What You Appreciate, Appreciates
Creating a Field of Light
Out beyond wrongdoing and rightdoing is a field. I’ll meet you there.
RUMI
Welcome, woman.
You crawled through the underworld and got re-birthed, remembered, re-educated, re-ignited, re-named, and re-united. You got yourself your own private Oracle, your always-on audience with your soul. You noticed that the voice of your truth can become bashful and soft-spoken in contrast to life’s noise. You know how to listen to and learn from your desires.
Like a light bulb, you function best when you are turned on. Your light is life-force energy, as seen and felt through your body. Your light is Eros, as channeled and expressed in your quotidian life. Your light is your power. It is what powers life itself and what powers you. Your light is the fuel within you and also what radiates from you. It is what blesses life and also what blesses you. Your light is the same as divine light.
Cultivating your light means that you wake up, again and again, to the awe of being alive and at home in your body. Not someday when you are perfect, but right now, in your humble life and your quirky body just as they are. I want for you to ally yourself with your light and live there, much of the time, even as your darkness ebbs and flows within you, and even if you have felt alienated from your body, sexuality, and inner knowing until now. You can, Feminine Genius, live brilliantly ever after.
But your light requires care and tending. Your light can easily flicker when you overuse your Masculine Genius — or when you follow a script, forget how to navigate your dark, become comfortably numb, modify who you are in order to fit in, overlook that who you are is holy, and believe for too long that you are wrong, broken, or crazy. Your inner wisdom, moxie, and vibrancy all need specific conditions in which to shine. This section is all about going up into the light parts of the death/rebirth cycle. Because, dear one, it really takes something to tend your radiance and to know how to turn it back up when it dims.
A great by-product of walking the path of Feminine Genius and allying yourself with your light is that you will have fewer crappy experiences and more wonderful ones. Life gets better and brighter. However, becoming masterful at cultivating your light does not mean you become inoculated against difficulty. You will still experience disappointment and loss. Things will, from time to time, not go your way. You will descend again into the dark part of the death/rebirth cycle.
None of this means that you are doing light cultivation wrong, are a bad human, or have failed Feminine Genius school. It simply means you are having a life. As you know, your life is supposed to go up and down. To keep walking your Feminine Genius path, you need to know how to navigate the dark times when they come, and cultivate the light times so they come more and more often.
So, in this crazy world that tends to cut off your power in the blink of a to-do list, this whole section will offer you ways to keep your power flowing. I have for you some radical ways of being, muscle-strengthening practices, and chop-honing exercises to help you enjoy yourself, come vibrantly alive, get great at receiving, express your desires, and use the power of sisterhood to keep your flame turned on. Daily, weekly, all your life long.
Let’s start with creating a field of light.
As I see it, the only two things in life you truly have any control over are the quality of your awareness, and to what you direct your awareness. On what will you focus? Will you treasure it or trash it? Will you see it for what it is, or only for what it is not? At first glance, this may seem overly simple or obtuse, but it is actually a key to wielding your power and enjoying your life.
I first learned about the power of awareness in a strange and bass-ackward way, almost a decade ago. My partner, Nathan, and I were in a session with a well-known relationship coach, Kevin. Kevin asked me to explain my side of a communication issue between Nathan and me, but when I opened my mouth, I was literally unable to speak. I was struck mute. Instead, I squirmed, as though I were sitting on pins and needles. I felt dumb and inadequate. Tears jabbed my eyeballs. After many long minutes of this, Nathan stopped the session, took me by the elbow, and led me out to the car.
Nathan and I talked, trying to figure out what in the world had happened. How had I, a naturally articulate and forthcoming person, become unable to speak up? Slowly, we realized that the way Kevin had been listening to me, and the energy he had been broadcasting, had been shutting me down. “I got the sense that he really didn’t like what you were saying. I could feel his contempt of you. And then, you stopped being able to speak,” Nathan said.
Hearing my partner’s insight, I calmed down and began to brush off my discomfort. Then I became fascinated by the power of my energetic exchange with Kevin. How he had listened to and looked at me had, directly and powerfully, affected how I spoke and how I felt about myself. Was I super-sensitive, an anomaly, or was I onto something about the ability we have to influence others, in both dark and light ways?
CREATING A FIELD OF APPRECIATION
For the next many years, I tried this out in my live retreats and programs, to the same effect every time. I would divide the group of women into pairs and have half of them leave the room to get ready to share what they were most excited to get out of the program. I gave the women present in the room their instructions: when their partners came back, they weren’t to say anything, just listen to what their partner shared. They were to be deliberate about listening in a way that was generous, appreciative, and welcoming. They were to direct their awareness to the beauty and wisdom they found in their partner’s face, body, and words; and they were to broadcast interest, enjoyment, and excitement.
