by sublimity-001-main | Jun 10, 2024 | 2024, Emergence, Podcast, Spiritual Growth, Wealth and Abundance, Work and Business
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The LIFT Process: Reclaiming Your Destiny
Essentially, the basic premise of Emergence is everything you could ever need to be all you were created to be, do, contribute, create, etc., is already within you.
Just like the oak tree is already in the acorn – there’s a perfect pattern awaiting the right conditions, and when those conditions match the pattern within the seed, that inherent pattern of potential naturally emerges. The same thing is true for you.
There’s a perfect pattern of your destiny that is already planted in the soil of your soul, and when the conditions are congruent with that pattern, it naturally emerges.
Another way to think of it is your favorite music is broadcasting where you are right now, amongst a bunch of broadcast stations, but you can’t hear or experience the music. The music is not yet manifest, even though it’s fully present and broadcasting. It’s not manifest until you tune the dial of your radio so that your frequency matches the frequency of that broadcast. When you do that, when the frequencies match, then that broadcast that was already playing becomes manifest. You have found your manifest-station.
In the process of Emergence, the first step is to identify the seed that’s seeking to emerge in your life. Otherwise known as the vision, whether it’s in some area of your life, or your life in general. What is the vision that’s trying to emerge in your life? There are clues for that all around you!
The LIFT practice stands for Living In the Feeling Tone, and this is part of the Emergence process. This is a simple method used to help engineer or design a way of life that is congruent to that of your grand vision.
Listen to the in-depth podcast on the subject to get the full explanation, discover the clues to your vision, and learn how to put it into real-life practice TODAY. This will be a real game-changer.
Also, learn how to create a life of unlimited abundance in my brand new Awakened Wealth Mastery 8-week program! There are already tons of comments of people having breakthroughs just from watching the free training videos! But it all comes down today, Tuesday, September 6.
Stay Inspired!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 Emergence: A Revolutionary Path for Radical Life Change. This is Derek Rydall, your guide on the side, the founder of the Law of Emergence and author of the bestselling book Emergence. It’s just great to have you here today for this topic, where we’re going to be talking about the LIFT practice, super conditions and reclaiming your destiny. The LIFT practice stands for Living in the Feeling Tone, and this is part of the Emergence process. If you’ve been doing the Emergence work in any capacity for a while you’ve probably heard that term, been in any of the programs. Essentially the basic premise of Emergence, if you’re new to this, is that everything you could ever need to be all you were created to be is already within you. Just like the oak tree is already in the acorn, a perfect pattern awaiting the right conditions, and when those conditions match the pattern within the seed, that inherent pattern of potential naturally emerges.
The same thing is true for you. There’s a perfect pattern of your destiny that is already planted in the soil of your soul, and when the conditions are congruent with that pattern, when they match that pattern, it naturally emerges. Another way to think of it is your favorite music is broadcasting right where you are right now, amongst a bunch of broadcast stations, but you can’t hear the music, experience the music. The music is not yet manifest, even though it’s fully present and broadcasting. It’s not manifest until you tune the dial of your radio so that your frequency matches the frequency of that broadcast. When you do that, when the frequencies match, then that broadcast that was already playing becomes manifest. That station that was always playing becomes manifest. You have found your manifest-station.
So the process of Emergence, fundamentally speaking, is identifying, number one, what is that seed that’s seeking to emerge in your life? Otherwise known as the vision, whether it’s in some are of your life or your life in general. What is the vision that’s trying to emerge in your life? There are clues for that all around, and I go much more in depth in that in my book Emergence, as well as my program on Emergence. Then the second step is cultivating those congruent conditions, creating conditions that are a match to that vision, to that seed. Cultivating the conditions of your soul, of your mind, of your heart, of your body, of your experience. Now the difference between an acorn or any seed is it’s indigenous, meaning that it’s largely at the whim of external conditions, but you are endogenous, which means that your conditions are self-generated. So you have the potential to generate the right conditions, regardless of where you’re planted in the world.
The LIFT practice is a part of that Stage Two. Stage One is the vision. Stage Two is cultivating the conditions. It’s a part of that process of once you know what your vision is, or have some idea or inkling, is now you begin to cultivate the conditions so that you can live in the feeling tone of that vision, the vibration, the frequency. The more you can live in the frequency of your vision, that is akin to tuning the dial of your radio, the dial of your consciousness, to the station where the music of your destiny is playing, where that beat of abundance, that symphony of success, is already playing. When your frequency matches that it manifests in your experience. It was already there. It’s already broadcasting, but when you cultivate the conditions through the LIFT practice that broadcast now becomes tangible and audible and manifest in your experience. You see?
