizing, because there’s so much unredeemed energy in your beliefs, in your thoughts, and in your emotions.
Now, of course, certain meditation processes, like the pause and mindfulness meditation, will create the context for you to observe all of that content. As you observe it, the thoughts, the feelings, etc., they begin to disintegrate. You begin to break karma, redeem all of that energy. That absolutely is a vital and important aspect of the process. Again, in my experience, it can be very, very slow-going. There can still be so much static on the line. For some so much you can’t even get into a really in-depth meditation practice, because there’s so much static of these very low level beliefs, thoughts and emotions. It’s a very good part of the practice to be refining and refining and refining your thinking, believing and feeling so that there’s less and less static and you are more and more congruent with your highest vision. At a certain point, you want to begin to practice this idea that all beliefs, all thoughts, are limitation. This is somewhat what Byron Katie, if you know Byron Katie has worked the work, is sort of getting at, which is beginning to observe your thinking and ultimately let go of your story. Now, for the most part, she still talks about letting go of the story that hurts, the story that doesn’t serve you. Again, very good stuff to do. I want to suggest that even your good story is limiting you.
Here’s the bottom line mystical truth. All the thoughts you have about yourself and about life, all of them without exception including all of the good thoughts, are not the truth about you. You are not the personality that you think you are. You are not this person born on a certain date that’s gone through these certain experiences, etc., etc. That whole story, that whole psychological construct and identity and every aspect of it, none of that is you. That’s shocking. You might get it on some level, but the implications of it are shocking. None of that is you. Any more than an actor taking a script with a very well-developed character and storyline and playing that part, they can play that part, and they can access certain dimensions of themselves to fill that part out and to express that part, but they’re not that part. This character you’re playing in this Divine drama is not you. This is the deeper esoteric meaning of, Before Abraham was I am. Your I am nature, your true nature and infinite, immortal, indestructible, incorruptible being is not the part you’re playing in this Divine play, no matter how good or how bad. We’re used to transcending the bad parts of our story or at least trying. What I want to suggest is to begin to contemplate what would it mean to transcend even the good parts, the parts that you really value, like you’re a great mother, a great father, a great student, a great teacher, a great healer or want to be. What I want you to understand is you’re actually none of those things.
Now, there is a spiritual truth behind all of those levels. There is the Divine father, mother, the Divine teacher, healer, the Divine true life that you are, but it’s so much more than those labels. The problem with all of those levels, including the good ones, is that they come along with a whole container of baggage. If you assume the identity, I’m a father, I’m a mother, I’m a student, I’m a teacher, I’m a creator, what you get with that is all of the history of baggage and memes and artifacts around that label that you will now have to work to overcome. Do you understand what I mean? You will now have to work, because you’ve now assumed that identity. All of the memes and all of the energetic frequencies that go along with that you’re going to be susceptible to. You’re going to have to now work to overcome all of that. If you accept that you’re a human being, then even in your greatest efforts, you’re going to often be just simply trying to improve your humanhood. As long as you accept that you’re a human being, that belief system, you are susceptible to all of the ups and downs and trials and tribulations of a human being. This is the deeper meaning of to be in the world but not of it, to be playing full out, but to wake up from all of these identities, all of these labels which are part of our belief systems.
We’ve been taught 99.999% of all of the teachings that are out there. Even a large degree of what I’m doing here is still helping you improve your belief about yourself, to make you think about yourself as a better human, as a more prosperous human, a healthier, wealthier, happier, more loving human, right? Maybe you might even include as a healthier, wealthier, happier, spiritual being. It’s still within this identity of being this person and trying to improve upon it. What I want to suggest, for some of you may be going, Geez, Derek, I just want to pay my rent and heal my back and fix my relationship. This is down the rabbit hole for me.We’re planting seeds here. I want to begin to open and stretch your mind because understand that all problems exist in time. All problems exist in the mind. All problems exist in thought. Whatever the structure of the thought is –a thought, a belief, a perception, a story – all problems exist in your story. Your story is a set of perceptions. All solutions exist outside of your current story, outside of your perception, outside of your identity, ultimately outside of time.
When we keep increasing our beliefs, that’s a valuable step, because if you have a higher quality belief certain problems you’ve struggled with can’t exist in that higher framework or that higher paradigm. The more you can begin to completely disidentify with the story and begin to have an extemporal experience of yourself, meaning out of time, out of the story, that I’m not the story, I’m not this character, and I’m not any of this stuff. I’m something so much bigger, so much more that has never been touched or diminished by this. As you begin to contemplate that and seek that larger expanded awareness, all solutions are in that expanded awareness. One moment of popping out of that story can radically and completely transform your life. It might take you years and years and even lifetimes of improving your belief to really transcend some of your core struggles. One moment of extemporal realization, one moment of popping out of your belief system, out of your story altogether, shooting the gap of your thoughts and touching the realm of the real where you have never been diminished, this is the place of miracles.
This is how spontaneous healing can happen. People have finally been brought into their needs, and they’re so utterly distraught and so utterly just over the struggle that something snaps in them, and, for a moment, the ego is ripped from its moorings and the veil is torn apart, and there’s a moment where they touch the realm of the real. Those are the moments you hear about where they suddenly become enlightened. Eckhart Tolle talks about that very moment where he’s in such suffering. He’s like, I can’t live with myself anymore, and, suddenly, in that moment, the pressure around that identity of self was so intense he broke from that storyline. He suddenly was like, If there’s a self I can’t live with, who is the I that can’t live with that? He suddenly had a moment of satori, of instant enlightenment. He broke out of the story. He broke out of time. He had a moment of expanded awareness beyond belief, beyond good and bad thinking.
I think that was Rumi that said, Out beyond good and bad, there is a field. There are good and bad thinking, There is a field, I’ll meet you there. That was what Eckhart Tolle did. Byron Katie had a very similar experience where she suddenly just broke, and she felt asleep. When she woke up and she suddenly looked around, and she had no sense of identity, no story, and she thinks she’s all like a cockroach walking around or something, and just was full of bliss, like there was no story in the way, including any good beliefs. There was nothing. There was no thinking. There was just reality, just isness. That’s always here. That’s always true. That’s who you really are. It’s beyond your beliefs. While it’s very valuable to improve, improve, improve, your mental, emotional, vibrational state, I want you to hold all that in the context of that’s not the end game. That’s just preparation. In the midst of that, your prayer is more than I want to fix, change, heal or improve anything including my thinking. I want to wake up to the truth that makes me free. I want to see the way God is. I want to know who and what I am, not through a glass darkly but face to face, beyond belief, beyond thought, beyond even good thinking, beyond even good beliefs, beyond all beliefs, all thoughts. Reality exists in all of its wholeness, completeness, perfection, fully shining in all of its majesty, the Kingdom of Heaven, Nirvana, paradise. We haven’t left it. We’ve just covered it up with a lot of thinking, a lot of layers of perception. We’re experiencing all of our own perceptions and thinkings. We try to improve our perceptions and thinkings, and all what we’re really doing is swapping one state of hypnosis for another. We’re just trading one dream, one nightmare for a dream but we’re still asleep.
Again, I’m not knocking these stages. I still work on it myself. We want to at least begin to inch ourselves into the mystical path, because the mystical path isn’t about improving your beliefs. It’s about waking up. Metaphysical teachings are more about improving your beliefs and self-help and self-improvements and most even religious teachings. The mystical path is about waking up. It’s about transcending all thinking, all believing, all identities, all pairs of opposites, all attempts to merely improve our conditions, and to wake up and discover who we really are, what’s really going on, who we are, where we are, what we are, why we are in the ultimate sense. The result of that expanded awareness is we pop out of our stories and beliefs. That then expresses itself as what the world will call improved experiences, improved conditions. The difference is they’re different in quality, because when you pop out of your belief and touch reality, and touch grace, and it transmutes itself into better experience, you know that you didn’t manifest that experience through your own mental thinking and believing. There’s not a personal sense of attachment or a personal sense of you have to keep it going, or as if you have done it all through your own believing and ultimate manipulation. There’s a part of you that knows it’s not permanent. You can’t necessarily depend on it 100%, and you’re never fully free in it. When you touch reality, the reality of wholeness, and that wholeness manifests as improved conditions, there’s a level of knowing that that was just the way it is and that’s never going to change. There’s a whole different level of freedom.
I just want to invite you into this next level of beginning to contemplate. Who am I beyond all of my stories, beyond all of my beliefs? You also come into what’s really called a knowing. Believing is a surrogate for ultimately knowing. What you’re really wanting is to have a knowing. You can have a lot of belief about something and even that belief can inspire you and charge you up. You can really believe in God or that life is for you, etc., and it can support you. When you touch reality directly, you now have a knowing that you’ll never have to think about again. You don’t have to do any affirmations about it. Nothing the world can ever show you or do can ever change your mind, because it’s not on your mind. You’ve touched reality. It may transmute into a set of constructive powerful beliefs and thoughts, but it’s not coming from those. You see?
You are now anchored in solid ground that no shifting sands or winds can blow it away, move it away. You’re free now. The more you’re anchored there, that’s what it means to be spiritually liberated, to be awake, to be enlightened, to be free. That’s what’s I’m inviting you into. This is the next stage to begin to contemplate. Who would I be if I couldn’t believe anything, I couldn’t think anything? Who am I without my story even my good story? It begins to pray the prayer of awakening. More than I want to fix, change, heal, control or improve anything or anyone, I want to wake up to the truth that makes me free. I want to see ultimate reality. As that becomes your mantra, that makes you a candidate for these insights and for these openings.
I invite you to begin to include that as part of your practice, your meditation, your contemplation and share. Post in the Facebook groups. Share some of the insights that are beginning to emerge as you begin this or go deeper in this path of being a true mystic, a modern day mystic. I welcome you to this path. I hope this has served you. To continue to get more support, if you haven’t already, please register for this podcast on iTunes. Leave a review so that others can find this material. Share it with a friend or loved one. It’s one of the greatest gifts you can give people, is to share content that has moved you, inspired you or helped you in some way. It costs you nothing, but it pays tremendous dividends, and even turn and teach it to somebody, because what you teach, you embody much, much deeper. You can go to DerekRydall.com. Go in to the free resources and download some free trainings and support. You can go to EmergenceTraining.com, if you haven’t already got your free Law of Emergence course. If you want to grab my book, Emergence, you can go to GetEmergenceBook.com. Click on Barnes & Noble or Amazon tab, and grab a copy of the book for like $10 or $12. Come back there, put in your information. I’m going to give you almost $1800 in free support, programs, and you’re even going to get a trial to be able to do some coaching with me in the Emergence Academy, so I can really support you in getting real results.
I’m all about results. I know I do some deep philosophical waxing and down the rabbit hole talks to open your consciousness and plant seeds to begin to blossom a more fertile vibrant awareness of truth. I’m also about rolling up your sleeves and getting practical and really helping you create a great human experience, not just merely sit in the cave and contemplate your navel. Please go check out those free resources. Share this with your friends and loved ones and clients and just take one action that applies this. Teach it, apply it and watch as really those seeds take root and begin to bear rich fruit. Until next time. Remember to live authentically, love unconditionally, and follow your destiny. Take care.
by sublimity-001-main | Jan 17, 2024 | 2024, Emergence, Podcast, Purpose, Spiritual Growth, Wealth and Abundance, Work and Business
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It can be very challenging to know when to stay the course and when to switch lanes. As I’ve taught, one of the most important things to do as a creator and entrepreneur is to pick a lane and to stay with it until you reach a specific result — no matter how challenging it is.
This level of commitment and focus brings up all the unconscious limitations that need to be healed, released, or integrated — and leads to building real soul stamina, resilience, and character. When we follow every shiny object and switch back and forth when things get difficult, boring, or unsure, we thwart our evolutionary progress.
It’s like circling the runway — we never get liftoff speed or escape velocity. In other words, we have no momentum. And without momentum, it takes all of your existing energy just to keep things moving. There’s no leverage, no capacity for deep creativity and innovation.
I struggled and suffered from this syndrome for many years until I understood the power of picking a lane and sticking with it with total commitment, no matter what, for a certain period of time. The result was that my work took a quantum leap — going from barely nothing to a global business in just over a year.
In order to succeed, one must develop the capacity for sustained focus. This is a key distinction that separates achievers from non-achievers. Non-achievers stop when things get hard, when they get bored, or when the results aren’t forthcoming. Achievers stay the course until they reach the finish line, no matter how hard it is.
This isn’t easy. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “God will not do His works through cowards.” Making real chance, making a real difference, and fulfilling your potential requires courage, strength, and a willingness to buck the trends of human thinking. That’s why so few ever do it!
You have to be willing to challenge and ultimately transmute limited beliefs and conditioning. You have to be willing to do what must be done, even when you don’t feel like it, even when people and conditions seem against you. But the result is a life worth living — a life where you are living on the emerging edge of possibility.
As the saying goes, “If you’re not living on the edge, you’re taking up too much space!”
Now, a common question around staying the course is, “How do I know if I’m meant to keep going or change directions?” This is often accompanied by sayings like, “Things are so hard, it must be a sign from the universe that I’m not meant to do this.”
Let me make this very clear: things being hard is NOT a sign from the universe that you’re meant to stop. If that was the case, just about every person who has ever made a significant difference in their life or the world would have quit!
The only sign from the universe that you might be meant to change directions is that you no longer desire the thing you were striving for. But even this can be tricky. Often, after much effort, the dust and grit of the journey can cover up your burning desire, to such an extent that you can barely feel it anymore, if at all.
[bctt tweet=”One of the most important signs that you’re meant to stay the course is that you deeply desire it.” username=”derekrydall”]
To check this, just ask the question, “If I was guaranteed success, guaranteed to be brilliant at this, and to be well received, and I could do it in a way that truly fulfills me, would I still want this?” This helps to override the ego’s threshold and the weariness that the journey has built up. If this sparks your desire again, stay the course. This is a sign of what’s trying to emerge…
You might discover along the way that new insights, new inspiration, new vision, new capacity and new opportunity starts to show up in your life. Before you know it, you’re getting hired somewhere or you’re doing something unexpected. That’s not an accident, that’s emergence. You just couldn’t have pictured it or imagined it from where you were before. This is a result of staying the course.
The key is to remain mindful, because if you’re a creative entrepreneurial type, you can have all kinds of new ideas and possibilities arise that tempt you to change course. You must stay vigilante. Ask yourself if you’re just tired, scared, bored, frustrated, and wanting relief…or if things have really changed and it’s time to make a different move.
Most likely it’s the former. The fact is, most people are just not willing to develop the inner fortitude it takes to stay on track long enough to get real, sustainable results. The main reason is that it requires real change, not just cosmetic makeovers. You have to actually become a different, more expanded, better version of yourself — if you want to keep creating better results.
To the ego, real change is equivalent to danger or death. So it will bring out all the heavy artillery to try and make you back away from the border of change. It’s had a long time to master this process — and it really thinks it’s protecting you. But if you want to make real progress and create real growth and success, you need to challenge this part of yourself and see through its coping mechanism.
Bottom line, you need to make a choice and pick a lane — then stick with it for a specific period of time until you get a specific outcome. And you need to do this no matter how hard it gets. If you’re willing, you will not only make real progress — something most people never do — but you will become an evolved version of your previous self!
Make the commitment today. Create a real vision, with a real plan — then put it on your calendar. Find an accountability partner, someone who also wants to make important changes in their life, and commit to supporting each other. This could make all the difference.
