Rainbow Bridge Across East and West

Recently, there have been a lot of tensions between the US and Chinese governments. They each shut down a diplomatic consulate. These two giants are sliding into a “cold-war-ish” standoff. As a Chinese American, this is very unsettling. These two cultures are fused in me, and hundreds of millions of other people like me. There is no way that an obsolete power structure can put me back into that “us-versus-other” game anymore.

Over the course of the last decade, I devoted my life to building a new bond between these two cultures. While the governments are busy shutting down each other’s consulate, in another corner of the world, a rainbow bridge, built by a group of ordinary people from both countries, straddled across the sky between East and West. Here’s how that happened.

Rainbow Bridge

As many of you know, the Resonance Code is born out of the marriage between I Ching, the ancient wisdom of Chinese cosmology, as well as modern organizational and leadership psychology. Resonance Code is a reinterpretation of a specific frequency of the Chinese soul: the indigenous wisdom that teaches us how to relate with the world as a living, evolving, thinking and feeling being.

This part of the Chinese soul has been in exile since China was dominated by the colonization forces at the end of the 19^th century. Throughout the last century, China has been adopting the scientific materialistic worldview from western culture. From this worldview, the idea of the world as a living being was seen as unscientific and a superstitious hoax. Therefore, I Ching became shrouded in stigma of a shameful past.

In 2008, I was guided by the Spirit of I Ching and set out to piece together its broken soul. In the beginning, I was angry at the Spirit. “How can you assign such an impossible task to someone like me, who has no power, credentials or funding?”

“I have a way, but you don’t need to know it.” The Spirit of I Ching replied. “The only thing you need to do is to attune your instinct to my guidance and make sure to follow whatever way is being shown. If you get lost, just sing. The songs coming through you will send resonance into the world, and help will come to you.”

That’s exactly what I did. I never knew what awaited ahead of me. I didn’t have a business plan, a career goal, or a future objective. I faithfully followed the way shown by my instinct. I trained my mind to be a loyal servant to steward my somatic knowing and felt senses.

I got lost often. But I remembered to sing. As I sang my songs, helpers were called to me. As years went by, one by one, partners, allies and collaborators of western origins showed up from the US as well as Europe. They came to guide me, teach me and heal me. When I resisted, they urged me, dragged me, or pushed me from behind. They offered countless hours of help without any financial remuneration. They devoted themselves to help a nameless Asian woman.

Midwifed by the generous help of this army of allies, the Resonance Code was born. The Resonance Path Institute published the book in English in April of 2019.

I was in constant awe of the fortune that blessed my work.

“Why? Why am I so lucky?” I asked the Spirit of I Ching.

The Spirit of I Ching replied, “Hmm, maybe because even though I have lived in China for the last 5000 years, my spirit belongs to the Earth. Even though the Chinese mind may have exiled me for a short hundred years, my spirit is really, boundless. Many people can feel me regardless what language they speak.”

As soon as the Resonance Code made its debut in the western world, a group of organizational consultants in China discovered my work. We immediately engaged in a process of moving this work into the domain of Chinese language. The leader of that group eventually became my primary collaborator in China. His name is Yiqing, which in Chinese, pronounces as, yee-chin, exactly as how English speakers would say “I Ching”! I take this synchronicity as a “present” from the Spirit of I Ching. I see it winking at me with a big smile…

Starting from the beginning of 2020, as the world shut down with COVID, with the help of Yiqing, I started devoting nearly all my attention to the composing the Resonance Code in Chinese language. In April, thirty Chinese people joined me and Yiqing in a remarkable effort of reweaving a linguistic terrain to revive this soul of China. After 8-weeks of intense, collective effort, the Resonance Code in Chinese caught up with or even surpassed its maturity in the English domain.

This 8-weeks has been a tearful reunion. For me, it was a homecoming, an answer to a longing so intense that I dared not to dream about it. I felt my grief as well as a sense that together, we were healing the Chinese soul in exile. The Chinese participants experienced an instant reactivation of ancient memories held in their bodies. Here are some of their reflections.

“I have been somatically operating [in the field of organization development] according to the principles of native Chinese philosophy. However, my mind has been programmed by western dualistic paradigm as long as I remembered. I always felt something was not right, as if a wrong head was screwed on my body. The Resonance Code has given me the language to articulate what I feel in my body. And, it gives me a spacious framework through which I can integrate what I learned from western mind with my indigenous knowing.”

