Emergence by Derek Rydall

All quotes from Derek's book

Your tomorrow is an extension of God’s today.

This didn’t mean that my life had to fall apart, just that I had to be willing to let it; I had to let go of attachment, of my ideas of what should or shouldn’t be.

Imagination may take us on a journey to the edge of our known self, but for a true vision that evolves us to the next level (whether personally, professionally, or societally), 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.

Emergination is an inside-out process that transforms you into the person you must be to handle the next phase of growth with ease, grace, and integrity.

Trust that what you need to receive and remember, you will, and that even if you don’t remember, there’s valuable work being done in the deeper recesses of your consciousness.

True change – whether in your inner world, outer world, or the world at large, requires you to go beyond your known self, beyond the stories of your life, beyond all the excuses that have held you back, and tap into that realm where your higher vision exists.

The experience of the senses is an expression of mental and spiritual activity, not a reality in itself. We don’t see or hear because we have eyes and ears; we have eyes and ears because seeing and hearing are aspects of consciousness.

Our body doesn’t actually feel – the mind does, the phantom limb phenomena illustrates this. When someone loses a limb, they’ll sometimes still feel pain or itching in the missing limb and reach into empty space to scratch an appendage that is no longer there. The whole world “out there” is a movie we’re projecting on the screen of our mind.

When we don’t consciously identify with what we don’t know, the ignorance remains unconscious and can manifest as anxiety, procrastination, and all manner of self-sabotage.

Life doesn’t always appear to be so generous to us.  When this happens, it’s not personal.  The universe is just reflecting how we’re thinking about or treating ourselves, such as “undeserving” or “not good enough”. 

The more you give from an awareness of having, the more you have to give.

Sometimes acting as if something is true activates something inside of us that really is.

Action is the evidence of belief and the mechanism by which we anchor it on earth.

Action is belief in work clothes.

Act from where you want to be, not from where you are.

Act from who you want to be, not from how you feel.

Do you want to know what you really believe so you can start from a place of honesty and authenticity and build upon that foundation? Don’t merely look at what you’re thinking, saying, affirming, or praying; look at what you’re doing, especially under pressure.

The urge to correct something is a form of resistance to what is.

Problems are symptoms of a particular state of consciousness.

To evolve, we must take our attention off the problem and place it on the opportunity.

Rather than focusing on the obstacle, you need to look beyond it to where you want to go.  And because energy flows where your attention goes, it will cause you to think, say, and do things that put you back on the road to success.

Many people believe that if they don’t “feel like it”, there’s a legitimate reason not to act.  But it’s no reason at all; it’s an unexamined false belief. It also shows up in less obvious but equally pernicious self-talk like, “I’m just not inspired”, or “I don’t have the energy”.

When we “do it any way”, we have a direct experience that shows that we really are the source of power in our life.

What you think and feel can only determine what you do if you let it.  On their own, your thoughts and feelings have no power.

There’s no such thing as being stuck, there’s no such things as “can’t”.  “Can’t” is just a filter the ego puts up to stop your growth.  It’s a limited belief.

When you say you can’t, what you’re really saying the majority of the time is “I won’t”.

No matter how far from your destination, you can always take another step in its direction, even if the step takes place in your mind first, then your emotions, then your body.  There’s always a next step.

The sad fact of the human experience is that most people lead lives of quiet desperation, never saying yes to the yes within them, waiting for some perfect or safe condition to finally act upon their deepest desires – a condition that never comes.

You don’t experience reality; you experience your perception of it.

Everything is conspiring for your good, awakening your deeper potential, and preparing you for greater things.

You can’t heal life by repressing it, you can’t have more life by rejecting it, and you can’t live more fully if you’re at war with it.

Whatever’s missing is what you’re not giving.

If we want to heal the situation once and for all, we must make a distinction: are the emotions of pain suffering coming from what we’re thinking, feeling, and projecting onto the person or situation? Or are they coming from the actual conditions of the situation?

Just as the oak is already in the acorn, everything we’re meant to be and all we need to fulfill it is already in us – a perfect pattern and divine purpose.  And, like the oak from the acorn, when the conditions are right, this innate potential naturally emerges.

It’s a trick of the ego to keep you the same while convincing you you’re changing.

The seed you started as already contained the material and mechanics of its fulfillment – and the fulfillment of everyone and everything that evolves from your life.