There’s several things with the LIFT practice, but the core work with the LIFT practice is you start with your vision. So I invite you just to follow along and do this. You can pause this. You can take the time you need to do this, but you start with a vision of what you want to create in your life. Again, I invite you to get the book Emergence, because I walk you through it step by step by step to identify the clues to what’s trying to emerge in your life, so you can really create a coherent and cohesive well-defined vision for yourself. You can start with, let’s just say for example you had a vision of having a life of more abundance, more wealth. You were building some kind of business or venture, and you would have a level of wealth and abundance.
So you would begin to now use the tool of visualization to tap into really seeing and feeling what it’s like to live in that vision. This is really the correct use of visualization. The old use is to try to visualize stuff in order to make it happen or attract it to you, but the more congruent use of the visualization, particularly in the Emergence work, is since it’s already happening to you you’re not trying to attract anything, since it’s already present, but you are using the angel of your imagination by visualizing your highest idea to activate the feeling tones of the vision. Because the truth is that from your imagination, your current self-concept, you really can’t always, or even ever, truly imagine what your future will be like. Just as anacorn, if it had self-consciousness, or a caterpillar if it had self-consciousness, couldn’t really imagine what it’s like to be a butterfly. The caterpillar, if it was using visualization, it would imagine a better caterpillar life, but it wouldn’t necessarily be able to tap into what’s really emerging as its destiny, which is to grow wings and fly.
That’s one of the limitations of merely visualizing your ideal life and just leaving it that. When you use the visualization to activate a feeling tone, you can never go wrong with the feeling tone. Let’s say you visualize your life with this successful business or venture, and this money, and all that that would bring you, and all that you would be able to do and be and have and create and contribute, and you really get into the vision of it, and you really feel what it would feel like. So I invite you to do that with your vision. Really feel what it would feel like. See the vision. Feel what it would feel like. Notice also who you’re being. Then you can let go of the picture, and merely stay with the feeling tone, the vibration.
Perhaps in this example you feel powerful. You feel joyful. You feel peaceful. You feel inspired. Those are the feelings. There’s three pillars to your vision. There’s feeling, being, and doing. There’s the feeling, and then you notice, who am I being? How am I being in this expanded vision? You notice, as you’re living into this vision you’re being more generous, more outgoing, more playful, etc. So now you’ve got a set of feeling qualities and a set of being qualities, and you can just hang in that vibration, breathe. Let it expand, fill your body, radiate it. Just really soak in that feeling tone. Now, we go to the next step. That is the Emergineering part of the process, which means engineering the emergence of your life.
Now that we know how we would feel and who we would be if we were living our ideal vision, we begin to engineer a way of life that is congruent with that, a way of life that will begin to activate those qualities just as a matter of course. As you’re doing this practice, don’t try to do it all at once. Don’t try to do all the feelings and all the being qualities, but start with the one that has the strongest change, the greatest pull. Let’s just say in this case it’s joy. You notice that’s a quality you really long for or lack, or want more of. You just take the quality of joy.
Now you’re going to break that down in the following categories: people, places, activities, and objects. How this works is you would start with people, and you would go, what people have I spent time with, do I spend time with, or do I want to spend time with, that when I’ve been with them or when I think about being with them it activates a quality of joy in me? Again, this is whatever quality you’re working with. I’m just using joy in this example. That could be people that you’re literally with live and in person, like a friend at lunch or a family member doing a fun outing, or it could be somebody that you’reexperiencing virtually, like you’re reading them in a book, reading a book by them, reading a book aboutthem, or watching a show with them, or listening to an audio with them. It doesn’t have to be literally the person living or live and in person, or even on the phone. It can be when you’re experiencing their presence through any medium it activates joy. Right?
For example, some people that have really strong religious leanings just reading the Bible or reading the teachings of Jesus, or watching a documentary about Mother Teresa. In fact, they did a study and saw that individuals watching Mother Teresa do her thing. Her generous service activated in the people watching the same qualities of love and the same chemicals even as somebody who was doing it themselves, part of the mirror neuron experience. You don’t have to be with the person, but begin to identify. Make a list. It might be people that you see sometimes, but you want to see more, or spend more time with them, or people you used to, but for whatever reason that you’ve come up with you don’t spend much time at all with them anymore.
Now, what’s another important distinction, if you’re already spending a lot of time with this person, virtually or life, that’s not somebody you need to put on the list, because if there’s not a need to spend more time with them they’re not a core activator right now for you. I mean, they may already be activating something, but they’re not going to necessarily take you to the next level, unless within that relationship, like I said, you know you want to spend more time with them. Make a list of those people, live or virtual.
