Vibrating to the Light with Jeanie Marshall by Susan Barber

Learning how to be Light all boils down to the deep inner knowing that we are conscious co-creators with God. When we come to the true realization that we create our own experience, then we can fully experience the Lightness of the Heart.

But if we are suffering, or someone we know is, the words "You create your own reality" can feel like a slap in the face. How can we get ourselves and others to a space of empowerment without using that intimidating phrase?

To find out how she does this, we had a very rewarding conversation with Jeanie Marshall, a spiritual consultant who does much of her work in the difficult corporate environment. After all, we figured, where spiritual teaching is concerned, "If you can do it there, you can do it anywhere."

Susan: I understand that you have found the language of energy is the easiest for you in teaching people how they get what they are getting, and how to get what they want. How did you come to start using this way of describing it?

Jeanie: I am focused on the way we language things. So when I began working with people in various configurations, I was always listening for the kinds of language that people would use to relate their experiences.

Now experience is elusive and hard to describe. But when I kept prompting people for more information, so often it came down to their using the word "energy."

I remember years ago I was called in by a corporation to help develop intuition for management trainees. And even in something like that, where we were working with business people on their intuitive skills, the language of energy kept coming around — energy fields, vibrations, the question as to what vibrations are composed of. . .

Also, when people first call me for a session, there is usually a serious problem. People don't normally call because their life is great. And because I can read energy, I can see that I need to get these people out of the vibration of the problem before our real work can begin.

So I almost always begin my first session with what I call "focused energy work." This is guided meditation that helps people become aware of the energy fields in and around their bodies and how they can move those fields and work with them and change them.

[NOTE: Jeanie now did one of these meditations with me, and it was impressive. She drew me along in a gradual progression from simple awareness of breathing to more and more complex energetic manipulations. It lasted only about ten minutes, and when we were through I knew that I had received a powerful teaching and an expanded awareness of my own energy fields.]

Susan: Thank you! So how do you relate the language of energy to helping people become empowered without actually using that phrase, "You create your own reality"?

Jeanie: I explain it like this. The vibration that each one of us puts out is like an antenna — or a series of antennas, because of course we are vibrating at different rates at different times. They are like tentacles that go out. And then other people "line up" with them. So we are automatically lined up with people who have the same kinds of vibrations.

Susan: Give us an example of what you mean.

Jeanie: I think one of the most immediate illustrations of how this works happens when we are out driving. The other drivers always reflect what's going on with us. If we're feeling grumpy, we may encounter horrendous driving behavior in others.

I remember one time when I was driving down the street and I happened to be feeling annoyed about something, and I started noticing other people being rude and careless. But then I said to myself, "Wait a minute. What's going on with me?" And I realized I was feeling this annoyance. So I said, "What do I want to feel?" The answer was, "I want to feel happy. And I can do that right now."

So I started feeling happy instead of annoyed. I moved my vibration right up to happiness. And the next thing I knew, another driver actually stopped and backed up his car in order to enable me to make a turn. Understand that this was Los Angeles. Things like that never happen in Los Angeles. But it happened to me that day when I decided to raise my vibration.

So I've made a habit of raising my vibration before I go out in my car. When I'm still sitting in the garage, I take time to "get happy." It can be difficult if there's something really bothering me, but most of the time I can do it. And if I don't — if I get careless? I will get the feedback. I'll have someone making a U-turn right in front of me.

The point is, it is not that the world is trying to teach us something by giving us negative feedback or punishing us. Rather, our world — the world of our own personal experience — is simply matching our vibration.

Susan: There are a couple of things I'd like to ask you about what you just said. First of all, you used the word "happy." Are you saying that this is what we should aim for? A happy vibration?

Jeanie: Not necessarily. Not unless "happy" is a word that describes what you want. The idea is to vibrate to whatever it is that we want. For me, it's being happy. For me, "happy" is the positive opposite to everything I don't want.

I have a client whose positive opposite is always freedom. Whenever she is getting something she does not want, freedom is always what she wants instead.

When we know what we want, then we have to start vibrating to that, and then the universe lines up so that we receive it.

Susan: I guess that leads to my next question. How can we learn to vibrate to what we want?

Jeanie: Practice! And in that regard, I'm a great advocate for practicing what you want when it's easy. In other words, when it's easy to be happy, or to feel free, or whatever it is you want, then focus on that vibration. Become aware of everything about it. And find times when you are feeling really good to imagine what you want, then allow your whole being to memorize that vibration.

Then if a time comes when you have negative feelings, you can say, "Okay, I can focus on what's wrong, or I can focus on what I want." And you focus on what you want, and you start vibrating to what you want. And you can do that because you've practiced being in that space.

We can do other things that will be easy to practice, like choosing our clothes in the morning. We can choose not to wear something just because we bought it. We can consciously choose clothes that feel good. We might say to ourselves, "Pink feels good today. I'm going to wear pink!" We can pack our suitcase only with things we really like, eat only those foods we really like, choose a route to the supermarket that is the most pleasurable to us.

When we practice on these simple things, easy things, we can say to ourselves, "I'm making a choice. I'm choosing what I want. I'm doing this because it feels good." Then when we get to the more difficult things, even though we still may "lose it," we won't lose it for as long. We will have the habit of making the choice to shift our vibration.

Susan: So, for example, what if someone is easily overpowered by authority figures and feels incompetent a lot. How can that person stop vibrating to situations that create that feeling? How can we learn a different vibration?

Jeanie: Again, practice. Just pick a time when you are already feeling good (practice what you want when it's easy!), then put your attention on things that do make you feel empowered or effective or whatever it is you want.

Then later on, if you're standing there with your boss and he or she is at you about something, you can shift your attention to whatever it is you've practiced — the things that make you feel empowered.

Susan: What about physical pain? How can we deal with this through shifting our energy?

Jeanie: We live in moments, don't we? Day to day. And some of that is painful and uncomfortable. And some of that is joyous. And when we are feeling the pain, what we are really doing is asking to feel good. That's what we want. Feeling pain is a not-wanted situation. It's where our attention is, but it's not wanted. So, again, we have to play around with, "Where do I want to put my attention?"

Some of it is about choice. Some of it is about, "I have a stomach ache and it hurts," and the best thing we can do is not to bring it back. For example, you mentioned to me in our focused energy session that you sometimes feel fear when you go into meditation, and that this started the first time you learned meditation.

So in other words what I am suggesting is, let that "first time" be then, and let now be now. Don't mention the history any more, don't talk about it. This is about languaging. The way we say things is important. We can bring in a not-wanted situation from the past by talking about it.

It's not that the past creates the future. But if we bring in memories from the past, then we also recreate the vibration. Then it appears that the past is creating the future, because we have come to expect that under certain situations we get a certain feeling or result, and that's how we are vibrating. Instead, when a familiar pain or feeling comes up, we could use different language. We could say, "I'm moving through this. It's just a spasm. I'm going to move right out of it."

The thought that "I'm moving through this" is soothing. It helps us move out of the not-wanted situation. It's not a joyous thought. But it is a bridge to joyousness.

Susan: You are saying then that the way we "language" or describe our situations in life can be carrying the vibrations we do not want?

Jeanie: Yes. Here's an example.

A client comes to me and says he is "struggling." And by reading his energy, I may discern that this word "struggle" carries a strong vibration for him. He is literally vibrating to "struggle" and adversity. So I might suggest that he say he is "working through" a situation or "experiencing" something.

Perhaps a woman says to me that she has an "issue" to discuss. The word issue can be neutral for many people, but in reading this woman's energy I see that, for her, it carries a heavy, conflictive vibration. So I might suggest that she say she has a "topic" or a "subject" to discuss.

By helping people be more attentive to their choices of words, we can change the vibration of their life situations. Choosing less inflammatory words calms the fires and shifts our attention to what we want rather than what we do not want.

Of course, this doesn't always work. Sometimes we can say "topic" with just as much angst as "issue." But this is rarely the case. Finding neutral language to describe whatever is happening that we do not want is usually an effective way of changing our vibration about it.

Susan: It seems that this way of looking at what happens to us would be of great help in getting us out of the space of guilt, or thinking that we are being rewarded or punished all the time.

Jeanie: I think that's an important aspect. The idea is that what happens to us is not personal. It's not there to teach us something. It's just feedback about how we are vibrating. It's the universe giving us feedback if we care to receive it.

Whatever is happening is happening in our vibration. So we shift our attention to something that creates the vibration of whatever it is we are wanting.

Susan: What kind of results have you been able to achieve with this work?

Jeanie: I worked with someone today — I've worked a couple of years with her — that I originally picked out of a group as being the most disempowered individual in that group. I invited her to work with me.

Most of the people I work with are already empowered. They're smart, they're out there, and results often come easily and quickly. But here was someone who was, I would say, one of the most disempowered persons I've ever worked with in the corporate setting.

Our work had to be slow and steady, because that's just the kind of person she is. But she was eager, and very consistent about practicing the things I suggested. And today, our session together was a pure celebration of how far she has come. Before, she was just seen as somebody who could get the job done. Now, she's being seen in her company as a high performer with creative ideas. She is getting all kinds of recognition. And she's just bursting with this.

Susan: Is there some particular area of what you do that you'd particularly like to share with our readers?

Jeanie: Yes. It's about working with difficult people. In the corporate environment, this is usually the boss. But the principles apply to all relationships.

In actuality, one of the most frequent reasons people come to me for help is that they have a problem with their boss. I do a lot of "how to manage the boss." So here's a story to illustrate how we might apply vibrational techniques to this kind of situation.

There was this one boss who was brilliant when everything was going well, but whenever there was a problem he became erratic, opinionated, and very unkind.

My client reported directly to this man, and in the past she had simply deferred to him. But she felt weakened by this man's behavior and powerless to change the situation.

Our main work was in helping her to stop focusing on his venom and focus instead on what she liked about him. "What is it that you admire about him?" I asked her. "What are the things he does well?" And she said that he was brilliant when he was "in a good mood."

So her work was to be in a good mood herself and meet him in that vibration. The images she was to focus on were all about having an effective meeting with him. "What is your intention for this meeting?" I would ask her. We would get her into a vibration of confidence, competence, and feeling good, and of meeting him in that vibration.

When she was worried, going, "Oh, I wonder what he will think about this?" he would pick up that vibration right away and go right into his own negative behavior. But whenever she moved into this confident vibration, the meeting always went well.

And another note about languaging. When we are in this space of mutual vibration with another, it's no longer about the words. If we are tuned to the other person, we'll know what to say. The language just flows. We don't have to worry about using the right words.

By the same token, if we're out of vibrational alignment, we can have the most beautiful, perfect words, and the communication won't happen correctly because we're not in the vibration of a positive intention.

Susan: Thank you so much, Jeanie. I have really enjoyed this. I wonder if you could just sum it all up for our readers.

Jeanie: That's easy.

The answer to the question, "Why did that happen?" is always, "It happened because I was vibrating to it." That is always the answer.

The world is always telling you about your own energy.

Jeanie Marshall has an M.S. in Human Resource Development concentrating in Organization Development. She facilitates workshops and private consultations throughout the world, appears as a guest on television and radio shows, and has produced more than fifty guided visualization meditations on audiocassette tapes.

For six years she has produced and hosted a local television show called "Return to Center," and has authored two books: Affirmations: A Pathway to Transformation and Energetic Meetings.

Jeanie has been actively involved in the human potential movement and organizational development for about twenty years. She is a mentor, coach, facilitator, and organizational and personal development consultant. You may visit her website at MHMail.com. She welcomes communication, and can be reached via email at Jeanie@MHMail.com.