Resonance Code (5) – Resonance Cycle and Procreation

Continued from Rhythm of Life: Resonance Cycle

A Woman’s Monthly Resonance Cycle

In her fertile years, a woman, when not pregnant or nursing, normally goes through the monthly cycle in which her egg is being produced and then destroyed and recycled.

Here we consider the woman’s egg as the particle-ized unit, and her reproductive system, the ovary and uterus as the Wave Field. Soon after a women’s period ends, under the well-orchestrated control of multiple hormones, ovocytes start to grow in one of the ovaries to prepare a matured egg. Meantime, the uterus is getting ready for the egg’s arrival by thickening the uterus walls and preparing the mucus tissues. This is the Growth phase.

Maturation phase begins with ovulation when the matured egg arrives at the uterus. Here the woman’s body temperature rises for days. Hormonal levels are all singing at high notes, preparing for the potential surprise. For couples who plan to conceive, this is the best time window to conduct the exciting ritual of delivering the sperm to fertilize the matured egg.

For modern-day women who practice birth control, sex usually happens without pregnancy. After the ovulation period, the body temperature drops. The unfertilized egg dissolves, along with the sloughed off uterus lining and dead tissues. Blood flows and the period begins, symbolic of the dramatic and tragic aspect of the Re-Sourcing phase.

The brief period after the old egg dissolves and before the new egg is produced is the Potentiation phase.

This monthly cycle is supremely important for human reproduction and biological evolution. It is orchestrated by a complex host of hormones with multiple levels of control. Their rise and fall is strictly timed to regulate every minute step along the cycle. With these hormonal tides, the woman also experiences cyclic changes in her psychological and physiological states.

Traditional Chinese medicine contains a rich wealth of information and medical practices to regulate women’s cycle, far more nuanced than western medicine. Among Chinese women, there are strong traditions for how to regulate one’s physical activity, food, and temperature to be in tune with the cycles of the body. Even though many other traditional practices are disrupted during modern times, these practices are relatively intact.

If a woman maintains a regimen to take care of her cycles throughout her life, at the time when the menopause comes, she will have the opportunity to transform her feminine energy to serve spiritual cultivation. In turn she may experience a dramatic shift and burst of energy after menopause.

For a woman, this monthly cycle is a distinct privilege that a female body is entitled to. The monthly cycle attunes our body and awareness to be more sensitive to the resonant rhythm of her feminine creative energies. The monthly pain and discomfort accompanying the shedding of the uterus trains our awareness to be more supple, flexible and receptive, qualities of feminine energy distinct from the forceful and propulsive masculine energy. Coming with this privilege is also the responsibility to steward the feminine power sourced from the sensitivity and attunement to the Resonance Cycle.

One of the biggest tragedies of modern times is that women are cut off from the feminine power and sensitivity inherent in the female body. When I moved to the US, I was shocked to discover that most modern western women are not aware of the kind of practices associated with women’s cycle and take for granted that we are meant to suffer at menopause. (I suspect that these practices were once alive in western traditions before patriarchal dominance.) I was even more horrified to find out that it is a common practice for women to take hormonal pills to stop the monthly flow so that they are not bothered by the discomfort and inconvenience of their period. In doing so, women are systematically removed from a powerful source of embodied awareness of the Resonance Cycle. Feminine power is not only being subjugated but wiped out from our body’s memory!

Instead, women are pressed to master masculine power and compete with men in many professional arenas. That definitely boosts women’s role in society. However, it leaves no one to serve the feminine power. By enlisting women to also serve patriarchal dominance, our culture further aggravates the imbalance between feminine and masculine energy in our social systems.

Procreativity

Now we come to the final mystery – what happens when egg meets sperm during the Maturation phase? The routine menstrual pattern of Re-Sourcing and Potentiation requires the egg to dissolve. This gets interrupted to activate a different kind of Re-Sourcing and Potentiation.

As far the egg is concerned, the sperm cell is a total “outsider”. In fact, some problems with infertility have to do with the immune system attacking the sperm.

In order to conceive, two things need to happen. First, the egg needs to coordinate with the right sperm to open a passageway into her vulnerable inside. Second, the egg needs to transition from being a Particle unit into becoming a Wave Field itself. The egg’s cellular environment will become the new Wave Field for the Re-Sourcing to take place so that both the egg and sperm can dissolve their old forms together. In that dissolution, the egg and sperm will release and combine both sets of genetic material so that evolution can work its power in bringing forth a new life. This new life will be held gently in Pregnancy/Potentiation following the Re-Sourcing. The potential being held in this phase is not just another egg, but a brand-new Particle-ized human life, constellating a whole new Wave Field around it.

This is probably why sex exerts such a gravitational pull to our psyche. As living beings embodied in organic matter with concrete forms, Re-Sourcing is terrifying, heart-breaking and traumatic. Today, so many of us can feel the gravity of Re-Sourcing, being caught in the in-between space of confusion, loss, and fear. We are intrinsically afraid of the unknown in the Potentiation Phase. Sex reminds us that there is another alternative to Re-Sourcing. We may become an active participant in the cosmic dance of procreation.

In procreation, we get to co-create with our past and future, which is a rare experience in our current culture. If we want to build a house, we will design the house down to the details of every tile and window molding, and then assemble this house piece by piece. The house will not assemble itself without our conscious effort. Most of the creative processes we are used to in our culture are like that. We design and control everything, and then put in our labor to piece together our designs. In procreation, a man and woman don’t get to design their baby. Instead, they offer their gametes as the host for evolution to unfold its mystery. Their ancestors are co-creating with them, through their joint pool of genetic information. The child is co-creating with them, as the baby’s body assembles itself and grows according to its own plan.