The second thing is the places. You want to begin to identify similarly what places have you been, or do you go to, or would you like to go to, that activate this quality, in this case joy? Perhaps you notice when you’re going to see a movie you feel this joyful quality like being a child again, which is also partly an activity. Maybe you notice when you are in nature, or when you sit by the window and look out at the yard, drinking your tea. That place in the house brings you a lot of joy, or being in church, whatever, a place. Again, this might be a place you used to spend more time in, but now you don’t think you have the time or the money or the energy, or whatever you need to be there, or it’s a place that you sometimes do, but you know you want to be doing it more, like being out in nature, or it’s a place you haven’t done, but you’ve been wanting to, or you thought about it and maybe you’ve pushed it away, because you’re like, that’s just not going to happen, for whatever reason, time, money, energy, whatever other excuse you’ve given yourself for why you can’t be there. You want to make a list of those. Again, if it’s already a place you do spend a lot of time in and don’t necessarily, and maybe it does make you feel joyful, or whatever the quality is, but you already do it a lot, that’s probably not a place you want to list. You want to find the places that you’re not doing, that you used to do, or that you want to do, or that you don’t do enough.
Then we get to activities. These are obvious. These are things that you do. When you do them they activate this quality. In this case, joy. So it could be when you’re dancing, singing, do some kind of creativity, hiking in the mountains, swimming in the ocean, whatever that might be, singing in a choir, taking yoga class, exercising. When you do this activity it makes you feel joy, or when you imagine doing it you feel a sense of joy. You want to write those down. Don’t monitor or filter. Write it all down. Write everything that comes to mind that used to bring you joy, that brings you joy sometimes, that you think would bring you joy if you were to do it, or whatever quality you’re working with.
Then finally we have objects. Objects are any objects of the sense. So a sight, a smell, a sound, a trinket, an actual physical object. So it might be a picture of someone or something. It might be a sound, the sound of chimes, the sound of the ocean crashing, the sound of water flowing. It could be a smell, thesmell of certain aromatherapies or essences, chamomile, frankincense, jasmine, whatever, or certain flower smells, the smell of freshly cut grass, the smell of freshly baked bread, because it’s got perhaps sense memory attached. Being at grandma’s house and smelling the bread. Coming from school, smelling the fresh cookies that mom’s made for you, and you felt so joyful or loved, whatever the quality may be.
You want to write down all of these objects of the sense. It could be statues of saints, stuffed animals, little trinkets, whatever. Like I said, any object of the senses. Now again, you want to look for the things that you want to have, that you’ve had, but don’t have, that you have sometimes but don’t have enough. Maybe sometimes you smell the fresh cut grass, or hear chimes, or smell the bread, but it’s not often. Maybe sometimes you listen to certain kinds of music, and it really activates that quality in you, but you don’t do it very often.
What you’re going to do is you’re going to take this first quality, and you’re going to take those lists, and you’re going to identify at least one, and you don’t necessarily have to have one from every list, but it’s fun to try to do that, and identify at least one that you’re going to implement and engineer into your life over the next week. Some of them will be once a week. Some of them will be every day. Some of them will be things you put into your life as part of your environment permanently. That’s you engineering the feeling tone, at least that side of it.
The other side of the LIFT practice is look at those qualities of being, and notice what are the qualities of being, which one of those qualities really stands out for you? Remember, a feeling quality is more static, like peace, love, joy. A being quality is more dynamic. It’s more action oriented, like more giving, more outgoing, more playful. It’s something you can do. So you want to pick one from that list that speaks to you the most, has the greatest charge, the greatest pull, and you want to take that out and simply ask the question, what would it look like for me to step into being fill-in-the-blank more fully in my life now? If you’re working in a particular area, like relationship or business, your job, and let’s say the being quality was outgoing or playful. You might say, what would it look like for me to be more playful at my job? To be more playful in my relationship? Just to be more playful in my life. As you ask that with sincerity, eyes closed, and listen and notice guidance, things will start to emerge, impressions, images, ideas, thoughts.
If it comes across vague, like something like you say, what would it look like to be more playful in my life, and you hear get involved in music somehow. Then you want to be more specific. You want to say, what specifically would that look like? Then you hear, sing more, or dance more, or dance around the house, or take a dancing class. You want to keep asking the guidance, and what would that look like? What specifically would that look like? Until you get something that is actionable. You don’t want guidance that just says, love yourself more. You want to ask, what would that look like if I loved myself more? What would that look like for me to love myself more? Until it becomes something concrete and actionable. Then you want to engineer that new action into your life. Again, this is only one quality in each category, but that alone could begin to make significant difference, just starting to activate some of these qualities in your life again. Another side thing to understand is you’re not just engineering things into your life, but those people, places, things, and activities that are no longer congruent with your vision. You want to begin to look at making a list of those. What relationships or people steal my joy? What activities take my joy away, or whatever the quality is? What environments deplete my joy, or whatever quality? What objects in my environment? Then wherever it’s possible, without doing harm to anyone, you remove those. You start to remove those things. For example, maybe you’re watching a lot of TV news and listening to talk radio,and you feel pulled to it, but it always makes you sad or scared or mad. That’s not congruent with your vision.