Listen to an in-depth podcast on this subject, where we break it down and talk about how to put it into real-life practice TODAY. This will be a real game-changer!
And remember, self-help is shelf help – you have everything you need already!
Stay inspired!
Derek
Other powerful free trainings in the podcast library:
Why ALL Your Beliefs Limit You (And What You Should Do Instead)
Why Going With the Flow is Wrong
Why You Can’t Get What You Don’t Have
To get these trainings now or see more episodes available, CLICK HERE!
PS – Like this episode? Please share it! Full Transcript
[The following is the full transcript of this episode of the Emergence, A Revolutionary Path for Radical Life Change, with Derek Rydall Podcast]
Derek Rydall here, and I want to welcome you to another episode of Emergence, the revolutionary path for radical life change, where we’re diving deep into the core principles of life that lead to consistent and dependable success and growth, to really living and growing and unfolding the way we were designed, which all of nature reflects back to us, but we have unfortunately become disconnected from. Our true nature is that we are individualized expressions of life. All the power, presence, substance, wealth, health and life, everything that is necessary to truly create our masterpiece, to paint our masterpiece on the canvas of time and space, to display our destiny of greatness, all of that is already here. It’s already within us. It’s already who and what we are, just as electricity is already everywhere, but we have to create the structure to plug into it. Likewise, everything that we need to be all we were created to be is already here. The process of growth and unfoldment and success isn’t about making it happen. It’s about making what is already happening welcome. It’s about creating the inner and outer conditions that are congruent to it that it may become manifest through us and as us.
We’re talking on this topic when to stay the course and when to change directions. This is a really common challenge for a lot of creative types and entrepreneurs and really just spiritually-minded, heart-centered people that are wanting to be about something. It can be very challenging to know when to stay the course and when to change, when to switch lanes. As I’ve often talked about, one of the most important things to do as a creator and entrepreneurial type is to pick a lane and to stay in that lane. That’s really, really difficult to choose when you have so many possible ways to go, or you’re just not sure and you want some kind of guarantee and assurance before you get all in. You try to joggle multiple things and play the field, and you find that nothing ends up growing, and you don’t gain any real momentum. I struggled and suffered from that for many years until I understood the power of picking a lane and sticking with it with total commitment no matter what for a certain period of time. The reason for that is that character is not developed when things are going easy. Character, which ultimately determines your destiny, is developed when things are challenging, when things are difficult, when things don’t go your way.
That’s when you develop character. In the same way that you don’t develop muscles by lifting a weight that’s so easy and doesn’t do anything to you. It has to tear the muscle. It has to do something in order to actually cause the muscle to tear and cause it to develop. If you’re not tearing your muscle, you’re not growing your muscle. It doesn’t mean you can’t maintain without tearing it, but if you’re going to grow, if you’re going to keep growing and unfolding and evolving and not merely maintaining the same status quo, you have to be going beyond comfort, convenience, yet go into those thresholds of consciousness, those boundaries of your known self-concepts and your concepts about life. You have to cross those thresholds. You have to break down those walls. You have to challenge and ultimately transmute limited beliefs and conditioning. That’s a never-ending process, because your true nature is infinite. It’s always unfolding. There’s always something more, always something new, always something next. Ultimately, you learn to live on that edge, that emerging edge, that evolutionary edge. As the old saying goes, If you’re not living on the edge, you’re taking up too much space.
Along this journey the question that arises, if you have had the courage to pick a lane, is when to stay the course and when to change? I want to tell you right out of the gate, for all of you metaphysical, spiritually-minded individuals, this is what I want you to get very clear, because this is one of the most common statements or questions. When things get hard, people will say, Maybe that’s just a sign from the Universe that I’m not supposed to keep going. I really want you to hear this: Things being hard, even really, really hard, is not a sign from the Universe that you’re supposed to stop. Think about it. If that was the case, then look at all of the greatest inventions and innovations in pretty much every area. How much challenge and strife and struggle, Martin Luther King, Jr. would have quit a long time before he ultimately made the kind of progress he did. Gandhi, Mother Teresa, Buddha, Jesus. Buddha suffered and struggled for years trying to understand and to break through. Jesus was hunted down and persecuted. Gandhi was constantly challenged by the British government. Mother Teresa was thought to be crazy and a fool and got sick and had all kinds of challenges. Thomas Edison failed purportedly thousands, if not up to ten thousand, times to discover and develop the light bulb. Walt Disney went bankrupt twice. Colonel Sanders tried to give away his chicken recipe somewhere over a thousand times, just giving it away for free. He couldn’t get anybody to take it. He persisted, something around a 1,003 or 1,006 somebody gave him the graciousness of just trying it out.
Over and over and over again, you see the story. If challenge and strife and even suffering was a sign from the Universe you’re supposed to quit, we’d still be in the dark ages. I want you from now and forevermore to erase that silly statement from your mind, Oh, it must be a sign from the Universe. No. The most important signs from the Universe are the ones you have within you, because the Universe is really in you. You’re not in the world. The whole world is in your consciousness. One of the most important signs that you’re meant to stay the course is your desire. The desire in its truest meaning is a root of the sire, or of the creative principle, of the Father, of the creative principle. It’s an indication of what’s in you trying to emerge. As long as you desire it, then it’s true.
Now, a caveat to that is it’s like it hears you now saying, Well, when it gets really, really hard, I don’t want it. I felt like I don’t want it anymore. You have to identify or discern the difference between truly not wanting something and just being burnt out or overwhelmed or disappointed, because the dust and grit and debris of the journey can cover up the spark, snuff out that flame and turn it into various sparks on the backbone of your soul, barely a pilot light, and it can feel like you don’t want it anymore. Sometimes, that’s an appropriate evolutionary process. It’s an erosion process that’s breaking down your ego, breaking down your willfulness, because as one of my mentors, Michael Beckwith, says, Where there’s a will, there’s a wall, but where there’s willingness, there’s always a way. Sometimes, we go in for our desire with a lot of willfulness and just pure will and force and push. Ultimately, as we grow and develop, we need to become more of a channel, an instrument for a higher power, a higher movement rather than merely being an ego that’s trying to make something happen. That can be eroded. It can feel like we don’t have as much desire, but what’s really happening is we’re becoming more and more surrendered.
One of the other things is it just can get covered up by the dust and grit of a journey, and so you need to ask a question to override that particular state of consciousness. You can ask, If I was guaranteed to succeed, if I was guaranteed to be well-received and guaranteed to be brilliant and good at it, do I still want this? Maybe you’re feeling tired and burnt out and disappointed in dissolution, but when you sincerely ask, If I could still have this and it could be easy and I could do what I want to do with it and create and contribute the way I want, with who I want, where I want, how I want, do I still want it? If you ask sincerely, and it’s merely been covered up by debris, you’ll feel that little kick, that little twinkling again. You’ll be like, Oh, yeah, I do want it. I’m sad, I’m disillusioned, I’m disappointed, I’m burnt out by all the struggle, but if I could really still write that book or make that impact or have that relationship or whatever the contribution might be, I really do still want that. I don’t know how I can get it. I feel a lot of doubt about it but I do want it. Then, that’s the sign you are meant to stay the course.
Some people would say that that’s giving false hope, because sometimes you could want the thing that you’re just not cut out for, like you want to be an NBA basketball player, and you’re 5’, or you’re 45 years old or something like that, and in that case, I would ask you to really check and see is that really your burning desire? If it is, then you can use the visioning process, the visualization process, to get into the feeling tone and be open to other ways that that vision is trying to unfold. What are some other versions of it? Maybe it’s not being an NBA player. Now, I’m not saying it’s not possible, because there are examples of people over the age that had become professional athletes or under the right height that had become professional athletes. So, I’m not saying you shouldn’t, and especially if there’s a burning desire, but sometimes that impulse to be or do or have something is being misinterpreted, that if you didn’t become an NBA basketball player, or you didn’t become the president of United States, whatever it might be, that if you could be involved in that world, that would feel just as good –a commentator, an author, a blogger, a videographer, somebody that’s commentating, expressing, creating in that area – that might feel just as inspiring and empowering. So, I’m not telling you to let go of the big vision, and I’m not saying that you let any of those worldly limits get in your way. For example, there are people, Grandma Moses became one of the world’s famous artists in her 70s or 80s. People had become doctors in their 70s and maybe even later. All manner of things happen in ways that define logic or defy what the world says it has to be, so I’m not telling you not to because of those. I’m just saying that sometimes what we think we want does contain the essence of what we want, but the exact form may not ultimately be what we think it will be.
That’s why I always say you can use visualization to access the qualities of feeling and being. You can do the LIFT process. If you don’t know what the LIFT process is, I would invite you to listen to the podcast where I talked about that and/or get the Emergineering program or the Emergence book and learn how to integrate that process. In any case, if you do that process and endeavor in advance towards your dream, your vision, as you come in to vibrational alignment with it, if the picture is not quite right, you’ll be course-corrected. Okay? The key is if you still want it, if you ask those questions and you move away some of the dust and debris and you still want it, then you are meant to still keep going for it. Again, we don’t know what the ultimate outcome will look like, but there’s something in that desire that is telling you something is in you trying to be born. That’s the key. As you do the work to come into the vibrational alignment with it, as you do the work to go for it and stay the course through those thresholds of fear, doubt, lack, limitation, challenge and it causes you to dig deeper and stick by something when all seems lost and build up the courage, the confidence, the strength, the faith, the resolve and the stamina, all of that is developing your character. It’s making you a stronger and stronger instrument to create and contribute and show up, stand up, speak up, speak out and be who you really are in a more powerful bold way.
You might discover along the way of one particular journey, as you’re becoming this individual as a result of staying on the course, that suddenly new insights, new inspiration, new vision, new capacity and new opportunity starts to show up in your life. Before you know it, you’re getting hired somewhere or you’re doing something. That’s not an accident. That is the unfoldment. You just couldn’t have pictured it or imagined it from where you were before. Much like the caterpillar. The caterpillar is following its impulse. It starts eating and eating and eating and doing all this stuff. Pretty soon, it pushes itself into a catalyzing state where it starts in the process of becoming a butterfly. Eventually, it creates a cocoon. It liquefies. All that wonderful stuff happens. It literally dies to the caterpillar, reborn as a butterfly, and now it is flying in an all new atmosphere. Well, if the caterpillar had a vision for its life, and it wanted to build the best caterpillar life possible, and that drove it to do whatever it’s doing, it drove it to an edge where it began this catalytic process of becoming a butterfly. That initial vision drove it there, but what it ultimately becomes was beyond its self-concept. It couldn’t have imagined the butterfly life.
The truth is you can’t really imagine what your destiny is, because it’s outside of imagination. Imagination is just a rearranging of existing known things. It’s a wonderful tool, but ultimately your vision lives in what I called the emergination, which is the imagination of the soul. We can’t really imagine. We have our best guess. We go forth, we stay the course, we build the character, and we come in to complete vibrational attunement or integrity with it. It changes us from the inside out as we stay the course. We build all kinds of skills and capacities and qualities of being. We become a better and better version of ourselves. Sometimes, the vision looks somewhat like what we imagined, or at least in the ballpark, and other times we’re taking on an event that takes us into places that we never imagined, but is always good and even often better than what we imagine. That’s why it’s no problem to start with the vision that may or may not be the exact accurate picture. As long as you do the LIFT work to come into vibrational alignment with it, because the vibrational qualities of it can never go wrong. If you’re developing more and more quality of abundance, joy, power, peace, love, etc., you can’t go wrong with that, because that’s universal. According to your unique pattern, it will begin to shape and form itself. That will lead you into new directions.
We must pick a lane and stay the course. Obviously, you have to develop a vision. You have to know where you’re going. If you don’t know where you’re going, every road will take you there, and you’ll be lost. You have to have a vision, and that’s the work we go through in the Emergineering process or the Soul Purpose Blueprint work. Now, you’re on course, and you stay the course. You pick a time period, so that for the minimum, 6 months, 12 months, for me, it was initially 18 months, you’re going to go for a particular result, and you’re not going to let up until you get that result. You’re going to do all the work to grow mentally, emotionally, spiritually, creatively as otherwise along the way. As a result, you will be a better version of yourself. Perhaps you’ll continue to stay in that direction, or you’ll discover after all there’s a new direction, but you’ve built the character now. You’ve overcome some core karmic patterns, and you now built the character to really now take the next leg of your journey.
Now, when is it time to change directions? Well, there’s a couple times. One is when in all sincerity the thing you are going for you truly, truly do not want anymore. That’s an evolutionary ark that happens to people where you are going for one thing. In fact, in the world of drama and storytelling, they call it a false goal. You see a lot of movies where the character has a false goal. Oftentimes, it ends bittersweet or tragic, where they only realize at the very end what they really wanted, like Citizen Kane where he’s going for all these riches and success, which was really a reaction to a wound. At the end, all he wants when he’s dying in his big mansion alone, all he wants is Rosebud, which is his sled when he was a little boy, which represents family and love and connection and innocence. At the end of the day, that’s what his soul really wanted, but he had lost it along the way, so it becomes a tragedy or a cautionary tale. You see that in stories.
Sometimes you see it like in Rain Man, Tom Cruise thinks what he really wants is to control his brother and get the money from the estate or make money from these cars, and at the end all he really wants is a real relationship with his only family, his brother. That’s bittersweet because at the end, he gets the relationship, but he loses his brother. He can’t keep him. So, we see that in stories all the time, these false goals that when a character goes for them, if they keep going, eventually it changes them. In some cases, they realize the error of their ways in time and they switch courses, and that’s a triumph. In other times, they get part of the goal but not the full goal, that’s bitter sweet. In other times, they don’t get it all, but they realize it or will realize it was a false goal, and that’s a tragedy.
The same is true with you. As you’re going along, and let’s say you think what you really want is to have a big business and make millions of dollars, get a mansion and a Ferrari, whatever that might be, and as you’re growing and developing emotionally, mentally and spiritually, things happen that transform you and deepen you. At some point along the way, you really get that making all this money is not my goal after all. It’s really not what matters to me. I’ve really changed. What really matters to me is making this contribution or having this family or maybe a completely different industry. After all, I really just want to be an artist. Like the story of the guy who was felt pressured by his parents to become a doctor. He pursued being a plastic surgeon, and what it was was this artistic impulse put into the most hopefully, in his mind, the way he can make the most money. Eventually, he was very unhappy and realized it was a false goal, being a plastic surgeon, and he wanted to be an artist. Like the lawyer who felt pressured by his parents to become a lawyer and ultimately got cancer and decided he was going to go for what he really wanted and that was music. He began to play music and learn music, and he was healed. These are examples of where we go for a false goal, but we really get through circumstances, through inner experience, that that’s no longer what we want. It’s clear, and it’s replaced by what we do want. Sometimes, it can just go away, and we don’t know what we want. We experience a dark night. Other times, we get really clear, suddenly or incrementally, this is just not what I want or care about anymore. What I really want and care about is this. That’s an obvious example of when it’s time to change directions when we really don’t want it anymore.
