Resonance

Within and Without

Today is my 40^th birthday.

Outwardly, perhaps, I appear not so different from a few years back. Inwardly, I feel that almost everything has shifted in some way. I find myself in a new home, with new friends, new work, new perspectives. Though I have always been averse to categories, at one time I would have called myself student, scientist, engineer, farmer, inventor, manufacturer. Now I can only say I am me.

Inner Resonance

The past decade has been a journey of coming home to myself, opening to and sharing what feels most true, what resonates within. I have always had some sense of inner knowing, but in this time it has grown stronger, impossible to ignore, stripping away concepts and constructs and stories.

“My only work is my inner resonance.”

Emma Liles, True Nature

Emma wrote that last month, and I could say much the same for myself, that during this time what has felt most meaningful to me has been this process, this unfolding, this releasing and opening and healing. And through all of it, writing the words that took shape within me, that arrived in resonance with myself and with something deeper than myself, asking to be set free.

In my transition from scientist to farmer, I found myself letting go of a story of progress, of technology saving the day and creating a brighter world. And as American politics became increasingly bitter and polarized, I found myself no longer in resonance with any party, any group. Five years ago, the larger world entered an era of fear – of a novel virus and of social controls in response – and amidst that outer dissonance I chose to stop listening to the media megaphones, the groupthink, and instead to give voice to what felt real.

Have you ever had that feeling, within yourself? Not that something makes sense, nor that it comes from a “respected” source, nor that it aligns with your group or your identity or your idea of who you are and what you believe. But instead that it vibrates, resonates, brings tears to your eyes when you read it or hear it or think it or say it out loud. If you feel this, I invite you to open it, allow it to grow stronger, trust it, follow where it leads you, even as it breaks you open, dissolves who you thought you were, leads you away from the illusion of certainty into a pregnant and living mystery.

My writings are a chronicle of this journey of inner resonance, each one taking form by surprise, words and phrases arriving, connecting, weaving into resonant structure. On my old blog: choosing out of fear, re-envisioning equity and the economy, escaping from the narrative matrix. Here: imagining time and change from a planetary perspective, sharing resonant music, attuning to Earth’s cycles, re-enchanting natural science and finding wonder all around me, immersing deeply in everyday experience, connecting to place and finding sacred places, embracing gratitude and reciprocity, releasing mind and control, becoming whole within myself, shifting inner paradigms, exploring an end to separation - between humans and nature, masculine and feminine, matter and spirit.

This process has been a sequence that has felt, in large part, orchestrated. My task has been less to focus and create and more to surrender and allow. Although I have been outwardly engaged to some extent, I have had a sense that my only work is my inner resonance - or at least my most important work, the only work that really matters.

It feels like that might be shifting, though I cannot yet discern what is ahead. Perhaps it is time for this resonance to expand, to begin weaving in harmony, co-creating with others.

Outer Resonance

In the early days of The Dendroica Project, readers would occasionally tell me that no one writes like you. And while I couldn’t quite pin down what that meant, exactly, I also felt a bit different, a bit lonely in writing from a place of inner resonance.

Two years ago, that started to change, as I began finding others, or they found me. And - in the comments here and in our own correspondence - we began having resonant conversations.

Your words feel like they came from my own heart

The words you have written feel like they have been moving around in me for years

It was like a gong reverberating over and over again

It is so nourishing for me to know there are others who trust this unfolding

In my heart it feels so very true

What I have received and feel through your words is the same powerful drumbeat of awakening that I hear within my own listening

Your writings make me feel so seen and heard in conversations I haven't yet had out loud

It’s interesting to meet someone who speaks exactly the same language I do

Hot damn, you fuckin get me

I began to connect with others who were also writing from their own inner resonance. And I don’t think, as one such writer shared, that I simply have a true gift for mirroring. I think that - in reaching inward for what feels most true, for the words that wish to be spoken - we are tapping into something universal, a living field of potential and awareness and aliveness to which we all belong, that is extending an open invitation for us to relax into being, to get out of our heads and identities and convictions and stories, to listen - not to “experts” or priests or gurus or master beings or scientists or politicians, but to the wind, to the trees, to the birds, to the rain, to our bodies, to that voice within ourselves that says this is real.

