Emergence by Derek Rydall

The problem is that we try to become somebody else based on what we see is popular at that time in society and at that place where we find ourselves. We are never fully committed to being who we already are. “Being who we already are” may sound illogical, but all it means is that we have something innate within all of us, what the author calls the “divine being“, and that we need to stop getting in its way and allow it to emerge.

“You don’t get what you want in life; you get who you are in consciousness.” – that is, you already are something – unique qualities, potential, and purpose inherently within you – and the goal is to make conditions ripe for their emergence. When the conditions are set, your true self will naturally emerge. “… when we recognize that everything we need is already within us … we lay the foundation for the Law of Emergence to operate …”.

This is a gradual process, that is, as the conditions gradually become right the more of your true self gradually emerges, “… when you make the connection to this seed of potential within you and become aligned with it, whatever you need for your life to emerge to the next level will show up.“. Conversely, when you start from the premise that you are lacking – the actions borne out of this “… dualistic perception … creates superficial improvements.“.

Just as an acorn contains the blueprint to become a mighty oak tree, each person has an inherent potential and purpose within them. “Just as the oak is already in the acorn before the acorn is planted in the ground, everything you need to fulfill your destiny was already in you before you were planted in your mother’s womb.“.

The acorn doesn’t need look externally for its identity; it already has everything it needs inside and just needs the right conditions—soil, water, sunlight to “become what it is”. Similarly, individuals have all the necessary qualities and potential within themselves and just need to create the right environment and remove barriers to allow their true selves to emerge naturally.

“… when you create the right inner conditions, the great purpose for which you were born must emerge.“.

Before starting with the steps one can take to create the conditions right for emergence Rydall takes an interesting detour into the philosophy I personally subscribe to: Advaita Vedanta. Although he does not use the exact term, the parallels are strong, unmistakable. I must talk about this before moving ahead. He says that we have mistaken our identities, that we are really spiritual beings having a human experience (Chardin’s quote).

That things “… arise out of the Self and dissolve back into it.“, that “… we exist in an indivisible unified field, out of which all creation arises …”, talking about the Advaitic concept of the vast ocean of existence, consciousness, bliss. He says that we must “… identify less as a limited human self that is trapped in time …”, that “… you are this infinite omnipresent something that is forever unfolding. Not the human you—who was born, has a history, and will eventually dissolve back into dust—but the real you, the true Self that is always emerging.” – Again talking about the Atman.

“Things are not happening to you; they are happening through you.” – or as I wrote in a Sun card once: “You do not move through time, time moves through you. You are not in space, space is in you.“. As I said, the parallels are unmistakable. And so an “… understanding of our true Self versus our human self is a primary condition in the successful activation of the Law of Emergence.“. Indeed.

Rydall posits that imagining (i.e. visualising) our desired future may be a sub-optimal strategy because our imagination is a capability that uses our conscious mind, our intellect. As a result what will be a imagined will be an extension or a slightly improved version of our current mindset: “… attempts to visualize your larger life often result in manifesting only an improved version of your limited self-concept …”.

To connect with our innate self we need to let go of attachment to our currently defined self-concept, our ideas of right or wrong, possible or not. “… but for a true vision that evolves us to the next level … we must cross the border of our conditioned mind and enter an uncharted frontier that can only be navigated through the sight of our soul.“, what Rydall calls “Emergination“.

• Rydall talks about a series of steps that you can take to unearth the vision of your life, its divine purpose as well as visions for discrete aspects of life such as family, work, money, community etc¹.
• He recommends exploring the deeper practices described in the book Life Visioning by Michael Beckwith.

Rydall says that with Emergination you “… discover the excitement of opening up to what wants you” – I find that very intelligent and on point to the concept – not “what you want”, but “what wants you“.

• Make a list of all your desires – the things you want, and goals – the reason you want those things. Make as long as you list as you want.
• Against each desire write down the reason for that desire (i.e. the goal). So you’ll have two columns: one for desire and the other for goals. For example, Desire: “I want a promotion”, Goal: “So that I can have more money”.

• Then, move over to the desire column all the goals that are for material stuff and repeat the exercise until you only have non-material goals left in the list. For example, the goal: “So that I can have more money” is about a material thing (money), so it will be moved over to the desire column and its goal will be written down next “So that I can have a bigger house and more things” (still material things), which itself will become “So that others will respect me” (finally a non material thing).

• Finally, convert all the non-material goals into internal non-material goals. For example, “So that others will respect me” will become “So I feel respected” will become “So that I respect myself”.
• Take note of these internal non-material goals as they are your core values waiting to emerge.