“I have always wanted to know I Ching. It is the source of my cultural heritage. However, for several generations, we have been severed from the teachings of our traditional culture. We feel this shame because our traditional knowledge is not ‘scientific’. Resonance Code has provided a framework to this traditional knowledge that is more accessible and more grounded in the experience of modern daily life. It also enables me to have a relationship with I Ching that is rooted in personal experience and inquiries rather than a blind belief of an external expert.”

As the first Chinese cohort drew to a conclusion, the Resonance Path Institute hosted a bilingual meeting where “resonaunts” from both US and China met for the first time! We called it the Rainbow Bridge Across East and West. For many Americans of that meeting, it is the first time they spoke to someone who actually lives in China. And, vice versa. This meeting broke many stereotypes we cast on “the other” portrayed by mainstream media on both sides.

Ironically, the Rainbow Bridge meeting also coincided with the mutual shut-down of consulate suites between US and China. It is amusing to ponder how the universe opens a new channel while shutting down an old one.

The meeting between the American and Chinese resonaunts lasted for a full three hours. I had to admit that I found it a daunting task to express in writing the richness and the miraculous quality of this meeting. I decided to just share with you this conversation between Michelle and Lihua that I witnessed in a zoom breakout session.

Lihua is a Chinese woman living in Shangdong province. She is an organization consultant. Michelle is an American woman living in Kentucky. She is a holistic healer, climate activist and facilitator. Michelle has attended three rounds of Resonance Code training within the last year. The three of us were a little pod in a breakout room along with one other person.

Lihua asked Michelle,

“I am most curious about this question. What motivates an American like you to study Taoism or I Ching, these kinds of ancient Chinese stuff?”

Michelle replied,

“I encountered Tao Te Ching when I was 15. When I first read it, I instantly felt a resonance. I may not fully comprehend it, but I felt a warmth in my belly. I always felt a sense of somatic impoverishment as a result of the dualistic worldview of the modern western culture. Being in touch with Taoism nourished my body. I could feel it in my Dan Tian. Therefore, I kept studying!”

Lihua said, “when I heard you say that you read Tao Te Ching when you were 15, I was very moved.”

Lihua’s eyes glistened with moisture.

“I felt a twinge of grief. As a Chinese, I didn’t get to read Tao Te Ching or any of the classics when I was young. We were busy studying western science. I didn’t encounter I Ching until I was in my 40s.”

Lihua paused. I knew this grief all too well. Growing up in the vacuum of traditional knowledge, I too felt a constant agony that something supremely important was missing. But what happened next took my breath away. I saw the gate of Lihua’s heart swung open. A light was shining through her, light with colors of the rainbow. She said, “But I feel very happy for you! I feel happy for all the westerners who were able to get nourished by the wisdom of Taoism or I Ching.”

Right then, I felt as if a bigger spirit was speaking through Lihua. A sense of awe descended on me.

I would say that the grief Lihua felt is universal to almost everyone who lives through the industrialization of society. This grief originates in the severance from the indigenous part of ourselves, the part of ourselves that never forgets the aliveness of Mother Earth, the part of us that feels that the Earth’s body is our body.

For many decades of my life, I carried this grief in my heart. I couldn’t bury this grief in my unconscious. During the years when I was trudging through the tracks of mainstream modern culture, this grief was my only connection to the ancient past. I resented this burden. I resented the pain, despair and isolation coming with this grief.

As I witnessed the exchange between Lihua and Michelle, I felt as if the warmth of springtime was melting a frozen river in my heart. I started to feel this grief is in its essence a gift, a true privilege for a citizen of the Earth. And the ice that melts becomes a river of healing.

What future do we choose?

After this event, an American participant said to me, “The energy of this meeting was so incredible. It ignites my hope that a life-affirming and peaceful world is possible. But then, this force also seems so tiny …” She paused. “But all life starts as a tiny force, doesn’t it?”

From one perspective, what happened on our zoom meeting among these 40 people is minuscule compared to the sensational news of “breakdown between US and China” the media pumps energy into. But our media industry is built upon an obsolete mindset obsessed with the “us-versus-them” game. If we dial into the channels of our hearts and our bodies, we can feel the immense force this Rainbow Bridge brings alive. In fact, it feeds on the breakdown of the old system. It thrives on the compost of the out-dated mindsets.

If we look at a beautiful lotus flower, it always plants its roots in a putrid pool of mud. The roots in the mud and the beautiful petals, they are all integral parts of the flower. The “us-versus-them” game served its function in human history. Now it is up to each one of us to choose the blossoming of a new future for humanity!