So far, so good. But then, half way through, I would clear my throat, their signal to switch the quality of their listening and seeing. They were to continue to listen to their partner, but in a way that was harsh, judgmental, and critical. Again, without saying anything, they were to direct their awareness to the flaws they could find in their partner’s face, body, and words; and they were to broadcast boredom, displeasure, and contempt.
After I gave these instructions, they looked at me as though I must be kidding. But taking it on faith that my request to do something they found repugnant might help them embody their Feminine Genius, they agreed to try it. We brought their partners back into the room. At the end of the exercise, we heard first from the partners who were speaking, the ones being listened to. Nearly universally, the speakers started out animated, inspired, and articulate. Their words flew out of them, even those usually shy, and they reported enjoying what they were sharing, and were feeling good about themselves. A few of their partners noted that they looked radiant and lovely as they spoke.
The speakers shared that then something shifted, and they sort of lost their trains of thought. “Yes,” others piped in. “Somehow I lost my steam or felt like what I was saying wasn’t that important.” “I noticed my voice got quieter, and I wondered if I was boring my partner,” a few said. When I revealed what was going on, they were surprised and awed, as I was after my disturbing coaching session with Kevin many years back. Even after we reversed roles, and everyone knew what was going on, the results were pretty much the same.
Your awareness — the way you listen to and regard another — is a field of energy that transmits and broadcasts, like a radio signal. I believe, like quantum research is demonstrating, that divine life-force energy is a field that can transmit to you, through your Oracle, and can directly affect how you speak, think, act, and feel. I likewise believe that there is a field of energy that extends out from you, to another person, and can directly and powerfully affect how they speak, think, act, and feel. And of course, your own field of energy can directly and powerfully affect how you speak, think, act, and feel. So the questions become: Will your field of energy broadcast appreciation or displeasure? And would you like to know how to transmit light?
What You Appreciate, Appreciates
To appreciate means to rise in value and to recognize the full worth of, to be grateful for, and to recognize the full implication of something or someone. When you appreciate, you often also feel grateful, and when you feel grateful, you often also feel joyful, pleased, and thankful. Appreciation — naturally linked with gratitude, esteem, and enjoyment — is the counterpart to fearing, faulting, and disparaging that which you listen to and look at. When you practice emitting an appreciative field rather than a critical one, you and others actually rise in value, and everyone’s full worth is recognized. I believe that a field of appreciation is a field of divine light, because it allows you to see yourself and others as the Divine sees you: with gratitude, esteem, and enjoyment.
It turns out that whether or not you feel pulled-together, eloquent, and on your A game depends partly on who is listening and the quality of their field. You think that people are what they are; some are beautiful, others are ugly; some are boring, others are interesting. But it turns out that whatever you direct your awareness to will increase and expand. When you direct your awareness to what is beautiful, interesting, or wise about someone (including you), they become even more beautiful, interesting, or wise. When you direct your awareness to what is ugly, boring, or stupid about someone (including you), they will oblige you and become more so.
The same is true for your issues, worries, and problems. You think that when you have a problem, if you focus and work on it, things will get better. But it turns out, although working on your worries has a place, no worry will change until you first deliberately direct your awareness to what you can appreciate about it — what is already good, right, and going well. For example, you might be convinced that if you first get a better wardrobe, clear up your acne, or get asked out on a date, then you will feel beautiful and will be able to appreciate yourself. But it turns out that you can appreciate yourself and feel beautiful right now, before anything else changes. And it turns out that you must shift the way you listen to and look at yourself first, in order for an issue, like too few dates, to shift.
Any gesture of honest and dear seeing toward yourself will affect how you experience your world. In fact, it will transform how you experience the world.
PEMA CHÖDRÖN, Comfortable with Uncertainty
So it turns out that the only things we truly have control over in life are the quality of our fields and to what or whom we are broadcasting them. It turns out that you have incredible power to affect not only how you feel, think, act, and how people show up for you, but also to affect how other people feel, think, and act, and show up for themselves. By emitting an appreciative field, it is within your grasp to feel attractive, sensuous, and successful even in shitty conditions. By emitting an appreciative field, you become empowered to have almost anyone, anywhere, open their heart to you. And this is also the first step to averting or resolving conflicts, resisting compromises, finding options through impasses, and simply enjoying yourself and your life.