The thing to understand in all of this is that your true values are things for which you never needed anything external. You always had the power to feel love, to respect yourself, to feel secure without buying the things that capitalism will tell you are essential.

“As you uncover the true motivation behind your desire to attain things, they begin to lose their luster, their irresistible pull. The more you come to understand that what you actually want is already within you, the less appeal the outer struggle has.“.

Having gone through the two steps above, our minds nimbler and less pre-conditioned to “practicality”, Rydall asks us to see the most fully realised vision of our life. No holds barred, a life of abundance. Don’t just see it, feel it in your body.

You are deliberately thinking big because “… it’s easier to activate our deeper emergent resources when we have … a vision that lifts us out of the gravitational pull of everyday thinking—than it is to try and achieve something that only mildly revs us up.“.

Now, capture this vision in your vision statement. This will also act as your North Star, bring you back on course should you veer off course.

Verbs: That resonate with your core values, such as, To Inspire, To Empower, To Create, To Innovate, To Lead, To Educate, To Heal, To Serve, To Explore, To Collaborate, To Build, To Enlighten, To Support, To Transform, To Protect.

Engagement Context: The context of your personal or professional life, deciding who or what you will be engaging with or contributing to.

Ultimate Goal: The value, benefit, or end result you want to create.

Your state of feeling is what you really care about, the things you think you want are just means to that end.

The thing is, state of feeling is independent of your state of having, state of doing, state of employment, state of finances or any other external state, even your state of health (think of mystics who fast for days and make do with minimal creature comforts yet feel blissful).

One can say that “it’s all in the mind”, or if you don’t like that extreme a position, “most of what we perceive as the qualitative aspects of our lives are modulated by our mental state, changing the mental state can change the qualitative perception”.

The author realises this “It’s the quality of our inner landscape … that creates the conditions of our outer world.“.

Accept the Reality creating mechanism of consciousness: What we manifest inside is going to appear in our world outside.

This is a most critical thing to understand. “If you want to fully activate the Law of Emergence and become the master of your life, you must accept that what’s outside is a reflection of what’s inside.“.

• This means that knowing nothing external has power over you. They have power over your assets, your bank account, your body – but not your resolved mind. A resolved mind can create the reality it wants and withdraw from negativity when it wants to. Many examples abound supporting this in history such as the one of Thích Quảng Đức.

• If you plant a dandelion in the ground and water it, you will naturally get a weed a few weeks later not a rose plant, that’s just nature doing its job. Similarly, if you feed the divine consciousness within you with negativity and feelings of lack then you’ll naturally only get the same reflected back in your life, that’s just consciousness doing its job.

“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.“.

Your good is already broadcasting: If you think about it, whatever we want already exists.

Say, you want a lot of money, then the a groundbreaking business idea that will make you that money already exists, doesn’t it?

Not just that one idea, all of the millions of business ideas that will make you a billionaire many times over already exist – it is you who has not found them.

The author takes the example of radio stations that are broadcasting music all the time.

If someone with a radio set tells us that they cannot hear the music, only static – we’ll naturally tell them to tune in to the correct station.

Similarly, all that we need for out innate self to emerge is already there – we just need to tune into it. In other words, we need to create congruent conditions.

Identify the three Soul Purpose Pillars of your life vision – Feeling, Being, Doing.

Visualise your ideal life, think about what you’re feeling in that vision, and the qualities / characteristics you embody.

You’re taking small steps towards your ideal life by starting at the foundation: feeling and being the person you’d be in your ideal life. Projecting outwards.

I can speak from personal experience that these things are easy to start but very hard to keep up; you tend to forget the you were being and revert to being the person you were.

Activate the Feeling and Being pillars:

1. For all the feelings identified write down the activities, people, things that make you feel them. Then start slowly incorporating these in your life.
2. For all the being qualities and characteristics write down the actions you can start taking to become that person now. These need to be specific actions, not vague.

Practice Daily LIFT (Living In the Feeling Tone): This is the foundational meditation technique for your emergence practice.

In a series of steps Rydall tells us how we can use visualisation, mental and somatic feeling, compassion and channeling energy to do this. Rydall also provides us with guidance on taking out time through the day to practice mindfulness, affirmation techniques, and journalling. This way you will have laid the foundation for your innate self to emerge and move this life to where it is destined to go.

This is the Law of Circulation and a key tenet of the concept of emergence.

The law suggests that for abundance to thrive, it must be in constant motion.

Just like water in a river, energy, money, and resources need to flow freely to maintain health and harmony.

