by sublimity-001-main | Oct 23, 2013 | 2013, Emergence, Post
Many if not most of us hold a belief that our fate is determined by external conditions, that the things we need are out there, and that we must get them by just about any means necessary. This leads us to try to operate in the world in ways that are the reverse of how life really works, causing us to constantly struggle against the natural order of the universe.
Haven’t you felt many times like you were peddling uphill with the brakes on? Well, you’re not crazy, lazy, or broken; you just weren’t given the correct—or complete—operating instructions for this thing called life.
The basic false belief goes something like this:
We are born blank slates, empty shells, and must make something of ourselves—internally and externally. The knowledge, resources, and support systems we need to achieve this are outside us, in other people, other places—or higher powers—that are hard to get to, requiring us to conform to cultural, societal, or religious norms to get them, often demanding that we work really hard at something we don’t love for most of our life and engage in a religious practice that gives us more guilt than good—all so we can save enough money to start living our life and accrue enough karmic credits to survive our afterlife–only to die before we get to really live, and discover our spiritual bank account is overdrawn.
Sound familiar? Whether or not you consciously buy into that B.S. (belief system), on some level you’re probably living it because it’s inherent to the collective consciousness of the Western world—and is rapidly being adopted by a large part of the planet in a rush toward social stability and economic freedom.
Meeting the expanding needs of a country (or family, business, or any organization) is a necessary and noble goal, but if the underlying beliefs and value systems guiding it are in opposition to the fundamental harmony of the universe, it will ultimately result in more suffering and limitation.
The acorn principle is something altogether different and, by understanding this aspect of Mother Nature, you will discover a powerful clue to your own nature and how you were actually designed to grow.
The acorn already contains the idea and intelligence to become an oak. It’s not an empty shell that has to struggle, figure out how life works, gather a bunch of information to fill itself with and, finally, decide what it wants to be when it grows up. No matter what the good opinion of other trees in the forest, the acorn will never become anything but what’s inside of it—an oak.
Even if its parent oak wants it to grow up to be a pine tree, it ain’t gonna happen. It might fail to thrive or reach its potential if the right conditions aren’t created, but the acorn’s destiny is to become an oak. The Big Questions of life, such as “Who am I?” and “What is my purpose?” were answered before the seed was planted in the ground.
Whatever is fundamentally true anywhere is true everywhere. As the Hermetic Law of Correspondence states: “As above so below; as within so without.” The reason for this, as the great mystics have taught, is that there is really only one thing going on, just being perceived from different levels and angles.
This has been further described as the Holographic Universe principle and has, along with other discoveries in quantum physics, led many scientists and philosophers to the conclusion that the same processes which occur in nature—and their underlying principles—can be found in every other area of life.
For every natural law, there appears to be a parallel moral, scientific, and spiritual law. A true principle discovered in, for instance, electricity, can often be found in psychology, biology, and every other -ology. Even Einstein believed if you could fully comprehend the laws that govern the universe, you could know the Mind of God.
From this understanding, we can deduce that the basic laws governing the acorn—or any seed—apply to the seed of our own being, which already contains the blueprint and mechanics for its perfect unfoldment.
Just as the oak is already planted in the acorn before the acorn is planted in the ground, everything you need to be all you were created for was already placed in you before you were placed in your mother’s womb.
What would it be like to live as if this were actually true? Each day for the next week, I invite you to ask yourself, “If I really believed everything I need is already within me, that I’m already whole and complete, what would I do today? Who would I be? What would that look like?”
Then live into that guidance.
To Your Emergence!
by sublimity-001-main | Oct 9, 2013 | 2013, Emergence, Post
We have been born under a mistaken identity. And almost everything that we see, hear, and experience – almost everything produced by society – keeps us in the dark about who and what we truly are. The mistaken identity is that we are merely human beings, having an occasional spiritual experience; that we are born in sin, worms of the dust; that we are circumscribed by our personality, a product of our culture and family, conceived on a certain date, destined to die.
But that’s a lie.
And when we peel away the dogma and doctrine of all great spiritual teachings, we discover that they have been trying to wake us up from this illusion or Maya all along. ‘Sin,’ as it turns out, is not some demonic quality of our soul; it is an archery term that means ‘to miss the mark.’ The only ‘original sin’ we were born under is this false belief about who we are.
The fact that this human self we perceive isn’t who we really are doesn’t mean it’s bad or that we should disregard it (as some extreme religious practices have concluded). This human incarnation is a magnificent thing, with the potential to reveal beauty, power, and greatness beyond our imagination. But it’s a pale reflection of the truth. Every level of our experience – mental, emotional, physical — is a relative expression of an Infinite Perfection, an Eternal Self, forever unfolding in this timeless moment.
