ASK DEREK – Why Aren’t Things Working Anymore?

by sublimity-001-main | Feb 2, 2024 | 2024, Emergence, Podcast, Purpose, Spiritual Growth

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The core reason Why Aren’t Things Working Anymore is evolutionary… You’ve activated a larger life and something more is trying to emerge through you.

In order to keep evolving up levels, you have to let go of the predominant tool of the level before, even in some cases, things that worked.

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. It’s my honor and pleasure to be with you on this journey of Emergence as your guide on the side instead of the sage on the stage and helping you to really understand how life operates to your benefit. Life is not personal, it’s principle. Life is not luck, it’s law. Often, we’ve come to believe that I’m just a good person, that things will work out better for me, and if I’m a bad person, things will work out bad. Then, we look out at the world and we wonder why are good things happening to bad people and bad things happen to good people. That’s one of the biggest conundrums, but when you understand that life is principle, that life doesn’t just happen, it happens just, it happens to lawful principles. When you understand the principle and can live in alignment with it, your life bears witness to that.

As I’ve talked about in previous episodes, if you understand the laws of buoyancy and have a layered body in integrity with that principle and the water, you’ll float. If you’re a really bad person, you’ll still float. If you don’t understand the laws of buoyancy and you go out into the water, but you’re a truly good person, like even a saint, you’ll sink. It’s important to understand this, so that we begin to understand the ancient scriptural reference when it says God is no respecter of persons. God shines its light on the saint and the sinners, pours its rain on the just and unjust. It’s trying to tell us that there’s a principle in operation. I’m here to help you understand what are those underlying principles so that you can bring your life into greater and greater harmony with it, both transcendent and immanent, the deep spiritual, internal transformational aspects as well as the most outward mundane practical aspects because there really one or two sides of the same coin of a full living.

I did not intend on saying all of that preamble, but it wanted to be said. In this particular episode, we’re answering the question Why aren’t things working anymore? Yes, we could just say, why aren’t things working, and that’s a broader question. Why aren’t things working anymore refers to those things that used to work or maybe even used to work really well, but aren’t working as well or aren’t working at all anymore. This is a very strange and frustrating and confusing experience when the things you used to do don’t work anymore. The core reason that I want to get across of why this is happening is evolutionary. You’ve activated a larger life, a bigger life. Something more is trying to emerge through you. You’re still operating in the old paradigm and the old models using the old toolbox. It’s like you’ve suddenly gotten a Ferrari, and you’re still driving it like it’s a Honda or whatever the case may be, and not understanding that’s so much finer-tuned instrument and requires a different way of handling.

Life is constantly evolving, I should say, life experiences evolve, and life itself is not. Life itself is an infinite perfect isness, but life experience is our experience of the enfoldment of this infinite life, and we call that evolution. As it’s unfolding, you cannot put new wine into old wine’s skins. You cannot use the same tools that work on your Honda on your Ferrari. Like a caterpillar, if it continued to try to operate using caterpillar models and tools and strategies once it sprouts wings and become a butterfly that would be very problematic. For example, let’s say you are using very traditional manifestation techniques like Law of Attraction and/or something like that, or perhaps just using your will to push yourself through and get things done and make things happen, but it’s burning you out. It becomes difficult and overwhelming, and it’s not sustainable, and you’ve prayed or affirmed or intended to discover an easier way, a better life, a life of more grace and ease than stress and struggle. You’ve had some insights around that. You begin to maybe see and understand that there is a different way, that there is a better way.

Maybe you’ve come to understand the Law of Emergence and that everything is an inside out instead of the Law of Attraction which you think you’re going to pull it to you. You’re still operating trying to attract things or trying to push through and achieve things and make things happen, and you’re noticing it’s simply not working anymore. It’s like pushing a boulder uphill like Sisyphus, and it keeps rolling back down and rolling over you or driving with one foot on the gas and one foot on the brake. What you have to begin to understand is in order to keep evolving up levels, you have to let go of the predominant tool of the level before, even in some cases things that worked. As I’ve said in previous talks, what’s working that’s in your way? You have to be willing to let it go. The acorn shell works really, really well for the acorn. It protects the internal substance of that acorn from outer elements. It does all kinds of wonderful things, but when the oak’s time has come to emerge, when it’s time to become an oak tree, that shell is a problem. It has to be cracked and broken and destroyed and released.

The same is true for you, that where things are no longer working the first thing you want to look at, one of the first things, is: What is the larger life trying to emerge through and as me? What is the larger paradigm or model of life? For example, whereas before I used to believe that everything was out there and I needed to work hard to get it, and now, I’ve come to understanding that everything is within me and I need to work to not make it happen but to make it welcome, to come into integrity with it, with the fact that I’ve already got it. You begin to discover what is that new paradigm or model of life that is emerging, that you began to accept or understand or affirm. Ask if I really believe that, that this was the way it is, that this is the life that is unfolding, how would I feel? How would I think? How would I talk? How would I walk? In other words, who would I be, and what would I do? If I really believed that this was so, this new paradigm, this new insight, this thing that I’m praying and affirming, if I really believed I had it, I was it, that it was happening, how would I show up? What would I do? What would I do more of, less of, or differently? How would I feel? How would I think? How would I talk? What kind of conversations would I have and what kinds would I no longer have? As you honestly ask that and then just look over your life and your habits and your practices, you begin to identify the things that are no longer congruent and while it’s difficult to let go of them.