When we give freely and generously, we create space for more abundance to flow into our lives. Conversely, hoarding or blocking the flow can lead to stagnation and limitation.

Embracing an abundance mindset means trusting that there is always enough to go around.

By circulating resources with positive intentions, we affirm our belief in the ongoing flow of wealth and opportunities.

Operating from a scarcity mindset will actually make scarcity manifest in your life. And merely intellectually knowing the Law of Circulation is not enough. You have to live it.

The same exercises feeling and being mentioned above are useful here – Through them you naturally start to exude the qualities needed for your life vision.

For instance, you may become more generous, kind and supporting behaving in alignment your vision of someone who is secure themselves.

This makes the world you interact with feel supported and secure – which then rewards you by reflecting back security to you – it may come back in the form of material wealth or social support or spiritual fortitude, but the point is that it will come back.

You may be rolling your eyes thinking: “Oh, so you mean I should give away all my money because the Law of Circulation will give me more of it?”

No, the key point is not the amount but the intent.

If you give with the intent that there is always enough to share – that’s it, job done. Realise what you’re really trying to give is not the material item but the feeling that there is enough – trust, love, security or whatever else your vision is about.

Understand that the Law of Circulation also involves receiving. Be open to accepting support and opportunities that come your way, creating a balanced flow of giving and receiving.

Making grand plans and painstakingly mapping our every facet is not only impractical and robs you of energy that can be used to do actual work, but it also guarantees its own failure by being too rigid because life does not work according to our plans. The planning paradox.

More pertinent to the principles of emergence crafting a plan based on the assumption that you are lacking something that must be acquired externally will eventually backfire.

The right way to do this, “quantum planning“, is to allow life (our inner spirit) to guide the intellect in the general direction where it wants to go.

To start quantum planning Rydall tells us to “… look at your life’s vision and imagine how much you are inspired to accomplish toward that vision one year from now.“.

Now is the time for converting your vision into a series of goals that need to be achieved to make it real.

You can make yearly goals or even quarterly goals – the thing is that you should be able to point out clearly how they moved you towards your vision.

This is how we’ll activate the doing Soul Purpose Pillar from above.

Acknowledge and make a running list of what you do not know so that you do not trip over them later as your scared monkey brain/ego looks to find loopholes in your plan.

Affirm that the things you do not know can become paths for additional and unique growth given the right perspective.

Also know that you’ll have many “unknown unknowns” – this is natural. Believe in the truth of your spirit’s direction.

• Imagine a future one year from now that doesn’t feel like a fairy tale, that you think can be possible.
• Just where it stops being a fairy tale and enters the realm of real possibility, see if that future still inspires you, energises you to dive right into the work to make it happen – is that growth good enough for you?
• If it is not then start dialling up the imagination again.

• If it again reenters the fairy tale zone then bring it back to reality, if it stops being inspiring again then dial the imagination back up.
• Iterate this way a few times and you should have a vision of the future a year from now that you actually are energised to achieve but that also will take real work.
• Convert this into a one year vision statement.

• Work backwards from that one year vision and create the general outline of the goals you will need to take to get there. Convert those goals into daily steps (all the approaches outlined in The Art of Impossible apply here).
• Be careful that you do not get caught in “analysis paralysis” i.e. over dividing and over analysing your goals, so that you end up getting confused and lost.

Pretty much exactly repeating what Kotler says in The Art of Impossible – when setting your vision (what Kotler calls “Massively Transformational Purpose”) the author tells us to dream big.

But when planning short term goals towards the dream, be specific, realistic, and once you have set them, make sure you achieve your short term goals.

You “… want to create success patterns, not failure patterns … create yearly goals that you really intend to reach … giving yourself your word …”

Apart from objective goals like “get into a good medical college” or “read, review and post about 50 books”, you also want to set subjective goals which are about the person you want to become.

Indeed, this is the same as the being exercise in creating congruent conditions, just that you’re really dialling in the specific behaviours you want embody a year from now.

Finally, as you start working your daily to-do list you will see patterns of work that you naturally love to do and do well – Rydall calls this the “zone of genius“.

• Try to play more in this zone while outsourcing the remaining goals to those who for whom they’ll be their zone of genius.
• Remember you are merely outsourcing, you are not letting go of the goals, they are still important to your vision!
• Even if you cannot immediately outsource the important thing is to know what should be outsourced and what shouldn’t.

