Resonance as Resilience

The principles of Presence, Resonance and Inter-Being may be well known even now. They just haven’t been applied to the Deep Adaptation context to the extent possible. Resonance, the deep state of inter-subjective communion, may be called a shared experience of emptiness. It isn’t a total leap into a mutual experience of non-dual awareness, but it is a window into ‘awareness of Awareness’, a moment in which the true nature and presence of Being intrudes into the mutual common discourse of beings. This is a glimmer of the absolute, a moment of non-duality within duality.

In entering Resonance/Inter-Being, Self and Not-self do not exist independently. They are more like the Tao, continuously folding into and out of each other as polar expressions of a single reality, instantaneously and continuously trading places at the forefront of influence and awareness. We are just as fully in our ego-selves at all times as not. We are thus not capable of entering Resonance only if we are able to dissolve ego—as if only then can we enter mutual or group Resonance.

If we examine our experience of Resonance, we would acknowledge our heightened sensitivity to its appearance and disappearance—or, perhaps more correctly—the continuously fluctuating relative dominance of Self and Not-self as a feature of the field. Thus the field is not uniform; it is constantly changing in every way. But that doesn’t make it any less real. Just the opposite. We are not failing to achieve or sustain our intention. We can still choose to direct our attention, just as we do in solitary practice.

And where shall that attention go? Personal attainment does not depend on a permanent achievement of selflessness, but rather a capacity to live in a continuous awareness of appearance and emptiness as One. Likewise, the field awareness of Resonance is not at all about Not-self, but an ability to hold both Self and Not-self as immanent, timeless and unchanging, which is to be both–and neither–in every moment.

This quality of awareness implies the larger reality, Inter-being. We enter a quality of relationship enacted by whoever is present. Thich Nhat Hanh reminded us we are connected in ways we either do not normally notice or cannot (yet) consciously access. He suggested we learn to do so because Inter-Being is always at play, always enacting itself in the forms and formlessness of our relations at every fractal of the Whole.

From this vantage point, what we do in communion with each other, whether in dyads or groups, in the suspension of timeless inter-subjectivity, is perform mutual transfusion. We reflect to each other our essence; we tune in together at a cellular level of exchange; we sustain each other on a precipice of possibility; we nourish each other in the midst of decay and collapse; we recognize and empower each other in our grief within the unending cycle of birth and death; we relinquish the illusion of personal agency, leveraging it on behalf of the collective; we hold space together for what is to come without attempting to define what is not yet here.

This quality of Resonance is a message from Inter-Being, the message of Inter-Being; it is a bridge to Inter-Being. Entering Inter-Being consciousness at any scale is poietic, a productive and juicy flow of awareness of Awareness often flooded with rich and dynamic imagery. To do so in a group is a palpable shared entrance into the timeless paradox of Self and Not-self fully and simultaneously.

By whatever method or approach, we glimpse our true body, the trans-corporeal body of Inter-being, a deeply loving and forgiving and compassionate space of relationship, the source-less source of everything: emptiness. In other words, Deep Adaptation can be an induction into Inter-Being as an embodiment practice, accessing the clarity and unlimited creative potential of our fundamental and true nature. Justice, Values and Governance informed by this view are a future worth creating.