Our human self is like a great character in this ‘divine drama’ that we are acting out for the evolution of our soul; a work of art we are painting on the canvas of our experience. We’re the Actor, not the character; the Painter, not the painting.
Your true Self is ‘made in the image and likeness of God,’ eternal, changeless, and infinite, whereas your human self is made in the image and likeness of your history, culture, and the transitory world of changes that arise out of the Self and dissolve back into it, over and over, like a wave upon the ocean.
Everything you need for your total fulfillment is already within you, constituted as a part of this essential Self. And when you are more identified with THAT, all your needs will emerge without the effort and struggle so common to the human experience.
We spin our wheels trying to come up with solutions to all our social, political, personal and professional problems, creating new policies, more restrictive laws, bigger prisons, and more powerful weapons to ‘attack the issues’ – or just twisting ourselves into pretzels trying to solve things.
But no matter what new invention, theory, or practice we engage in, if it doesn’t emerge out of some degree of true Self-realization, out of an awareness of our innate wholeness, it will never create lasting peace, abundance, or fulfillment in our lives or on the planet. It can’t. Because we don’t get what we want, or even what we fight for and claim – we get who we are in consciousness. Nothing more, nothing less.
It’s not personal, it’s Principle.
To Your Emergence!
by sublimity-001-main | Sep 16, 2013 | 2013, Post, Spiritual Growth, Work and Business
A busy person is not necessarily productive. If they’re not aligned with their true purpose, focused on what’s most important (but not necessarily urgent), whatemerges is often stress, overwhelm, and more distraction. Have you ever gone through a busy day, only to fall into bed, exhausted, feeling like you didn’t get anything significant done?
Swirling around in that tornado of to-do’s, you felt like you were accomplishing something, but you mistook the blur of busyness with authentic action. As Benjamin Franklin said, “Never confuse motion with action.” This is sometimes a lack of clear vision or planning, putting us at the whim of every squeaky wheel and fire that needs putting out, and causing us to say yes to things that have little to do with our deeper purpose.
But it’s also a symptom of avoidance.
Most people, when faced with a list of tasks will focus on the easiest thing first and work their way to the hardest—which they rarely arrive at. The false sense of satisfaction that comes from turning their to-do’s into to-dones gives them an adrenaline high—and this can become addictive. But like all addictions, they’re often there to numb our true feelings. And for the Task Addict, the deeper feelings are fear of failure and a sense of inadequacy. If they really take the bold action necessary to make progress, they’ll have to face the unconscious belief that they’re not good enough and their goals will never happen.
Better to stay busy and hold onto hope than reach for that impossible dream.
This can go on for years, difficult to diagnose. By all appearance the person seems to be doing all the right things. But upon closer inspection, they’re often not doing the one or two highest impact things—the hard actions that would stretch them into the person who can make their dream a reality. They’re walking aroundtheir vision, rather than taking a stand for it.
When activating your emerging potential, it’s sometimes about taking lots of little actions—but just as often it’s about taking a few big ones. While sometimes you can grow incrementally, other times the only way to break free from the inertia of old patterns is to blast off like a rocket escaping earth’s gravitational pull. If your vision is to be a professional writer, it might be committing to writing that book in 30 days instead of three months.
If your vision is to get in shape, it could be joining a marathon club with a rigorous structure instead of joining a gym that you try to fit into your busy schedule. If a significant relationship is suffering, it might look like having that hard conversation and letting things fall apart temporarily, rather than scheduling another round of fun activities to distract you from the inevitable blowup or breakdown.
As you contemplate your big vision, look honestly at what you’re doing, and not doing, and ask if you’re keeping up the illusion of trying so you have a good excuse for not risking. Then commit to letting at least one busy activity go—and taking one bold action
To Your Emergence!
by sublimity-001-main | Aug 27, 2013 | 2013, Emergence, Post
One of the greatest shifts that happens in our attention, as we work on cultivating the congruent conditions for our emergence, is we move from anticipation of future good or fear of future bad to a greater participation in the good already here. Remember the radio analogy that I often use: your favorite music isn’t playing in the future or distance, it’s already here and now, but you must be tuned in to that frequency to experience it.
To some extent, our habitual anxiety about the future is based on the great mystery of where we go when we die – or if we go anywhere at all. The concepts of heaven and hell play a part in this. But from a deeper understanding of what many spiritual masters have taught, there is no heaven “up there” nor a hell “down there.” It’s all a state of consciousness—heaven being that state of connection to our divine reality and hell being the experience of disconnection from that.