It’s beyond the scope of this session right now to talk about this, but in some cases, in fact, if it’s pushing your buttons there is still valuable work there to do, shadow work, values conflicts. If the news is pushing your buttons, scaring you, that’s really giving you something to pray for, to pray about, to heal, but for the sake of this process, and especially depending on where you are in your growth, it’s really important to first remove the things that are not lifting you. When I first got on this path there was a point where I had to completely get rid of everything. I got rid of TV news, a lot of books, videos, and people, and sort of cloistered myself and just had in my life only the people, places, and things that nourished what was emerging in me, a deeper spiritual connection, a creative connection, things that affirmed me and inspired me and fed me.
As I grew stronger I could start to step back into some of those relationships and things. For example, I could step back into some relationships with my family, extended family. Whereas for a while I had to extricate from some of those relationships and not see them or talk to them, at least not as often, until I had the inner strength from doing this work that I could step back into those without having it take away my power. Sometimes that’s necessary. Again, take it step by step. Don’t suddenly kick everybody out of your life and get rid of everything and join a monastery. That’s not what we’re saying here. Take it step by step. You’re building a new way of life.
So you’ve got the feeling, the being, and then the doing part, which you’ll already be doing some things is, depending on your vision, there are certain things you can begin to do to live into that vision, even before the vision appears. For example, when I wanted to have our first home I was doing all of these first steps, but then I also started going and looking at new homes, even though we couldn’t afford it, even though it seemed crazy and most people would never do that. Because I was doing the inner work of feeling it, of being it, of activating it, I had the vision. The third step is the doing it. So I began to do what I could do to live into that vision, and all that I could do was learn about buying a new house, visit dream homes, look at the models, hang out in the models, play house at the models, and come back to our little condo and feel sad and depressed by contrast. I would do the work again, feel good again, feel like I’m living in my dream home, feel the vibration, the quality, the frequency. Go look at homes, and in a matter of a couple months I had a breakthrough and an opening and realized that we could do it, that we would do it. A month or two later we were moving into our dream home.
That all was part of doing this LIFT practice, and I’ve done this in many areas of my life and helped clients to do the same. You can add that one in as well if you’d like. Again, this is a process. Be gentle. Be patient. You’re developing a new way of life. You’re developing a new emotional, mental, vibrational set point. So be patient with it. Focus on creating a life that really is congruent with this vision. It’s based on the old adage, surround yourself with the people, places, and things that represent your future, or where you want to go, not where you’ve been, or even necessarily where you are. As Wayne Gretzky, the famous hockey player said, I skate to where the puck is going to be, not to where it is.
I just want to say one other thing about this, what I call a super condition. What that is is when you find where you can put multiple things together. This doesn’t mean you’re going to add necessarily a bunch of things extra in your life. If you’re already exercising, let’s say, and you know that being out in nature is one of the activities or places that really lifts you, you might do some of your exercising in nature. If you already know that spending time with Bob or Sue or whoever lifts you, you might invite that friend to go jog or hike in nature. Now what have you done? You’ve combined a person, a place, and an activity that all lift you, and maybe there’s even certain objects, certain kinds of clothes, maybe the smells around you, or something you can put on you, and you combine all of these sight, sound, activity, person, place, all into what’s called a super condition. If you look at your life, there have been moments in your life when this happened organically. You found yourself with the right person in the right place doing the right thing, surrounded by the right objects of the senses, and you were completely lit up. Right? You weren’t just a little bit happy, a little bit peaceful. You were totally lit up. That’s what called the super condition.
Granted, sometimes you can be completely lit up by grace and by some spiritual activation where you’re feeling that way even when the outer conditions aren’t that great, and that will eventually come as you embody this frequency, but for now we’re looking to build those super conditions into our life. Interestingly to note, babies and young children do this naturally. Young children will naturally gravitate toward super conditions. In other words, before they’re conditioned to believe what’s right and wrong and what they should and shouldn’t do, be, or have, or who they should or shouldn’t be with, they will naturally gravitate towards the people, in the places, with the activities and the objects that completely light them up, that completely feed them and nourish them and grow them. Right?