At this point, some people narrow their eyes and look at me critically. (The irony is not lost on me.) They ask if I am simply suggesting that they cover up their judgment and paste on some appreciation. Slap a Band-Aid over the pain of their problems. Because, they tell me, they feel their impatience, criticism, trepidation, or disdain. It is the truth of their experience, and to pretend otherwise would be inauthentic.
I am not suggesting you pretend or cover up anything. Instead, notice the judgment or problem or whatever else, notice your awareness is on it, and then deliberately direct your awareness elsewhere, to something you can appreciate. Change the channel you are broadcasting to one of appreciation. Later, if there is still a real issue, there will be room to tune back to the original channel and work out the problem, likely with the fresh perspective, insight, and open-heartedness that appreciation, enjoyment, and gratitude often bring. If you are anything like the women I get to know and get to work with, your default field is likely harsh and critical, toward others and toward yourself. I would love for you to retrain yourself to create an appreciative field instead. You can gaze at life through rose-tinted lenses, and your outlook can inspire others to do the same.
Whatever you direct your awareness to will increase and expand. Direct it to how much you suck, you will suck all the more. Direct it to how much you are wonderful, you will be all the more wondrous. It is your choice. I figure, why not choose to see things in their natural glory rather than through the cloudy lens handed to us by a culture that believes women need to be airbrushed in order to be appreciated?
Your illumination is absolutely an inside job. You have the dial. You can feel great about yourself in a world that questions the validity of your existence at every turn. You needn’t — and shouldn’t — wait for anyone’s or anything’s approval to feel great about yourself. That is your responsibility and no one and nothing else’s.
However, the flip side is that your radiance also blooms when you feel regarded with an appreciative field. When you are noticed for your rightness, just as you are — whether for your body, emotions, ideas, or visions — you will likely feel even more vibrant, vivid, and great about yourself. How you see and how you listen matters. How you are seen and how you are listened to matters.
Let me share with you some of my favorite practices for broadcasting an appreciative field. Don’t let their playful or sassy nature fool you. These practices are strenuous meditations that masquerade as blessings; blessings that take shape as fields of appreciation.
APPRECIATION PRACTICE #1 WHEN IN DOUBT, APPRECIATE
You create a field of appreciation simply by changing the channel from bitter and bitchy to caring and curious, so that you can regard what is and what is good about what is in front of you. Practice this on yourself and on others.
I have found that there are two main ways to practice creating an appreciative field. Try them both.
1 See what is, without a tinge of judgment — no right or wrong, good or bad. Just see things as they are, in their is-ness.
This is incredibly liberating and is often enough. For example, instead of harshly proclaiming how you think your friend’s dimples make her face look fat and insipid, neutrally notice things as they are: she has dimples.
2 See what is, with a positive tinge.
Imagine that the lens through which you regard the world is appreciation-tinted. Practice seeing people and situations (including yourself) as astonishing, pleasing, true, and wise. In the dimple example, you could notice, positively, the ways your friend’s dimples catch and reflect the light, her cheeks lustrous as pearls. You could notice each dimple’s curvaceous slope, designed to direct your eye to the mysterious center of each divot.
A great way to get the hang of appreciation is to practice on your own body, perhaps what you see in the mirror. Broadcast an appreciative field, look through the lens of appreciation, and find something about your body that you can appreciate.
Find something that simply is, or that is valuable, worthy, wondrous, or sensuous. Remember: appreciate first; find flaws later (if you are still compelled to).
Appreciation is a practice that will teach you to love what you don’t even like. What is in front of you might be your friend, your partner, your own reflection, a stranger, some dimples, or a recent heartbreak. When you can see it for what it is, not as you wish it to be, its rightness and beauty will be revealed. And then, a magical thing happens: your bothersome partner, your double chin, that wily stranger, those dimples, or your own complicated life can become resplendent, valuable, and worthy of gratitude.
Your ability to switch channels — to turn your attention from what is bad and wrong to what simply is, to what you can appreciate, and to what you can enjoy — is an awesome superpower. Your appreciation, of yourself and others, is the special sauce that can take a mundane or miserable moment and make it magical.
APPRECIATION PRACTICE #2 SHAKE IT
Another great way to get the hang of appreciation is to practice on your own moving body — as a meditation, a celebration, or a prayer.
Again, power up that ever-handy appreciative field, broadcast it onto your body as well as out into the world, and — shake it.
Shake it! As in, shake what your mama gave you. As in, appreciate what your mama gave you.
