Coherence 1 : It's Not a Process, It's a Field

Wherein I begin to define the role of the Chief Coherence Officer

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Chief Coherence Officer: It’s Not a Process, It’s a Field (Part 1 of 2)

Almost two months ago, I announced my return to the worldly world and my sense that there is an important role for people like me in these times of hyper-transformation. I call the role, Chief Coherence Officer, which is a term coined by my former business-partner and friend, Lucy Chung. Back in 2019, Lucy watched me work with clients for a year and concluded that the world wasn’t quite ready for me yet, but that I’d make a great CCO some day.

A lot has happened since then, including COVID and an extended hermitage, during which I acquired and refined potent healing and psychic abilities, received initiations, and traversed subtle realms—a.k.a. perimenopause. What a long, strange trip it’s been. Now, I feel ready to express what I am sensing about the importance of coherence in our ways of relating and creating. 

The oracle in me is active. I feel right now about “coherence” like I felt about “emergence” back in 2018 when I began to sense the rising of that modality in the social field. Since then, emergence has become a common reference for a way of being and creating. I expect coherence to grow in relevance also in the coming months and years. This makes me happy. We need more coherence like we need more light, more love, more harmony.

There are specific definitions for the term, coherence, in physics, mathematics, linguistics, philosophy…that have to do with the unification of parts into a united whole (unity); the likelihood that wavelengths will align over time/through space (consistency); or an agreement as to the meaning of things or adherence to truth (alignment). If I were to define coherence in a social context, I would say it’s a measure of signal to noise in its most basic form and in its most exalted form, it’s a state experience of the frequency of Love.

The more coherent the group, the more likely it is that input will lead to desired output; the less friction in the achievement of goals; the more efficiency; the more meaning; and ultimately, the closer we get to being in alignment with Truth. Coherence leads to a shared understanding of goals, alignment on meaning and intentionality, and ultimately direct experience of unity. 

Right now, many of our most important conversations, operations, events and projects are extremely incoherent—from everyday experiences like shopping at your average supermarket to the way our country is run. Take it from someone who has a visceral experience of the levels of coherence in any space: most of what we “do” when we do it “together” is pretty incoherent. All it would take to change that is a critical mass of people who begin to attune to what’s happening with more presence, precision, and care. When we bring incoherence into the light, we have a chance to change things.

Most people can’t feel coherence or incoherence as it’s happening because we’re so conditioned to experience high levels of incoherence as “normal.” We also tend to screen out a lot of the incoherence in a space just to get the job (whatever the job is) done. Our sensitivity has been reduced and numbed. We almost have to overlook or ignore most of the stimulus in the spaces and conversations we enter. 

Incoherent spaces and conversations and events exhaust me. Coherent spaces and events elate me. Regardless of the actual levels of sound or visual stimulus or intensity of emotional expression, etc. I can be at a very loud rock concert where everyone is absolutely attuned to the performer and the coherence is exquisite and I experience ecstasy. Meanwhile, a cocktail party where there is no focus, no clearly-stated purpose, and a lot of hidden agendas can send me to bed early.

If you look at some of the effects of incoherent conversations and systems, I’m sure they’ll feel familiar: 

• Meetings that leave one less certain, more stressed or more confused

• Conversations that are draining

• Anxiety, skepticism, or ambivalence about achieving goals

• Identification with the wrong goals, deadlines, or metrics in a project or system (false structure and forced coherence)

• A lot of false starts or dead-ends 

• Disagreements that aren’t sufficiently resolved and continue to impact morale or team dynamics; individuals shutting down, feeling unheard, misunderstood or wrongly accused

• Suppressed information in a system—including emotional content

• Hidden agendas, lies, misinformation and/or gossip within a community or system

• Team members or partners operating at cross-purposes or stepping on each other’s toes—right hand isn’t speaking to the left hand, e.g.

• Draining resources of all kinds for no apparent reason

I’ve been thinking about some principles of coherence and how they could be leveraged and practiced to improve the way we create and cooperate. A friend was encouraging me to create a keynote that I can use to present the role of Chief Coherence Officer to potential clients. He said, “You know, you need a slide that outlines the process you’ll take them through…” I almost agreed and then I thought about it for a minute and tried to imagine what that process might be! I realized pretty quickly it would 100% depend on the client and the conditions on the ground. I laughed and replied, “It’s not really a process…it’s a field.” He asked what I meant by that.

Basically, what I meant was that I’ve noticed over time that the more coherent my system gets, the more incoherence shows itself in the places I go. Not just to me…if there is something incoherent in the room, it becomes glaringly obvious. I’ll give some examples:

• Someone who has been suppressing emotion or taking on the free-floating and disowned stress or anxiety of the team might break down or lash out

• Hidden agendas show themselves through words, actions or gestures

• Things that have been taken for granted suddenly come under scrutiny

• Social norms and job functions that have been on autopilot fail or malfunction

• Noise gets noisier until it looks like nonsense

This is not a magic trick. This is something all of us do all of the time. We resonate at a particular frequency and we impact the spaces we enter—either bringing them up or down. The thing is…coherence trumps incoherence if coherence wants to. I do believe coherence wants to be found within most systems.

How do we increase our personal coherence? There are so many ways and it’s very personal. It has to do with being in alignment with your soul’s mission…and with integrity in word and deed. It has to do with knowing thyself and being free from fear. In short, it has to do with authenticity and being in alignment with what, in ancient times, was called charisma.

The highest coherence I can achieve, I achieve through spiritual service and alignment with the Divine. This is me as Love in action or embodying Love. This is the farthest thing from woo-woo. This is like becoming a tuning fork for the Sacred, for Truth and for Love. I am standing in a Truth that makes lesser truths show their ragged edges. It’s glaringly obvious to anyone willing to pay attention to what’s real and what’s not. This is the field a Chief Coherence Officer can transmit, radiate, offer, bring…words fail here because it’s a channel, an imprint, a way of being, not a verb.

In part two of this essay, I will get into some of the aspects of coherence that can add so much to our experience of collaboration, team work, partnership, relationality such as 1) frequency, 2) resonance, and 3) interference.