Just returned from a 10-day silent Vipassana retreat. Something like 18 hours a day of meditation. No talk, no phone, no email, no internet, no nothin’! Just me and my consciousness. Powerful insights. All of which I know will probably sound like cliches. But they’re not when you’re having them anew.

There was the realization that the whole universe has conspired to produce every bite of food (just trace back the ultimate origins of everything on your plate, including your plate, and you’ll see it’s true), that every idea in the universe is represented in everything (again, trace back the origins of every idea that went into creating whatever you’re contemplating and you’ll see for yourself), that life truly is love loving itself into ever-expanding expression, that life is a totally perfect support system, that life is total abundance — and that I AM this Life celebrating Itself in pure ecstasy.

What I could see so clearly was that there was this Grand Idea, the Godhead, that was already perfect, whole, and complete, and infinite beyond comprehension. It isn’t evolving. It IS. But as it unfolds as individual consciousness, it appears as an infinite variety of sub-ideas and systems that manifest as the universe, the world, the people — and all of our desires to be more, do more, and have more. From our human perspective we think we are lacking and need something, but it’s really the Something That We Already Are seeking to emerge.

I believe this is the true meaning of what Jesus meant when he said that the kingdom of heaven was at hand now, but having eyes you see it not and having ears you hear it not. And that it is not ‘lo here or lo there’ but it is within us, within our consciousness. When we judge by our material senses, we are tricked into believing things are separate and evolving, but when we move from eyesight to insight and see with our soul-senses, we glimpse a Reality that is already whole, complete, and perfect, just awaiting our conscious recognition to activate it into emergence. This is the true essence of The Law of Emergence, something that I have been talking about for a few years (you can check out the free ecourse at http://www.derekrydall.com).

Oh, yeah, I also made friends with some trees, ants, and a fly.

When you get still enough, everything becomes a portal into infinity, and everything becomes a friend, even the pain and seeming-problems. You realize it’s all showing up to help you become a master, to dissolve the personal sense of ‘I’, and liberate you into an awareness of the Self that you have before the ‘story of you’.

Then I came back to like 1500 emails! Talk about a rough re-entry!

To Your Emergence!

Derek