You don’t need to convince people who aren’t willing or interested….. You just need to say the course.

Just as a single acorn contains endless forests, the seed of your being contains all the ideas, contributions, and impact your life will ever make.

The collective consciousness of separation, limitation, and self-preservation has created a false sense of self and a deep disconnect from the seed of our true nature.

The acorn and its oakhood are perfect ideas that will always emerge when the conditions are right, so, too, will you.

You can’t heal what you don’t feel, and you can’t get where you want to go until you’re honest with where you are.

If we’re not living consciously, our ego will use every trick in its playbook to keep us the same, all while making us think we’re changing, convincing us we can’t, or just dulling our senses.

The ego’s job is self-preservation, often at any cost.

The only way to evolve is to go to a higher level.  And the only way to go to a higher level is to access the evolutionary impulse beyond the conditioned mind.

Money is rarely, if ever, the issue, even when it is.

The life you’ve been trying to make happen is already happening inside you, but it needs you to be conscious of it and congruent with it.  You don’t get what you want in life; you get who you are in consciousness.

The source within you doesn’t bring more into your life; it pulls more life out of you.  The result is what appears to be more things coming to you but is really more of you emerging.

When you practice any goal-achieving technique that starts from a premise that you’re broken or lacking or something is missing, your growth is determined by the level of your current self-image – the picture you have of yourself that is make up of your perceptions, fears, or past traumas as well as the stories you tell yourself and the characters you play in those stories.  At best, this creates superficial improvements.

When we recognize that everything we need is already within us and begin to reconnect to that feeling of innate wholeness and perfection – the way we felt toward that baby—we lay the foundation for the Law of Emergence to operate a process that is about becoming (or, rather, revealing) more of who you truly are, unleashing your infinite, often imprisoned potential.

When you cultivate your inner conditions, your next evolutionary stage will unfold organically.  And because your next stage is already within you, it will arrive whole, bringing with it everything needed for it fulfillment.

As you realize you’re already who you’re meant to be and you already have the thing you want, your process will become more about self-realization.

It’s also important to understanding that self-realization is not a straight line.

The key is to not become attached to or overly identified with any practice or condition.

Locked up in the seed of your soul is not just an image, calling, or pattern of potential; it is the fully realized Self, formed in the invisible dimension of your being.

Your soul is your soil, and if you generate the right inner conditions – mentally, emotionally, and spiritually – your seed will have the right nutrients to thrive.

In order to allow your greatest good to express itself in the most powerful way, you must identify less as a limited human self that is trapped in time and instead tune in to the boundless eternal self within.  

Once we know we’re already whole and that everything we need is within us – including love, respect, validation, power, wealth, and health – we realize there’s no reason to demand, fight for, or fear the loss of any of this.

To the extent that you identify with the part of you that is changing – the human self – you create resistance to the part of you that is emerging – the true Self – much in the way an acorn would if it identified with its shell instead of the oak.

Stop trying to make it happen and instead make it welcome.

All About Love by bell hooks

All quotes from bell's book

Men theorize about love, but women are more often love's practitioners.  Most men feel that they receive love and therefore know what it feels like to be loved; women often feel we are in a constant state of yearning, wanting love but not receiving it.  

Everywhere we learn that love is important, and yet we are bombarded by its failure. 

When we understand love as the will to nurture our own and another's spiritual growth, it becomes clear that we cannot claim to love if we are hurtful and abusive. 

Care is a dimension of love, but simply giving care does not mean we are loving. 

To embrace patriarchy, they must actively surrender the longing to love. 

While privacy strengthens all our bonds, secrecy weakens and damages connection. ... We do not usually "know the emotional costs of keeping a secret" until the truth is disclosed.  Usually, secrecy involves lying.  And lying is always the setting for potential betrayal and violation of trust. 

Keeping people in a constant state of lack, in perpetual desire, strengthens the marketplace economy.  Lovelessness is a boon to consumerism. 

To know love we have to tell the truth to ourselves and to others. 

When we see love as a combination of trust, commitment, care, respect, knowledge, and responsibility, we can work on developing these qualities or, if they are already a part of who we are, we can learn to extend them to ourselves.  

The wounded heart learns self-love by first overcoming low self-esteem. 

Living consciously means we think critically about ourselves and the world we live in. 

Work that enhances our spiritual well-being strengthens our capacity to love. 