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To illustrate what feels resonant to me I’d like to offer a contrast. Below are two bios, found online. I believe they are something of a matched pair - two women, I imagine of similar age, who are practitioners of ecological spirituality, who both create healing essences from plants. One of them feels absolutely resonant to me. The other feels flat, does not stir anything deep inside. One of them calls me into myself, into experience. The other calls me outward, into listening to what a qualified person has to say.

In making this contrast I want to be clear that it is in no way a value judgment. I don’t think either of them is a better person. Resonance has nothing to do with rank or hierarchy, everything to do with feeling and connection and relationship.

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(She) is a Lyran Starseed and holds the vibration of Lemurian Love Fire. She is a carrier of the Original Tree of Life Templates within her DNA and is here on Mission Work to Restore Peace, Love and Harmony within the Ancient Tree. (The Human DNA and the Planetary Grid System.)

She is an Indigo Spirit who is working under the Emerald Covenant to assist the Earth in its Reharmonization. She is a Spiritual Healer and Priestess of Mu’u under the Melchizedek Colister Order.

She works in co-creation with the Guardian Alliance and the Galactic Earth Guardians, the White Animal Kingdom, the Elven Elders, the Grandmothers and Grandfathers and the Council of 12.

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I am a plant tender, a moon poet, star listener, soil devotee, and apprentice to the coyotes, clouds, songbirds, stones and the mystical human heart.

The writings, poetry, inquiries and invitations I get to share here are part of my own unraveling and re-spinning of my relationship with the world. The more I have befriended the soil, studied the many different kinds of wind, and grown thousands upon thousands of flowers over the years, the more this one simple truth reveals itself: life on Earth is all about relationship. How we relate to the world around us in our own distinct way, and how we then allow ourselves to be moved by the world in return.

I dream of a collective ecological awakening that germinates from the human heart— where we remember how to hear and honor the voices of the other-than-human beings who share this planet with us. Where we reclaim our place in the web of kinship with everything. My dream is for us to slow down to the pace of the moon. To the thrum of moss growing. To the chant of your own heartbeat.

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One of them says: this is who I am, these are my credentials, I belong to these groups.

The other says: this is what I do, this is my dream, I invite you to join me.

One of them has Lots of Capital Letters, many distinctions that mean little to me but probably a great deal to people in the know, statements of belonging that are also effectively statements of othering. Because it seems to happen tolerably often that Lemurian Love Fire has a 50,000-year-old beef with Atlantean Love Fire, or that people have conflicting ideas about what the Original Tree of Life templates are and whether the self-proclaimed Galactic Earth Guardians are worthy of that title.

The other contains nothing with which anyone could possibly disagree. It is simply a statement of being, of lived experience. An invitation, open to all.

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Who are we - those of us who feel this resonance within and without?

I would not give form, give a name to that which is by nature fluid, which cannot be crystallized, which is shifted out of integrity by any attempt to define it as A Thing. I can offer a contrast of language - what feels resonant and what does not - but I cannot say these people belong, these are the resonant people. This way of being, way of seeing is open to all who choose it.

I can - I think - say a little about us and how we approach life.

We are rooted. We are grounded in our bodies, in Earth. We are rooted not in a particular story or belief system but in something that cannot be described, can only be felt, experienced.

We are flexible. We don’t believe in The Truth. We allow perception to be relative, know that there are infinite ways to condense a deeper reality into our own unique experience of the present moment, know that in honoring our own inner resonance we are also asking our friends, our families, our readers to honor theirs.

We are internally referenced, and we wish that for everyone. We know what feels true to us, what vibrates, and what does not. We don’t defer to others, to thought or spiritual leaders, to philosophies or systems or methods, and we don’t wish for anyone else to defer to us. We most definitely will not tell you the Seven Secrets of the Trees, that we learned from the Grand Master of the Ancient Order of TreeSpeakers. Nor will we tell you any Important Secrets revealed uniquely to us, that are guaranteed to change your life. Nor will we even tell you the best method to follow. We will simply share our experience and invite you into presence, into awareness in your own way.