Then a well-meaning relative or parent comes along. This happens with children. Uncle Joe wants to hold little Sue, and little Sue doesn’t want to be held by Uncle Joe. Right? Mommy forces little Sue into Uncle Joe’s hands, thinking, come on, Sue, Uncle Joe loves you. He wants to get to know you, or whatever. Little Sue doesn’t want to get to know Uncle Joe. Then you might even shame the child. Why are you being such a brat? Intuitively and instinctively, little Sue knows Uncle Joe’s vibrational field, for whatever reason, she may know some things that mommy and daddy don’t know about Uncle Joe, but for whatever reason it’s not a match for little Sue. Likewise, a parent or teacher or relative might force a kid to be in an environment that is antithetical to their developing vibration. This happens all the time. It happens a lot in our rigid formulaic school systems. The child is forced into a frequency, into a space that’s not lighting them up. It’s not congruent.
On and on this happens until little bit by little bit, through shame, blame, fear, fear of rejection, loss, that child begins to develop coping and defensive mechanisms to adjust and adapt to their environment, to the people, places, things, and objects that seem to be what they should do, be, and have as a means to survive. Until you end up an adult, and you end up in a home, in a job, in a relationship, and in certain situations that at least somewhat, and sometimes almost entirely, has been designed from a place of survival. Do you see that?
What we’re doing now is taking back that natural ability to create a way of life that serves and feeds our soul’s emerging potential. It’s a natural ability. We’ve been conditioned out of it. We’ve been shamed and guilt tripped out of it. Now we’re reclaiming our destiny. Isn’t this exciting? Even though I’ve taught this so many times I just get excited every time I talk about it. I hope you’re getting excited or inspired as well. I invite you to take this, listen to it again, write it down. Do the work. Do something to activate this potential, and lift your frequency, lift your life to the next level.
I invite you to share your comments on our Facebook page, to leave a review, if you haven’t already, or leave another one if you have. Register on iTunes for this podcast if you haven’t already, so you can be guaranteed to not miss an episode and get all the archives. Come to the site, DerekRydall.com, and get some free tools. Stay involved. Stay engaged. Until next time, live authentically, love unconditionally, and follow your destiny.
by sublimity-001-main | Apr 18, 2024 | 2024, Emergence, Podcast, Purpose, Spiritual Growth, Wealth and Abundance, Work and Business
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When we understand that life is emergent, that life is not happening to us, but it’s happening through us and as us, that whatever’s missing is what we’re not giving, that if we want more to come into our life we have to let more life come out of us, or as the poet Browning said, “We must find a way to release this imprisoned splendor.”
We’re talking about today the seven reasons why things aren’t working, or just why aren’t things working? This is such a common experience, of course, and we bang our head against the wall, and we get depressed and disillusioned, and it’s important to understand so we can begin to diagnose why aren’t things working? What’s going on when things aren’t working?
Listen in now for the full explanation and support your personal development and spiritual growth and start participating in your future good NOW.
And remember, self-help is shelf help – you have everything you need already!
Stay inspired!
Transcription
Derek Rydall here, founder of the Law of Emergence, and author of the bestselling book, Emergence, and it’s just such an honor and a pleasure to be with you again as we take this deep dive into understanding the principles for successful living that sometimes can be quite radical and exactly the opposite of what we’ve conditioned to believe. When we understand that life is emergent, that life is not happening to us, but it’s happening through us and as us, that whatever’s missing is what we’re not giving, that if we want more to come into our life we have to let more life come out of us, or as the poet Browning said, “We must find a way to release this imprisoned splendor.”
We’re talking about today the seven reasons why things aren’t working, or just why aren’t things working? This is such a common experience, of course, and we bang our head against the wall, and we get depressed and disillusioned, and it’s important to understand so we can begin to diagnose why aren’t things working? What’s going on when things aren’t working?
I want to start off by saying it’s almost never a sign from the Universe that you’re not supposed to be pursuing this. Now, certainly sometimes you aren’t supposed to be pursuing what you’re pursuing, but that old trope of New Age belief that when things are difficult and hard it’s a sign that you’re not supposed to do it from the Universe, if that was true, pretty much all major innovations in history would never have happened, because it was really hard for Martin Luther King, Jr. and Gandhi and Edison and Disney and Steve Jobs and Jesus and Buddha, pick your master, creator, inventor, leader. Every door was closed to them. Every window was closed, and storm shutters nailed to them. So that wasn’t a sign they weren’t supposed to do it, it was an opportunity for them to dig deeper to become stronger, and it was really a sign that they were in many cases on the right track of progress, because it was bringing up all the resistance in their direction.
I just want to start off right out of the gate and say that your struggle and your challenge, don’t fall for the belief that it’s just a sign from the Universe you’re not supposed to do it. The only real sign you’re not supposed to pursue something is you no longer want to. I want to say a caveat to that is sometimes you don’t think you want to, because it’s hard, and you have to trick your ego and say, “If it could be easy, if I could still do it, be successful, be well received, have a great time, would I want to do this and be this and create and contribute this?” That kind of temporarily clears away the dust and debris of the journey, and allows you to feel that glow of your heart’s desire again. As long as that glow is still there it’s still true for you, and the difficulty is about growing and getting stronger and building soul stamina and developing certain muscles and skills so that you can carry the energy of that vision or mission.
