We Are the Children of the Earth – A Story of Resonance

Since the publication of The Resonance Code, people often ask me, with what are we resonating and how does resonance work in real life?

The Resonance Code helps us to vibrate in harmony with the larger energetic forces of life.  I call these forces the Inter-being, a field of inter-connected subtle energy, weaving through sentient beings in all realms, human and non-human, past, present and future.

Here is the story of how resonance brought the song, Children of the Earth, to me while I was attending the CCC, Climate Change and Consciousness conference. People at the CCC conference called this song the anthem of the new indigenous culture of the Earth. At the closing ceremony, I stood on the stage and directed the audience to sing this song together. Hearing the song that came through me also vibrate through 300 people, I was filled with amazement and awe. Only six years ago, I would never in my wildest dreams have imagined that I would even sing or play music! This would have not happened without resonance with the inter-being.

Children of the Earth

Mother’s tears melt ice of the heart

Elder’s songs burn away the fear

The planet is awakening; the universe is calling

We are the children of the Earth

We remember who we are

We are the medicine; we are the wealth

We are the power; we are the home

We are the ocean; we are the forest

We are the flower; we are the land

In April 2019, I arrived at the campus of Findhorn ecovillage in Scotland to present a workshop at the Climate Change and Consciousness conference. Ten days before I left my home in Seattle, I released the book The Resonance Code, which was the culmination of my last 11 years of work. For 11 years, I was running a marathon, determined to bring a new voice into the philosophy and practice of leadership development. This voice, nascent, tender and vulnerable, represents a deep yearning for recognition from the hierarchal bottom of modern society. This yearning carries the weight of many oppressed cultural elements in my identity: female, Asian, immigrant, and mystic. For 11 years, I was constantly thrown to the brink in tests of courage, will and trust. Countless nights, I lay in bed and wondered, am I crazy? Can I survive the intensity of this work? Will this long marathon ever end?

Yet one day the marathon was over, and my book was done. Miraculously, I found myself being invited to attend the CCC, Climate Change and Consciousness Conference. I do not identify as an activist or environmentalist per se. However, I hold the vision that through the crisis of climate change, humans are invited by the larger force of Inter-being to embark on a new journey of conscious evolution. I always knew that I was preparing myself to participate in this journey.

Wandering on the campus of Findhorn before the conference started, I was engulfed with fatigue and loneliness. My body knotted up from the intensity of writing the entire last year. My heart ruminated over all the losses and sacrifices I made to get this far. A nagging internal voice wondered if I had made the wrong choice in life. I feared perhaps the work I made out of sweat, tears and sacrifice might never be embraced or valued by others. I felt insecure and worried about how my presentation was going to be received by this community who barely knew me and had not heard of this kind of work. I channeled all this chaotic emotional energy into incessantly fine-tuning my slides and preparing for my workshop.

Once the CCC conference started, life surrounded me with its big waves. Almost instantly all my melancholy and insecurity became like shells on the beach, washed way into the deep ocean. Three hundred fifty people from more than 42 countries and regions gathered in this conference, representing ten different fields including environmental work, governance, spirituality, education and healing. This purely grassroots movement involved no government agencies or state funding. Everyone at the conference answered a calling from the ocean of Inter-being. Each one of these people recognized an innate responsibility to restore humanity’s relationship with the Earth. This responsibility originates from one’s heart and soul, independent from external recognition, reward and validation. The gathering felt like the United Nations of a new civilization on Earth.

The energy of the conference was high. Injustice and destruction laid on the land and lives of indigenous people around the world formed front and center themes. We heard the cries of the Amazon warriors who pleaded to save the Amazon forest and their ancient way of life. We were immersed in the haunting song of a Greenland elder grieving for the melting of the ice shelf along with their traditions of thousands of years. We were shaken to the core by the contrasting rage towards colonialism alongside the expansive forgiveness from the indigenous people of New Zealand.

I have read about how modern civilization impacts indigenous people as facts and statistics in news or books. However, to meet these people, to look into their eyes, to hear their voices and to hug them in my own arms brought these mental concepts into a visceral experience. My body started to resonate with their pain, anger and desperation, as well as with their compassion for humanity and commitment to the Earth. Through them, I heard the deep rumbling of a voice coming from the core of Earth.

Like many people especially women I met in the conference, for the first three days of the conference, I simply could not stop crying. Tears welled up from the deep crevice of my body as if thousand-year-old glaciers of my own were melting. When a woman shared with me how she struggled to talk to her children about Climate Change, she broke down and cried in my arms. At that moment, I felt her tears flow into my heart. I knew we were not just crying for ourselves. The Earth cries through us!

