Human Resonances II
What if intimacy isn't touchy or feely — but planetary?
"There’s a dog in my bed!”
The Thunderstorm Early Warning System went off at 3:28 am, but I heard nothing.
“Miko! What the hell is going on?”
I forgot about Miko’s psychic radar until BOOM!! — the mother of all storms hit the cabin.
It was day two of Solstice week, my first significant time with humans in six months.
I didn’t tell my cabin mates, Julie, Carole Anne, or Suzy, but I was desperate for Bondo.
Solstice week was a chance for “Brujo” to revel in his newfound “totality of self.” I enjoyed punking the tiresome grief question, “Bruce, how are you doing?” with “Thank you for asking; conservation of angular momentum has changed my life.”
For Solstice week, I jettisoned the script and told the participants, “Get ready for five days in a Bondo laboratory and prepare for the advanced course: Making something out of nothing.”
“Miko, everything’s gonna be okay!” FLASH-CRACKLE-BOOM!
Sleep wasn’t happening, so I let Miko break the rules. I clicked on Facebook which algorithmically suggested I join “Awakened Souls Dating & Relationship.” I’m not dating, but in a lightning storm, all bets were off.
I scrolled past the lonely hearts (Yeah, I know, my people) and paused on a crazy-color spectrograph with the headline:
“The CRAZIEST Schumann Resonances yet!”
Who’s this guy Schumann? I read further to discover that the even-keeled bands on the left of the graph suddenly catapulted into the crazy quilt on the right. The comments heralded something big:
“We have been freed from lower energies; much higher frequencies are coming in!”
“CRAAZZYY off the charts! Explains why we are feeling such intense chakra energies.”
“The earth is shifting, which is why it's Spiking. The Great Awakening!”
Okay, a bit over the top, but what about the spectrograph? It was from a reporting station in Tomsk, Russia, in Siberia — hardly a hotbed for the new age.
Wikipedia explained that the Schumann Resonances describe electromagnetic waves surrounding the planet at particular frequencies. They were mathematically predicted by Winfried Otto Schumann in 1952 — hardly a shaman.
What’s a resonance?
If you blow across the lip of a wine bottle, the air molecules vibrate in the bottle’s cavity to produce sound waves — a mellow tone of 114 Hz for an empty bottle of Cabernet (114 waves per second). A Coke bottle has a higher pitch.
Like a giant donut, the ionosphere also forms a cavity surrounding the Earth that stretches over 300 kilometers into space. There’s no bottle to blow, but lightning discharges from thousands of thunderstorms provide the force — each strong enough to explode an oak tree. Approximately 50 bolts of lightning strike our planet each second, and many were near our cabin.
BOOOOOOM!
“Miko, you’re okay… it’s just a little rain….” BOOM!
A wine bottle makes a rich low note at 114 Hz, but imagine the ionosphere as a big bottle that resonates at approximately 8 Hz (Not sound waves, but electromagnetic waves similar to light). To get a feel for 8 Hz, search the web for an online tone generator and play some low tones. Even with a stereophile sound system, you can’t hear much below 20 hz, but you can feel it. The planet bathes in the pulsing ionosphere like an electromagnetic bath.
Here’s where it gets interesting.
During our Solstice week meditations, we practiced slowing our brain waves to reach a nice alpha state.
And what are alpha waves?
The electrical rhythms in our brain range are divided into five bands associated with mental states: delta, theta, alpha, beta, and gamma.
The Schumann Resonances are also divided into five bands. You can see these white bands on the spectrograph at 7.8, 14.1, 20.3, 26.4, and 32.5 Hz.
Here’s the kicker: The brain's alpha waves and the planet's Schumann Resonance vibrate at the same 8 Hz rate. The much-vaunted alpha state is harmonious with the vibration of the planet.
