What is resonance, and what does it have to do with spirituality and personal development?
Resonance is the way something vibrates in response to the vibration of something else near by.
Before we think about resonance itself, let's just think about vibration, and again what it might mean in our personal development studies and practices. Everything has its own natural vibration. A number of musical instruments use this characteristic in order to allow us to create beautiful music. We can change that natural vibration by altering the tuning, for example by tightening or loosening a guitar string.
Spiritually we also have a natural vibration. This vibration can allow us to create beautiful spiritual "music" in the world around us, or if we are not tuned right we can create great discord instead. By focusing on and developing our spiritual beliefs and qualities, especially the latter, we can determine whether the world hears beautiful music from us or, as St Paul described, a clashing cymbal. Not that I want to criticize cymbal players or other percussionists who play their part in orchestras all over the world.
So, which would you prefer? To create beautiful music that all around you can enjoy or to make a horrible discordant noise that will make life a misery for all who encounter you? I hope it is the former. We are all human, so sometimes we will be out of tune and won't be able to help making a horrible noise, but just as a violinist can learn to produce a beautiful sound rather than the awful screeching which no doubt he or she created when first taking up the violin, so can we learn to become more beautiful inside and produce beautiful spiritual music.
Back to resonance. If you have tuned yourself to produce a beautiful sound, that is the sound you will produce when something or someone nearby is tuned in the same way.
Students of physics will be aware of the concept of "forced vibration". If you take a tuning fork and strike it with a mallet it will produce a sound, but the sound is very quiet. But if you now place that tuning fork on something able to vibrate at the same frequency, a board of some kind, everything will vibrate and a very loud sound will be produced - a beautiful note. This is a form of resonance.
We can do the same in life. If we have tuned ourselves the right way spiritually we will respond when someone or something else nearby is on a similar spiritual frequency. Also, we will cause the environment around us to resonate, and our small quiet voice can become a mighty, powerful sound. A sound that will attract similar frequencies in those around us, perhaps lifting them to higher spiritual levels.
I used the word "attract" quite deliberately. Like attracts like. If you have spiritual vibration that is full of love and beauty you will attract to you other people and even other things and situations of a similar vibration. This can only make your life, and the lives of those around you, happier and more fulfilled.
This concept may seem rather obscure, but it is so important! Work hard on improving your tuning and allowing yourself to resonate to good, pure, helpful feelings.
For further help in both understanding this concept and developing and using it, take a look at this video by the "spiritual vibration" specialist, Christie Marie Sheldon:
