Coherence

‍ “If you want to understand the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency, and vibration.” - Nikola Tesla

Early Friday morning, sunlight poured through the east-facing, floor-to-ceiling windows of the pool facility where I swim.

I had just finished a workout and sat, mesmerized, watching the light reflect off the pool onto the wall opposite the windows. The shadows of the lane markers created layers of striation, and each level carried a different pattern of wavelengths.

The bottom layer was frenetic. An incoherent explosion of short-wave energy crashing into and over itself with no discernible pattern.

Each layer above it grew calmer, the wavelengths lengthening and flowing into more predictable, harmonious movement.

At the top, the reflection formed a near perfectly synchronized, rhythmic lattice of light.

I was mesmerized by this living mural. It was a visual representation of the invisible energy that surrounds us, suffuses every waking moment of our lives, and that we ourselves are constantly emitting.

It also felt like a mirror of my own inner experience. A reflection of the energetic transformation I’ve felt this year, and the growing sense of coherence in my life.

Waves

Coherence is a state of alignment that exists when all the parts of a system are working together efficiently.

It’s an apt description of what I’ve felt as I’ve come to understand and work through internal, emotional conflicts.

The surface of that pool felt symbolic of our inner world: the constant energetic motion of our thoughts and emotions.

In Letting Go, David Hawkins describes a hierarchy of emotional energy. The lower half consists of contractive, energy-draining states; shame at the bottom, then guilt, apathy, grief, fear, desire, anger, and pride.

Watching the chaotic patterns at the bottom of that pool reflection, I was struck by how closely they resembled what those internal states feel like.

How much friction, scattered energy, and noise is created when we’re operating there. When our inner world is churning in those frequencies.

Courage

The tipping point in Hawkins’ hierarchy is courage. That’s where we step into responsibility for our inner state. Not blaming external forces.

Below courage, life feels like it’s happening to us. At courage and above, we regain agency. Life begins happening for us and, at the highest levels, even through us.

At this point, adversity and challenge are no longer excuses. They become catalysts. Doorways into awareness of the emotional patterns that hold us in place, and the hidden sources of energy beneath them.

The inner journey becomes one of finding that trapped energy and letting it go.

From courage, Hawkins describes a progression through neutrality, willingness, acceptance, reason, love, joy, peace, and enlightenment.

Enlightenment may be what our souls are ultimately oriented toward in what Gary Zukav calls “earth school.” But our real work here, inside the homes we call ourselves, is awareness and progress. Again and again.

This Way In

Work with my coach over the last few years, and especially writing this year, has helped me explore, understand and release trapped emotional energy. It’s felt as though I’ve been moving up that light mural on the pool wall.…layer by layer.

As numbing ceased, clarity expanded. As resentments softened, compassion grew. Fear loosened its grip, and trust and love began taking the wheel. My agency expanded to create my reality.

When I come back to the simple truth that nothing changes until you do, coherence begins to emerge.

Not because I forced it. But because over the course of years, I have removed and limited interference.

I don’t I live in some blissed-out state. I still get pissed, annoyed, triggered, and upset daily!

The difference is awareness. I can now recognize those states as energy patterns, and often arrest them before they create too much commotion.

Mental strength is reducing the time it takes to recenter when you inevitably get knocked off.

I’ve experienced more moments of beauty, harmony, and clarity this year than at any other time in my life…except maybe childhood, when we naturally lived this way.

I had lunch this week with a new friend who described the process as “learning to remember.”

That perfectly captures it.

Energy

There’s a large body of scientific and spiritual thought suggesting that like energy attracts like.

When similar wave patterns meet, they resonate and amplify each other. In some ways, we’re energetic Velcro for one another; both good and bad.

I’ve seen striking examples of this in just the last two months.

I reached out to the author of a book on sales psychology that deeply resonated with me, and we’re now collaborating weekly. One of my oldest and wisest friends wants to partner on emotional intelligence work. And that lunch conversation? My new friend leads the Chicago chapter of the TED speaker series, and is generously sharing her wisdom with me.

None of it feels forced.

It feels like the natural outcome of removing interference, of no longer leaking energy into resistance, fear, and unprocessed emotion. Of being willing to look honestly at what’s moving inside us instead of trying to think our way around it.

I’m convinced this is how energy works. None of the external circumstances need to change, just how we how we relate and react to them.

With that understanding comes courage. And with courage, energy that was once scattered begins to organize. The signal strengthens. Coherence emerges.

Mental Wifi

This isn’t about perfection or transcendence.

It’s about awareness—recognizing the emotional frequencies we’re operating from, and how much energy we spend managing inner noise.

I’ve started thinking of all this as mental Wi-Fi. We all know how frustrating it is to work with a weak signal. Nothing functions properly.

Substances once weakened my signal, keeping me stuck. But more insidiously, it was internal interference: fear, anxiety, uncertainty, unprocessed shame.

When that noise quiets, something remarkable happens. Our energy organizes itself. Our signal strengthens. Life begins responding instead of resisting.

That pool wall captivated me because it visually captured the energetic truth of my experience: when the underlying frequency shifts, coherence and harmony follow naturally.

The real work available to all of us isn’t becoming someone new. It’s noticing where we’re fighting ourselves and letting that tension go.

When we remove that internal interference, our energy organizes and attracts on its own.

Nothing I saw on that pool wall needed to be fixed or improved. The patterns changed as the interference settled.

The same seems true for us.

-Coach Kris

P.S. A good workout always helps me see things more clearly! This the pool wall that inspired this reflection. I slowed it down to capture the effect until the last couple seconds.