This is an important piece, because we’re all, to some extent, waiting or hoping to arrive at a future paradise—the paradise of a perfect relationship, a perfect job, a perfect car, house, or literally the pearly gates beyond. And most of us also fear, to some extent, a future hell—the hell of losing the love of our life, losing our job, going broke, getting sick, or dying. Both positions keep us stuck in a fantasy of the future, putting our good on a layaway plan or keeping us fearful about living fully. All the power and joy we’ll ever need are right here. But we can’t experience it as long as we’re stuck in the past, anticipating the future, or lost in fantasy
This state of consciousness often creates a self-fulfilling prophecy – and we find ourselves either running right into the bad we expect or forever waiting for the hoped-for good. Neither states of mind create the ideal conditions for the emergence of our full potential in the only time and place it can happen—Here and Now. We must retrain ourselves to remember that all the good we could ever want, all the joy, peace, love, freedom, fulfillment, creativity, and inspiration, is happening within and all around us. We are swimming in a sea of well-being and abundance and don’t often know it. All our effort to get it and our anticipation for it in the future creates mental blocks to experiencing it.
So stop already!
You must participate in your good NOW to activate the Law of Emergence.
This begins by accepting that it’s here, then doing the L.I.F.T. (Living In The Feeling Tone) practice I’ve described in previous articles. As you begin activating the feeling tone of your vision, you can start looking for evidence of it in your current conditions. This doesn’t mean merely in your personal life, which the Night Pages focuses on—but everywhere, for everyone. For example, if you’re consciously working on embodying the quality of abundance, start looking for the abundance manifesting everywhere. Notice the lavish opulence of nature, the immeasurable scope of space and the stars that fill it. Notice all the wealth manifesting for others—the nice cars, the successes, the riches of all kinds. Good is breaking out all over the place! But don’t just notice it, celebrate it as if it’s your own. When you see someone driving the car you want or living the lifestyle you desire, enjoy it and give thanks that someone is reflecting a quality and capacity of your own being.
This does a few things: first, it activates a positive feeling in you, allowing you to participate in some measure of that good—which in turn cultivates the inner conditions for it in your experience. Second, it trains your reticular activating system (RAS), a part of your brain designed to heighten arousal and awareness around a specific target, to look for and see the potential, the possibilities, and the abundance everywhere—where before you’d most likely trained yourself to see what’s lacking and not working. Third, it begins to dissolve the illusion of separation, allowing you to have moments of oneness, where you feel like someone else’s success is your own—because it is. There isn’t a bunch of separate activities of good; there’s only One Good going on everywhere. It’s Omnipresent. We’re all waves in the same sea of love, branches on the same tree of life.
For thousands of years, the world has prayed to a far off God, or done all kinds of techniques to get something or make something happen, when everything has been here all along. God has done all that God’s going to do. The work is complete. The music is broadcasting. But you must be tuned in to receive it. That’s why so many prayers go unanswered, so many affirmations fall flat, and so many practices fail—or make things worse. People are doing all these things to get something they don’t think they have—and by the very law they’re setting in motion, it must reflect back more lack, limitation, and separation. This is one of the greatest secrets. That’s why I keep repeating it. You’re already in Heaven, whole, complete, and abundant—but you must participate in it to experience it.
Master this principle and watch your life emerge to a whole new level!
To Your Emergence!
by sublimity-001-main | Aug 12, 2013 | 2013, Post, Spiritual Growth
As the proverb states, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. There’s an even clearer alternate version: “Hell is full of good meanings, but heaven is full of good works.” Despite its lofty place in personal development, setting intentions can be dangerous because the ego often uses it to give us the illusion of progress while keeping us the same. We set the intention, generate positive energy—making us think we’ve done something—then forget it. Setting an intention is a great start, but if you don’t follow it with action, it’s like turning your steering wheel in the direction you want to go, then leaving your car parked. You might walk by and admire the direction the tires are pointed, but without a plan, and getting in and driving, that intention won’t get you anywhere.
Think about the last few intentions you set. Maybe they were New Year’s resolutions. Perhaps it was the intention to lose weight, write a book, or be more loving. Reflect over the last year of intentions. How’s it going so far? It felt good in the moment you set it. Your resolve might’ve been high. Maybe you even sensed a shift in energy, like something real was happening. And that’s often where we stumble. Remember, the ego’s job is to keep us where we are while giving us the illusion of moving forward. Only after the momentum has died do we realize we hadn’t moved at all and we must start over again—or give up on the idea altogether.
I’m not saying to stop setting intentions. Your intention is like the rudder on a boat, giving direction to your life force. But you, like that boat, must be moving to benefit from it. You must align your actions with your intentions. It doesn’t have to be a big action. A page a day becomes a book or more in a year. A walk a day becomes a healthier body in months. A few minutes of meditation a day can create a new consciousness. A life of small steps can take you around the world. As Oscar Wilde said, “The smallest act of kindness is worth more than the grandest intention.”