When we work with love we renew the spirit; that renewal is an act of self-love, it nurtures our growth. 

A commitment to a spiritual life requires us to do more than read a good book or go on a restful retreat. It requires conscious practice a willingness to unite the way we think with the way we act. 

Awakening to love can happen only as we let go of our obsession with power and domination. 

Living ethically ensures that relationships in our lives, including encounters with strangers, nurture our spiritual growth. 

The choice to love is a choice to connect. 

The need for instant gratification is a component of greed. 

Genuine love is rarely an emotional space where needs are instantly gratified.  To know genuine love we have to invest time and commitment. 

When the practice of love invites us to enter a place of potential bliss that is at the same time a place of critical awakening and pain, many of us turn our backs on love. 

When greedy consumption is the order of the day, dehumanization becomes acceptable. 

When we see love as the will to nurture one's own or another's spiritual growth, revealed through acts of care, respect, knowing, and assuming responsibility, the foundation of all love in our life is the same. 

The practice of love offers no place of safety.  We risk loss, hurt, pain. We risk being acted upon by forces outside our control. 

Self-help books that are anti-gender equality often present women's overinvestment in nurturance as a "natural", inherent quality rather than a learned approach to caregiving.  Much fancy footwork takes place to make it seem that new age mystical evocations of yin and yang, masculine and feminine androgyny, and so on, are not just the same old sexist stereotypes wrapped in more alluring and seductive packaging.  

To practice the art of loving we have first to choose love -- admit to ourselves that we want to know love and be loving even if we do not know what that means. 

Love is an action, a participatory emotion.  Whether we are engaged in a process of self-love or of loving others we must move beyond the realm of feeling to actualize love. 

When we commit to true love, we are committed to being changed, to being acted upon by the beloved in a way that enables us to be more fully self-actualized. 

Love empowers us to surrender. 

Prayer provides a space where talking cures. 

To know compassion fully is to engage in a process of forgiveness and recognition that enables us to release all the baggage we carry that serves as a barrier to healing. 

Judging others increases our alienation. 

When we judge we are less able to forgive. 

Estrangement from the realm of the senses is a direct product of overindulgence, of acquiring too much.  This is why living simply is a crucial part of healing.  As we begin to simplify, to let the clutter go, whether it is the clutter of desire or the actual material clutter and incessant busyness that fills every space, we recover our capacity to be sensual. 

Love does not lead to an end to difficulties, it provides us with the means to cope with our difficulties in ways that enhance our growth. 

Woundedness is not a cause for shame, it is necessary for spiritual growth and awakening. 

All individuals who are genuinely seeking well-being within a healing context realize that it is important to that process not to make being a victim a stance of pride or allocation from which to simply blame others. 

Everything terrible is really something helpless that wants help from us. 

Being loving does not mean we will not be betrayed.  Love helps us face betrayal without losing heart. 

On Intelligence by Jeff Hawkins

All quotes from Jeff's book

The biggest mistake is the belief that intelligence is defined by intelligent behavior.

When you don't know how to proceed, often the best strategy is to make no changes

until your options become clear. 

All your brain knows is patterns.  Your perceptions and knowledge about the world are built from

these patterns. There's no light inside your head. It's dark in there.  There's no sound entering

your brain either.  It's quiet inside.  In fact, the brain is the only part of your body that has no senses

itself.  A surgeon could stick a finger into your brain and you wouldn't feel it.  All the information

that enters your mind comes in as spatial and temporal patterns on the axons.

Patterns are the fundamental currency of intelligence.

All our knowledge of the world is a model based on patterns.... There is no such thing as direct

perception.... The brain is in a dark quiet box with no knowledge of anything other than the

time-flowing patterns on its input fibers.  Your perception of the world is created from these

patterns, nothing else.

The brain does not "compute" the answers to problems; it retrieves the answers from memory.

Thoughts and memories are associatively linked, and random thoughts never really occur.  Inputs

to the brain auto-associatively link to themselves, filling in the present, and auto-associatively link

to what normally follows next.  We call this chain of memories thought.

Our brains use stored memories to constantly make predictions about everything we see, feel

and hear.

Your brain makes low-level sensory predictions about what it expects to see, hear, and feel at

every given moment, and it does so in parallel.  All regions of your neocortex are simultaneously

trying to predict what their next experience will be.