I became so immersed and engaged in the conference that I completely forgot about my workshop. I had arranged with my co-workers back home to rehearse my talk the night before the workshop. But I canceled the meeting. My heart over-flowed with emotion. There was no space for other things. I felt a wave of grief welling up, building its momentum, and asking for my attention. I gave into it.

I had a rough night. I tossed and turned from one dream to another, broken up by grief, agony and anger. Francis Weller said, there is some strange intimacy between grief and aliveness, some sacred exchange between what seems unbearable and what is most exquisitely alive. That night held long hours of the unbearable.

Finally, morning came. It was beautiful and glorious. I stepped outside and let the fresh smell of the North Sea infuse and renew my tired body. In that moment, I heard the indistinct voice of a song that wanted to be born.

For forty years, I never thought of myself as a musician. As many people who had not grown up playing music, I firmly believed I could not sing and I would never play music. I resented that. Yet, when the Inter-being brought the work of the Resonance Code to me, it melted that wall of resentment. I rewrote my belief and started to sing. That was a miraculous journey of its own pieced together by a series of synchronous events. Eventually I found my voice, or more accurately, my voice found me. I have been practicing singing and songwriting ever since.

Songwriters would say songs have souls and wills of their own. They come to us and ask to be written. That morning my whole body was seized by that electric sensation of a new song. At first it was a soft singing with indistinct words. Then it became louder and louder, demanding to be put into a form. I rushed back to my host’s house. Out of serendipity, my host had an old grand piano that sat unplayed for a long time. I sat down and started working. Two hours later, the song Children of the Earth was born.

To all indigenous cultures, songs play an important role in people’s lives. Songs are laws. Not human laws written by analytical minds, but cosmic laws brought into the human realm through songwriters’ emotions and feelings, transmitted into the vibrations of those who write and sing the songs.

A song carrying cosmic law assumes a life of its own. Soon after I wrote the song, I taught it to people at the conference. Then people told me they wanted to sing this song at the closing ceremony. I presented it to the meeting organizers who immediately included it as part of the closing ceremony. It was the first time I led a choir of 300 people singing a song I wrote, a peak moment of self-expression for someone who once thought she would never sing or play music!

Several weeks later at a leadership conference on the East coast of the US, I met Paul Kwiecinski, a musician and organizational consultant. He heard the song and decided to produce it. After the conference, he went on a trip to the Andes in Peru. There he met some local musicians with whom he shared the song. These local musicians said, “This is a song from the Pachamama” (meaning Mother Earth). They wanted to be part of the production. Now, Paul is organizing a multi-national team to co-produce this song! Here is a punk version of the song Paul made as an early experiment.

Back at the CCC conference, when it was time to present my workshop, I had let go of how it would turn out. The insecurity I felt had been transformed by the forces of the Inter-being into the voices of a new-born song. I improvised my way through the workshop and had a great time connecting with those who attended. My relationship with some CCC alumni and climate activists continues as my partner Joe and I lead a project called the Inner Climate Lab.  We are exploring the relationship between consciousness and climate change by applying the Resonance Path Institute framework.

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This story of relationship with the Inter-Being shows how following the invitation of resonance is often joyful and ecstatic, like falling in love. It almost inevitably requires melting away old resistance, habitual ways of thinking or being, or belief patterns that can be thousands of years old! That melting resistance brings pain, tears and the dark night of the soul where you feel like the giant wave of life is tearing you into millions of pieces and then spinning you in a huge centrifuge. The experience of resonance oscillates between these two poles both within and without, the rhythm of creation and destruction.

It is through the oscillation between these poles, we learn to show up for the present moment, completely authentic, vulnerable and ready to dance with the unknown. That often means we are asked by the Inter-being to let go of our expectations, ideas and wishes about how we want things to be. And that can be super difficult. All of us work hard. We make sacrifices. We toil for decades often in solitude, sometimes without support or recognition, or against life’s many pressures. It completely makes sense to have expectations, ideas and wishes about what we will get in return down the road. Letting go of these is no less than a mini-death.

Yet, when we finally deliver our work, often what is being asked of us is to go through these mini-deaths. Through these mini-deaths something larger and more beautiful than our expectations can arise. In these times, we are not just working on something external, or making the world change according to our ideas. We are also transforming ourselves. After all, our own transformation is the most potent agent of change we can offer to humanity.

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If you are curious how the Resonance Code will help us to dance and resonate with the forces of Inter-being, please check out our upcoming course, Voyage into the Resonance Code.