What if we start to cultivate the paradigm of procreation in our creative process and social collaborations? This could be a radical departure from our current paradigm. It means becoming a host for the future that is emerging and alive, rather than be the designer of the future that is passive and inanimate. It means developing skills to be more fluid and proficient at transitioning through the Re-Sourcing phase. It means opening up our Particle Self to the influences of the Wave Field. It means developing collective stewardship with our creative invention, instead of clinging to ownership and control. It also means a genuine and soul-centered intimacy among the “co-parents” of a creative endeavor.

A Procreative Self?

As you may see by now, there is a great deal of challenge to restore our awareness to be in tune with Resonance Cycles. Particularly, the patterns of awareness set in place through the last two thousand years of patriarchal dominance have greatly subjugated the feminine embodied awareness of Resonance Cycles. And the patterns of awareness constellated by the reductionist scientific era have caused our Wave “muscle” to atrophy.

Our ancestors from indigenous cultures developed their understanding of Resonance Cycles. Yet that understanding invariably was a function of awareness developed through long-standing cultural practices shaped and constrained by environment and geography. What will be a new understanding and practice of Resonance Cycle that answers the needs of our globalized culture today? That is the foundational quest that has brought Resonance Path Institute into being.

What happens when we apply the habitual modes of Particle-ization to the sense of self? We uphold this notion that a self is only a construct with solidity and persistency that we can study under the lens of objective and categorical means. What about the part of our self we each have shaped through our life that also goes through the Resonance Cycle, just like the seasons, breathing, sleep/awake, or even the female “egg”?  What if the self is the “egg”, waiting to be fertilized by the mysterious forces from a broader field that we are not yet aware of? What does that mean for the Particle Self to become the Wave Field, so that it can also host the procreative power of evolution to unfold within it?

If you are a man, how do you feel when taking on this very feminine-oriented paradigm? In the last few thousand years of patriarchy, men and women both have been enrolled in serving the masculine energy at the cost of subjugation of feminine energy. It will take concerted efforts from both men and women to restore the balance of feminine and masculine energies in the coming new era.

This brings us back to the beginning of our inquiry. How do we switch from seeing our self as a Particle self, unconscious of the Wave, to a Resonance Self, which resonates with Wave? This is a radical shift. The Particle Self we have constructed often has distinct boundaries such as “I am X, not Y,” or “I prefer this to that,” or “I reject A, B and C.” And we have very solid habitual patterns that give us a sense of control or comfort in an otherwise chaotic and demanding life.

Opening ourselves up to the Wave Field does not mean completely abolishing these boundaries. Instead it means learning how to selectively receive influences from our life space and use them towards our ongoing transformation. It also means preparing our Particle Self as a procreative agent when opportunity presents itself. Just like the egg being fertilized by the sperm, receiving the outside influences can often feel threatening and disruptive at the beginning.

For me personally, every step along the way of creating Resonance Code was a procreative event. Only a few years ago, my Particle Self could not have fathomed coming anywhere near where I am with Resonance Code now. The tasks of reinventing I-Ching felt astronomically difficult and I had almost zero training and capacity to do the kind of intellectual work required. In fact, I carried an enormous inner resistance towards surrendering myself into this task. It was many people’s influence, especially Joe and Joseph’s, which fertilized the possibilities I carried within. In the last three months, it was the quality of the space held by the 11 people drawn to the pilot course that catalyzed another exponential growth of the work. None of these could have been predicted, planned or even imagined beforehand.

At the beginning of the Voyage course, the techniques we introduced all aimed at switching from Particle mode only to a Particle-Wave continuous mode. For example, finding the multiple sub selves within the inquiry shifts us from thinking ourselves as one unit, to multiple units and the space held in between the multiple units. The 5-Phase exercise expands our experience of a situation along five dimensions of conscious processes. Finding Fractal Representatives helps us direct our attention to forces in our life-space otherwise unnamed and unspoken of. Feelingwork helps us release attention frozen in reactive configurations into more free-flowing, responsive patterns. In the next stage of our work, we will re-examine those techniques under the framework we have laid out.

Final Thoughts

For now, we have finished our journey into the Resonance Cycle from nature to body, from breathing to women’s cycle. We have seen how the life forms around us, as well as the cells within us are all scintillating with the vibrations of the Cycle. We have reflected on how our human attention, in its youthful stage, gravitates towards the Growth and Maturation phase, while having difficulty going through Re-Sourcing, the most challenging but also potentially “sexy” phase. We then peeked into the core of procreativity and pondered what it would be like to offer the “egg” of our Self as a Wave Field where the cosmic or collective creativity can sing through our hearts and souls.

With that, we have completed introducing the trinity framework of Resonance Code: Wave, Particle and Resonance. This opens the door to a whole spectrum of more questions and mysteries. For example, why would the dynamic of the three be reflected in a random throw of coins? How do synchronous events arise in the Wave Field? What does time mean in all these? What will be the ethics of someone or a group of people who have mastered Resonance Power?

A full understanding and embodiment of the Resonance Cycle will be a long, long journey for us individually or collectively. For now, I will end with a Chinese adage, “A thousand mile of journey starts with one single step.” Here is our very first step!