Dance, move, wiggle, sashay, prance, sweat, grind, and groove. Take a dance class, do yoga on the beach, or boogie in your own room, all good. Hip-hop, belly dancing, or S Factor are all good. Do it with an instructor or by yourself; do it at home or out in nature — all good.
Like Riya did back in chapter 12, get into your passionate pelvis, your low belly, and move. Make it hot, make it holy, make it sweet, make it wrathful. Dance your demons, dance your daemons, dance your aching, dance your wisdom, dance your mystery. Dance like no one is watching you. Dance like everyone is watching you and gets lit up as they do.
Look, as you know, many spiritual and religious traditions say stillness is the best path to inner peace. That seated, quiet contemplation is the ideal way to meet God. As I see it, these practices have been designed by and for the Divine Masculine in all of us. For the Divine Masculine, nothingness is bliss. Yet for the Divine Feminine, the ever-changing, wildly feeling, spiraling, shining everything-of-life is bliss.
Life-force moves. The feminine flavor of God cycles. Feminine Genius spirals, undulates, and fluctuates. Masculine-based spiritual traditions are time honored and have their place. But when a pew or a meditation cushion can’t contain the size of your soul, get moving. Shake your booty and turn the other cheek.
Let your moving body be an appreciation and a supplication, all in one.
can i get an amen?
and an ah-woman?
Noticing imperfections can wait. If you slip up and find a fault first, then you owe yourself three appreciations. Wait a minute. What? You think there is nothing about you to appreciate? I’ll have none of that insubordination. That’s right, you heard me. Drop and give me twenty appreciations!
Appreciate your partner first, then he can show up as trustworthy and sexy. Appreciate your thick thighs first, and then they can be transformed into one of the strongest parts of you. Appreciate the stranger first, and notice as your curiosity (about what might have put her in such a bad mood this morning) relaxes you, and lets you breathe more fully. Appreciate your breakdown first (as your personal invitation from the Queen of the Dark), so your heart can become that much bigger to hold you through the massive challenge.
Appreciation will not only change how you look at yourself and how others listen to you, but it can also become your new default setting. Appreciation is the best antidote to light-dimming conditions like doubts, delusions, people pleasing, and perfectionism. Whether experiencing good or bad times in your life, broadcasting an appreciative field will allow you to see yourself as a freakin’ Genius. Self-acceptance will no longer cut it; self-celebration must become the new norm. As my friend Annie would put it, give yourself (internally or out loud) applause, standing ovations, and high-fives for every time you change the channel of your awareness, realize even the most microscopic ahas, and do even the tiniest acts of creativity.
And no, you will not become a self-promoting, navel-gazing narcissist. Self-appreciation is not the same as self-aggrandizement. Broadcasting an appreciative field will not tamper with your compassion, lucidity, or motivation — except perhaps to heighten them. You will not lose your ability to lend a hand to others because you are too busy high-fiving yourself.
I promise you, you can love yourself without losing touch with reality. You can do right by someone else and yourself at the same time, I swear. In fact, the next practice is all about that.
FROM APPRECIATION TO FLIRTATION
When appreciation drops an octave deeper and richer, it becomes enjoyment. When you are enjoying yourself, you are filling yourself with joy like you could fill a pitcher with water. Joy is a feeling of great happiness and pleasure that lets you know you are in contact with something you love and care deeply about. There is a saying in 12-step programs, “A grateful heart doesn’t drink.” I agree, and add, “A joyful heart doesn’t drink — or cut, or binge, or starve, overbook, or overspend.” When you are truly experiencing joy, and are truly enjoying yourself, you can’t fake it. Joy awakens your truest self, the part of you that is most loving and alive. Your enjoyment puts you automatically and authentically in touch with what moves you, grooves you, and drives you. You become moved, grooved, and driven by delight and abundance, rather than by fear and not-enoughness.
How does flirtation come into this? I define flirtation as simply enjoying yourself at the same time as enjoying someone or something else. Flirtation is enjoyment, squared. Flirtation winks conspiratorially at you and at the other person, intimating, “I’m kind of great, and you’re not so bad yourself!” There are plenty of ways to enjoy yourself while enjoying something or someone else, but one that is especially good for you, as a woman cultivating your light, is flirting.
You can flirt with a baby or a puppy just as well as you can flirt with a hottie in the seat next to you on the bus, or with your partner of twenty years. Flirtation can have platonic or erotic energy. Either way, for those flirtatious moments (and possibly for quite a while afterward), you — and they — are reminded who you truly are. Light and joy return.