The other time is where it just already evolved. It might not be as dramatic or drastic, but it just evolves. Like for me, I started off as an actor, and at a certain point, I had a spiritual opening, and it wasn’t really a conscious choice per se, but I was just so pulled and driven to go on this inward journey that the outer pursuit of acting became unimportant to me. It wasn’t even like a conscious choice. It wasn’t like the outer experience of acting was so hard and painful that I wanted to change it. It was just this inner experience was so powerful I couldn’t resist it. Then, as I went on, I started writing, and I was developingmyself as a screen writer. That didn’t take off initially, but I found out I was really good at talking about story, and almost organically, as I begin to pursue where the interest was, I grew into a story consultant and script consultant. There was this kind of organic awareness that that was a door that was opening. I could make money. I could learn the craft even more. I could be of service. I could get all these needs met by pursuing that. Then, at a certain point, it became clear that that was no longer fulfilling enough, that I really wanted to be writing my own stuff. So, I began writing my own stuff, or rather I began getting hired to write other people’s stuff, instead of just consulting to write whole screen plays. Eventually, that wasn’t fulfilling enough, and I realized what I really want to do is write my own stuff. So, I began writing my own stuff and getting other people to hire me to do that. Eventually, I got really cleared that I wanted to write a book about how I did it all.
These goals emerged organically, and there was like little incremental steps or little incremental turns, and then eventually I was consulting, and then eventually I was bringing in spirituality into my consulting. Then eventually that drove me to write another book, There’s No Business Like Show Business, on consciousness and creativity and the media. Then I saw that, as I developed the platform to market that book, I began to learn marketing, online marketing and all these new areas in order to make that project successful. That led eventually to me wanting to just be a coach, a transformational coach. Now, I took all that I’ve learned from that and began to apply it there. You see there was like this incremental gradual evolution. At certain points, I had to make a decision – try to keep this other alive and do this other thing or eventually put all my attention into the new thing and let go of the other. That was hard. I had to again choose and let go of some good stuff that was working in order to go for this thing that I really wanted.
When to change directions is either because you truly lose the desire. It’s just not there anymore. You just don’t want it anymore. You don’t want to do anymore, not because of burnout, but because you really changed. The other thing is organically a new direction arises, and it’s often a progression to one side or the other of what you’re doing. Now, you have to be mindful, because if you’re a creative entrepreneurial type, you can have all kinds of new ideas arise, new possibilities arise. I’m not talking about Shiny Object Syndrome. I’m talking about you are steadfast and committed to a result, and you are all in and you’re working, like I was a story consultant or a screen writer. I mean I was really, reallydoing it. I wasn’t just playing at it. I was committed to very specific outcomes. That evolved into new tributaries. That’s different than What about this? What about that? What about this? What about that? Now, the what about this, what about that came into play when I had multiple possibilities, because something new was emerging and I had to see, I had to try. I was trying to hold onto the thing that was passing and the new thing that was emerging. That’s when I had to be willing to let go. Ultimately, when the Law of Emergence became evident to me, I had to once again be all in committed fully. For me, I chose a minimum of 18 months to be all in, create the program, create the offering, launch it, and see how it went. I wasn’t going to stop for a minimum of 18 months. That’s when all of my work was taken to yet a whole another level.
These are the things we want to begin to discern: When to stay the course, when to change directions? I can tell you for many of you, just from my experience, the biggest challenge is staying the course. The biggest challenge is being committed. The biggest challenge is picking a lane and staying in it when things get hard. They will get hard. You will bump up against lots of walls. You may experience loss. You may experience all kinds of rejection. You may experience every door close against you. You may experience what appears to be the whole world telling you you’re crazy, you’re wrong, this is not going to work as have many, many creative entrepreneurs, teachers, leaders. None of that means you should stop. Your work is to get clear that you still want it, that it’s still the vision and the mission, and then to do the deeper work that I teach – embracing the shadows, the values conflicts, strengthening the inner core, reconditioning so that you have soul stamina, so that you’re truly rooted and anchored within, getting the accountability partners, having coaches or mentors or group that can really support you and hold the space when you don’t feel like you can.
If you don’t have that kind of support around you, you must get it. Mentoring and coaching is a principle. It used to be the master apprentice model. We’ve lost that to our great detriment. The mastermind principle where you have a group of people that are supporting you in different ways is a principle that we used to have in some of the greatest innovators and leaders of the turn of the century and beyond, they have that. Look back in history, you see groups of individuals that were tight-knit, that were supporting each other, whether it was the industrialists of the industrial revolution or the Renaissance people that hang out together or the time of the Greek period where there’s Socrates and Aristotle and Plato and all those types of individuals forming together in mystery school. There was this group that came together, supported each other, bounced stuff off each other that held like a morphic field, their own attractor pattern that was separate and apart from the societal norms, so that they could keep lifting each other while society was constantly trying to pull them back. They had mentors and masters that they could apprentice under so that they can continue to be lifted and lifted and lifted, where otherwise condition, society, their own patterns would pull them back and pull them down.
So, you need to have these. You need to have those structures in your life so that you can stay the course and you can get to that point where you grow beyond those thresholds, you truly grow, you truly develop character which determines your destiny and also can have the kind of healthy feedback that can help you make the decision when it’s time to change direction. I invite you to really take this to heartfelt consideration and to take some kind of action, whether it’s a deeper commitment to stay the course, whether it’s a reevaluation if it’s time to change directions, but do some work on this today. If you don’t have a coach or a mentor or support group, get one. We serve people in that way. Obviously, I coach. We have master coaches here at the Emerging Edge Community as well as Mastermind and in the Emergence Academy, which is a very inexpensive way to get that kind of support on an on-going basis. Wherever you get it, get it because you need it. We all do.
If you find this podcast had been helpful, educating, inspiring, please share it with a friend, a family member, a client. When you share, you activate the law of circulation, and you integrate even more of what you’re sharing. When you teach it to someone, you even more powerfully anchor it. So, teach it within the next 24 hours. Just something about it, turn to someone and teach it, and then share it. If you haven’t already registered for the podcast, please take a moment to do that. It just takes a moment, a click on iTunes. If you can leave a review, that would be very much appreciated. It would help more people find this podcast if you believe in it. Feel free to come on our Facebook group and post questions, post your insights and your learnings. Get involved, get engaged and get inspired. We’re here to serve you. I’m here to serve you. I look forward to meeting you in person. Until next time, remember to live authentically, love unconditionally, and follow your destiny.
by sublimity-001-main | Jan 14, 2024 | 2023, Emergence, Podcast, Spiritual Growth, Wealth and Abundance
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Have you ever been in a big shopping mall where you were trying to get to a particular store, but you didn’t know where you were in relation to it — so you had no idea which direction to turn? Then you found one of those maps that showed the layout of the mall and had an X that said, “You are here’ — and instantly you knew which way to go!
You can’t get where you want until you know where you are.
This seems obvious on the surface, and when it comes to simple things like finding our way through a mall, it’s fairly easy to figure out. But when it comes to finding our way to more important destination and accomplishing higher priorities, getting clear on where we are requires a different kind of map, and a deeper kind of work.
In the Truman Show, starring Jim Carrey, his character could never go beyond a certain area of his town. Try as he might, when he hit a certain street or the edge of the lake, he was overcome with mental and emotional anxiety and had to stop. He didn’t even remember why initially, all he knew was that it was dangerous to go further.
Because the world he lived in was false, made up by someone else as an experiment, there had to be boundaries that he would never go beyond — or else he would break the illusion and the reality show would be over. To make sure he would stay within those boundaries, he had been conditioned through fearful experience as a boy so that he wouldn’t go beyond the known borders.
This same level of conditioning has been used on circus elephants, where they are raised with a strong rope around their neck, a rope that holds the baby elephant. As it grows up, the rope can no longer restrain it, however, because it has felt the pull and the restraint for so long, it believes it is stuck in place. So much so that even during one great circus fire, the elephants never tried to escape, believing they couldn’t.
This is called learned helplessness. It’s a state of mind and being where we believe we are stuck with certain limitations that are no longer true, or maybe never were.
How this relates to your life now is that, in the areas where you seem stuck, limited, or feel like you’ll never make it, you’re experiencing a level of conditioning making it look and feel that way — but it’s a lie. You aren’t where you really think you are, what you really think you are, or who you really think you are. You are so much more, but you have been conditioned to be trapped.
The problem, like with Truman, is that we don’t know what we don’t know. We don’t know what we’re believing that is false, and we don’t know what the truth is. We’re not actually experiencing reality, we’re experiencing our limited perception of it — like taking a picture of a small part of a vast landscape, and calling that picture reality!
We don’t have choice or free will without expanded awareness, without knowing what we’re believing and the patterns we’re reacting to. This is why all the great master teachers and teachings include some form of meditation and contemplation as part of the practice. As the great Oracle of Delphi says, ‘Know Thyself.’ That’s what we must do.
We must be willing to get really honest with where we are, what we believe, and how we feel. You can’t heal what you won’t feel. That energy remains stuck, unconsciously wreaking havoc on your life. But when you bring this unconscious material to the surface and challenge it with the truth of your being — now real healing, growth, and ultimate freedom can happen.
That’s what happened with Truman. He finally confronted his deepest fears and worked through them — finally realizing they had no power to hurt him. Once he broke through this, he could keep going, past the perceived boundaries, and break out of the limited world he had grown up in.
The key to his transformation was his desire. He has a bigger vision for his life and a deep love, giving him the fuel to face his fears, overcome his foes, and keep going until he achieved his freedom!
What is that burning desire in you that you want more than anything? What are you willing to risk for, to work hard for, to face your fears and even die for? You won’t have to literally die, but some part of you will have to — the old identity, the old protective habits.
The challenge is that the human mind is designed to avoid pain and move towards pleasure. It’s an evolutionary mechanism that was designed to help the developing human survive before we had the higher levels of cognition that allowed us to think more deeply about life and our choices. But this same program that helped us survive now puts us on the verge of extinction.
To override this, we have to be willing to challenge our beliefs and experiences, to dig deeper and find out who we really are, where we really are, and why we are alive – and then to design a way of life that is in integrity with that. It’s not easy because of this survival mechanism, but it is possible – and it’s necessary if we’re going to live our full potential and highest purpose.
To begin overriding this limited program, you can start with the Prayer of Awakening: “More than I want to fix, change, heal, control anyone or anything, I want to wake up to the truth that makes me free. I want to know who and what I really am and why I’m alive. I want to see with the eyes of God, feel with the heart of God, know the truth.”
That prayer can, in and of itself, begin to bring up everything that’s in the way and even start to heal or release the limited patterns. It’s a powerful intention.
The second prayer or intention is, “I’m willing to see and feel all the things I’ve been avoiding, all the things I’ve been afraid to look at, and let everything that is not serving me anymore come up to be embraced, redeemed, transmuted, or released — come what may.”
On a regular basis, you can also ask yourself, “Where am I really? What am I really? Why am I here? What do I really believe? What do I really feel?” This will continue to make you a candidate for fresh insights and healing activations.
Remember, you can’t get to where you really want to go, to where you’re destined to go, unless you’re honest with where you really are – and willing to live here, fully present to whatever exists. That’s the journey I invite you on and welcome you to. It’s one trip where you’re guaranteed to lose your baggage on and be happy about it!
To support you in mastering this, Listen to the in-depth podcast on the subject, where we break it down and put it into real-life practice TODAY. This will be a real game-changer.
To Your Emergence!
And remember, self-help is shelf help – you have everything you need already!
Stay inspired!
Derek
Other powerful free trainings in the podcast library:
When to Stay the Course, When to Change Directions
Why ALL Your Beliefs Limit You (And What You Should Do Instead)
Why Going With the Flow is Wrong
To get these trainings now or see more episodes available, CLICK HERE!
PS – Like this episode? Please share it! Want more advanced training? Full Transcript
[The following is the full transcript of this episode of the Emergence, A Revolutionary Path for Radical Life Change, with Derek Rydall Podcast]
Greetings, everyone, my fellow Emergineers. Derek Rydall here, the founder of the Law of Emergence and author of the best-selling book, Emergence. It’s just great to be with you again as we continue this journey of never-ending, ever-expanding, always unfolding growth and potential. Just think about that. There is no limit to how much good you can realize and express. There is no limit in your body. We think about our body as being just as material thing that is limited to whatever we’ve experienced so far humanly. The body is actually infinite. It has the potential to infinitely and eternally unfold new capacities, new strengths, new talents, new gifts, new abilities, the mental body, the emotional body, the astral, the etheric, all the subtle bodies, the physical body, and your entire body of affairs. It’s that infinite potential, infinite abundance, infinite genius, infinite love, peace, joy, beauty, freedom, wisdom, creativity, infinite. No matter what feeling you have seen, no matter what your culture or your parents or your school or the world says, there’s infinite potential remaining.
It’s something to think about, because we bump into so many beliefs, so many experiences with your coagulated beliefs and the human laws, which are also just coagulated beliefs, and it’s very tempting to think this is it like in the Truman Show, the movie with Jim Carrey could not ever go beyond the water, the river, or the ocean, or whatever it was, the lake and certain places. Not to go beyond this street, this lake, because it was a fake world, it was a circumscribed world. Everybody outside of it knew, and even inside of it, except for him. He had been conditioned and grown up in this world and had experiences like almost drowning in the boat, or his brother drowning or whatever the case was, in the storm, and so he had this conditioned fear. It kept him in this circumscribed little world, until one day, because of his desire for love, for freedom, he eventually was willing to push beyond those boundaries to discover what was really true, what was really there, and ultimately became free of that particular world and discovered a whole new bigger world.
It’s also like the actual reality of the elephant that ultimately died in a circus fire. They were staked to the ground with these ropes, but they could have easily pulled the ropes out and just stormed out of the tent and would never have been hurt, but they stood there and burned to death. Why? Because as little elephants, they had been trained to believe that they couldn’t move. When they were little, they were staked with a strong rope or a chain. They would feel that, and they couldn’t move. As they got older and older even just a feeling of the tug of the rope made them think that they were still stuck, that they couldn’t move, even though they could have easily just pulled it out of the ground and trampled over everybody and stormed out. They sat there feeling the tug of the rope, believing they couldn’t move, and ultimately they didn’t have the ability to question. They didn’t have the ability to question their reality, what they were thinking or feeling, and they ended up dying. There’s many experiments like this. There’s the one with the fish in the tank where they have a fish on one side, a glass partition, and then the food on the other. The fish bumps up against the glass over and over again, can’t get to the food, eventually gives up, goes back. They remove the glass, and the fish keeps swimming in circles. It’ll swim right up to where the glass used to be, stare at the food, and then swim back and end up starving to death, even though the food was available to it the whole time. So, what does this all have to do with what we’re talking about today? I have no idea. No, I’m just kidding.
We’re talking today about Where are you really? You can’t get where you want until you’re honest with where you are. Another analogy I used for that is if you’ve ever been in the mall, a big shopping mall, and you want to get to a particular store, but you have no idea where to even start unless you look at one of those signs that has like a map of the mall, and it says You are here.It has a big X or an arrow pointing to where you are, and then you can easily go, Oh, okay, so now I know how to get to where I want to go. If I didn’t know where I was, I wouldn’t know is it the right turn or left turn, is it up, is it down, because I have no point of origin. So, we have to know where we are. The problem is, like these examples I just gave – the fish, the elephant, and Truman – is that we don’t know what we are unconsciously reacting to. We don’t know what we’re unconsciously believing. We’re not actually experiencing reality. We’re experiencing our belief about it. We’re experiencing our perceptions about it, the universal perceptions that we’ve also made personal. Like Truman, he didn’t even know he was trapped. The elephants didn’t even know that they were trapped. The fish didn’t even know that he or she could just go get the food. They didn’t realize they were reacting to an unconscious conditioned pattern. They thought they were in one place, but they were really in a very different place. By the way, as I’ve said before, there’s no real free will without this expanded awareness. You think you’re making choice, but you’re really just reacting. You think you have free rein to choose whatever you want. In fact, you really don’t. I mean, you do in truth, but you don’t have access to that level of choice until you have enough expanded awareness to see what you’ve been unconsciously reacting to, the beliefs, the condition patterns, the undigested emotional content, the beliefs of your culture, of your parents, of the society, etc. and/or the lack of the knowledge of what’s called the letter of truth, which means the spiritual principles. So, to the extent you don’t know those, and to the extent you aren’t aware of what you really think and believe and feel and perceive, to that extent, you have XY access. To that extent, there’s a corollary to how much of that you don’t know, to how limited your real freedom and real choice is, but you’re dreaming a dream that you have a choice. That’s one of the tricks of the ego, because you’re thinking you’re making all these choices and that you have free will, but really it’s doing that and keeping you circumscribed in your own little Truman show, in your own little circus tent. The challenge is that the human mind is designed to avoid pain and move towards pleasure, which is one of the ways they train an animal, right? They crack the whip, or they give it food. When it does the thing they want to condition it to, they give it food. When it doesn’t do the thing they want to condition it to, they crack the whip, and eventually the animal develops that pattern, that habit, that conditioning through pain and pleasure. Eventually, that becomes its reality. The same exact thing is happened to us.
By the way, as I’ve said before, there’s no real free will without this expanded awareness. You think you’re making choice, but you’re really just reacting. You think you have free rein to choose whatever you want. In fact, you really don’t. I mean, you do in truth, but you don’t have access to that level of choice until you have enough expanded awareness to see what you’ve been unconsciously reacting to, the beliefs, the condition patterns, the undigested emotional content, the beliefs of your culture, of your parents, of the society, etc. and/or the lack of the knowledge of what’s called the letter of truth, which means the spiritual principles. So, to the extent you don’t know those, and to the extent you aren’t aware of what you really think and believe and feel and perceive, to that extent, you have XY access. To that extent, there’s a corollary to how much of that you don’t know, to how limited your real freedom and real choice is, but you’re dreaming a dream that you have a choice. That’s one of the tricks of the ego, because you’re thinking you’re making all these choices and that you have free will, but really it’s doing that and keeping you circumscribed in your own little Truman show, in your own little circus tent. The challenge is that the human mind is designed to avoid pain and move towards pleasure, which is one of the ways they train an animal, right? They crack the whip, or they give it food. When it does the thing they want to condition it to, they give it food. When it doesn’t do the thing they want to condition it to, they crack the whip, and eventually the animal develops that pattern, that habit, that conditioning through pain and pleasure. Eventually, that becomes its reality. The same exact thing is happened to us.
So, the challenge is then to subvert or override that mechanism. We have to actually do what is completely counterintuitive and counter to our human nature which is to not participate in the pain and pleasure mechanism, to not let our mere pleasure and our movement towards feeling good, determine what we’re willing to look at and challenge, and to not let our fear of feeling pain, which can feel like more than just a fear. It can feel like a matter of survival, because the ego doesn’t know the difference between emotional pain and physical danger. We have to override that whole evolutionary mechanism, which can really feel like we’re crazy, like we’re going against our nature. It’s there initially as a way to help these organisms that did not have high level of cognition, that were just much more reactionary before our brain was developed. There had to be a way that this human species could survive. It had to be like an animal, which is to basically avoid pain and danger and move towards pleasure. Moving towards pleasure would mean sex, would mean procreation, would mean food, would mean survival, would mean moving away from pain, would be avoiding anything that had a sign of danger which could lead to being hurt, being killed. It’s a good idea when you got a developing species that does not have the capacity to think about what it’s thinking about, metacognition. It doesn’t have self-consciousness, so it can’t go, Well, it looks like that dangerous, but let me investigate it. We couldn’t do that, so we have the ability to just be moving around like an animal with instinct, move away from pain, and move towards pleasure. It helped. It allowed us to survive. It allowed us to ultimately populate the planet.
Now, that same mechanism is preventing us from evolving and growing outside of our circumscribed little world. So, we have to override that. That can feel really hard, really challenging, really scary. Everything in our body and mind can try to convince us that we shouldn’t go that way, because we’re not used to that. It just seems like a very dark mysterious place to go to. It’s like that analogy of the guy that’s outside of his house searching for his key, and his neighbor said, Where did you lose it? The guy is like looking in all the bushes under the street lamp. The neighbor is helping him. After an hour, the neighbor said, Where did you lose the key? because they’ve been looking all over. The guy said, Well, I lost it inside the house, but the light is better out here. So, that’s the way we are. It’s dark and scary to go into the mystery, the cave of mystery, the cave of our evolutionary potential and really discover where am I really. Then, you get into a spiritual path, and you learn about visualization and affirmation and all these feel-good tools, which are beautiful, but then the ego uses them to cover us what we really feel, to cover up what we really believe. So, you’ll hear people saying, Well, no, I mean I know God is all there is but…͟ and then you’ll hear me say, Ah, ah, ah, no, you don’t really know God is all there is.That’s just a nice concept and an affirmation to cover up the fact that you really believe you’re lost and alone in a cold and unfriendly Universe. So, let’s get down to what you really believe. Why? Because you can’t get to where you really want to go if you aren’t honest with where you really are. You can’t heal what you’re not willing to feel. That doesn’t mean you necessarily have to feel every little grain of emotion you’ve ever experienced, but it definitely means you have to be willing, open, available, and to really look at your beliefs.
Again, this is very counter human nature. People go to war for their beliefs. People kills for their beliefs. People bomb abortion clinics and beat people up and stand on a pulpit and rain fire and brimstone down on a congregation and scare them into their little caves of limited belief to fight for belief. To say I’m going to question all of my believes, especially my core one, the mind is going to think you’re crazy, and it’s going to feel very dangerous, but if you really want to wake up, and you really want to be free and you really want to have free will and choice, you must. You must shine the light of your awareness into the dark cave of your consciousness and see what’s really lurking there. Only then can you transmute that energy, those undigested emotions. Can you question those limited beliefs? It may not even seem limited at first. Truman doesn’t know he’s living in a limited world. That’s the trick of it, right? We don’t realize even the greatest human life is living in limitation compared to what’s possible. We have to stay open at the top. We have to stay beginner’s mind, students, and question everything, like a little kid does before they start to get solidified beliefs. Why is the sky blue? Why? Why is that? What is happening there? Why is the Grand Canyon look like that? Why do dogs sniff each other’s butts? So many things they’ve got to question. A kid does that until they get either told, Stop asking so many questions or The sky is just blue because it’s blue or we just get told complete BS, right? Belief Systems. Eventually, we just buy it. We believe it, either through pain or fear or shame or survival or exhaustion. We just buy into things, and we go along, and we try to live our lives within those programs. We wonder why we hit feelings and we got stuck and we can’t get to the next level. We’re experiencing things, limitations that others don’t.
So, we have to be willing to look. We have to have the courage to really look, because remember the ego perceives pain. Because we perceive certain things as painful, we have assigned the meaning that it’s dangerous, that it’s shameful, that it’s scary, that it’s painful, and then we have to create a coping mechanism to not feel that feeling anymore. We’ve talked about this with the shadow work, and it’s how we developed our shadows or the values conflicts. One of my friends, Jeffrey Van Dyke, I think it’s one of the most brilliant definitions of wounds. I’m paraphrasing, but he says, A wound is when you have to believe a lie in order to survive. There’s something that is inherently against your soul’s knowing of who you really are. The parent says, Rich people are whatever or says something, If you don’t go to church, you’re going to be burned in hell or just something about you, We’re just a family of people that aren’t very creative or You can’t make it as an artist. Artists live below the poverty level. Something. Maybe you’re standing up and asking for what you really want, and your parent shames you into believing that’s being selfish and a bad person. In your soul, you know that’s not true, but the threat of pain and danger and rejection if you keep believing that truth and knowing that truth becomes so painful that you have to eventually decide to believe that you really aren’t creative, that you really are a bad person, that whatever the case may be so that you can continue to survive and be taken care of and ultimately make it in this world. That’s a wounding. I call that core wounding, also a core initiation, because it’s really setting you up to have a deeper journey of transformation. It’s setting you on a journey to dig deeper and discover something about yourself that you’re here to discover and ultimately bring that wisdom to the world.
So, we create these coping mechanisms. They become very well-developed over time to where we literally don’t feel all the emotional pain that’s going on inside of us anymore. Believe me, it’s still going on inside of you, and it’s still running the show. It’s taking the potential currency that’s coming in everyday for you to invest in your life. It’s using it up to keep that emotional pain alive. You have to create a coping mechanism, some form of habit or compulsive behavior, mental, emotional, physical behaviors to keep that emotional pain out of consciousness. That’s also using up a lot of your energy and capacity. Whatever is left over, that’s all you’ve got now to create your life. If you’ve got so many of these going on, you not only have very little left over, you end up in energetic death. You have to start pulling it from the cells of your body, from other people. You become like an energy vampire, so there’s an extreme version of that. In any case, you’re stuck at certain levels, because you have to use all this energy to keep this old level alive, but you don’t even know you’re doing it. You beat your head against the wall, you try more affirmations, more visualization, more this, more that, but as Debbie Ford, the great teacher of shadow work, once said, That’s like putting ice cream on top of poop. It temporarily makes it look a little prettier, but you do not want to bite it to that sundae. I’m sorry, guys. I’m in a funny mood today, so I’m saying some pretty funny things, some crap things, but you get the point, right? You’re not going to forget that analogy. That’s the key. We have to have the courage to override this system and to really, really discover, where am I really? There’s two prayers. One prayer is, more than I want to fix, change, heal, control anyone or anything, I want to wake up to the truth that makes me free. I want to know who and what I really am and why I’m alive. I want to see with the eyes of God, feel with the heart of God, know the truth. So, that’s one prayer. That prayer can, in and of itself, if you pray it and intend it sincerely and daily, can begin to bring up everything that’s in the way, these unconscious patterns. That’s one approach. That’s just going straight to the truth. Notice within that prayer, it’s saying more than I want to fix, change, heal, manipulate, control, which are all based on coping mechanisms. More than any of that, I want to know the truth that makes me free. What that’s setting us up to is to override those coping mechanisms and ultimately have a realization of what’s really true about us and about life. Often that will bring up those coping mechanisms as they get broken down and chemicalized and start to come to the surface.
That’s the key. We have to have the courage to override this system and to really, really discover, where am I really? There’s two prayers. One prayer is, more than I want to fix, change, heal, control anyone or anything, I want to wake up to the truth that makes me free. I want to know who and what I really am and why I’m alive. I want to see with the eyes of God, feel with the heart of God, know the truth. So, that’s one prayer. That prayer can, in and of itself, if you pray it and intend it sincerely and daily, can begin to bring up everything that’s in the way, these unconscious patterns. That’s one approach. That’s just going straight to the truth. Notice within that prayer, it’s saying more than I want to fix, change, heal, manipulate, control, which are all based on coping mechanisms. More than any of that, I want to know the truth that makes me free. What that’s setting us up to is to override those coping mechanisms and ultimately have a realization of what’s really true about us and about life. Often that will bring up those coping mechanisms as they get broken down and chemicalized and start to come to the surface.
If that’s not enough, sometimes we really do need to also set the intention of the prayer, which is God, life, I’m willing to see and feel all the things I’ve been avoiding, seeing and feeling. I’m willing to see and feel all the things I’ve been afraid to see and feel, the things I’ve been afraid to look at. I’m willing to let everything that is not serving me anymore come up to be seen, to be embraced, to be redeemed or transmuted, all the undigested emotions, all of the uninvestigated beliefs. I’m willing to really see where I am in consciousness, to really feel where I am in consciousness and do the work to heal it, to redeem it, to transmute it, to let it go. Come what may. I’m willing to let go of all of my coping mechanisms, all of my attempts to control and manipulate and refresh and to really see where I really am emotionally, mentally, so that I can ultimately heal, release and know the deeper truth that makes me free and fulfill my greater destiny.
That becomes our prayer, our mantra, our intention. We’re willing, we’re available, we’re open. That alone can start the engine of transformation if you do it with sincerity and with consistency. I know that I recently have become aware that there’s undigested repressed anger in me from several years of me saying yes when I really needed to say no, from me being more of a doormat when I really needed to stand up in family and relationship, and that I was trying to be the nice guy, the good guy, keep the peace, and I realized that all of that left a lot of deposits of unexpressed energy as emotion or pain or that sort of thing. It starts to leak out in certain conversations I would hear in my mind or dreams. I begin to set the prayer. Let all that unconscious emotional stuff come up, so that I can redeem it, transmute it. Sure enough, I started to experience tremendous amounts of anger and sadness, and things came to the surface. The key thing is that it was always there, doing its damage in my system or limiting my capacity, and I just had not been willing to really feel it or look at it, because I had a belief, a shadow around being angry, at least that was years ago. That’s why I didn’t express it, but all that was still undigested. We have to have that level of courage and commitment to really grow, and it might be awkward, and it might be messy at times. You might be a neurotic mess as you start to see this stuff and let this stuff come up. You might find yourself snapping at people or breaking down and crying like Holly Hunter in Broadcast News, everyday wake up and just sob, and then go on with her day. You might find yourself in various states of emotional upheaval or suddenly seeing these beliefs you bought into in being angry or being scared or sad, but having the courage to move through it. That’s what it really takes to grow.
We have to realize that we’ve developed a lot of really good coping mechanisms. We’ve learned how to anesthetize ourselves from what we really feel. We’ve learned how to cover over our real beliefs with stories, excuses and affirmations. You can always see where you’re doing that or attempting to do that when you find yourself saying, I believe this but…͟ or like I said before, I know that I’m supported by the Universe, but whenever you find yourself thinking that or saying that, that’s a sure sign that you have a belief that you’re using to cover up what you really believe and ultimately what you really feel –the fear or the sadness or the shame about what you really believe about life or about yourself. You can’t heal that if you’re not willing to feel bad. Again, it doesn’t mean you’re going to have to feel everything. It just means you have to be willing, you have to be available to let the energy move. I invite you to take a moment right now and look at an area where you’re struggling to overcome or achieve something. What you want to begin to do as you do this process is you can look at all the dimensions of a thing. So, what do you believe about the thing? What do you believe about yourself in relation to the thing? What do you believe about the people involved? What do you believe what they think about you? What do you believe about the world of the thing? What do you believe about the world in general in that context? So, you’re looking at the dimensions of what you believe about the thing.
Let’s say your issue is you’re struggling financially. What you believe about that situation, for real? Not, Oh, God is all there is and I’m truly supported. What do you really believe? What you believe about yourself in relationship to that financial struggle? Not just Oh, I’m doing my best. I’m trying hard. Nothing is working. No, that’s not a belief. What do you believe about yourself? I just don’t understand money. I just don’t know how to do financial stuff. I’m just a loser and a failure around it. My parents said women weren’t any good at that. Okay, what do you believe about the people involved? So, that’s where we start to uncover. Well, I believe that my boss is being a jerk, and he should pay me more or The people that taught me how to do this coaching thing are stupid. It doesn’t work. They’re scam artists. What do you believe about that they think about you, that whatever people involved? Oh, my family thinks I’m a loser, I’m a failure, etc. etc. What do you believe about the world of the thing?