We like to say seeing is believing.  Yet we see what we expect to see as often as we see

what we really see.

If you spend some time observing yourself, you can begin to understand that your perception

of the world, your understanding of the world, is intimately tied to prediction.  Your brain has

made a model of the world and is constantly checking that model against reality. 

Help Thanks Wow: The Three Essential Prayers by Anne Lamott

All quotes from Anne's book

There’s something to be said about keeping prayer simple.  Help. Thanks. Wow. 

Prayer can be motion and stillness and energy – all at the same time.  It begins with stopping in our tracks, or with our backs against the wall, or when we are going under the waves.

Prayer is taking a chance that against all odds and past history, we are loved and chosen, and do not have to get it together before we show up. 

Where do we even start on the daily walk of restoration and awakening? We start where we are.

If I were going to begin practicing the presence of God for the first time today, it would help to begin by admitting the three most terrible truths of our existence: that we are so ruined, and so loved, and in charge of so little. 

The three things I cannot change are the past, the truth, and you.

Often when we do not get our way, which I hate, hate, hate.  But in my saner moments I remember that if we did, usually we would shortchange ourselves.

Revelation is not for the faint at heart.

Without revelation and reframing, life can seem like an endless desert of danger with scratchy sand in your shoes, and yet if we remember or are reminded to pay attention, we find so many sources of hidden water, so many bits and chips and washes of color, in a weed or the gravel or a sunrise.  There are so many ways to sweep the sand off our feet.

God’s idea of a good time is to see us picking up litter.

Gorgeous, amazing things come into our lives when we are paying attention: mangoes, grandnieces, Bach, ponds. 

If you want to know only what you already know, you’re dying.

When nothing new can get in, that’s death.

Life is motion, change, stagnation, bloom.

When all else fails, follow instructions.

The Code of the Extraordinary Mind by Vishen Lakhiani

All quotes from Vishen's book

Have big goals but don’t tie your happiness to your goals.  You must be happy before you attain them.

In the present moment, you’re in the field of possibility.  How you engage with the present moment will direct your life.

We shouldn’t do things so we can be happy.  We should be happy so we can do things.

Good attitudes yield better results.

Holding onto grudges and anger is the single biggest factor suppressing alpha waves.

Everyone who has ever entered our lives, even those who have hurt us, are nothing more than messengers to teach us an important lesson.

Giving is a powerful system for bringing bliss into your life.

Be merciless with your kindness.

Create a new model of reality and think of family as those whom you truly love and want to spend time with.

Extraordinary minds create a vision for their future that is decidedly their own and free from expectations of the culturescape.  Their vision is focused on end goals that strike a direct chord with their happiness.

Some people think that being “spiritual” means having to be content with one’s current life.  Rubbish.  You should be happy no matter where you are.  But that shouldn’t stop you from dreaming, growing, and contributing.

Knowing what you want your life to look like three years from now, what do you need to do today to make this happen?

Happiness is hackable, and Blissipline is a beautiful discipline for leveling up your happiness every day and feeling limitless.

Can you see something if you don’t have a word for it?

Our beliefs about the world and our systems for functioning in the world are all embedded in us through the flow and progression of culture from the minds of the people around us into our baby brains.  But there’s just one problem.  Many of these beliefs and systems are dysfunctional, and while the intention is that these ideas should guide us, in reality they keep us locked into lives far more limited than what we’re truly capable of.

The world of absolute truth is fact-based. The world of the culturescape is opinion-based and agreement-based.

Life has a way of taking care of you no matter how dark it can sometimes feel.

Place your happiness first, only when you’re happy can you truly give your best to others.

While your beliefs make you, your beliefs are not you.

When a belief no longer serves you, you have every right to swap it out.

Nobody taught us optimal ways to exercise, love, parent, eat, or ever to speed read or improve longevity.

What we see as our culture is really nothing more than a quirk of history.  It’s not necessarily right or wrong…. Our culture is the result of thousands of years of ideas emerging, clashing, and dissolving, battling for dominance.

Thanks to intuition, when you set end goals, you don’t necessarily need to know how to attain them.

When you know what you want to bring forth in the world and why you want it, choose it.  Then take whatever action intuition guides you toward taking.

With the right force, even entrenched childhood models of reality can be completely disrupted.