You can begin to step-by-step methodically release those and replace them with the thinking and the feeling and the walking and the talking that is in integrity with the life you’ve been praying, affirming, visioning or having a deeper insight about, so that you begin to bring your life now into integrity with that which is emerging. That’s really what we’re being called to do. We’re not here to save the world but to serve the emerging paradigm. We’re not here to save our little world but to serve the emerging version of our life. That’s very different. The saving of our life has this holding on habits and methods and modes that are based on preservation, protection, comfort and convenience. The serving of our bigger life has this letting go of safety, security, comfort and convenience and beginning to embrace habits and practices, thoughts and activities that are progressive, beginning to surround ourselves inside and out with the people, places, things and activities that represent where we’re going, not where we’ve been. This is my charge to you, to begin to consciously ask that question, and then to begin to practice it.

Now, there’s another reason why things aren’t working anymore sometimes. I wanted to start with that other one first, because I think in some ways it’s more important, especially because I believe you’re listening to this because you’re an evolutionary, that you’re here to live on the emerging edge of your own progressive enfoldment and make a bigger impact in your life and in the world, and not merely keep the status quo and just improve around status quo. The second reason is that when we started to do these sort of principles and practices, even if it’s Law of Attraction or Law of Emergence, but we’re doing the inner work, changing our mind set, changing our emotions, changing our vibration, changing our habits, and we’re really focusing on planting those healthy seeds, and cultivating health roots. When it starts to grow and emerge and produce the rich fruits, if that money suddenly shows up, that new job suddenly shows up, that new partner or mate suddenly shows, we start getting compliments on how we’ve lost weight and we look better than ever. Those are the fruits of our labors, of cultivating and planting, and watering and weeding and feeding the seeds of our own potential. Those are the fruits, but what happens invariably is that we’ve become identified and attached to the fruits and we’ve become complacent around our main or foundational practice in cultivating and nourishing the roots. This is why I say we must stay rooted as we rise.

The best farmer or gardener understands that the fruits, as wonderful as they are, are just the by-product, the effect of a deeper process of planting seed and cultivating soil and the watering and the weeding and the feeding, that of itself has no immediate reward, because you do that a lot in the dark and in the dank soil of your soul. Eventually, the fruits come as a reward but sometimes, the reward has been so long-sought that we forget, we get so lost and caught up in the rewards, in the fruits so identified and even afraid of losing them, that we hoard them, we hold onto them. What happens if you just hold on and hoard all the fruits? They rot in your hands, but if you honor them, you share them, and you use them, that’s a beautiful thing, as long as you keep your main priority – the honoring, the cultivating of the soil and the seed and the root. A lot of times when things stop working, when they’re not working anymore, you got inspired. You got into a new program or plans, you started doing these things, bam, things started happening almost like magic.

Now, a month, a few months, six months down the road, everything seems to be installed or stagnated and you’re not making progress. Well, this is another reason why – you’ve taken your attention off of the very things that got you to where you are. You’ve forgotten that the core practice, your meditation, your affirmation, your prayer, your inner healing, your forgiveness work, all that rich-cultivating work has become either less important or in some cases, completely put aside as you become so caught up in the new life that you’ve manifested, because you’re not focused on the roots and the seed, you start to become afraid of losing. Unconsciously, you know that you’re going to lose these things, that you don’t really own them. That energy of fear of loss is an energy of constriction, of lack, of limitation and now you have begun the downward spiral that will eventually end and you’re losing that which you have. Like a farmer that stops cultivating the roots, they get a good harvest once, maybe twice but eventually that seed or those roots aren’t fed, aren’t taken care of and the tree dies. Like the goose and the golden egg, you take yourself for granted, you cut it open trying to get all the gold out at once and you killed the goose.

These are the core reasons why things aren’t working anymore. Things may not be working to begin with because you’re not understanding the principle, and you’re not consciously applying it and you don’t have a clear practice that you’re doing consistently until you get results. Things, once they are working and stop working, are often because of these two purposes: you’ve stopped focusing on the core practices that developed the consciousness, the mindset, the habits that bear your fruits, and you’ve gotten overly caught up in the fruits. You just don’t have the time to meditate lately, and you’re wondering why you’re starting to feel like you have less and less space in your life, or you’ve been practicing a certain level of creation or manifestation or living that is now too small for the larger life that’s been activated in you. You’re being called to let go of those lesser tools, strategies, habits and mindsets and begin to embrace a more refined higher practice in way of living that is more in integrity with the vision that’s emerging.

I invite you to take an honest assessment of your life right now. If you find any area where things aren’t working anymore and discover one or two areas where this is true and begin to rededicate yourself to the practice that got you to transform in the first place or to commit to the higher level of living and practicing that serves and is in integrity with the greater life and the greater you that is now seeking to emerge. I hope you’ve enjoyed this episode of Ask Derek. Please post on Facebook. If you haven’t already joined, registered for this podcast on iTunes, please register so that you can never miss an episode. If you find this helpful and inspiring, please share it with a friend, a family member, a client. The more you share or teach it, the more you learn and own it. It activates the law of circulation that whatever you give away and share, you multiply in your own life. Take some time to post a review, to post your insights and experience or feedback on our Facebook page. Share it with a friend, and then take some time today to take at least one action to apply what you’ve learned. Until next time. Remember to live authentically, love unconditionally and follow your destiny.