So, now, we expand out a little bit. So, in general, what do you believe about money and finances and bill paying or whatever? Then, you start to go, Well, actually, I think it’s all a bunch of BS. This whole capitalist model is completely wrong. The government should be taking care of…͟ Whatever, right? You start to discover, Wow, that’s what I really believe about it. You might discover I hate money. I think money is the root of all evil. I think like that might have something to do with why I’m broke or struggling. I think that people that have money are usually jerks and mean and insensitive and don’t care about other people. Okay. That might have something to do with why you don’t have a lot of it, because you don’t want to be that kind of a person. What do you believe about the world in general? When you’re in the midst of this now, unpacking it, you ask that question, and you’ll come up with the world is unfair, it’s dog eat dog; it’s every man for himself, or whatever, and you’ll start to discover some beliefs in that arena about the world in general. In other words, that’s the context in which this experience has happened.
So, you start to unpack that. Again, the dimensions are what do you believe about the thing? What do you believe about yourself in relation to the thing? What do you believe about the people involved? They can be directly involved or indirectly involved, just anybody that pops up in your awareness when you’re thinking about that. What do you believe they think about you in relation to the situation? What do you believe about the world of the thing? Then, finally, what do you believe about the world in general within the context of that thing? I’m not expecting you to do all this work right now, but play with it while we’re talking. Start to unpack it a little bit. Again, your intention is, what do I really believe about it? Not what I convinced myself, what am I trying to convince myself of, what does the world say it is, what does Derek say it is? What do I really believe about it? I’m willing to see the truth, even if it’s scary, even if it hurts. What do you really believe about your chances to overcome that or achieve that, whatever the thing is? What do you really believe? I don’t think I’ll ever get out of this mess. I don’t believe I’ll ever really make enough money to pay my bills. Really get honest. Maybe there’s some truth that you’re affirming. I’m supported. Life is for me. What do you really believe about that truth? I think it’s bunch of bullshit, right? You got to get honest. I don’t really believe life is for me. Great. That’s a great start, because as you’re sitting there affirming it about what you really believe is it’s not true, you’re actually affirming the opposite of what you’re saying.
So, what do you really believe? Do you believe in lack? Do you believe in limitation? Do you believe in injustice disease, death? Do you believe these are real things that exist that we have to struggle with? Because if you believe in any of those kinds of things, then you create them as a real obstacle, and now you have to overcome them. If you don’t even realize that you actually believe in lack, because you keep affirming and telling yourself, I’m abundant. I’m abundant. There’s abundance. There’s abundance but what you really believe in is lack. That’s like Sisyphus pushing a bolder up a hill, and then eventually he gets exhausted and the ball pulls back down again, rolls over him. He has to pick it up and push it back up again. You’ve got one foot on the brake and one foot on the gas. You want to really ask that. Then, you go back to that, and you now ask the same questions about how you really feel. How do I really feel about this thing, this situation? How do I really feel about myself in relationship to it? How do I really feel about the people involved, about what they think of me, about the world of this thing, about the world in general? Now, you unpack the feeling. This, for some of us, is even scarier, because you start to go, You know what, I’m really effing angry. I am so, so hurt. I’m so ashamed. I’m so freaking scared. I feel like such an abysmal failure. It just feels like you’re getting sucked into a bottomless pit of emotion. That’s one of the reasons why you don’t go there. It just feels bad, but you can’t heal what you don’t feel.
So, you have to begin to codify it. You have to begin to become conscious of it. There’s the saying, You shall know the truth, and the truth will make you free.It’s true, but it doesn’t just say the truth will make you free. It says you have to know the truth. Truth is all there is, but it doesn’t do you any good until you know it. Just like electricity is everywhere. It doesn’t do you any good until you plug into it. So, the fact that all there is life, love and truth, that does no good unless we’re plugged into it, unless we are consciously knowing it, aware of it, participating it. The same thing is true with healing. It’s the things that we’re unwilling to look at and become conscious of. We cannot ultimately heal or redeem or transmute, because if we’re not willing to look at them it means we’re in resistance to them. What you resist persists. What you fight you fuel. These parts of us, these egoic parts, they know that as long as they remain unconscious, they can survive and even thrive. They can live off of our energy and off of our fears and all of our emotional stuff. As long as they remain unconscious, like the little creatures that scurry around in the dark tunnels, under our front lawn or whatever, or in the sewers, as long as they remain in the dark, they can do their stuff, spread their disease, eat at the roots of our plants and trees, and go on unabated, but the minute we shine a light down those holes, and we bring it all to consciousness, they scurry to the surface, and now we can trap them, stop them, ultimately destroy them or integrate in the case of our own beliefs and feelings.
So, the coping mechanisms are very successful in keeping a lot of this stuff unconscious, so that it can survive. Once it’s brought into the light of our awareness, with consistency, it cannot survive. This is what the Biblical passage of, You cannot see the face of God and live. What it means is you cannot stare into the face of truth, the light, the fire of truth and continue to be the same person you were. It will burn away the false self. It will burn away, and it will transform you and reveal who you really are. The ego knows that, and to the ego that’s death. It’s working very hard to not let you discover where you really are, how you really think, what you really feel, because it knows that will begin the process of dying, of dying to the old self that you may be reborn to your true self. The ego is working 24/7 to prevent. It thinks it’s keeping you alive. It’s just keeping those patterns alive by keeping them in the dark. Your charge now is to no longer allow that to go unabated, but to be willing and courageous, truly heroic enough to discover where you really are, what you really believe, what you really think, and what you really feel. Now, you can do the real work around those beliefs and feelings. You can do the shadow work. You can do the mindful meditation practice where you just sit with the feelings and observe them, but don’t become lost in them. That’s important. We’re not saying feel the feelings and become indulgent and get lost with them. We’re saying let it come to the surface, so you can shine the light of your awareness on it and transmute it and redeem it. Don’t indulge in it. You observe. You feel it, but you allow yourself to be the witness of the feeling the same with the beliefs. Then, you specifically create affirmations or vision, visualization that represents the opposite, or the truth versus your limited belief. You continue to work with the limited belief to redeem and transmute the energy of it.
Do the shadow work through values conflict work, etc. You start to then notice when you start to do certain compulsive behaviors, like eating when you’re not hungry, eating more than you really need, working so much and never taking a break, and never giving yourself a break. You just start to notice, when do I start to feel constricted, when do I start to do things that are not fully serving or honoring me or others. Let me stop and let me question what’s really going on there. What am I really feeling? You’ll always discover there’s some kind of emotion there. What am I really believing? Well, I can’t just stop or slow down or take a break. It’s scary sometimes to stop and not eat that thing or not keep working on that thing or not keep doing all the stuff we’re doing, exercising, overexercising, overshopping, over whatever, overeating, overworking. It’s scary to stop, because there’s like this deep sense of void or a darkness or a fear or emptiness that we have to confront. We’ve been working so hard to not, and it does feel counterintuitive. It does feel almost destructive, almost just wrong to stop and let ourselves feel how terrible we feel. We have to override that temptation to avoid it. That’s the real path of awakening and mastery. At the same time, we don’t want to become indulgent in the content of our consciousness, so we have to also be simultaneously praying that prayer and saying that intention and doing the work to know the Truth. We’ve been talking about the truth with the little t, but we want to know the truth with the capital T. So we want to become really aware of the letter of truth, truth principles. That way we start to have a compass or a barometer to measure our beliefs against, so that when we come up against the belief that says, well, you’re such and such an age, at this point, things start going downhill mentally, physically, creatively, whatever. You can go, that feels true, and I certainly have a lot of people in society that will back me up in
At the same time, we don’t want to become indulgent in the content of our consciousness, so we have to also be simultaneously praying that prayer and saying that intention and doing the work to know the Truth. We’ve been talking about the truth with the little t, but we want to know the truth with the capital T. So we want to become really aware of the letter of truth, truth principles. That way we start to have a compass or a barometer to measure our beliefs against, so that when we come up against the belief that says, well, you’re such and such an age, at this point, things start going downhill mentally, physically, creatively, whatever. You can go, that feels true, and I certainly have a lot of people in society that will back me up in medical industry and whatever, but is it true? Let me go and look at the truth principle. Let me see if I can find anywhere in principle where this is true.
If you don’t know what the truth principles are, then that shows you where you need to do research, where you need to ask questions and investigate. What is the spiritual principle and truth about the body? Well, if the divine intelligence made everything out of itself, and its nature is infinite and omniscient and omnipotent and omnipresent, there can’t be anything outside of God. There can’t be any other substance or power or creative principle. God is all that there really is. God made all that is. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and God made all that was made out of the Word, and nothing was made without the Word, and God saw it all and named it good, or as the Course In Miracles says, Nothing real can be damaged, nothing unreal exists. Okay, so then God made the body, because if God didn’t make it, it was never made. So this divine intelligence must have made it, and if divine infinite, omnipotent, omniscient, eternal, immortal intelligence made something, then its nature must be infinite, immortal, and eternal as well. This body must be as eternal and immortal and infinite as God. Oh, yeah, it says that the body is the temple of the living spirit. Okay, so then this belief that says at this age, it should start diminishing is just a belief. It’s not in principle at all.
So, do you see what I’m doing? I’m working through it to see where have I bought in to something that’s not true, but I might have to go study the letter of truth to discover what is principle there. The same thing with finances and abundance. Again, the same principle, if the nature of it is infinite, immortal and eternal, then my dollar bills in my bank or the lack thereof isn’t telling me how much abundance I have. If I’m a unique expression of this one life, then my capacity must be the same as God’s capacity. I must have infinite supply, infinite abundance. If this is only God expressing, the one appearing as the many, like the one tree with its many branches, then if Bill Gates or Oprah or anybody else could have a lot of abundance, then the same abundance must be right where I am, uniquely expressing as this branch on the tree.
You just start to play with the truth principles and compare them against your belief systems, and you start to call it for what it really is. Then, once you really know the truth principle, you can look at these beliefs and say, if they’re telling you anything less than that you are infinite, immortal, eternal, whole, complete, perfect, fulfilled, free, fully-expressed, beautiful, bountiful, abundant, bold, powerful, brilliant expression of life, love, peace, joy, health, and abundant, if these beliefs are telling you anything less than that, they’re a lie. You can look into that and say, you’re a liar, and the father of even more lies. You can’t do that if you’re not consciously excavating them, and you’re not consciously seeking to know the truth principles. This must become a part of your practice. You must become contemplative and have the courage. This is real heroism. Certainly it’s heroic to go on the battlefield and to run into a burning building, but this is the ultimate heroism.
So, I invite you on this path of becoming a hero in your own life and in your own work to begin to ask – Where am I really? What do I really believe? What do I really feel? Understand that you cannot get to where you really want to go, to where you’re destined to go unless you’re honest with where you really are. So, I hope that serves you, inspires you, opened you up, and now you have to do the work. It’s the work play.
by sublimity-001-main | Jan 11, 2024 | 2023, Emergence, Healing, Podcast, Spiritual Growth, Tools
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This is an issue that has always been part of human culture, but with the ability of so many people to comment anonymously online, our need to deal with criticism and the haters has been greatly magnified.
There’s a thing in the UK called ‘Tall Poppy Syndrome,’ which is based on the need to cut off the top of a poppy if it grows above the rest — to create uniformity. But it also applies to people — if someone gets too big and rises above the rest, there is an impulse to cut them down. When people start to outgrow the tribe, then members of the tribe seek to pull them back down so that they can feel safe and secure.
The key thing to remember from the standpoint of Emergence is that everything, without exception, is there to serve you. You are creating your own Universe, and so everything, if you’re willing to practice this way and to live in this framework, is there to serve your awakening, empowerment, and evolution — to make you an ever stronger instrument of what you’re here to do, be and share.
You’ve got to start there. Everything is here to serve me. So the question doesn’t become, “Why is this happening to me?” , but, “How is this serving me?” “How is this making me stronger?”, “How is this activating something in me, and what is the greater potential it’s activating in me?”
Whenever somebody is criticizing you, especially when it’s truly unfair, unjust or unfounded, there is a very powerful opportunity for you to become more anchored in your truth. It’s the opportunity to build that inner soul stamina, that inner muscle of knowing who you are, and of valuing yourself — which ultimately will inoculate you from the limited thought viruses of the world.
If you understand the shadow work, anything that pushes or pulls you is a projection of your unintegrated potential or power. That works both ways — anything that is pushing your buttons, which are the haters or the criticisms, is really an unconscious judgment you have about a part of yourself.
When you are criticized and it’s making you feel like you need to fight for your right or defend your perspective, and convince them that it’s not true, it’s because there’s a part of you that actually believes it. (It’s also possible that there’s a part of you that actually does have that element to some degree.) To become truly free and empowered requires you to look at this part, understand, embrace, and integrate it.
For example, somebody calls you selfish, and you might respond, “I’m not selfish! I’m one of the most giving people I know. I’m always helping you. I’m always doing this for you.” You find yourself going through a list of all the ways you’re such a giving selfless person. This is just defense, resistance, and actually anchors the shame and judgment even deeper.
Instead, you want to stop and contemplate if there is any truth to it – “Let me see where in my life am I selfish.”This immediately starts to diffuse the criticism, especially if you do it in front of a someone whose criticized you, instead of defending yourself. You actually start to look for where you’re selfish, and you’ll find something. If you don’t find the way you are overtly selfish to others, then you want to look internally and see where you’re selfish with yourself. You’re not doing this to beat yourself up, but because it’s showing up in your life as feedback. Don’t just dismiss it.
The next thing you look at is the particular judgment, the shadow, and see where you might have some baggage around it. For example, let’s say you’re becoming successful, getting in shape, or growing in some positive way, and some people tell you, “Oh, you’re so greedy. You’re so self-important.” If you’re a spiritual teacher or artist, you might hear things like, “How could you try to make money off spirituality or art? That’s so unspiritual…art, music, information — these should all openly available to everyone. You should be charging much less or giving it away for free!”
To key is to see where you harbor judgments, fears, beliefs of limitations around this area. It’s showing up as criticism so you can clear it and embody the truth of it — that means, first, seeing where you might be out of integrity, and second, seeing where you have unconscious limiting beliefs, shadows or values conflicts that are sabotaging your ability to really grow or succeed in this area. It’s like the beginning of a weed that’s going to eventually grow up and choke the plant. This might be a blessing in disguise.
By being willing to examine your judgments and shadows you begin to clean up your side of the street and become even more in integrity, more in alignment with who or what you really are. As you ask yourself, “How is this here to truly serve my greater purpose and potential?”, you will begin to tap into a vision for your life where you start to see that this is showing up to make you stronger and more resilient. You begin to access and activate latent powers, gifts, talents and abilities.
That’s the gift of criticism. And what an awesome gift it is!
To support you in mastering this, listen to the in-depth podcast on the subject, where we break it down and put it into real-life practice TODAY. This will be a real game-changer.
To Your Emergence!
Stay inspired!
Derek
Other powerful free trainings in the podcast library:
Where are You REALLY?
When to Stay the Course, When to Change Directions
Why ALL Your Beliefs Limit You (And What You Should Do Instead)
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Full Transcript
[The following is the full transcript of this episode of the Emergence, A Revolutionary Path for Radical Life Change, with Derek Rydall Podcast]
Welcome to another episode of Ask Derek on this journey of Emergence, where we deal with the question today How do you deal with the haters? Otherwise known as the gift of criticism. This is something that is always been a part of culture, people that criticize people, that hate on people, that try to cut people down. In the UK, there’s a saying for the tall poppy syndrome. If a poppy gets too big above the rest, it gets lopped off at the head. When people get too big amongst the tribe, then the rest of the individuals on some levels seek to pull them back down to match everybody else. They’re such a general kind of thing that one ego likes to bring another ego down and ultimately be at the very least equal and ideally less than, or if you’ve been wounded then actually you bring yourself down, but that’s a whole other topic. Nowadays, with internet and with so much public expression of ourselves and so much public exposure and so many people online that can comment anonymously, this problem of dealing with criticism and the haters, also called the trolls, is just much, much bigger, and I would submit that it’s not that the problem itself or the issue itself has changed, it’s just that it becomes magnified, but it’s always been in the human psyche.
