By Joseph Friedman for Enlivening Edge Magazine
Like many community members at Enlivening Edge, I have been working in the field of personal and organizational transformation for many decades. My professional practice has been primarily based in Western perspectives on the human psyche and social systems.
During these years I also pursued an interest in the ancient Taoist wisdom-teaching called I Ching, (also known as the Book of Change). The I Ching is a system for divining deeper truths hidden inside spontaneous events in the moment. It echoes the Jungian idea of synchronicity–events happening simultaneously and thus related in time without implying causality.
For four decades, I had seen no way to connect my studies of the I Ching with my profession of coaching and consulting. Even though they both shine such penetrating light onto the human heart and mind, they remained as two separate worlds with no bridge connecting them.
That missing bridge began to take shape in November 2016 when I met Spring Cheng. Spring is a Chinese-American scientist, healer, and artist working to reinvent the Taoist wisdom of I Ching into modern form. We were introduced by a mutual friend, and I can truly say it was love at first sight–not the Eros of romance but of creativity.
We immediately dove into a collaboration, with me bringing my extensive experience in Western developmental perspectives and leadership coaching and with Spring bringing her deep, lived experience of Taoism.
Over the following two years, Spring started birthing the essence of I Ching into a body of knowledge called the Resonance Code, using both her scientific and poetic sensibilities. I played the role of holding the container to guide Spring’s birthing process into forms and language that can directly speak with the modern mind.
Along the way we attracted a small team of international explorers into this unknown new territory. We formed a research lab using the frameworks and practices of Resonance Code to engage self transformation and system transformation. All of us together experienced an adventure of discovery and creation under Spring’s pioneering leadership.
Finally, over the last few months, Spring pulled all the threads of our exploration together, culminating in a profound synthesis of East and West. With the help of her partner Joe Shirley and talented editor Ellen McCord, Spring wrote and published a beautiful and evocative book celebrating this work, The Resonance Code: Empowering Leaders to Evolve Toward Wholeness.
Helping to create this amazing book has been the most exciting intellectual journey I’ve ever taken, one that it seems I have been preparing for my entire life. The Resonance Code is a remarkable and unique blend of Western science and ancient Taoist wisdom that Spring has been cultivating for many years.
It is a set of maps to guide us across the terrain of our individual and collective psyches.
With these maps, one is empowered to participate intentionally in the evolution of consciousness and engage with the rapid flux of life with grace and a holistic sense of self-awareness.
These skills are so dearly needed in our time.
The Resonance Code serves as a tremendous addition to the growing body of work that treats humans and their organizations at all scales as living, complex, adaptive systems. The core principle of Resonance Code highlights the unity between the individual and the collective, the leader and the system she leads.
And it approaches this principle from an embodied, holistic and trans-rationalistic perspective that has matured within the eastern mystic tradition for thousands of years. We authors believe that system change toward wholeness requires an integration between the holistic, mystical approach of the East and the intellectual and analytical approach of the West.
Just as DNA codes for biological life, The Resonance Code codes for ontological and noetic life.
If one knows the code, creativity multiplies. This work enables a way of being where one’s evolutionary purpose naturally and elegantly becomes apparent.
The book presents clear practices for doing this that I have personally found beautiful, elegant and invigorating.
Already we have received a wave of positive feedback saying the book is both startlingly original in thought and beautiful in design. Spring has the mind of scientist and the soul of an artist; both are fully expressed in this volume, with wonderful illustrations, charts, and drawings on almost every page.
I wholeheartedly invite you to explore the book and discover what The Resonance Code might contribute to your own work in the world. The book is available in three formats: full color, black and white and PDF download. For a complete list of Amazon links and PDF file, please visit ResonancePath.com/Resonance-Code.
Spring’s primary commitment at this time is to build a community of co-creators and researchers who will use the book as a guide for conscious participation in the complex dance of the evolution of consciousness.
If you are interested in joining this community, please visit the Resonance Path Institute website and click the tab of Engage. I also encourage you to share this announcement with anyone else you think might be interested.
Articles for EE Magazine by Spring Cheng are here and here.
Joseph Friedman has over forty years’ experience in consulting and coaching individuals and organizations in communication effectiveness, leadership, high performance teamwork and creating and enacting strategic plans.
He has founded and managed several successful consultancies and has designed and delivered consulting, coaching and educational programs in Africa, the Caribbean, Japan, India and Canada as well as within the United States.
In all his work he draws on the two courses of study which have proved the most interesting, challenging and rewarding of his life — the study of self in intimate relationship with other and the study of what the inner eye sees when it turns its gaze inward.
The more we integrate, the richer we are! Especially if there are opposites (west & east) – then the scope is much wider.