One early morning, before flying to guest teach in my friend and colleague’s coaching course, I had one such experience of enjoyment, squared. My friend Stacey and I were eating breakfast in a dive diner at a tiny terminal in the San Francisco airport. Now, the list of things I cannot eat is long and makes eating outside my own kitchen an exercise in creativity. It can make me a large pain in the derrière for wait staff worldwide. I ordered, doing my usual routine of “hold this,” “add that,” and “substitute this for that.” As I spoke, I broadcast an invisible but palpable field of appreciation and enjoyment, and directed my awareness to what was right and good about me, and what was right and good about our waiter. Instead of seeing me as an early-morning problem and subtly rolling his eyes, our waiter visibly relaxed and even cracked a grin.
To give you a sense of what a minor miracle this was, let me clarify that it was just past 6:00 a.m. and most everyone at his other tables was grumpy and giving him a hard time. Yet he had smiled when he left our table, a bounce in his step. He even gave us our coffee for free, as we noticed when the bill came. The afterglow of my flirting had extended beyond our meal.
“What were you doing back there?” Stacey asked me as we walked toward our gate. “You were doing something, but I wasn’t sure what it was.” I explained how I used appreciation fields, and I explained my definition of flirting — my way to enjoy airport food, our waiter, my friend, and myself. As he himself had shared, our waiter was gay, and young enough to be just out of high school. So, my flirting was in no way suggestive or sexual. I was doing the platonic version of creating a field of enjoyment.
“I always figure people don’t want to be bothered,” Stacey said.
“I used to think that, too,” I said. “Sometimes people do just want to be left alone, it’s true. But mostly, people are just a heartbeat away from opening up. Given even a tiny window, people can’t wait to come out to play.”
I don’t suggest flirting to get free coffee. Free things are great perks, sure, but even the perks are just a tangible reminder of the generosity that can’t help but tumble out of you both. I suggest you flirt to feel full of light, to raise you both in value and worth, and to make you both feel better for the moment you share. Instead of nagging your partner, what if you propose that you will remove one item of clothing for every plate he or she washes from the sink full of yesterday’s dinner dishes? Instead of threatening, “If you don’t clean up your toys, no dessert for a week!” try putting on music and sharing the new rules of the game: “One gold star sticker for every toy back in the toy chest. And twenty stars equals an extra hour at the pool tomorrow.” A moment like that inspires another moment like that. A day full of moments like that, day after day, piles up to life full of light.
You can even flirt — and create a field of enjoyment — without saying much at all or making much eye contact. About three years after working together, I recently asked one of my former clients, Carey, how things were going for her. From the outside, things looked good: her business was growing impressively, and instead of dreading her on-stage appearances, she was enjoying them.
Carey said, “Let me tell you this story that illustrates just how much I have incorporated my sensual energy into my life and how much I feel at home and powerful in my body. A couple of months ago, I was walking through the airport with a little time before my next flight. I was a few pounds over my normal weight, so I wasn’t feeling like I was at my best. But I sauntered to my gate, wearing flats and no makeup, feeling happy in my skin, when I saw a tall, handsome Latino man noticing me, quite, shall we say, appreciatively? I wasn’t in the mood to stop and engage, but I gave him a glance to thank him; and internally, I said to myself, ‘That’s right. This is what a goddess looks like. Enjoy the view.’”
So, go, goddess, go flirt! Enjoyment, squared, is your next practice.
ENJOYMENT PRACTICE OPENING UP WITH FLIRTATION
Whether it is done with platonic or erotic intentions, the kind of flirtation I suggest cannot be mistaken for manipulation, misrepresentation, or deceit. It organically brings out your own authenticity and brilliance while bringing them out in another. So, give it a go:
1 Power up your appreciative field and enjoy yourself while enjoying someone or something else.
2 To help get in the right frame of mind, ask yourself internally (or ask your Oracle), “If I direct my awareness to what is right and good about me, and right and good about them, what do I see?” or “What could help this be more enjoyable for me or for them?”
3 With the answers you receive, simply do them, think them, feel them, or say them in the presence of this other person.
As you practice, you will come to see that appreciating someone or something is not only a form of deep enjoyment but is also a gift. Your appreciation, for yourself and for others, is a blessing and a thank you, all in one. Your enjoyment, of yourself and of others, is a field of light.
Your enjoyment is God’s blessing on creation.
DR. VICTOR BARANCO
So, go, goddess. Go flirt with your reflection in the mirror, flirt with your child, flirt with your dancing body, flirt with your partner, flirt with the sunshine, flirt with the woman bundling up your bouquet of flowers. And when she hands you an extra daisy you didn’t pay for, give it to the next stranger you see, wrapped in a layer of light.