Let’s go through the seven reasons why things are often not working. The first one, and these aren’t necessarily in any given order, but the first one it’s often a sign that you’re trying to achieve something with old tools, and an old model, and an old map. In other words, in our developmental stages of life you end up having experiences, and you end up deciding this is the way life is. Life is hard. Resources are limited. I’m not that worthy, and people aren’t to be trusted, as an example. Right? That’s based on some experiences you have, so you quickly draw a map of reality, and it literally gets laid down neurologically, and then you create a model for living based on that map. Then you end up creating a toolkit to operate and survive in that territory.
The problem, of course, is that the map is incorrect, but for a time it can actually be useful, because, if you’ve studied my shadow work, you end up developing a lot of skills and abilities and things as a reaction based on coping and defense mechanism and self-preservation, a lot of skills and things that are actually beneficial. This is what’s called the gift of the shadow, but at a certain point, especially if you really get on a path of self-development and self-actualization and spiritual awareness and consciousness expansion and real vision, you are calling forth and activating a larger consciousness, a larger perception of reality, and what starts to happen is that old model, that old thing, no longer works. It’s like you’re trying to use the tools that they used to work on the Model T Ford to work on your Ferrari, or even your Prius. The tools don’t work anymore. You don’t realize that, because these tools and this map and this model are so close to you, but that’s one of the reasons is that you’re trying to get from LA to New York using a map of the old world where it’s still got little drawings of dragons and stuff, there be dragons. They would write those on the maps whenever they didn’t know what was there. They would just draw a picture of a monster or something, because that was how the mind perceived the unknown.
That’s one sign, and you begin to question. What if my map of reality is wrong, and my model of operating therefore is wrong, and the tools I’m using to work with that model are therefore outdated or no longer work on this new model that’s trying to emerge in my life? That starts to open up a whole other line of questions, of inquiry, and of discovery. As well as transformation and real evolution.
The next of the seven reasons, and this is connected to this first one, is often your chronic challenges or problems are a sign that you’re trying to manage a life that is too small. You’re trying to manage or cope in a world too small where you’ve activated a different or bigger life, a larger life. For example, like the acorn analogy you’ve activated your inner oak tree, but you’re still trying to stay a safe acorn and hold onto your protective shell. That inner oak is trying to crack through, and it’s creating the crisis. It’s creating the experience of things falling apart or not working, and you’re trying to call in a shell repairman to fix your shell and all these kinds of things. Like the caterpillar trying to hold your caterpillar life together. You’re trying to manage. You’re trying to cope and hold onto a self-concept and a life concept that is breaking apart, because you’ve activated a bigger life.
It’s similar, but it’s different by degree. In the first example you’re trying to use tools and a model and a map of the world that you’ve outgrown, and eventually when it becomes a chronic problem you are now trying to manage and cope in a world that is too small for the world life that you’ve activated, for the energy that you’ve activated. This becomes increasingly challenging and painful the more you are on a conscious spiritual path, and the more you have desires and intentions and prayers, because you are activating all this energy that’s now trying to emerge, but you are still holding onto the old self-concept, the old world concept, and trying to actually manage your life within that paradigm. It won’t work. It’s extremely painful, and ultimately impossible. You can’t be an acorn and an oak tree at the same time. Once you’ve activated the inner oak, you cannot remain an acorn without suffering. Does that make sense?
Then the third reason why things aren’t working is a values conflict. You may have heard me talk about this before, but basically you’ve been wired a certain way because of experiences. Perhaps growing up you were trying to do a certain endeavor or project, and maybe make money or be successful or be creative, and it was causing problems in your family, and you got the message somewhere along the line that you were hurting your family, or you were hurting your sibling, because you were outshining them. You got the message that you either have to be a good child, a good son, a good daughter, and be part of the tribe and have family and connection and love, or you have to leave it, abandon it, for success and for name, fame, and fortune. It may not have been that overt, but you got a message that it was one or the other. It was mutually exclusive.
Internally you still valued both things. You still wanted to shine your creative genius or be successful, and you still wanted to have love and family and connection. Those values still existed in you, but now they were sibling rivalry. They were mutually exclusive they way they were wired. So every time you would start to go for one, it would create problems in the other. It would create anxiety, or you would self-sabotage, so that you could ultimately go back to the other value. Then you would eventually yearn for the other value, the opposite value, and somehow self-sabotage this one so you can go for the other one. Right?
