The Tao of Dating: The Smart Woman's Guide to Being Absolutely Irresistible (6 page)

Exercise 4.  Embodying the Goddess

What does the word
goddess
mean to you?  Take a few minutes to write down what comes to your mind as you complete this sentence: "To be the Goddess is to be the embodiment of ..." Here are some ideas to get you started: wisdom, beauty, grace, joy, sensuality, nurturance, passion, kindness, forgiveness, strength, radiance.

              Now that you have your list, take a moment to imagine what it would be like if you were to embody those characteristics.  What would you look like?  How would you move differently?  What would it feel like in your body?  Imagine a few situations you were in this week, and notice how you would handle them differently if you were embodying the Goddess.  What would you say?  How would you act?  Imagine some scenarios in the future – at home, at work, or in a social setting.  What do you notice about yourself? 

              Finally, imagine yourself interacting with a man you're interested in – perhaps a former or future companion.  What is the quality of the connection?  How does the relationship unfold differently from before?

              If you are not yet completely comfortable with the idea that you are the Goddess, that's okay.  Do the exercise anyway.  Do it again.  And again.  Eventually, it will feel right.  And sooner than you think, it takes hold in your consciousness. 

              This is not about egotism.  It's not about being better than anyone else.  It's simply about exercising the choice to become who you already are.  Once again in
A Woman's Worth
, Williamson says: "At every moment, a woman makes a choice: between the state of the queen and the state of the slavegirl."  Embodying your true power as Queen and Goddess is a choice – one you can make right now. 

              When you are the queen, the Goddess, then the right kind of men – the Warriors, the Kings – will naturally gravitate towards you.  The slavegirl will also attract men, but she's much more likely to attract the wrong kind.  When you flourish into the most glorious, radiant, version of you, people will take notice – especially the good men.  But that is merely a side benefit.  Much more important is that you will feel alive and empowered, which is its own reward:

When a woman has owned her passionate nature, allowing love to flood her heart, her thoughts grow wild and fierce and beautiful... When a woman conceives her true self, a miracle occurs and life around her begins again.

– Marianne Williamson,
A Woman's Worth

Your shortcut to divinity

              If I were to pick one and only one quality that would bring out your goddess nature and make you irresistible to men, it would have to be
radiance
.  It encompasses earthly aspects: radiant health, glowing skin, radiant smile.  It encompasses metaphysical aspects as well: radiating positive energy, shining the light of the divine.

              That's nice, you say, but how do you
do
that?  Well, if I told you that doing one simple practice would make you irresistibly radiant to almost any man, and remove every woman as competition, would you do it?  Think about that for a second.

              What if I told you that this practice would require all of your courage and a complete re-thinking of who you are?  Would you still do it? 

              The practice is simple, and it encompasses nearly everything we discussed in Exercise 4.  It is called
devotion
(which may mean something different than what you think).  If you are able to convey complete and utter devotion to a man, he will feel so energized, so elevated, so manly that he will have absolutely nowhere to go but to you.  You will be irresistible.  We will discuss devotion and how to practice it in an empowering context in Chapter 10 when we talk about attraction.

Chapter 3. Yin and Yang

              Taoist philosophy talks about how universal energy has two aspects to it: feminine
yin
energy and masculine
yang
energy.  They are not opposite to one another as much as they are complementary.  Every coin has two sides, and every mountain casts a shadow.  In the same way that the two sides of a coin form a unit, so do yin and yang.  In Chapter 2 of the
Tao Te Ching
, Lao Tzu says:

Being and non-being create each other.
Difficult and easy complement each other.
Long and short shape each other.
High and low define each other.
Before and after follow each other.
 

              Everything in the universe has both yin and yang aspects to it.  The
taijitu
symbol of Taoism – the circle with the black area holding a dot of white, and a white area holding a dot of black – illustrates this concept: there is a little bit of yang (white) in the middle of the yin (black), and a little bit of yin in the field of yang. 

              In a similar fashion, women hold both masculine and feminine energy within them (as do men).  There is a physiological parallel to this as well.  Men's primary sex hormone is testosterone, with estrogen secondary.  Women's primary sex hormone is estrogen, with testosterone as secondary.

              Feminine yin energy encompasses receptivity, generativity, and yielding.  In Taoist philosophy, this is symbolized by water, the ocean or earth. Masculine yang energy is about motion, action and giving; fire is its Taoist symbol.  

              In the language of modern psychological research, feminine functions are known as
expressivity
while masculine ones are
instrumentality
.  We will use these terms interchangeably.  In
A Woman's Worth
, Williamson has a lucid description of masculine and feminine and the difference between them: "The masculine is active, the feminine passive; the masculine is dynamic, the feminine magnetic.  The masculine
does
while the feminine
is
."