Humans evolved bathed in this band of frequencies, and our cells depend upon it. Most brainwave activity occurs within the range of the first four Schumann resonances. We are synchronized to this signal. A growing body of research shows how our core brain and cellular rhythms evolved to synchronize with the Earth's pulse. In modern life, this natural electromagnetic field is swamped by EMFs from radio, wifi, radar, and now 5G mobile phones which may be suppressing our natural immune system.
A 2017 study found seven positive emotions associated with alpha waves:
Awe, gratitude, hope, inspiration, pride, serenity, and love.1 Another study identified five positive emotions: anticipatory enthusiasm, attachment love, nurturing love, amusement, and awe. Could alpha waves be synonymous with Bondo waves?2
The lightning subsided, but I continued down the wormhole to learn how these natural energy fields affect the brain, heart, nervous system, cells, proteins, and even our DNA.
Researchers also found surges in these electromagnetic waves during the 9/11 attacks, the Japanese earthquake in 2011, and other catastrophic events. When Karen and I lived in Los Angeles years ago, we knew nothing of Schumann surges but joked about “earthquake weather.” On freaky hot days, we often felt the psychic tension from smog, traffic, and societal stress build before an earthquake. No canaries were needed.
Miko went back to sleep, and I listened to the comforting sound of rain and geese outside my window. I sensed the earth’s vibration.
I had been starved for Bondo during my grieving process, but what if the intimacy I sought wasn’t kinky but planetary?
What if Bondo is planetary consciousness?
The collective unconscious contains the whole spiritual heritage of mankind's evolution born anew in the brain structure of every individual. ~ Carl Jung
Once you consider Jung, the mystery deepens. Laying in bed, I stumbled upon a scientific discovery: A background of gravitational waves is washing through the universe. From the Atlantic:
“The whole universe is humming… Every star, every planet, every continent, every building, every person is vibrating along to the slow cosmic beat.
“That’s the takeaway from yesterday’s remarkable announcement that scientists have detected a “cosmic background” of ripples in the structure of space and time.
“All of a sudden, we know that we are humming in tune with the entire universe, that each of us contains the signature of everything that has ever been. It’s all within us, around us, pushing us to and fro as we hurtle through the cosmos.”3
I never went back to sleep, and the rain never stopped. The radar showed the entire weather system rotating like a wormhole around our little lake — for days.
Today was the solstice, and the plan was to celebrate Karen.
First up, to swim across the lake to honor Karen’s determination to beat her stage 4 diagnosis for a remarkable nine years. The radar showed a break; we dove in (half of us naked to honor Karen and Sarah’s famous double-dare swim across the lake au naturel, unbeknown to the tipsy cocktail cruisers). Suddenly, the sky looked iffy — BOOM!
No lifeguards are here to blow whistles, so we frolicked in the magical deluge of raindrops that bounced off the water like diamonds — or better, like a “cosmic background of ripples in the structure of space and time.”
Next up, the tomato pie.
If this were a workbook on building Bondo, the critical exercise would be simple: Cook together.
I love pie. I also love tomatoes. Tomato pie taunts like a culinary oxymoron; yes, I know, tomatoes are of the nightshade family. They contain the alkaloid solanine, which is toxic in high concentrations, so, like Mediterranean mescaline, tomatoes are my drug of choice.
Following a hand-written recipe, we started with a stick and a half of butter, basil, cheeses, eggs, bacon, yogurt, and the New York Times crust. You can’t go wrong. Suzy, the artist, laid the tomato slices into a Fibonacci spiral while we prepped and assembled the ingredients.
With Karen’s favorite dance number, Colors by the Black Pumas, blaring on the kitchen speakers, Carole Anne and I took a pie break to swing — in, out, around, and through. As we caught our breath, I felt safe to share, “On that first night alone in bed after Karen died, my first terrifying thought was, ‘I will never dance with her again.’”
For Karen, dance was better than sex. Surrendering into love can take many forms, especially with a good beat.