The key thing to remember from the standpoint of Emergence and this work is that everything, without exception, is there to serve you. You are creating your own Universe, and so everything, without exception, if you’re willing to practice this way and to live in this framework, is there to serve your awakening, your empowering, your evolution to make you an ever stronger, pure instrument of what you’re really here to do and to be and the gifts you’re here to give. You’ve got to start there. You’ve got to always come back to there. Everything is here to serve me. So the question doesn’t become, why is this happening to me, but how is this serving me? How is this making me stronger? How is this activating something in me, and what is the greater potential it’s activating in me? Whenever somebody is hating on you, is criticizing you, especially when it’s truly unfair or unjust or unfounded, then there is a very powerful opportunity for you to become really anchored in the truth of who and what you really are and build that inner soul stamina, that inner muscle of knowing who you are, of valuing yourself, of not being inoculated or immune to the feedback and the criticisms of the world.
There’s another side topic to this, which I won’t go into today, but it’s important to know that ultimately you want to become free of all opinions, good ones and the bad ones. So even those that are praising you, you ultimately want to become free of those too. For one thing, much praise is really a projection. If you understand the shadow work, anything that pushes or pulls you is a projection of your unintegrated potential or power. That works both ways, so anything that is pushing your buttons, which are the haters or the criticisms, is really an unconscious judgment you have about a part of yourself. We’ll talk about that in a moment. Anything that pulls you, those people you greatly admire, those people you find yourself praising, is really also a projection of an unintegrated, unidentified part of your own power. When other people are praising you, often, they’re projecting their disowned power. That’s why, especially if you’re in some role of leadership, authority, expert, teacher, etc. and that begins to happen, or healer, or therapist, at some point, projection happens, or otherwise, it’s been called transference. They start to either reject you or praise you, criticize you or praise. Both are equally false. Both are equally their projection. When it’s criticism, your job is to not defend and fight and prove your point, but to look within yourself and find that part of yourself where you hold that criticism, where you have that shadow. When it’s praise, your job is to notice your own proclivity, the one that grabbed on to that.
Now, that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t receive the love and the compliments. Let it in. Let all the love in, but if you’re in authority position, you want to give it back to them. You don’t want people to become followers. You want to empower them to become their own leaders. When they start projecting their power on you, you want to not so much reject their compliment, accept it, but also remind them that whatever good they see in you, especially where they feel incredibly praiseworthy, is really a reflection of good that’s within them, that they perhaps have not fully owned, and that this is an opportunity to own it. So, the entire star system, celebrity, athletes, all of that, is made of that. It’s made up of a projection of our disowned power. Praise and criticism are equally projections, and ultimately we want to become free of both of them.
We’re talking about the haters today. We’re talking about the gift of criticism, and so we come back to the shadow again and understand that if anybody is criticizing you or hating on you, and it’s making you feel like you need to fight for your right, you need to defend your prospective, you need to set them straight, you need to convince them that it’s not true or convince other people that it’s not true, it’s because there’s a part of you that actually believes it. It’s also possible that there’s a part of you that actually does have that element to some degree. For example, somebody calls you selfish, and you might go, I’m not selfish. I’m one of the most giving people I know. I’m always helping you. I’m always doing this for you. You find yourself going through a list of all the ways you’re such a giving selfless person. The first thing you want to do is stop and go, Let me take that feedback in and let me see is there any truth to it. Criticism is never True. It’s not ultimate truth, but you want to look and see Is there any truth to it? Let me see where in my life am I selfish.
First of all, this immediately starts to diffuse the criticism, especially if you do it in person in front of them, instead of defending yourself. You actually start to look for where you’re selfish, and you’ll find something. If you don’t find the way you are overtly selfish to others, then you want to look internally and see where am I selfish with myself? When somebody says you’re greedy, and you’re like one of the most generous people you know, where am I greedy? You look, and you’ll find something. That’s the first step. Find out where there’s some truth to it, not to beat yourself up, but because it’s showing up in your life as feedback. Don’t just dismiss it. Of course, sometimes, feedback is not simply you’re being selfish. It’s things like, you’re a complete waste of humanity. You’re a waste of human space, and in that case, it’s going to be hard to go, Where am I a waste of human space? Now, you might find something as the old axiom goes, If you’re not living on the edge, you’re taking up too much space. You might actually go, Well, I do waste time just surfing the internet. I gossip with my friends sometimes, just meaningless gossip that adds no value to anybody’s life. You know what, that is a waste of human space. That is a waste of time. In that moment, I am wasting my life and their life. That might be valuable to discover that, to clean that up.
The next thing you look at is, Okay, let me look at that particular judgment, that shadow, and see where I might have some baggage around that. For example, let’s say you are becoming successful or you’re endeavoring to be successful and make more money in your life, and some people come out and tell you, Oh, you’re so greedy. You’re so self-important. If you’re a consciousness or spiritual teacher or thought leader, you’ll get the kind of criticisms of how could you try to make money off spirituality. That’s so unspiritual. That’s so unconscious. That’s so mean or insensitive. You should be charging much, much less or giving it away for free, etc. If you are really a spiritual teacher, you wouldn’t charge anything. That’s a very big thing of baggage in this arena. You can go and look at that and see where do you hold some personal judgments about people that make a lot of money, or people that make money with spirituality, or people that are really successful. You can begin to see how you also harbor some udgments around that, some fears around that, some beliefs of limitation around that. They’re showing up so that you can clean it out, so that you can first of all see where you might be out of integrity, and second of all see where you have unconscious limiting beliefs or shadows or values conflicts that are sabotaging your ability to really grow or to really succeed or they will. It’s like the beginning of a weed that’s going to eventually grow up and choke the plant. This might be a blessing in disguise. This is a gift of criticism.
You can begin to clean up your side of the street and become even more in integrity, more in alignment with who or what you really are, and you can begin to access and activate latent powers, gifts, talents and abilities. I won’t go into the whole shadow process here, but you can certainly check out when I talk about shadow work or values conflict in other podcasts. You can go to DerekRydall.com/ShadowProcess and download a free audio process around the shadow. You can also grab the Shadow Dancing program if you really want to master shadow work. So, you first want to acknowledge where there might be some truth, so you can come back into greater integrity. You want to then acknowledge where you might have judgments and baggage around this particular part of you, so that you can begin to clean it up and activate that disowned power and capacity through the shadow work. Finally, as you ask how is this here to truly serve my greater purpose, my greater potential, you will begin to tap into a vision for your life where you start to see that this is showing up to make you stronger, more resilient, so that you can give your gifts and speak your truth, and share your work and your message, whether it’s in your family or in relationships or in the world, in bigger and bigger platforms and bigger and bigger ways where there will be even more potential for attack and criticism.
Let’s just say right now you’re just starting out, and perhaps your circle of influence is relatively small, and so there’s not a lot of people that are exposed you or your message or your work or your opinions, and it’s not challenging you that much. If you are to suddenly get a large global platform or suddenly be in front of a large audience or suddenly be exposed in some much grander way, a hundred times where you are right now, the amount of feedback, criticism, opinions would most likely just crush you, because you don’t have the inner fortitude or stamina or resilience or consciousness that’s been developed to handle that. When I was just walking around in high school, if anybody had an opinion about me, it took me out for a period of time. Now, I’m exposed to tens of thousands of people or more a year, and there’s plenty of opinion. It’s not that it doesn’t sometimes still bother me a little bit, but it’s mostly because I’m sad by the lack of compassion and the ignorance of other people when they are just haters. I don’t mind constructive criticism, and you shouldn’t either, when it’s just trolling, when it’s just hating, when it’s just venting and it has no value. My level of resilience and my ability to handle it is much, much stronger. Sometimes people are like, How do you deal with that? How do you handle that? hence this question – how do you deal with the haters? It’s because I’ve been practicing. I’ve been exercising my capacity to love myself, value myself, forgive myself and be humble enough to look at these places in me that aren’t in integrity and that do have judgments and baggage and shadows.
Have I completely cleaned myself out of all of this? Absolutely not. In fact, one of the things that inspired me to do this podcast and answer this question now is because in recent months, the last year or so, I’ve been growing through a period where in the realm of family and friends and social circles, I became a target for certain stories and beliefs and opinions and perceptions that in my opinion are not true, and in fact are blatantly false and could be extremely hurtful, and in fact have been hurtful a few times. I noticed for the first time in a long time, I felt the need to want to convince other people that these stories and things weren’t true, whereas in the larger world, I had become relatively inoculated. I don’t mean if I was to suddenly be on the global stage, in the global media, that I would be immune to that level of feedback, but I get enough feedback to see that I’m pretty strong in that area. What I discovered was that in my personal life, with family and friends and the larger circle, that I was not immune. Of course, that’s where it cuts the deepest, those closest to us. That’s the Divine purpose of those relationships. That’s why we are shadow dancing in those relationships. That’s why we created those soul contracts, so that they could show us where we’re unconscious, where we’re living in fear or separation, lack or limitation, where we don’t know who we really are, where we don’t deeply truly love and value ourselves and respect ourselves. They show up so that we can ultimately come home to ourselves. Because I know that, I’m working with it and have worked through a lot of it. It’s very important that you know that, that everybody that shows up is bearing a gift uniquely wrapped for you.
It’s like the grain of sand that gets into the oyster, that irritates the heck out of it, but the result is that it spins a pearl. To try to get rid of that irritation, it creates a beautiful pearl. So all these people that come into your life that are criticizing you and even hating on you and telling lies or distortions, those are the grains of sand getting in your shell. There you can create a string of pearls. As the Bible calls it, the pearl of great price. It’s that ultimate wisdom that comes from digging deeper, not taking life at face value, but taking everything that comes as a gift and a blessing, often in disguise, and doing this inner work. So that you can transform and transmute that into a pearl, into a jewel, into a treasure, and ultimately into real wisdom that not only adds value to your life but allows you to turn around and add value to the lives of others and to become a role model in whatever area that you endeavor, family, friends, business, the world.
So, my invitation to you is when this shows up in your life – the opinion, the feedback, the criticism, the haters, family, friends, business, and colleagues or beyond – that you stop, and you remember everything is conspiring for your good, for your growth, for your evolution. This is showing up to make you stronger. Then ask what if anything is true about this? I’m willing to see where am I in this so I can take responsibility for it and clean it up. Number two, where is the shadow? What’s the shadow here? If somebody’s calling you a name – you’re a loser, you’re cheap, you’re selfish – whatever, you want to go and do the shadow work on that until you can fully own and embrace that part of you. Number three, you want to ask, how is this serving my larger vision? How is it making me a unique and perfect instrument to serve the larger purpose, to share the larger message? You’ll start to discover as you work with that that it is making you stronger so that you can share your message, speak your truth on a much bigger platform where more people might criticize you or have their opinions, but you will be immune to that because you’ve done the work today rather than waiting until then.
It’s like the story of a surfer that goes from beach to beach waiting for the big wave, but never gets out there and surfs the little ones. When the big wave finally comes, the surfer gets out there and gets just crushed by the wave, because they haven’t built the musculature, the dexterity, the ability to handle that velocity, that energy. They’re just not ready for it, and so it destroys them. If it doesn’t kill them, it might tremendously set them back in terms of their interest and desire and belief that they can never do it again. So, you want to practice every little time there’s a criticism, there’s a judgment, there’s an opinion that pushes your buttons. That’s the time to do the work. It’s like the old saying that every little challenge is a practice for dying. Those challenges that you have to surrender and open up beyond your self-concept is practice for dying, which is the ultimate surrender of your self-concept. That’s all dying really is, you’re releasing your material, personal self-concepts, but who you really are never dies. It continues to emerge and unfold. These criticisms are like little deaths. They’re opportunities for you to let go of a little part of your ego that’s fighting for its right, trying to prove itself, trying to survive. You can breathe and release that and get the gift of that criticism.
One little caveat to all these, and I think it’s very important, because a lot of people, they’re heart-centered, spiritually-minded, they are wounded, they are scarred, they are scared, and sometimes what’s really necessary needed is for people to take a stand for themselves, to so value and respect and love themselves that they have the courage and the willingness to tell other people that are mistreating them, that is not okay. You don’t get to do that. You don’t get to talk to me that way. You don’t get to treat me that way. I’m putting my foot down. Come what may. You can reject me. You can fire me. You can kick me out of the house, whatever the case may be, but I will not allow anybody to treat me less than kind and respectful. That’s a very valid stance. It’s a very valid and important step and stage for a person’s development, but if you find yourself always doing that, and doing that and trying to convince a person to see you a certain way, that’s where you know you’ve gotten caught up in your own shadow. You’re trying to use them as a proxy to try to quell your own bad feelings. Do you understand what I mean? If I can just get them to see me a certain way, I’ll feel better, but it never works, because your feeling bad really isn’t about them. They’ve triggered a pocket in you that already has that judgment. So, whenever you are drawing a boundary, this is very important, you’re not doing it to change them. You’re not putting up a boundary to change their behavior. You’re putting up a boundary to honor yourself, to stand in your truth and in your power.
If I said to a person, You don’t get to talk to me that way. If you want to be around me, you’re going to have to treat me more respectful, more kind, etc. I’m not saying you’ve got to change or else. It’s not an ultimatum. Maybe it’s an ultimatum, but I’m not trying to manipulate them. I could even say to them, I’m not telling you you need to be different for your own life, but if you’re going to be in my life, this is where my line is. You see? Then, it’s up to them to change or to choose to change, but you’re not trying to change them. You’re not trying to change them to make you feel better. You’re taking a stance. You’re putting a boundary up. You are loving and valuing and respecting and honoring yourself for its own sake. If they continue to act out, to criticize, to hate on you, to do whatever they’re doing, then you take whatever the next logical step is. You break off relations. There’s a certain consequence. Again, not because you’re trying to change them, but because you’re going to stand in the truth of honoring, valuing, loving, and respecting yourself. Whatever they decide to do around that is ultimately up to them, but it’s an important thing to add to this, because otherwise some people might hear that I’m saying if somebody’s hating on you and saying mean and rude things to you and disrespecting you, don’t say anything to them, don’t do anything about it, just go work on yourself. I’m not saying that. I am saying that wherever it pushes your buttons and makes you feel compelled through a more compulsive behavior to want to change their opinion in order to feel better, that is about you.
You want to work on yourself, so that you don’t have the button, but you also get to have boundaries. You’ve got to treat yourself with love and kindness and respect. Let others know that nothing less than that is acceptable. Now, of course, this comes with a price, because the minute you take a stand to love, value, and respect yourself and make that a boundary, they’re going to call you out on all the places where you are not loving, kind, or respectful to them, or in general. So you’re going to have to take responsibility for that. That’s a step that you have to take sometimes in order to get to the next level. You have to be willing, again, to be humble, to be open, to really listen and to look and see where within me is what they’re saying true? So, this isn’t just one side. Sometimes it’s not a monologue. Sometimes it requires a dialogue, okay? Ultimately, your goal, your focus, your intention is about you cleaning up you, you becoming an integrity, you being cleared of who and what you really are and why you’re alive and knowing your true value and power and coming into a greater sense of self-love, self-respect, and self-actualization. It’s not about changing the world. That’s the key idea here that I want you to get in all of this, okay? That’s how you deal with the haters. That’s the gift of criticism. If you’re willing to take this stand and commit to this path, everybody that comes at you, even though they may think they’re throwing a grain of sand into your shell, you will be able to turn that into a pearl.
