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 enjoy focusing on the way we language things. When I work with people individually and in groups, I listen for the words they choose to relate their experiences.

Experiences can be elusive and hard to describe. A description is not the experience. But when I kept prompting people for more information about their experiences, so often they arrived at using the word "energy."

I remember years ago I was called in by a corporation to help develop intuition for managers who were identified as high potential for senior management. While I was working with these 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. The word "energy" seemed to be everywhere; and, indeed, energy IS everywhere.

When people first call me for a session, they usually are prompted by a serious problem. People don't normally call initially because their life is great. Because I read energy, I see that these people will become more able to deal with the situation if they change their vibration. In other words, they need to move out of the vibration of the problem itself before they can change the situation. So, our work begins with lifting the vibration and then focusing on the situation in a new and different way.

I prefer to 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 from Susan: 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: My perspective is this. The vibration that each one of us puts out is like an antenna -- or a series of antennae, because of course we are vibrating at different rates at different times about different things. We send out these vibrations and they connect with other people, places, things and ideas that are of a similar vibration. Other people "line up" with them. They find us; we find them through energy or vibrations. 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 annoyed, I didn't even know about what. So I asked myself, "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 rarely happen in Los Angeles. But it happened to me that day within seconds of my decision to raise my vibration.

So I've made a habit of raising my vibration before I start my car. When I'm still sitting in my 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. Someone will make 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. It is a personal choice. Everyone is different. I do find that "happy" is a word that describes what most people want, but I ask what they want to feel rather than assuming. The idea is to resonate with 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 experiencing something she does not want, freedom is always what she wants instead. Other clients have different positive opposites for each situation. I developed this concept of "positive opposite" to help people to describe how they want to feel when they are feeling or experiencing something that they do not want.

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

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

Jeanie: Practice, practice, practice! I'm a great advocate for practicing what we want when it's easy. In other words, when it's easy to be happy, or to feel free, or whatever it is we want, then recognize that we are in that vibration. It is helpful to become aware of different aspects of the vibration. When we become aware of those times when we are feeling really good, we become more familiar with that feeling and then can let it expand into other situations.

Then in those more difficult times, it is easier to remember "I have a choice, I can focus on what's wrong, or I can focus on what I want." When we choose to focus on what we want, we resonate with what we want. This becomes easier to do when we have practiced being in that consciousness.

I like to suggest simple situations for practice. These are such simple ways that they are easy to discount, but when people practice in these ways they make faster progress in their more difficult situations. So, I suggest being aware of feeling good or happy or free (whatever the person has said he or she wants) while choosing clothes in the morning. 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 enjoy, choose a route to the supermarket that is the most pleasurable to us.

When we practice feeling good in these simple everyday situations, we can say to ourselves, "I'm making a choice. I'm choosing what I want to feel. I'm doing this because it feels good or helps me to feel free." Then when we get to the more difficult situations, we have a better chance of maintaining our equilibrium. Of course, we still may "lose it," but we won't lose it for as long if we are practicing feeling good regularly. The idea is to make it a habit to notice how we are feeling, and if it is not a good feeling, identify the positive opposite and shift our vibration to that feeling.

Susan: So, for example, what someone is easily overpowered by authority figures and feels incompetent a lot. How can that person stop resonating with 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 situations where you feel empowered or effective. Your question is a wonderful one, because it illustrates a tendency most of us have -- to go right to the most difficult situation and try to fix that. But if we try to fix the situation from the same consciousness in which we created it, we will not change it. So, instead, I suggest raising the person's vibration before looking at the situation.

When you practice in the easy situations, if you're standing with your boss who is treating you in a way you do not like, you can more easily shift your attention to whatever it is you've practiced, to the ideas that make you feel empowered. And, if you are not successful this time, you will get another chance.

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. When we are feeling the pain, we are in a not-wanted condition. The first step is to ask, "what do I want to feel?" This will be the positive opposite of the pain for that person. Always, it is a variation on feeling healthy or feeling good. That's what we want. Right then, feeling pain has our attention, but it's not wanted. So, again, we have to play around with, "Where do I want to put my attention?"

Distractions can be wonderful when there is physical pain. Meditation, work, reaching for a nutritional supplement, reading a book are all places to focus our attention. And sometimes the thought,"I have a stomach ache and it hurts," is so strong in us that we just have to ride it out. Perhaps the best thought we can believe is, "it will be over soon."

Susan, 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. I suggest you re-frame this: the "first time" you mediated was in the past. Leave it in the past and let now be now so that you do not drag that into your current meditations. I suggest you not mention the history any more, don't talk about it. Giving an experience language makes it more powerful, more real. 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. It is the present that creates the future. So, 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 resonating. 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 male 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 resonating with "struggle" and adversity. He is re-creating struggle. 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. I use language as a tool, but remember that consciousness is the key to word choice.

Sometimes we can say "topic" with just as much angst as "issue." But I have found this to be 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: It works for any not-wanted space or condition. There is a prevalent misconception that the Universe is trying to teach us something. I think that concept keeps us focused in a disempowering place. Rather, I find it helpful to think of our experiences as feedback about how we are resonating. It's the Universe giving us feedback if we care to receive it.

Whatever is happening is happening because of our vibration. So, we shift our attention to something that helps us to create or remember the vibration of whatever it is we are wanting.

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

Jeanie: The results are usually fast, deep, and lasting. Sometimes people need a lot of practice. People tend to have the results that they are expecting, with this approach or any other.

I worked with someone today -- I've worked a couple of years with her -- whom 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, and they find me. 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. In her company, she used to be seen as somebody who could get the job done. Now, she's being seen as a high performer with creative ideas. She is getting all kinds of recognition. And she's just bursting with enthusiasm.

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

Jeanie: Yes, when focusing on energy or vibration we can enhance all our relationships. Often we find ourselves faced with working with a difficult person. In the corporate environment, this is often the boss. But the principles apply to all relationships.

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

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

My client reports 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 negativity 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, she might think, "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 moves into her confident vibration, the meeting always goes well.

And another note about using language. When we are in this space of mutual vibration with another, it's not just 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 choose 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 to me?" is always, "It happened because I was resonating with it." That is always the answer. The world is always telling you about your own energy.