Last dance with Karen to the Black Pumas, a few months before she passed
We ate pie with our neighbor while sharing Karen stories as the sun set behind the mountains. Earlier that day, I discovered a slew of Karen interviews hidden on my phone from years ago: The infamous blind date, how we got back together after separation, her last moments before brain surgery, her journey through Hartsfield-Atlanta airport dazed from chemo/radiation brain fog, and the one interview she didn’t want to share — the story of how she went over a Big Sur waterfall at age 28. Naturally, that’s the one I played.
“It was a lonely time in my life,” Karen recounted on the tape.
“I was constantly looking at other people and the things they had — particularly relationships. I was envious and even resentful that I was not in a committed relationship. I wanted to be married.”
My ears perked. Was Karen offering advice from the other side? I listened intently.
"It was during this time that I stumbled upon a little pamphlet titled 'Gratitude' that profoundly affected me. I had a wake-up call. I realized I needed to change my attitude and focus on what I had instead of what I didn't have. That changed everything. I got into a place of trust, and everything shifted. I shifted into a different world.
"I had a vision of my future self — myself as an old woman. I saw myself with long white hair in a French twist looking pretty and lively. I saw my older self tell my younger self, 'Hang in there. If you only knew what was coming.'
"I quit my job at the hospital in Santa Cruz and headed to Big Sur. I lived in my Ford Falcon for a few weeks. A friend showed me how to lower the seat, lay out a piece of plywood, and form a comfortable bed. I had a Coleman stove.
"During my time in Big Sur, I lived in a place of question: Where is my spiritual home? What do I need to be doing? Who is my teacher?
"I decided to perform a cleansing ritual to find my authentic voice. I didn’t know what would happen; I was on a vision quest. I fasted for several days and then drove to a secret beach with a waterfall.
"I followed the steep, difficult trail to the beach, all the time opening myself to my question, going deeper and deeper: What is the next thing to do?
"I saw the waterfall and began to climb the slope. Once I started, it wasn’t possible to go back. It was very steep and treacherous. I’m amazed I didn’t fall. I climbed this rugged cliff full of rocks and debris, pulling myself up the hillside.
"As I climbed, I felt like a Native American on a vision quest. A vision quest is a sacred rite where you go into the wilderness seeking guidance and renewal, encounter your authentic self, and let your old self die. I had been studying the Tarot archetypes for the Inner Guide, and I connected through those archetypes. It was terrifying, but I just kept going.
"I sensed that there would be something beautiful at the top, but when I reached the top, there were lots of briars. It wasn’t pretty at all.
"But now I needed to go down. I kept asking which is the way to go? I was in this place of total surrender, asking where is my life calling me? At that moment, I found a way to surrender into the stream. I have been able to totally surrender a few times in my life, and it was quite profound. I was called to the stream, into the stream of life. But this was a real stream, and when I reclined into the water, the rushing water carried me over some rocks, and I got banged up, scraped, and scratched.
"I was pretty upset that I had gotten hurt but was also in a surrendered state. It was very similar to the place of trust I experienced with the brain tumor. On one level, I was embarrassed that it happened, that I got hurt, but on another level, it took profound courage. That moment symbolized my seriousness toward the spiritual path.
"The sun was starting to go down, and eventually, I reached the beach. I gathered my shoes and clothes and realized I had to get out of there, or I might die from hypothermia. Plus, I was hurt and banged up. I managed to hike out even though it had become completely dark.
"I got into my car and headed to Deetjen’s Inn. There was nothing else for miles. As it turned out, Deetjen’s was closed, so I walked around the back and went to the kitchen. I found some staff who wanted to take me to the hospital. I said, no, I don’t need the hospital. I’m a nurse. Could you let me stay here? So they took me to a special room, Grandpa’s Room, the original hand-built home of the Inn's founder, Grandpa Deetjen. It was beautiful. And in that room, I saw a sculpture of a nude woman leaning back in total surrender. I saw myself in her.
"Throughout the night, people came and sat with me. They chanted at times and kept vigil. I felt held and loved, and supported. And, I felt a confirmation. These people took me in, put me in Grandpa Deetjen’s place of honor, watched after me, and cared for me.
