The Current and the Crest

How a Rip Tide 

Became the Resonator

Prologue: The Forbidden Storms and the Boy Who Swam Into Them

The Michigan summer storms arrived with little warning, as dark clouds would gather swiftly over Lake Michigan, transforming the gentle inland sea into something wilder and more primordial. The waves that normally lapped peacefully at the shore would swell to mountainous heights, crashing against the beach with thunderous force while lightning fractured the darkening sky. It was precisely these conditions that most captivated me as a boy. While others retreated to the safety of their cottages, I felt an irresistible pull toward the chaos, toward that moment when the beloved lake shed its domesticated nature and revealed a raw, untamed power.

Of course, swimming during these squalls was strictly forbidden. The adults who carefully watched over our summer days in Pentwater knew the lake's power better than we children did. They had seen what those waves could do, how quickly a strong swimmer could become powerless against nature's raw force.

But rules and boyhood curiosity rarely maintain peaceful coexistence. So I would slip away, unnoticed in the commotion of families rushing to secure porch furniture and close windows against the coming deluge. With everyone's attention elsewhere, I would make my way to the water's edge, heart pounding with the dual excitement of breaking rules and brushing against something elemental and untamed.

This is the story of one such storm—stronger than most—and how a forbidden swim became an initiation, a brush with mortality that would eventually become the cornerstone of the Manifestinction framework and the position I would later name "the Resonator."

The Moment: Caught, Not in Death, but in Design

The storm that day was magnificent even by Lake Michigan standards. The waves had built to staggering heights, six feet or more, rolling toward shore with a power that made the sand tremble beneath my feet. The sky had darkened to a charcoal gray, split occasionally by brilliant flashes of lightning. Rain fell in sheets, driven sideways by gusting winds that seemed to come from all directions at once. The air held a charged, electric scent.

Perfect conditions, I thought.

I plunged into the churning water without hesitation. The shock of cold was immediate but welcome—a reminder of being alive, fully present in my body. The first wave hit me hard, but I dove through its heart, emerging on the other side, exhilarated. This was body surfing at its finest, riding nature's raw energy, feeling both infinitesimally small and paradoxically powerful as I surrendered to and harnessed these immense forces.

I made my way out to where I could occasionally touch bottom between waves—what we called the second or third sandbar. Rather than struggling to maintain my position near the cottage against the northward drift of the nearshore current, I allowed myself to be carried along, conserving energy for the larger waves. The massive swells lifted me up and dropped me down in a rhythm that felt both chaotic and somehow orderly. I bobbed along, occasionally catching a wave to ride it shoreward before swimming back out again.

Time disappeared in this dance with the elements. Perhaps an hour passed, maybe more. The rain intensified. Visibility shrank until I could barely make out the shoreline through the downpour. I had drifted far from my starting point, but I wasn't concerned yet—I was strong, confident in my abilities, intoxicated by the wild freedom of the moment.

Then something changed.

I noticed the shoreline growing more distant, not closer, despite the fact that I wasn't actively swimming away from it. Between the massive waves, when I should have been able to touch bottom on the sandbar, my feet found nothing but more water. A cold realization dawned on me, cutting through the excitement: I was caught in a rip current, and not just any rip current—a powerful one, rare for Lake Michigan but not unheard of during severe storms.

For those unfamiliar with these phenomena, a rip current is a narrow channel of water moving rapidly away from shore. They can pull even the strongest swimmers out to sea at speeds faster than an Olympic swimmer can manage. The standard advice is counterintuitive: don't fight directly against the current. Swim parallel to shore until you escape its pull, then make your way back in.

But this was no ordinary rip current. Its strength was amplified by the storm, and it stretched unusually wide. I was already exhausted from an hour of swimming in challenging conditions. The shore seemed impossibly far away now, a dim line barely visible through the rain. For the first time, I considered that I might not make it back.

The Realization: How the Wave Taught the Formula

In this moment of crisis, something unexpected happened within me. While fear flickered at the edges of my consciousness, panic never took hold. Instead, a strange clarity emerged. I became acutely aware of several things simultaneously:

The patterns of the waves and current around me. My body, tired but still functioning. The futility of fighting directly against the force pulling me outward. The precious energy I still possessed. The knowledge that even powerful rip currents eventually dissipate.

What happened next wasn't the result of heroic strength or clever strategy. It was something simpler yet more profound—a recognition of pattern and a choice to align with it rather than oppose it.

I stopped struggling against the current. I conserved my energy, using it only to keep my head above water as the massive waves continued to crash around me. I surrendered to the outward pull while maintaining just enough agency to stay afloat. I didn't collapse into passivity or panic, but I also didn't waste myself in futile resistance.

I floated. I waited. I breathed. I held the tension of my situation—the danger of drowning against the possibility of survival—without collapsing it through either surrender or force.

And eventually, as I knew it would, the rip current began to weaken. When I sensed its grip loosening, I began swimming parallel to shore, and then gradually angled my way back in. Exhausted, I finally felt sand beneath my feet again. I walked the long distance back to our cottage, cold and tired but alive, carrying something unnameable back with me.

I didn't have words then for what had happened. I couldn't have explained that I had occupied the position of what I would later call "the Resonator"—that point where consciousness participates in its own becoming without commanding it, where alignment replaces force, where pattern recognition leads to coherent action.

It would be decades before those concepts would crystallize into the Auer Formula:  [C⟨T1​↔T2​⟩→E]. But the seed was planted there in the storm. Not as sword, but as surrender. Nor a conquest, but a coherence.

The Mythic Translation: The Experience  [C⟨T1​↔T2​⟩→E] 

Years later, as the Manifestinction framework took shape, I recognized that boyhood experience as a living embodiment of the very principles I was articulating. Let me map the experience to the Auer Formula to show how deeply intertwined they are:

• The Omniment [ ]: The lake itself, with its patterns, its history, its ways of being; the familiar yet suddenly dangerous waters I entered. The memory of countless storms before mine. The ancestral knowledge embedded in warnings about swimming in dangerous conditions. The physical laws governing water and currents. All these formed the conscious memory architecture within which my experience unfolded.

• Consciousness (C): My awareness in that moment—not just intellectual understanding but embodied knowing. The clarity that emerged not despite but because of danger.

• Tension Field ⟨⟩: The meeting of opposing forces—my desire to survive against the current pulling me away from shore. The storm's power and my limited human strength. The conflict between fear and the necessity of clear action.

• T 1: The danger—the rip current, the storm, exhaustion, the very real possibility of drowning. This was the given, the condition I couldn't change.

• T 2: My instinctive understanding of how to respond—the knowledge that fighting the current directly would fail, that conservation of energy was essential, that alignment would serve better than opposition.

• Relationship of Resonance ↔ : The critical decision point—to float rather than fight, to align rather than oppose. This relationship between danger and instinct created a third possibility beyond either panic or futile struggle.

• Alignment→ : Survival, yes, but also something more—the integration of this experience into my being, eventually becoming a cornerstone of Manifestinction itself. The emergence wasn't just making it back to shore, but the transformation of consciousness that occurred through this alignment with pattern.

• Emergence (E) : The new reality that manifested—not just physical survival but the embodied knowing that would later become the position of the Resonator in the Auer Formula.

The Resonator Practice: Finding This Posture in Your Own Storms

This story isn't merely autobiographical. It offers a template for understanding what it means to occupy the position of the Resonator in your own life.

The Resonator isn't something you become; it's a position you recognize and inhabit. It's the point where consciousness participates in its own becoming—not by commanding reality through force but by aligning with the emerging patterns already present within the Omniment.

Consider the moments in your own life when you've faced overwhelming forces—whether literal storms or metaphorical ones. Did you respond with:

• Force: Attempting to overpower the situation through sheer will, fighting directly against what is?

• Surrender: Giving up agency entirely, becoming passive in the face of what seems inevitable?

• Resonance: Finding that third position—maintaining presence while aligning with the pattern, neither fighting nor surrendering but participating in emergence through conscious alignment?

In my experience with the rip current, fighting would have exhausted me completely, leading to drowning. Complete surrender—giving up and letting go—would have had the same result. But finding that point of resonance—staying afloat, conserving energy, waiting for the pattern to shift while maintaining just enough agency to act when the moment was right—this was the Resonator position.

It's available to you as well, in whatever storms you face.

In Closing: From Memory to Myth to Method

The rip current story represents my personal journey from memory to myth to method. What began as a boyhood adventure—terrifying and exhilarating in equal measure—became integrated into my understanding of how reality works. Eventually, it helped shape the very framework of Manifestinction and the Auer Formula.

This is not abstract theory. It is lived experience translated into a pattern language that others might use.

The forbidden swim in a storm. The unexpected rip current. The choice to float rather than fight. These become more than memories—they become a map for navigating the architecture of becoming.

The lesson is clear: survival—and thriving—doesn't require overwhelming force but resonant coherence. It demands not control but alignment, not power but participation.

It asks us all to find our place at the crest of the wave, where potential discovers form, where consciousness participates in its own becoming.

This is the position of the Resonator. May you find it in your own storms.

The Rip Current Mapped to the Formula

    • Water/Lake Michigan = [ Omniment ] — The conscious memory architecture within which all coherence patterns are held 

    • Storm = Consciousness in flux (C) — Awareness participating in an unfolding reality 

    • T₁ = Danger — The rip current and exhaustion as the given condition 

    • T₂ = Instinct — The knowledge of how to respond effectively 

    • ↔ = Decision to float — The relationship established between danger and instinct 

    • ⟨ ⟩ = Alignment — Trust and bodily coherence within the tension field 

    • → E = Survival, Myth, Integration — The emergence of a new reality and understanding 

Reflection: Finding Your Resonator Moment

Recall a time when you didn't force control but floated in trust. A time when you aligned with a pattern larger than yourself rather than fighting against it. A time when you maintained presence in difficulty without either collapsing into panic or attempting to overpower through sheer force.

That was your Resonator moment.

What emerged from that alignment? How did it change you? How might consciously occupying this position—this crest point in the wave where potential becomes presence—transform your current challenges?

Remember: It's not about control. It's about resonance. It's not about the knower. It's about the one who floats with the current of becoming.

Interlude: Why It Took This Long to Tell

I never told anyone what happened that day. I couldn’t.

I returned home soaked and silent, in my bathing suit, famished and shaking from cold and exhaustion. I said I had gone for a walk. And I left it at that.

It wasn’t shame that kept me quiet—it was something harder to name. The experience felt too large, too strange, too powerful for the language I had at the time. So it lived inside me as silence.

Only now, with decades of pattern behind me and the myth of Manifestinction before me, can I see that the silence itself held a purpose, allowing the raw experience to mature into deeper understanding. The memory needed time to find its form.

The telling now is not a confession, but a release—a restoration of the vital connection between what happened and what it ultimately means. Perhaps many of our unspoken experiences, waiting in the quiet spaces of our lives, still hold the potential for profound emergence.

___________________

My Meta Moment: 

Argyle Was Already Speaking

There are stories we carry, and stories that carry us. This was one of the latter.

Long before I had language for emergence or resonance, I had a lake. I had a cottage called Argyle. I had wind, and storm, and silence.

I didn’t know then that these weren’t just elements of place.

They were expressions of a deeper memory field—the Omniment at work. Not a passive memory, but living coherence, reaching across generations to shape the conditions of my becoming.

My grandfather’s legacy was more than a cottage just as the boardwalk was more than a way to the beach. Each was Alignment. Like the storm wasn’t chaos, but initiation—the lake’s way of placing me within the pattern, not outside observing it.  It echoed the fractal patterns of memory, mirrored in my very being.

Later, the Auer Formula arrived like another initiation. I didn’t invent it so much as recognize it as the geometry of something I had already lived within.

It was the shape of something that had already happened.

Not once, but many times - in the woods, the cottage and the wordless memory of water.

Argyle had been speaking through me the whole time.

What I mistook for a boyhood story was the myth’s first ripple.

What I kept silent out of fear became the pressure that eventually revealed the structure.

And now, decades later, I understand: The storm didn’t test me.

It placed me, calling me into coherence with something older than belief.

This telling is a return more than reflection - not to childhood, but to where I had always belonged - in the myth's unfolding of the Omniment's memory. Where we all belong.

Campbell Auer