I used to do that as well. I’d start to get successful, then I’d pull back, back away, self-sabotage, and then I would go do my spiritual practice, be with my family, feel a sense of relief. Then eventually I’d start to feel anxious and like I’m not doing anything, I’m not living my potential. I would start going for success again, and eventually start to feel anxious, guilty, disconnected from my spirit, from my family or friends, and then I would sabotage and go back to that again. Until I eventually saw that based on my upbringing I had these values conflicts, and in my mind to go for one would mean I’d have to sacrifice the other. I just created a reconnection of my values, a values affirmation, where I essentially said, the more successful I become, the more deeply connected I am to my heart, to my art, to my loved ones, and the more I honor my need to be connected to my spirit and to my art and to my loved ones, the more powerfully I am inspired to go for success and make a big impact in the world. That felt good. Yes. I can have both.
Those values aren’t intrinsically exclusive. They were only wired that way. The minute those wires touched again there was an energetic spark. Energy started to flow again, and as that became a mantra and became embodied then the more I would go for my success the more I would be inspired to take my spiritual path deeper and connect with loved ones, and the more I connected with my art and my heart and my loved ones, the more inspired I was to go for my work, and it served. They became complimentary and served each other. So values conflict, that’s often a reason why things aren’t working. It’s like you’ve got one foot on the gas and one foot on the brake.
Then we get to the shadow block. Again, if you’ve studied my work you understand some of the shadow work, and this is there’s a shadow around whatever the next step of growth is. You’re bumping into the shadow, and this shadow is connected to values conflicts, can be connected, and can be similar, and can emerge out of similar developmental stages of your life. This basically means that, for example, maybe you actually need to take a different direction or slow down or take a break or take more time at some aspect of the work you’re developing or the relationship, but when you imagine doing it you’re afraid of the outcome. What if it doesn’t work? What if I fail? What if I look stupid? What if I look bad? Then if you ask yourself, if that happens, what would I make that mean about me, or what am I afraid others would make it mean about me? You hear certain judgments, like I’m lazy, I’m a loser, I’m a failure, I’m unworthy, I’m not good enough, I’m selfish. For example, you really want to go for this thing, and you find you just don’t feel the momentum or the energy, or you keep sabotaging it, and when you ask, what am I afraid is going to happen? I’m going to succeed. What am I afraid people are going to think about me? I’m self-centered. I’m selfish. I’m insensitive to their needs, whatever. That’s a shadow.
So when you do the shadow work, and you embrace the selfish self, or the lazy self, or the failure self, you integrate the imprisoned energy within that shadow. I don’t have the time to go into the full understanding of shadows within this particular talk, but you unlock it, and now that energy becomes available to you, and the wisdom, and the insight, and the gift of that, and it’s no longer blocking you, because you have now made friends with the selfish self. You don’t care if somebody thinks you’re selfish, because you’ve embodied selfishness in its optimal state, which means to honor the self, to take care of the self. Now, if you want to do the shadow process once you understand what your shadow is, you can go to DerekRydall.com/shadowprocess. Download a free shadow process audio training. If you really want to master the shadow work, you can get the program Shadow Dancing. It’s a total in depth mastery of the shadows in all the major structures of your life, and that will radically transform you and unleash the energy within you. You can go to DerekRydall.com for more information on that, or email support@DerekRydall.com.
The next, Number Five, why things aren’t working, wrong goal. Let me just break this down a little bit. That doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t still, let’s say you want to write a book, build a business, grow your clientele, or find the love of your life. That doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t have that as a success endeavor as a part of your plan and your vision and something you are going for, but ultimately there’s only one legitimate goal, and that is to live in a deep connection with yourself, with your Source, with God, with truth, whatever name you want to give it, and to be in a state of peace, love, joy, in this moment. That’s the only legitimate goal. That’s what all the great masters have taught. You can actually test and verify this if you ask, if I got that outer goal, what would that give me? Why do I want it? If you ask what I call the five whys, why do I want it, why do I want it, why do I want that? Then you get this, and why do I want that? Then you get this. You eventually get down to I’d get the money, so I can buy the house, and I’d get the house so that I can enjoy my life. Then I can enjoy my life, so I can finally be in joy or peace. You’ll always eventually get to a quality, a state of being, a state of deeper connection with life. Always. That’s all we’re really ever going for.
Any attempt to have an attachment to an external goal immediately turns on the stress response, makes it increasingly difficult to achieve it, creates all kinds of resistance and toxic chemicals and toxic thoughts, and may make it difficult to impossible to ever achieve it, or if you do the cost will be so high, and you will not experience joy or freedom, if only temporarily, and then eventually you’ll be right back to thinking you need to get the next bigger, better thing, and you’ll be miserable. You want to look at, what do I really want? What I really want is a sense of peace and joy. So then you shift your goal to be developing and embodying whatever the vibrational feeling tone of achieving that goal would be.