Extraordinary minds do not need to seek validation from outside opinion or through the attainment of goals.  Instead, they are truly at peace with themselves and the world around them.  They live fearlessly – immune to criticism or praise and fueled by their own inner happiness and self-love.

Failure is often nothing more than good luck in disguise.

You don’t have to save the world. Just don’t mess it up for the next generation.

When you create meaning around others’ actions or judge others who don’t provide what you need, chances are you’re really just compensating for a hole within yourself that they reminded you of.

We add meanings to every situation we see and then carry their meanings around as simplistic and often distorted and dangerous models of reality about our world.  We then act as if these models are laws.

There is nothing more attractive than a person who loves himself or herself so deeply that their energy and love spill over to others and to the world. 

Every time you give someone the power to build you up with praise, you’re also unknowingly giving the person the power to destroy you with criticism.

Why has to do with meaning, and meaning is always made up – a mental construct from the world of relative truth.

The problem with most people is that their problems aren’t big enough.

All of us have a child within who never received all the love and appreciation we deserved.  We can’t go back and fix the past.  But we can take responsibility to heal ourselves now by giving ourselves the love and appreciate we once craved.

Human beings can function as logical beings and as intuitive beings.  When we use both capabilities, we’re priming ourselves for extraordinary results.

Creative visualization is a practice of shifting beliefs by meditating and then visualizing your life as you want it to evolve.

Most of us are told to work hard.  Few of us are encouraged to work happy.

The best advice is often to listen to your heart and intuition.  Remember that our models of reality all have expiration dates.  Even what we take to be absolute truth today may not always be a truth in the future.

Stop adding meaning to events.  You will become less reactive to stress and less upset with others in your life.

A system for living is a repeated, optimized pattern for getting things done.  How we dress in the morning is a system.  How we get through our email is often a system.  Our work, our parenting, our exercise routine, how we make love and handle relationships, our methods for creativity – all often fall into specific systems for living.

I compare systems of living to the software the computers use to perform specific operations. They’re the things you do to function in the world, from the moment you wake up to your night time rituals.

Extraordinary people don’t just have extraordinary models of reality.  They strive to ensure that their systems for living – that is, doing what they do in the world – are well defined, structured, and continuously optimized.

Too many of us are so busy doing that we never step back and think about how we’re doing.  Or why we’re doing it.

Awareness is the essence of discovery. Every now and then, stop doing and gather some research.

Step back from what you’re doing and seek to discover new ways to do it better.

Things slip when we don’t have a detection method for knowing when it’s happening.

We’ve created a society where it’s considered normal to wake up with feelings of stress, anxiety, fear, and worry.  But it isn’t. These feelings aren’t meant to be constant states.  They’re alarm systems, evolved to alert us to things we need to deal with.

Stop postponing your happiness.   Be happy now:  your thoughts and beliefs do create your reality, but only when your present state is joyful. 

Secrets of the Millionaire Mind by T. Harv Eker

All quotes from T. Harv's book

Money is a result, wealth is a result, health is a result, illness is a result, your weight is a result.  We live in a world of cause and effect. 

Your programming leads to your thoughts; your thoughts lead to your feelings, your feelings lead to your actions, your actions lead to your results. 

Nonviolent Communication by Marshall B Rosenberg

All quotes from Marshall's book

When we simply express our feelings, it may not be clear to the listener what we want them to do.

Respond to the needs of others out of compassion, never out of fear, guilt, or shame.

Taking responsibility for the feelings of others can be very detrimental to intimate relationships.  

The more directly we can connect our feelings to our own needs, the easier it is for others to respond to us compassionately. 

Judgments of others are alienated expressions of our own unmet needs. 

Connect your feeling with your need:  “I feel… because I need…” 

What others do may be the stimulus of our feelings, but not the cause. 

The Gift of Yoga by Gena Kenny

All quotes from Gena's book

Yoga is a mindful approach to the body, breath, and mind. 

Yoga is about connection, receptivity, vulnerability and being present.

The goal of yoga is to join, balance and harmonize the body, mind and emotions. 

A Thousand Names for Joy by Byron Katie

All quotes from Byron's book

If a criticism hurts you, that means you’re defending against it. 

When you don’t believe your own thinking, life becomes effortless.

When people see some things as good, other things become bad.

You are the storyteller.  You have become the stories you told yourself.

Don’t be spiritual; be honest instead. 

To respect the way of it is to follow simple directions.