By the way, this is also the esoteric meaning of turn the other cheek. It doesn’t mean just letting a person keep hitting you. It means to return a different energy than what you receive. That’s ultimately what you’re able to do. You’re able to take in the hate, the criticism, and transmute it through your consciousness to love and light and power. Think about that. Think about that. It’s like a plant that takes in carbon dioxide and turns it into oxygen. Certain fish and certain sea products, they take in wastes, and they turn it into something of value. That’s what you become – an individual that takes all of that negativity and redeems it and transmute it back into power and intelligence, and wisdom, and light, and ultimately love. That’s pretty cool. I think that’s a beautiful place to end. That’s my charge to you. I hope you’ve enjoyed this edition of Ask Derek as part of my Emergence podcasts. If you want to go deeper in this work, please go to DerekRydall.com. Go to the free resource section. Download all the free tools and trainings. If you have not yet gotten a copy of my best-selling book Emergence, you can go to GetEmergenceBook.com and grab your copy there, and all the bonuses that come with that. If you have not yet registered for this podcast in iTunes, please take a moment. It just takes a moment, it’s literally a click of the button to register on iTunes for the Emergence podcast. Leave a review, because it really does help more people receive this. If you found this to be valuable, please share it with a friend or two. I look forward to connecting with you more personally and to giving you even more cutting edge or emerging edge, knowledge and inspiration and transformation. Until next time, remember to live authentically, love unconditionally, and follow your destiny.
by sublimity-001-main | Jan 9, 2024 | 2023, Emergence, Podcast, Spiritual Growth, Tools, Work and Business
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The biggest challenges for many of us is either getting and keeping momentum, or having momentum, but it going the opposite direction – downward momentum.
For the latter, it’s like having one foot on the gas and one foot on the brake. We have a downward pull, and then we’re simultaneously having upward pull. If you’re driving and pushing to make stuff happen in your life, it’s because you’ve got momentum going in two directions.
The worst thing that we try to do when we’re pushing and pushing is to push more, or push harder, at least in same the way that we’ve been pushing.
We must notice where is the momentum going in the opposite direction. This is one of the deeper esoteric meanings of the Biblical statement, “Where two or more are gathered in agreement, there I am in the midst of them.” The two or more can certainly be two or more people as in a church, organization, spiritual organization, but it also represents the two or more aspects of ourselves – the conscious, the unconscious, the mental, emotional, physical. When all of those are in agreement, moving in the same direction, then you activate the larger pattern of your potential, and you have real momentum.
This is also one of the meanings behind the Biblical statement that you cannot serve two masters, or you will be a house divided and a house divided cannot stand. A lot of times, when we’re feeling stuck and we’re lacking real momentum, it’s because we’re trying to serve two masters. We are ambitious. We are, on one hand, going for something and then the other hand not believing it’s going to happen or not believing that we’re worthy, or whatever the case may be. We can’t get real momentum.
As the core of the Emergence work, we want to ultimately bring all of our life into congruence, into integrity with our biggest vision – all going in the same direction. That’s what develops the optimal level of momentum.
As we hit new levels of growth and unfoldment, we hit new thresholds. Those unconscious limited beliefs, or just those areas that need to be activated more fully, they come up, and they create these road blocks that slow us down. We have to look at them, whether it’s a shadow, a values conflict or just developing ourselves.
One of the biggest of misunderstandings and things we tell ourselves is “I’m stuck.” We believe that we actually can be stuck. The truth is you can never really be stuck, no matter what the situation is. Even if you’re literally bedridden right now – there’s four core areas where you can get momentum. They are mentally, emotionally, physically, and spiritually. (We could even say energetically, because you can actually separate out the energetics of it.)
If one of those areas is difficult or closed off at the moment, like being bedridden, you could sit and visualize and imagine yourself playing your sport and repeating it over and over, just getting it down to the most minute detail until you are just playing basketball masterfully. You see every little move of your hand. You can watch the best highlights of the golf swing and then imagine yourself doing it. Believe it or not, you are developing that skill mentally and emotionally, and creating real momentum.
This is true in any area. By practicing your talents, your gifts, your skills, at any level and any moment, there’s always a next step that you can do mentally and emotionally. There’s always something you can do to move forward.
The way you keep taking your life to higher levels is you have to habituate whatever level you’re working towards, so that that becomes a subconscious subjective pattern or habit. When you’re thinking about building momentum, it’s not just about going from zero to 60 quickly. Sometimes that’s necessary, but it’s more about developing the habits, to ultimately put momentum on autopilot.
Habit is ultimately what determines your character, and your character is what determines your destiny. Especially if you’re going, what seems to be going backwards, it requires patience as you’re building these new habits, because at first it might appear like you’re not getting any momentum.
If you try to move a big giant ship that is going in one direction, you turn it, you won’t see it turning right away – it takes time.
You can’t always judge by appearances where there’s real progress. If you’re building these habits based on your highest vision and based on the character you want to develop, then you are on the right track. It doesn’t have to be this grand high faluting vision. It’s just whatever that thing is you most feel and inspired to move towards.
You’re designing a way of life that allows you to mentally, emotionally, physically, spiritually, and energetically start moving everything towards that direction.
At the most simplest level, how you get the Mighty Mo is to start moving… Move yourself emotionally, move yourself mentally, move yourself spiritually, and move yourself physically – you can always move no matter what, no matter who you are.
To support you in mastering this, listen to the in-depth podcast on the subject, where we break it down and put it into real-life practice TODAY. This will be a real game-changer.
To Your Emergence!
Stay inspired!
Derek
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Where are You REALLY?
When to Stay the Course, When to Change Directions
Why ALL Your Beliefs Limit You (And What You Should Do Instead)
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Full Transcript
[The following is the full transcript of this episode of the Emergence, A Revolutionary Path for Radical Life Change, with Derek Rydall Podcast]
Greetings, my fellow Emergineers. Derek Rydall here, and it’s so good to be with you again as we’re talking about the Mighty Mo, how to create real momentum in your life, even if your life is standing still or it’s going backwards. This is such an important aspect. The Mighty Mo obviously stands for momentum. Mighty Mo, Uncle Mo – it’s all about momentum. For so many of us, and of you, one of the biggest challenges is getting and keeping momentum. Ultimately, the reason why we don’t create momentum is a variety of things. We’re going to talk about that. A lot of us do have momentum, it’s just we have momentum that’s going either in the opposite direction, it’s downward momentum, or we have dual momentum. It’s like we have one foot on the gas and one foot on the brake. We have a downward pull, and then we’re simultaneously having upward pull. If you’re driving and pushing to make stuff happen in your life, it’s because you’ve got momentum going in two directions.
This is called ambition. Ambition means you’re going in two directions at the same time. It’s like the Zen statement of trying to ride two horses at the same time that are going in different directions. When you’re pushing and struggling, oftentimes it’s because on one hand, you’ve got momentum going down or going backwards, or, for example, you’ve got an emotional or mental momentum in the direction of It’s not going to happen. It’s not going to happen. It’s not going to work. Then, you are physically pushing and maybe mentally on some level also pushing, I’ve got to make it work. I’ve got to make it work. I’vegot to make it work. Again, it’s like running in place. It’s like running on a treadmill, or worse, having one foot on the brake and one foot on the gas. This is what creates burnout and ultimately overwhelm and breakdown.
The worst thing that we try to do when we’re pushing and pushing and pushing is just push more, just push harder, at least in the way that we’ve been pushing. It doesn’t mean we don’t want to keep working, but we don’t want to keep working or pushing in the way we have been. We want to notice where is the momentum going in the opposite direction, and how can we get all of us going in the same direction? This is one of the deeper esoteric meanings of the Biblical statement, Where two or more are gathered in agreement, there I am in the midst of them. The two or more can certainly be two or more people as in a church, organization, spiritual organization, but it also represents the two or more aspects of ourselves – the conscious, the unconscious, the mental, emotional, physical. When all of those are in agreement, moving in the same direction, then you activate the larger pattern of your potential, and you have real momentum. This is also one of the meanings behind the Biblical statement that you cannot serve two masters, or you will be a house divided and a house divided cannot stand. So, a lot of times, when we’re feeling stuck and we’re lacking real momentum, it’s because we’re just trying to serve two masters. We are ambitious. We are on one hand going for something, and then the other hand not believing it’s going to happen, not believing that we’re worthy, or whatever the case may be. We can’t get real momentum. Now, we’re just pushing and pushing and forcing or alternatively, we give up.Ultimately, as the core of the Emergence work, we wanted to ultimately bring all of our life into congruence, into integrity with our biggest vision, all going in the same direction. That’s what develops the optimal level of momentum. We’re not going to build or do it consistently forever and perfectly forever as we’re continuing to grow and unfold. As we hit new levels of growth and unfoldment, we hit new thresholds. Those unconscious limited beliefs, or just those areas that need to be activated more
Ultimately, as the core of the Emergence work, we wanted to ultimately bring all of our life into congruence, into integrity with our biggest vision, all going in the same direction. That’s what develops the optimal level of momentum. We’re not going to build or do it consistently forever and perfectly forever as we’re continuing to grow and unfold. As we hit new levels of growth and unfoldment, we hit new thresholds. Those unconscious limited beliefs, or just those areas that need to be activated more fully, they come up, and they create these road blocks that slow us down, and we have to look at them, whether it’s a shadow or values conflict or just developing ourselves. One of the biggest of misunderstandings and things we tell ourselves is I’m stuck. We believe that we actually can be stuck. We slipped into feeling like a victim and either don’t do anything, spend our time getting momentum around how much Ben & Jerry’s, Chunky Monkey or New York Super Fudge Chunk we can eat. We get a lot of momentum with that spoon and not enough momentum in the area that really matters most to us.
The truth is you can never really be stuck, no matter what the situation is. Let’s just say physically you are impaired and you’re bedridden, and let’s say you’re an athlete, and you’re like, You don’t understand, Derek, I can’t get momentum in the area of my athletic growth, because I’m literally bedridden right now. That’s not true, because there’s three core areas, or really four, where you can get momentum. That is mentally, emotionally, physically, and spiritually. We could even say energetically, because actually you can separate out the energetics of it. So, you can get momentum in all those areas. If one of those areas is difficult or closed off at the moment, like you’re bedridden, you could sit there and visualize and imagine yourself playing your sport and repeating it over and over and over and just getting it down to the most minute detail until you are just playing basketball masterfully, or whatever the thing may be, and you see every little move of your hand. You can be watching the best highlights of golf swing or whatever, and then imagine yourself doing it. Believe it or not, and I think you do believe it, you are developing that skill just mentally and emotionally, and creating real momentum.
In fact, they’ve done a study where they had three groups. One was practicing basketball, going out there and doing the drills. The other one was just visualizing themselves practicing, and the other group was visualizing and practicing. The one that was visualizing did just as good as the one that was just practicing their skill level and their growth. The one that visualized and practiced did better than both of them. The key is that they could just visualize practicing, and they were able to grow their skill level and be on par with those that were just physically practicing. This is true in the area. You might say, I don’t have the capacity to go…͟ It will be another example. Maybe you think something requires money to launch your business or something. In fact, it really doesn’t, but you could be visualizing it. You could be practicing your talents, your gifts, your skills. At any level at any moment, there’s always a next step that you can do mentally, emotionally. You could be working on your mental games that you are embodying the mental mindset for whatever it is the next stage of your life. You could be working on your emotional game so that you are emotionally resilient and activating the high quality positive emotions. You can be working on physically, meaning any of the physical attributes – walking, talking, creating, developing, and then energetically increasing your energy and energy flow in your body and radiating and expanding your energy field, and spiritually – prayer, meditation. There’s always something you can do to move forward.
deally, like I said at the start, you want to bring all of these in line with your highest vision, your deeper desire, so they’re all moving in the same direction. In some cases, some periods, one or more of them aren’t moving in the same direction, but if you get enough of them moving, it pulls the other one with you. When you are feeling stuck or stagnant or overwhelmed or burned out or doing a lot of pushing and forcing, as I said, you want to begin to identify where you are going in opposite directions. What do you really believe about this? What do you really feel about this? Likewise, if you’re just doing affirmations and meditation, but you’re not taking any physical action, that could be the missing piece to create real momentum. If you’re just sitting around affirming, I’m rich. I’m abundant. I’m successful. I’m a powerful coach, leader, teacher, author or whatever but you’re not actually writing every day or taking steps to get new clients or whatever the case may be, then you can feel and experience yourself being stuck. It’s what I called coming spiritually or affirmatively constipated, because you’re activating all this energy, but you’re not expressing it. So, if you do have the capability to be taking other actions in these other dimensions then you want to be doing that. You don’t want to be just affirming that you’re abundant. You want to be taking actions of an abundant person. You want to be generating emotions of an abundant person and having conversations like an abundant person. Little bit by little bit, you bring your whole life into integrity, into congruence.
The other thing about momentum is to understand ultimately you want to put momentum on autopilot. What this means is that understanding that what we mostly live by is habits. Most of our life is run by habits – mental, emotional, physical habits, even energetic patterns that had become habitual. So, you want to be aware of that. The way you keep taking your life to higher levels is you have to habituate whatever level you’re working towards, so that that becomes a subconscious subjective pattern or habit. When you’re thinking about building momentum, it’s not just about going from zero to 60 quickly. Sometimes that’s necessary as soon as you have to just come out of the gate fast and furious. It’s more about what are the habits, what are the daily habits? It might not look like you’re getting a lot of momentum if you’re just writing a hundred words a day. What happens is, over time, suddenly those hundreds add up, and it adds up literally to pages and pages. When you start to have a stack of pages in front of you, it affects your emotional and mental outlook on it. You start to develop a consciousness of having of abundance, of things that are happening. All these difference start to connect, and they create momentum. You may not see it right away.
Momentum is not always about being busy. In fact, oftentimes when you’re busy you don’t have real momentum. Busyness does not equal being productive, doing what matters most does. You somewhat had to sacrifice busyness for building habits, for doing the right thing, the most important thing, and doing it consistently even, and especially, when it’s not urgent – sitting and meditating every day, not only when you’re in a bad place. You don’t want to just have foxhole consciousness where you’re only going to pray and meditate when you’re in the foxhole and the bullets are wheezing over your head. You build the practice until meditation becomes a habit. You notice throughout the day it starts to have a transferring effect, and you start to think about and tap into, regularly, this prayer without ceasing. It starts to build momentum. You start going to the gym or walking around the block every day. At first, you don’t see any results and don’t feel like it’s making a difference, but it starts to build momentum. Habit is what we’re most after. More than we want just a quick fix or a quick results, we want to know that we’re designing a way of life through our habits that ultimately building our character. It’s like this is just the kind of person I am. I meditate every day. I work on my creativity every day. I exercise every day or multiple times a week. I spend this kind of time with family, friends, and loved ones on a regular basis. I put in X amount of time in building my business every day. This is just who I am. That becomes a habit and a way of life. As Confucius said, All men are the same, but it is their habits that separate them.