1. Have a Clear Vision – “… starting each day, each project, or each event with a clear vision, rooted in your core values and larger purpose …”
2. Act Like Your Vision Is True – Walk the talk.
3. Act According to Your Highest Beliefs – “In order to move to the next level, you must align your actions with your highest beliefs about God, life, and your true Self.“.
4. Act from the Stillness – “… notice instances where your actions seem to be coming from a fearful or frenetic place, where you’re pushing or trying to make something happen, and practice a little inaction.“.

5. Act from Where You Want to Be, Not from Where You Are – “When we focus on where we’re going, on the vision, and live as if we’re already there, rather than trying to get there, we don’t just draw that reality toward us; we create it.“.
6. Act from Who You Want to Be, Not from How You Feel – You will not think you’re way into a new way of acting, you will act your way into a new way of thinking. #AtomicHabits.
7. Act without Concern for the Results – You’re doing it because it is good work. You are entitled only to the action, not the fruits. Realise this.

We do not like to be reminded about the parts we have hidden away in our consciousness, we feel those parts bring us down and are useless. We try to avoid these seemingly negative feelings of inadequacy, shame, guilt and regret. We try to move through life hauling those parts as baggage and believing that whatever we are able to muster after covering up for those parts is the life left for us. But this is not the truth. The pain is not bad, the pain is not what you think it is.

“We have an experience and, with limited information, decide what it means—what life is, who others are, and who we are in relation to it all—and then create coping and defense mechanisms to survive the story we’ve created. Most, if not all, of the actual threats that caused us to create our story no longer exist in our life (except the ones we’re perpetuating with our defense mechanisms). Yet we continue to live as if they do.“.

Those parts that we have hidden away, the parts we don’t like, the parts we are scared of – they hold the key to our true growth – they are you. We have to believe, and indeed in some cases (my case at least) learn from experience, that those painful episodes were actually the times we grew and evolved the most. Feel the pain, embrace it.

“… we can’t leave our troubles behind; they’re an expression of our consciousness.“.

Rydall reveals two powerful meditations: “The Timeline Process” and “Entering the House of Shadows“.

Designed to make us embrace parts of us that we have hidden away in shame or fear or any other similar emotion, they free us from the manifestations of those parts in our lives such as a fearing, paranoid nature or an inability to express love.

“… you don’t have to fix yourself; you have to embrace, integrate, and redeem the parts [of you that] you’ve judged and rejected …”

Rydall tells us that even if we follow all the exercises in the book start living the Emergence way of life, transformation may not happen immediately.

We start the new venture and no one seems to care, we open up to another and they remain cold, we join the gym and the love handles are still there.

This may be due to additional layers of our limiting mindset that need to be uncovered and dealt with, or additional skills that we need to acquire, or more work that needs to be done, or simply luck that needs to turn in our favour.

Whatever the reason, it is likely during this time that our ego will come at us – self-doubt, worry, fear, anxiety, dread, anguish – It knows exactly where to hit – “I should have never taken the leap”, “I was fine where I was, at least I got a pay check”, “I should have never opened up”, “What will people say?”, “What was I thinking?”

“The frustration, doubt, blame, or impatience we experience with the Emergence process are all directly attributable to this long-entrenched function of the ego.“.

We bump into “thresholds” as Rydall calls them, limitations and preconceived ideas about what we can and cannot have, do and be.

It is during these times of stress that we must stay the course – this is why the first exercise of defining your vision statement is so important.

In a way you have to be the vision, and it cannot be anything but you. The vision will never change, as you, the real you (#VedantaVibes) will not change – what changes is your interpretation and execution of the vision.

People with such alignment with their vision still face hard times as any one else, but they find it easier to stay the course. They might not even think of it as staying the course, it is only to us as outside observers that it looks like persistence, grit and such.

To them, they are just doing what they’re supposed to do, how their vision would have them act – tough external circumstances are feedback to them to change, adapt and try to live their vision in the new reality, but it is never an indictment of their vision itself.

This is critical to realise and whether you like to remember it by Shri Krishna’s guidance (“do the work, leave the results to me”) or Mother Teresa’s prayer or anything else – just remember, if it truly is your vision then you must hold the line.

“Make the commitment to your vision and stay the course. And when the thresholds tempt you to believe you can’t go on, do it anyway.“.

Rydall gives an exercise to figure out where your limiting beliefs (thresholds) are, and then working on them.

At the end of the book Rydall invites us to use our lives in the service of something bigger than our personality, something bigger than our body-mind complex. It could be family, community, country or even the world.

Bigger is not just about space but also about time, Rydall also tells us to “… contemplate the impact of your life over many generations.“.

He guides us through an exercise called “Finding Your Emerging Edge”