              Regardless of which terminology you prefer, the yin/yang idea is a powerful one, clarifying many aspects of romance while empowering you in the process.  For example, we all express different amounts of yin and yang depending on our station in life, time of year, career situation, even time of day.  You may spend your days as a business owner, corporate consultant, high-powered attorney or President of the United States.  During these times, you are predominantly utilizing your yang aspect: leading, directing, deciding.  Yet you may also be a mother, and when you return home, you switch to the more feeling yin aspect of your energy when dealing with your children. 

Balancing yin and yang in partnerships

              Although as a woman, your predominant tone is yin, masculine and feminine energies are fluid.  Like the tides, yin and yang ebb and rise depending on position and time.  While men are predominantly yang, some men have a strong yin energy. 

              In the context of a relationship, the point to keep in mind is not the absolute value of someone's energy, but rather to look for energy
complementarity
between partners.  Even in a same-sex relationship, one partner will end up being more yin, the other more yang.  As in positive and negative charge, or north and south poles of a magnet,
polarity
is the basis of bringing things together.  A connection between yin and yang has polarity, whereas yin-yin and yang-yang have none. 

              In psychological terminology, a person with more instrumentality is best partnered up with someone who has more expressivity.  Both partners can also be
androgynous
, meaning that they embody both instrumentality and expressivity, yang and yin.  In fact, research shows that people who demonstrate both yin and yang energies are easier to get along with. 

              Let us illustrate these concepts with an example.  Jennifer was a successful attorney who saw her marriage of five years coming to an end.  When I asked her what precipitated the break, she expressed that her husband wasn't strong enough (actual wording: "He was too wimpy"). One way of interpreting this is that he wasn't expressing enough yang, resulting in a yin-yang imbalance and a loss of polarity.  This may have been because she was bringing home a lot of the leading, directive yang energy that her job required.  So now, the amount of yang energy the man used to have at the beginning of the relationship – which was probably sufficient when they first got married – was insufficient.  This led to a flattening of their relationship and the loss of the spark of passion, which needs the flow of energy between opposite poles.

              One way to improve this relationship is to restore the yin-yang polarity.  This can happen in several ways: the man steps up his yang; the woman embraces more of her yin, feminine aspect; or some mixture of the two.  If the man is plenty masculine already, then the first solution will most likely result in a clash of yang energies, which is a bit like two partners on the dance floor both trying to lead.  The other solution is for one of the partners to yield, embracing yin. 

              It's important to remember that
yielding is not the same as submission or losing
.  Quite the opposite: when one dance partner allows the other to lead, both end up having a lot more fun.  And it's not a competition in any case: it's a partnership.  It's a win-win situation.  In tantric philosophy, the feminine finds its ultimate fulfillment in yielding and surrender.  Whether or not that resonates with you, there are times when it is good to lead, and times when it is good to follow.  Once again, Chapter 29 of the
Tao Te Ching
:

There’s a time for leading,
And a time for following;

A time for blowing hot,

And a time for blowing cold;
A time for motion

And a time for rest;
A time for  vigor,
And a time for exhaustion;
A time for beginning,
And a time for ending.
 

The dilemma of the career-oriented woman

              If you are reading this book, you are probably a well-educated, career-oriented woman.  That's because I wrote this book specifically with you in mind.  Being a talented, driven and successful woman creates unique challenges in the dating domain.

              There’s a popular conception of how for thousands of years, perhaps even until the 1950s, gender roles roughly mirrored the yin-yang duality.  Men were engaged in instrumental functions – hunting or working outside the home – while women stayed at home and took care of the household.  Each party appreciated what the other brought to the table, literally and figuratively.  Men appreciated the nurturing function of women and their role in raising children, and women were grateful for their men going out and bringing back home a hunk of woolly mammoth for dinner.

              That was a long time ago.  Many more women now have the choice to pursue an education and career instead of taking on the traditional gender role of staying at home and raising children.  As a result, there are many women who are tremendously successful in the traditionally male-dominated workforce.  According to Taoist philosophy, this is expected, since we all have both yin and yang energy within us.  Women are just as capable of turning on their yang energy and being driven, competitive, powerful leaders as men are of turning on their expressive yin energy and crying over the death of a pet. 

              However, there is a side effect to this.  Whenever anyone spends most of her time and energy on a certain pursuit, then she will come to
identify
herself more and more with that pursuit (remember the parable of meditating on a cow).  In other words, it becomes challenging to turn off the work mentality when it takes up so much of your existence.  It reminds me of the old medical school parties, when the spouses of the surgeons would complain that the husband (or wife) was too domineering, running the household as if it were an operating room and he (or she) the undisputed ruler.  The surgeons couldn't turn off the surgeon at home, annoying everyone around them and straining their relationships.

              Hence, the dilemma of the modern woman.  The strength and leadership that a career-oriented woman exhibit are tremendously appealing qualities to almost all educated men I know.  However, unless they are expressed in the context of a woman's feminine energies, they are more likely to evoke feelings of respect and admiration rather than attraction.