That becomes your core goal, your top priority, so that as you’re going through your day and doing the work you’re doing, you’re stopping on a regular basis and checking in and going, what am I really after here? Remembering, getting reconnected to your real goal, to be in love, to be in peace, to be in joy, in this moment. For the next 30-60 minutes that’s my goal. Then you go back to work, and you still do whatever you’re going to do. Some people are like, if I just only want peace or joy, and I’m just resting in the moment and peace and joy, I’m not going to be inspired. I’m not going to have momentum. Everything’s going to fall apart. That’s what the ego tells you, but exactly the opposite will happen.
The more you are connected to and achieving a state of peace, love, joy, gratitude in the moment, legitimately, the more dynamically creative and active you will be, because your spirit is not neutral. Love is not neutral. It’s dynamic. According to your unique design and pattern it will unfold. You know the old thing where your parents might have told you, “You keep crying, and I’ll give you something to cry about.” The Universe is saying, you keep being in joy, I’m going to give you something to be joyful about. You keep being grateful, I’m going to give you something to be grateful about. That state of joy and gratitude will manifest more experiences that give you reason to be joyful and grateful. If you’re struggling and things just aren’t working, you want to check in and see, what’s the real goal here, and realign yourself with that.
Then we get to the sixth reason why things aren’t working, and that’s competence. Sometimes you hear your voice say, I’m not good enough at this. I’m just not good enough, and you know what? That voice might be right. A lot of times we brush over that and try to just do an affirmation, but it might actually be accurate and giving you guidance and saying, “You need to go back to the drawing board. You need to dive a little deeper and get a little bit more learning and understanding and mastery of this particular thing.” There’s gold there that you have yet to mine, beyond what you may even know. You may go back to research and study, and all of a sudden it opens up a whole new world, a whole new possibility, a whole new potential. Don’t dismiss the possibility that you need to develop more competence. Sometimes it also might mean you need to work harder, not just smarter. You might go back and discover the people that really succeeded in this, the very best of the best, they were the ones still at the gym when everybody else went home. They were the ones willing to completely redevelop their particular skill even when people were saying they were good enough. Like Tiger Woods willing to break down his golf swing and rebuild it at the height of his career. Like Michael Jordan going and shooting 300 free throws every time, even at the height of his career.
If you’re the person who suffers under perfectionism, this is probably not your issue. Your issue is probably the opposite, you just need to ship it, as Seth Godin would say. You just need to get in the game and not just stay on the sidelines practicing. It depends. Depending on where you are, there’s some deeper learning either that the best practice is you need to just do it, just get it written, get it out there, or that you need to learn Step A or Step B or Step C. This is the most practical of the seven reasons why things aren’t working, but, believe it or not, often overlooked.
Step Seven, finally, you might just need to rest and stop taking action. The analogy is you plant the seed. You water it. You weed it. You feed it. It doesn’t grow right away. You dig it up again, plant it again. Water, weed it, feed it. It doesn’t grow right away. You dig it up, plant it again. Is that seed going to grow? No. It’s not only not going to grow, it’s probably going to die. There is a period of work and labor and sowing, and then there’s a period of resting, and then there’s a period of reaping. If you go to the gym, and you work out every day the same muscle over and over again, it’s not going to grow stronger. In fact, it’s going to tear down and eventually fail. You have to rest. Actually, all of the greatest progress happens during the rest. That’s when the repair and the rebuilding and the signal in the body goes and makes the muscle stronger and bigger through the process of repair.
The same thing is true with your ideas, your creative projects. Sometimes you have to just put it in a drawer for a day or a week or a month. It’s not saying you’re giving up. It’s understanding the gestation, germination, creation process. There are cycles. You don’t just breathe out. You have to also breathe in. Again, for some individuals that are go, go, go, go, like a shark afraid if they stop swimming they’re going to die, you want to look at a values conflict or a shadow, because there’s something you’re afraid is going to happen if you rest. For some of you you need to develop new structures in your life so that there’s space for playing, that you actually build into your calendar your mediation practice, time to be with friends and family, time to play, time to exercise, time to just goof off, free time where you got nothing scheduled. So that you’re designing a life that’s conducive to the natural rhythms of conception, creation, gestation, maturation, and ultimately manifestation. Sometimes you just need to stop and rest. Be still, and let the work you’ve done begin to work on you.
These are the seven core reasons why things aren’t working. Usually you can find and diagnose the problem within these seven. I hope this has served you, and my prayer, my intention for you, is that no matter what you stay the course. You stay engaged, and you stay inspired. Until next time, remember to live authentically, love unconditionally, and follow your destiny.