"The next day, a friend from Santa Cruz picked me up and cared for me over the next two weeks. I realized I couldn’t reach my spiritual station myself; I needed a teacher.”
I stopped the tape so my solstice crew could watch the last red rays of the sun over the mountain. We were quiet. A single image from Karen’s story lingered: Lying down in that stream.
“She was making a decision,” Carole Anne said, “that whatever happened, she was choosing a life of transformation. In that moment of grace, she let go from being the Sue of her childhood to becoming Karen, the wise woman of her older self.”
I suddenly remembered nine years earlier when Karen was about to be wheeled into brain surgery. As I took her hand, the words spilled out, “Karen, this is crazy, but I just have to say it, whoa, I just feel so in love.”
Karen smiled at me with an other-worldly luminescence.
“Isn’t it funny,” she confided, “I feel myself entering a space I long dreamed of. When I was young, I imagined what it would be like to surrender to love without shame — a kind of freedom, to be myself without inhibition or fear.”
A couple of years later, I asked Karen if she had been scared at that moment when she was wired up on the gurney.
“Yes, it was scary to have brain surgery. It was also necessary. I didn’t know what might happen; it was just the journey I was on. I was just going with it. I was completely going with it. It was like being on the whitewater rapids. I was in the boat, and I knew that if I became emotional and upset about it, that could turn the boat over and cause many more problems. So, I chose to be surrendered and relaxed, particularly with the anesthesia, because I knew that by being relaxed, it would all go better.”
I flashed forward to Karen’s final days when Bridget touched her crown chakra and encouraged her to be up there. “There is a garden up there,” Bridget whispered. “Can you feel it?”
“Yes, it’s very beautiful,” Karen replied.
I strung those moments together — letting go into the waterfall at her Saturn’s Return, Karen coursing through the whitewater of brain surgery forty years later and surrendering into an inner garden during her final hours. It all seemed like preparation for the Final Act.
Karen found comfort in those waves — Bondo waves of love energy.
The breeze picked up, forming ripples on the lake at my cabin. Far in the distance, we watched a beaver cut a wake across the water’s surface to mark his journey.
I walked the girls next door to their cabin with the flashlight off. The rain clouds parted to reveal a growing patch of sky.
“Look, stars,” I said.
Everyone looked up to see a shooting star burst across the open window of sky.
“That never happens,” Carole Anne remarked. “Someone in a group always misses it.”
I walked back to my cabin under the blanket of stars. I crawled into bed and flipped on my bedtime addiction — the Internet. What’s this? It didn’t take much research to discover that the “CRAAZZYY-off-the-charts” Schumann spectrograph was bogus. It could have been a glitch, equipment calibration, a HAARP attack, or a spoof. No other monitoring station except Russia observed it, and they’re all looking at the same ionosphere. Adding to the intrigue, the Russian Schumann monitoring app was hacked on the same day Yevgeny Prigozhin staged a rebellion against Vladamir Putin’s military.
No second coming. Even worse, I felt a big dent in my expectations.
I assumed the Magic that brought Karen and me together forty years ago would deliver again.
Some backstory: After Karen returned to Santa Cruz bruised and banged, her friend recommended rebirthing to release suppressed traumatic childhood memories. (It was a Santa Cruz thing). During her session, Karen mentioned that she liked to spin round and round as a child. The rebirther suggested that she seek out Reshad Feild. He lived in Santa Cruz and taught the turn of the whirling dervishes.
This next section comes from an interview with Karen for my book Fortune. We were lying in bed in the wee hours before dawn.
“I kept Reshad’s name in my thinking,” Karen recounted. “I had this intuitive sense that Reshad would recognize me. Those were the words that came to me and I didn’t really know what those words meant. On one level ‘recognize me’ doesn’t make any sense. But those were the words — I needed to meet him and he would recognize me.
“I met a woman at his address pruning roses. She invited me to come to a talk that very night. As it turned out, Reshad was ill and did not attend. Afterward, I mentioned I was a nurse and if I could be of service, please call me.