For the next 14 days, match your strongest intentions with specific actions. And if you really want to succeed, make a plan. In the end, as Picasso said, “What one does is what counts, not what one had the intention of doing.”
To Your Emergence!
by sublimity-001-main | Jul 30, 2013 | 2013, Emergence, Post, Tools
Living In the Feeling Tone of your vision—what I call the LIFT Practice—is the core of your daily emergence work. It brings together all the elements you’ve been developing, if you’ve been doing the work in the emergence programs. As this becomes a consistent part of your life, it will cut a new subjective groove in your consciousness, integrating this higher frequency until it becomes a new set point, creating the congruent conditions for the emergence of your next stage of evolution.
I’ve been sharing several parts of the Daily Life practice lately. There is the VVR process, a foundational meditation that activates, expands, and integrates your Visionary Vibration – the signature feeling-tone of your vision. I won’t go into the technique now, but you can get a free copy of the meditation here: https://derekrydall.com/vibrationradiation/. This is best done first thing in the morning, to establish yourself in the Visionary Vibration.
There’s also the One-Minute Mystic, which I’ve recently shared. This is a process that allows you to tap into that soul-connection and visionary vibration several times throughout the day – in moments when you may not have realized you could. If you haven’t seen this process, please look back over your past issues of The Emerging Edge newsletter or check out the Facebook fan page history.
Today I want to share a component of the Daily Life practice I call: 3-D Affirmations.
Affirmations recondition our beliefs about ourselves. The problem is that we’ve been taught affirmations in a very linear way, while our beliefs have been laid down in Surround Sound. Because impressions come to us in first, second, and third person, they are imprinted that way.
The voice in our head—or the deep belief in our subconscious—speaks not only in “I am” terms. It’s also imprinted with “You are” and “He/She is.” So it can be helpful to layer our affirmations the same way. If your affirmation is “I am a powerful, wealthy, confident person!” You could also state it as “You (name) are a powerful, wealthy, confident person!” Then say it as “(Your name) is a powerful, wealthy, confident person!
To implement this, take the feeling tones/qualities of character you’re trying to embody – those feelings you would have if you were living your ideal vision — and turn them into a 3-D affirmation by stating them in all three ways. Don’t try to cram all the qualities into one affirmation; start with the most pressing area. Pick one to three qualities. Turn that into a 3-D affirmation. Then work on it until there’s some integration – until it starts to feel like an active part of your emotional-vibrational field.
As you speak the affirmations, notice the negative self talk and write it down. It will give you insight into the limited beliefs running you. Then turn those into affirmations and use them to uncover deeper shadow beliefs, which will allow you to access and activate latent potential.
To practice 3-D affirmations, it helps to pick a predetermined time, stand in front of a mirror, and exercise your affirmative muscles by saying the affirmations to yourself while looking in your eyes. As the negative chatter comes up, write it down, and go back to the affirmations. Once you notice the same chatter cycling back, ignore it and stay in the affirmation practice.
Start by methodically repeating your affirmations in first, second, then third person, again and again. Then as the energy builds, be willing to mix it up. You might go from first person to third person to second person, then back to third person. Trust the process. As you get comfortable, see if other affirmations or variations want to emerge.
For instance, “I’m a powerful, abundant person…” could organically shift into, “I’m a powerful, abundant, gorgeous person…” and even “I’m a powerful, abundant, gorgeous, sexy genius!” Hold nothing back. Then, at the height of the experience, when you’re really buzzing, sit down and meditate on that feeling for at least a few minutes, longer if you want. Let it soak in.
Then ask, “From this energy, what am I called to release or embrace to step more fully into my vision?” Listen. See if there is any guidance playing on this station. If it’s vague, keep asking until you get something specific. Write it down. And follow it.
If standing in front of the mirror isn’t your thing—do it anyway. I know it can feel awkward and foolish, but that’s just ego chatter, self-judgment, and protective walls you’ve built around your heart. Work through that and watch the walls crumble and your heart open. If you want to change it up from time to time, try it walking, jogging or running. The rhythm of your body can help you fall into a nice cadence that supports the affirmations. And the extra energy from moving can help you activate the feelings more.
The key is to do this every day; that’s why it’s called the ‘Daily’ LIFT practice. It’s all about consistency. The world constantly bombards you with messages and energy that are NOT congruent with your highest vision – it doesn’t take a day off — so, just as you have good ‘dental hygiene,’ you must also have good ‘mental hygiene.’ But this practice is so much more than merely maintenance; if you’re willing to put in the practice daily, your life will be taken to a whole new level – in many cases beyond what you could have imagined!
To Your Emergence!