We are curious. We are open to mystery. We are not seeking truth, comfort, consensus, reassurance, stability. We are always exploring, seeking deeper understanding, finding wonder in our discoveries along the way.

We are guided by love. Even as old systems collapse around us, we are not afraid. And as much as we yearn for a more harmonious world, we know that such a world can only be loved and dreamed into existence, not frightened or shamed or guilted into being.

We are content in solitude. We don’t fit in to a world where children are expected to sit in desks and absorb knowledge, where the assumed goal is to compete and succeed and climb the ladder and earn money and retire, to choose a political party and a religion and a personal identity, to “find our tribe”. The best times of our early years were spent playing in creeks and rolling boulders and bathing in ponds. Many of us, it seems, had traumatic childhoods and learned to adapt, to live from our minds, to seek validation and approval, and we are only now reawakening, healing, rediscovering our true nature.

Resonance is not merely a vibration, though it expresses as such. Resonance is a co-creation. A co-gestation. The subtle “yes” of one field recognizing another. Not in sameness, but mutual coherence. Connection within differentiation.

Emma Liles, True Nature

We are content in solitude, and yet increasingly I am finding resonance and community in these connections, and I would like to propose a gathering. A gathering that is not filled with workshops or performances but that is simply a place for sharing and receiving, immersing, connecting. A gathering of resonant beings.

Such a gathering might not be comfortable. I have found, within myself, that outer resonance pulls me into inner resonance. Which is to say that I feel seen, reflected, heard, understood, but also catalyzed into shifting what remains unhealed and out of balance. But always that shift has led to a deeper sense of wholeness, rootedness.

The wider world seems to have reached peak differentiation, peak separation, and even movements aligned for a common purpose all too frequently fracture along some Important Distinction or other. I feel like it is not purely coincidence that we are finding our voices, finding each other, finding inner and outer resonance at this time. I wonder what we might yet co-create, co-gestate, dream into existence.

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It is a strange first day of summer this year - 52 degrees and all-day rain would be more likely on the winter solstice. And yet I am grateful for moisture after a droughty spring, grateful for water on blackberry blossoms that will lead to full hives of honey and plump berries in a month, will dampen early wildfires, nourish mountain wildflowers, delay the season of smoke.

In the past I would have kept to my tradition of sleeping out on the mountain last night, bundled against cold and encased in fog, seeing this weather as a sort of omen for the year ahead. But I find that through my unfolding I have become less attached even to my own traditions, less rigid in my interpretations. I am grateful for a quiet day of introspection and nesting in my new home.

This year I moved my mountain vigil four days earlier, to a clear night, and in the morning followed where my feet wanted to go to a sacred space where a perfect alignment of rising sun within forest created the photo at the top. This morning - at 6:21 am on 6/21, I was visited by this mother deer and her two fawns, grazing the narrow strip of grass outside my front windows.

I have been asking myself, in this time, who am I? What is it that I do?

I find myself simultaneously immersed and yet standing a bit apart, observing, seeing the pattern as it weaves, as I weave within it.

I am reminded that what felt most meaningful with my winnowing machine was not sales or recognition but the connections it created: visits to island farms, folks establishing seed hubs and networks of equipment sharing, coming together around shared values and visions and stories for a vibrant and participatory food system.

I am reminded of the time I was shopping at the farmers market and talked to one fellow who told me he wanted to sell a combine and then - immediately after - another fellow who wanted to buy one, and put them in touch, and the combine went where it was needed.

I am reminded of the night, a few months back, when I sat down with Jean’s artwork and Hannah’s poetry and found resonant matches, that became an exhibit, that today is moving to my living room.

I am reminded of the community coming together around local food, around the distribution hub I will be helping to launch next week.

I am reminded of the many introductions I have made, here on Substack, within this growing community of resonance.

I am reminded of all of the words I have written that seek to break down binaries, to bring an end to separation, to coalesce polarity into wholeness.

I am reminded of the many hours I spent, as a child, drawing bridges, building bridges over small streams. My counselor said it was because I wanted to bring my parents back together, but perhaps it is simply in my nature to be a bridge-builder.

I am Markael Luterra. I create resonant connections.

Is that who I am? If so, may it be!

Happy Solstice everyone!