Habit is ultimately what determines your character, and your character is what determines your destiny. Especially if you’re going what seems to be going backwards, sometimes you have to be patient as you’re building these new habits, because at first it might appear like you’re not getting any momentum. If you try to move a big giant ship that is going in one direction, you turn it, and you don’t see it turning right away. It takes time. I’ve used the analogy of the racecar that’s sliding towards the wall. You turn the wheel the opposite way, turning it away from the wall towards the track, but it’s got momentum still and it slides towards the wall. You could be like, Oh, my God. It’s not working. It’s not working. Then, you turn the wheel. You look at the wall again, and the wheel turns back towards the wall, and you hit the wall. If you are willing to turn away from the wall, the problem, the place that you’re sliding towards, the momentum that you don’t want, this backwards momentum, and you keep your attention on the road and on the finish line and where you want to go, at some point, the wheels catch. The momentum in the opposite direction gets stopped, and you reverse course. There’s a period a lot of times when you’re going backwards, where it feels like you’re doing all this stuff and it’s still sliding towards the wall. I’m doing all this stuff, and I’m not losing any weight. I’m doing all this stuff, and I’m not getting any clients. I’m doing all this stuff, and I’m not feeling better, but then there’s an inflection point where all that you’ve done catches up and the tires catch, and you’re back on track again.
You have to be patient. You can’t always judge by appearances where there’s real progress. If you’re building these habits based on your highest vision, you’re building habits that are based on the character you want to develop, then you are on the right track. Does that mean you’ll never hit the wall? No. If you don’t do this, you’re almost certain to hit the wall. You’re taking your ideal vision of where you want to go. It doesn’t have to be this grand high faluting vision. It’s just whatever that thing is you most feel and inspired to move towards. You’re designing a way of life that allows you to mentally, emotionally, physically, spiritually, and energetically start moving everything towards that direction. That does include your inner and your outer environment. Your outer environment helps to either create momentum or recharge momentum, to speed it up or to slow it down. If you’ve got relationships, activities and spaces that are cluttered or that are negative or that are not aligned with where you want to go, every time you see that picture or watch that program or listen to that music or talk to that person that it is energetically, emotionally going in a different direction, you are slowing your momentum down. You want to design a life inside and out that represents where you want to go and not where you’ve been or even necessarily where you are. You see that inspiring image or picture or token. You watch that inspiring program and listen to that inspiring audio. All of that develops momentum energetically, spiritually, emotionally and mentally. You have conversations with people that are inspiring, that speak life into you, that are living their own life and that begins to bring momentum.
You’re designing a way of life inside and out that is about where you want to go, not where you’ve been. That’s how you build a reality that supports momentum. You do the daily practices that build the kinds of habits that represent the kind of character that you would be if you were living your ideal destiny. Regardless of where you’ve been or what you’re experiencing, you build those habits. In those areas where you really don’t feel like you can take action, then you focus on another area. As I said, if you just are feeling emotionally you’re so out of line, then you focus on what can I do physically. If I’m not feeling happy, what would a happy person do? I’m not able to generate happiness internally, let me find a way to do something physically, and now you have physical momentum, and then you activate emotional momentum. When you’re in that emotionally high place, that’s the best time to do your affirmations and your practice. Now you activate mental momentum and spiritual momentum. You see? You don’t have to wait. You just find your entry point, the place you can begin to move, and you go there. You don’t go, Oh, affirmations aren’t doing it for me today. I guess I’m screwed. No. If that’s not working, what can you do? Maybe you put on the piece of music and you dance. Suddenly, you’re feeling inspired again. You’re feeling energized. Now, say your affirmations or if none of that is working, maybe again, if I say emotionally you’re not feeling inspired to do the work you want to do, what can you do? Maybe you listen to a song, you take some physical action. You go out in nature or you call out a friend or whatever, but there’s always some next step. You don’t give yourself the luxury of being stuck.
Sometimes, what you need to continue and to stay in momentum is to do nothing. Nothing isn’t really a nothing, it’s an active resting. Remember that sound without space is just noise. Sound with the proper spacing is music. Action without rest is chaos. Action with the proper rest becomes productivity, creativity. Resting and space, both physical, mental, and emotional space, is a key component to creating momentum and to sustaining momentum. One of my favorite sayings is, play until you need to rest; rest until you want to play again. So, it’s a balance. Sometimes when you’re not feeling momentum and you’re pushing and pushing, stopping and becoming still is the most important thing you can do to get back on track again. The key is that wherever you are right now, begin where you are. Find that area where is your entry point and begin to align it with your bigger vision, and then one by one bring the rest of your life into alignment with it.
Now, what are some of the other things that prevent momentum? What are some of the areas we get stuck in? One is waiting. You’re waiting for some conditions to be right. You’re waiting for some person to be different. You’re feeling like a victim of them or of the situation. You’re wondering why you’re stuck. Whatever you’re waiting for, you’re waiting with, and then you’re weighing it down. Life doesn’t happen to you, it happens through you. Whatever’s missing is what you’re not giving. When you’re waiting telling yourself, Well, I’ll do this when, or I’ll start this when, you’ve got to ask yourself, how can I start this now? I’ll start to do this or be this way when that person treats me this way or respects me more. Well, how can you start respecting yourself now? We don’t want to wait. Now, there is a Divine waiting in the sense that you’re doing the work, you’ve done the work, and you’re in that resting period again, which is a very conscious resting. If you find yourself saying, I can’t do this thing that I want to do. I can’t move towards it and create momentum until something outside of me changes or even something inside of me, like I use the example before Well, I can’t really feel happy today because I can’t say affirmations. They’re not working, and so I’m just going to wait until happiness in me. No, what can you do to generate that feeling, to make create momentum?
The other one, again, talking about emotions and feelings, is emotional reasoning. We say, Well, I just don’t feel like it. I want to write today, but I just don’t feel inspired, and then we don’t. We don’t write. I want to do this thing. I want to go exercise, but I just don’t feel like it. We’ve grown up being conditioned to believe that’s a logical reason not to do it. In fact, it’s not. It’s emotional reasoning. It’s a cognitive disorder, because your emotions don’t determine your actions. Your emotions don’t have any actual power over you, so you don’t want to let them determine your actions. You want to let your vision determine your actions, and then take the actions of a person who’s feeling the way you want to feel, and you’ll start to generate those feelings. Start to hold yourself the way a person holds. There’s been plenty of studies to show that our physiology, the way we use our physiology has a big part into how we feel emotionally. Right now, if you want to experience depression, you can do that. You can slump your shoulders, you can look down, you can slow your voice down, lower the register of it, and start to feel more depressed, or you can straighten your back and you can raise your voice a little bit and speed up a little bit and keep your gaze upward, and you start to feel better. That is where you took a depressed person and had them stand up on a table, back straight, head held high, looking up, say, Okay, now, tell me what you’re depressed about, and the person would have to lower their head and look down to access that information. If they didn’t let them, you said, You’ve got to keep your eyes up, keep your head up, keep your back straight. Now, tell me what you’re depressed about. They literally couldn’t access their depression. So, use your physiology, use your body, use that to create momentum.
Another thing that obviously stops momentum is our judgments, otherwise known as our shadows. We want to move in a particular direction, we’re hitting a threshold, and when we look and say, What am I afraid that’s going to happen if I do this? Oh, I’m going to fail, and then what would I make that mean about me or what would others think about me? You’re a loser, you’re a failure, you’re stupid, and so that’s why we’re not moving forward. So, you want to then stop, write that down and begin to address that very specifically and practically in shadow work. You don’t want to stop moving. You don’t want to go get that would be a good excuse for you to take a break for the next week and just do nothing but work on your shadow. You want to still take productive action in the direction of your vision. Now that you know there’s a judgment, there’s a shadow there, you’re not going to get caught in emotional reasoning and wait till you feel better about it, till you don’t feel afraid. You’re still going to take that action, but you’re also now going to work on the shadow which is equivalent to taking your foot off the brake. So, you still have your foot on the gas, but you’re now going to ease your foot off the brake by doing the shadow work.
The same thing is true with values conflicts. That’s where you want two different things, but they seem opposed to each other. You want space and freedom, and you want success and abundance. In your mind, they’ve been wired where in order to get success and abundance, you have to sacrifice space and freedom or time and freedom. In order to have time and freedom, you have to sacrifice success and abundance. You’re upbringing your experiences, that’s how you’ve been conditioned to believe. Of course, it’s not true, but it’s the map you’ve created. It’s the way your neurology has been wired. You discover by when you’re feeling stuck, you can ask questions like, if I achieve this or get this or do that, I’m afraid I’ll lose _____ or I’m afraid I’ll have to sacrifice _____. Do that question and answer period 5 or 10 times till you come up with a variety of things and start to see the pattern.I’m afraid if I really go for this, I’m going to have not enough time for myself. If I really go for this, it can take me away from family.
That’s a values conflict, and then you need to create a values affirmation, which is the more I do this or go for this, the more of this other thing I have, too. The more of this other thing I have and honor, the more of this other thing I go for. For example, the more successful and abundant I am in the world, the more time and freedom I have. The more I honor my legitimate need for time and freedom, the more inspired and empowered I am to create incredible success and abundance in the world. That becomes like a mantra, a values affirmation that rewires that, and so you begin to use that on a regular basis. You keep moving in the direction that your vision is calling. Again, you don’t wait to get the values affirmation all worked out, but now that becomes part of your daily practice while you’re also taking action.
This is why I created what I called the quantum plan. It’s not just outer action, outer action, outer action. It’s a plan that incorporates the objective and subjective parts of your brain of your awareness. You are developing and refining your daily practice in terms of building your inner life and the inner structures so that your inner life is moving in the same direction as your outer life. You’re working on both streams not one or the other and not one at the expense of the other. You don’t just stop outer actions to only work on inner actions. You don’t just stop inner action to only work on outer action which happens, right? We get so busy, we stop doing our daily practice. We lose momentum emotionally and spiritually, and then we wonder why the other action starts to lose momentum, and we start to feel tired or burned out or stressed or unclear. We focused all of our attention on the inner action, and once we hit a threshold, we stop the outer action, and then we wonder why we lose momentum and start to feel congested, constipated, sluggish, depressed. I’m doing all this meditation, prayer, affirmation, I’m depressed – because you’re not taking action. You’re not expressing it. You’re not circulating it. You’ve let go the outer for the inner or you let go of the inner for the outer. You become stressed, overwhelmed, burned out when you let go the outer for the inner. You become depressed, sluggish. So, you want to have both streams going, and then you put that together as part of your quantum plan so you’ve got a daily inner practice and a daily outer practice. All of it is aligned with your biggest vision. As you bump into those thresholds, you look deeper, you see what it’s really all about. Is it am I waiting for something? Is it emotional reasoning? Is it judgment or shadow? Is it values conflict? I add that piece to my daily practice. I keep moving outside and I got momentum again.
This is how you get the Mighty Mo. At the most simple level, how do you get momentum? You start moving. That’s the most basic level. Just start moving. Again, that doesn’t mean just physically start moving. It means just start moving in some capacity. Move yourself emotionally. Move yourself mentally. Move yourself spiritually. Move yourself physically. Again, when I use physical, that doesn’t just mean like walking. It means speaking, moving your body, expressing yourself creatively, etc. but just start moving. If you are moving in one of those dimensions, look at the other dimensions and see are you moving there too? If not, start getting that moving. This is how you create real momentum and really no longer can ever be stuck again. It doesn’t mean you won’t have challenges, you won’t have setbacks, you won’t have problems, you won’t feel bad some days but it won’t stop you. You won’t feel like a victim of it. Even if you do feel like a victim of it, you’ll look at that, you’ll do something about it. You won’t just stop. Eventually, this all becomes subjective. It becomes habit. Your life becomes now automatically designed. It starts to automatically produce this momentum. That habit pattern now develops your character. You literally evolve, you literally change, you literally become different, and now you’ve changed your destiny.
hope this has served you. I hope this has inspired you to find greater momentum, to realize that you can always move no matter what, no matter who you are. Stephen Hawking can’t move his body at all, but he certainly doesn’t have a lack of momentum in his life. Helen Keller couldn’t see or hear or speak very well, but it didn’t stop her from having momentum in her life. Many people have lost everything, gone bankrupt, had great tragedies, but they found that entry point to create momentum in their life. Wherever you are now, you can create real momentum and increase momentum. I invite you to pick one or two things you can do today to get momentum in some area where you felt otherwise stuck. Pick one or two things, and then share that in the Facebook group where you’re going to generate more momentum. Share that with your accountability partner. If you don’t have one, that’s a great way to get momentum. Get an accountability partner. Just reach out to somebody in the group. You’ll be off to the races. Just take a moment and just drop down into this field of grace, this prayer field. At least throw ourselves wide open. There’s always something trying to emerge, always more life, more light, more love, more truth, more beauty, more abundance. We just open ourselves now and the silence of our soul, we set an intention. We’re willing. We’re ready to be ever greater instruments of life and all of its many qualities than ever before. We’re available to more good than we’ve ever experienced or imagined. We’re available to be used more powerfully, more completely than we’ve ever imagined. We’re willing despite all appearances, all conditions, all past. We’re willing to be used. We’re willing to fulfill our purpose. We’re willing to be of service. We’re willing to be bigger, better, stronger, more awake, aware, creative than we’ve ever imagined. We’re just engaging willingness. I’m willing. I’m ready. I’m able. Use me. Send me.
Just take a moment and just drop down into this field of grace, this prayer field. At least throw ourselves wide open. There’s always something trying to emerge, always more life, more light, more love, more truth, more beauty, more abundance. We just open ourselves now and the silence of our soul, we set an intention. We’re willing. We’re ready to be ever greater instruments of life and all of its many qualities than ever before. We’re available to more good than we’ve ever experienced or imagined. We’re available to be used more powerfully, more completely than we’ve ever imagined. We’re willing despite all appearances, all conditions, all past. We’re willing to be used. We’re willing to fulfill our purpose. We’re willing to be of service. We’re willing to be bigger, better, stronger, more awake, aware, creative than we’ve ever imagined. We’re just engaging willingness. I’m willing. I’m ready. I’m able. Use me. Send me.
n this openness, in this availability, the whole Universe rushes to this place called each and every one of us, because it’s always looking for willing instrument to put itself on display. We’re just so available now, so willing. If any thoughts popped up, like a fear that somehow this is going to cause this to go in the wrong direction, or that God or life is going to somehow want us to do something we don’t, or that we’re going to have to sacrifice, we just notice any of that resistance. We bless it, and we release it, and we say I’m willing. I’m willing. I’m willing. Use me, life. Use me, God. Send me. Take over. Take over my whole life that it may become a transparency for the will of god, for the highest pattern of good, that my life may reveal and reflect the true order and harmony and abundance and beauty of the Universe and help and liberate and inspire and set others free along with me.
Wherever I’ve got and seemingly stuck, wherever I’ve created an excuse for why I can’t, why I’m not able, I’m willing not to let that remove. I’m willing for my life to just be a pure open channel for the full power and presence and love and brilliance of the universe of God. Like a mighty river rushing downhill without a boulder inside, I’m willing, I’m ready. Thy will be done. Whatever I need to see, feel, sense, embrace, release, speak, or do to be a channel and an instrument in the place where life can fulfill itself, where my destiny of greatness can be fulfilled, I’m ready and I’m willing now. No holds barred. In this space now, this flow continues to unfold. It finds all the pockets that are seemingly blocked and it opens them. Wherever where hungry were fed, wherever where thirsty were quenched, this energy, this flow now moves through our entire mind, body, heart and life transforming and transmuting everything to serve its higher purpose that we may truly fulfill that great and grand reason for which we came. It’s happening now. Breathe and receive this. Allow it. Allow gratitude to well up and so it is. Amen.