“The next day, they called and invited me to lunch. They created this incredibly beautiful meal with maybe a dozen people around the table, and I was the guest of honor. I had never received this kind of attention.
“We finished the meal with Turkish coffee. Reshad instructed, ‘Turn your cup over.’ He gestured for my inverted cup, and I passed it to him. As he turned it around, observing the grounds, I got the sense he was reading me — not the grounds. He saw the shape of a crescent moon.
“’You will travel very far in the Work,’ Reshad declared. I didn’t know what to say, but I felt at home.
“I returned that evening. After Reshad’s talk, again, I became the center of attention. He took my hands and noticed ‘how kind I was’ by looking at my forearms. Soon I was in floods of tears. Someone took me upstairs and prepared a bath for me with fragrant lotions. When I came back downstairs, I felt completely recognized for the first time in my life.”
At this point, Karen’s story intersected with mine. I was living alone in Los Angeles, newly dumped by my girlfriend, when Reshad invited me to come to Santa Cruz to present a slide show. I sent a letter to discuss preparations, and in my flippant way, I added a postscript, something like: “Reshad, while you’re at it, set me up on a blind date.”
“That’s your thing,” Karen continued in the interview. “You think you were so flippant. But you weren’t so flippant. You were serious too! But you won’t admit it to yourself.”
“What do you think I wrote? ‘Dear Reshad, I’m lonely and horny and desperate. Please find me a wife!’ Of course, I was flippant and ironic, and you’re right, serious too.”
“Reshad announced to the group that you had asked him to set you up on a blind date,” Karen continued. “But he wasn’t sure who to ask. I didn’t say anything, even though I secretly wanted him to choose me for the blind date — and he did. I was very shy, but it was not a casual thing. It was my first and only blind date, and he gave me permission to do whatever we wanted.”
“What kind of permission?” I interjected. “Sounds very casual.”
Karen ignored me and continued: “I remember being excited. Reshad played it up whenever we talked. The day came; someone picked you up at the airport and brought you to the house. You walked in the door, and Reshad made a big deal, like, ‘This is Bruce, and he is the one who started the Institute for Conscious Life.’”
I interjected, “What I remember was walking in the door and Reshad gesturing toward each woman in the room, saying, ‘I was thinking about this one, and this one, and this one.’ Then he pointed to you, announcing, ‘But she is the one.’ It seemed incredibly awkward.”
“It was embarrassing,” Karen remembered, “but I had come to expect that from him. After everyone went to bed, we sat on the couch for a long time.”
“How was that for you?” I asked.
“I told you that I was serious about being in a relationship,” Karen remembered.
“There was this whoosh of energy,” I remembered. “And I thought, ‘Whoa! This is happening.’ And by ‘whoa,’ I mean there was a sense of shock, like an octave shock.”
“You found it shocking?” Karen probed.
“Not in that way. But unlike the people who make their ideal partner lists — and I hate those lists — my list would have been all wrong. I would have ordered all the wrong things. You’re so different from anyone I could have conceived.”
“So, maybe you felt shocked, but…”
“There was this whoosh of energy,” I continued. “You were completely present and connected in my being. I literally felt you residing in my heart. And that was profound. At the same time, there was this shock, this holy-shit wake-up call. My preconceived notions of my partner were turned upside down.”
“Yeah, but it “Yeah, but it worked out pretty good,” Karen reminded.
“Yeah, but it’s still a shock that it did,” I countered. Karen rolled over and snuggled closer. “Now, no more talking. Give me my rubbies.”
The tape came to an end.
Like a strange dawn after a storm, those bolts of love and lightning now only exist in my memory.
Contrary to the myth, lightning can strike in the same place and the same way twice
— except in matters of love.
https://www.diygenius.com/positive-emotions-linked-to-alpha-waves-and-meditation/
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2023/06/universe-gravitational-waves-nanograv-discovery/674570/