Category: “Reality”

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The difficulty of being the “woke” police

MUNROE - WARROR OR FOOL
It depends on your story.

Monroe Bergdorf. Bless her heart.

She’s been the topic of wild criticism of late, having offended an entire race of people. Some within that race are more open-minded to her criticism. Others, less so.

I can see her point. I can also see her critic’s points. Everyone has a story. Each is valid for the person holding it. So, how do we as a species, as a group of people, get along in the wake of all this story-making, much of which has to do with pointing fingers at what we dislike or disagree?

If everyone is telling stories and those stories are creating evidence confirming it, is it possible for us to all get on the same page? Is it possible for all white people to acknowledge their in-born privilege? Is it possible for all black people to acknowledge their victim mentality? Is it possible that you, or I, can tell a person he’s wrong, when the world is providing him evidence which confirms his stories?

For me, what matters is this: Are you happy in your personal life?

Whether you are trans, or cis, male or female, that question can be a guiding light for you. Answering that question doesn’t have to involve anyone else. For if you can find personal happiness, and tell stories from that place, your life will shape over time in favor of those stories. As that happens, people inconsistent with the happy stories you’re telling will fade out of your life and those who are “in tune” with your happy stories will fade into your life. It all begins with the stories you’re telling.

finger pointing hardly ever works
finger pointing hardly ever works

I worked several months with a person who defined himself as an activist, much like Munroe. The problem with being an activist is, it’s not a very happy life. This guy I worked with one-on-one was trying so hard to right the wrongs of society – in the areas of class warfare, wealth inequity, racism, sexism and more – all he could see when he looked out into society was a pandemic of problems, problems that, no matter how hard he tried, he acknowledged he was making very little progress in abating.

Ironically, he was making himself miserable! He was depressed, pessimistic. He had little hope for humanity. And, if matters for him weren’t bad enough, he was miserable over his eyesight which was increasingly failing on him. I find that situation ironic too: The more he focused on seeing all the negative in the world, the worse his eyesight seemed to be getting…

It’s one thing to want to make the world a better place. But you can’t do that telling stories about how wrong people are. Nor can you do that with your actions alone. All you do is make people defensive. You make them dig into their already negative stories, thus creating more of what you think must change. Not less.

Is there a place for activism? You bet. But there’s got to be a better way than throwing blame around claiming to have the high ground on woke.

 

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I didn’t choose to be transgender/transamorous

IMG_1062Actually you did. So did I.

What? Did you think it was some random selection?

Well, I have news for you: Everything happening in this physical “reality” is being agreed upon and acted out in a massive cooperative venture. And that includes choices you make about you, what you look like, your gender and more. In the same way you create your reality through the stories you tell (the thoughts you think) you have created everything else about you.

Now, you may think you don’t like the choice you made to come into the world as you are, but actually, you’re celebrating the fact in the eternal now that is your home.

Yes, you are an eternal being. I know, you probably don’t have any reference for that statement. Or maybe you do, and you rail against it because the reference refers to some kind of religious dogma you’d rather not think about. That’s cool because I’m not sharing dogma here. I’m sharing something you can easily verify with a little effort and guidance (guidance because you have to know what to look for).

Consider the possibility that you are eternal. What if this life was just one of an infinite number you have lived, many of which you have lived, and are living simultaneously right now. If that is the case (and it is), then it seems you as an eternal being would tire of experiencing every freaking life experience as a woman or a man or whatever.

Look a that again: If you are eternal, continuously, raucously, enthusiastically experiencing lifetime after lifetime AND you have had infinite numbers of experiences in the past, doesn’t it make sense that you’d get tired of coming into the experience only as a man or a woman?

Oh, consider this: There are no genders in that eternal state that is you. In that state, the original state from which you spring, you are all “genders” (infinite potential). If you are eternal, you have access to the amazing variety (i.e. infinite) of ways you could express yourself in physical reality. Also, presuming you are eternal, that means everyone (and everything) else is too. Along with eternity comes mastery of awareness and knowledge. Since you are not some closed-off being, separate from other experiences of other beings, you have direct influence upon other beings’ experiences. So all that interoperability between you and other points of being-ness has an infinite potential to generate variety….variety that you crave as an eternal being.

(are you beginning to get this?)

℘”What if this life was just one of an infinite number you have lived, many of which you have lived, and are living simultaneously right now.” ℘

So here you are, at the point of yet another life. You’re excited, thrilled even for another plunge into this framework that freaking fascinates you. You’re wanting to have a new experience though, one that will add to the immenseness of you. You’re also wanting to positively influence those other beings with whom you are in contact with and will continue to be once you in-personate yourself.

So, you choose an experience on the frontier of life experience. One that will push the boundaries of life experience for you and for others “affiliated” with you. These others (your family members, friends, lovers and everyone else you may encounter) have agreed to this escapade of yours and promise to make the experience interesting. But they are bounded by the stories you tell, stories which create experience after experience in your coming day-to-day journey that will be your life.

So you come into the world with an express purpose: to experience joy, “growth”, to have fun in the process, and to explore the frontiers of what it means to be you. Not you the transperson or trans attracted person. But you the eternal being having a life experience as a transperson or a trans attracted person.

This may make no sense to you whatsoever. You may have no reference to understand what you’re reading.  Many folks aren’t ready to hear this. But as I wrote above and in previous posts, with a little effort and guidance all of this can be verified by you.

But whether you choose to verify it or not doesn’t really matter. Your stories are predetermining your life experience moment by moment. And if you’re telling stories of suffering, mayhem, bad relationships, joblessness and such, that is what is stacking up to be delivered in your day-to-day life experience.

And that is why we focus on the stories you tell.

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Freedom and being trans…or not

The detransitionersA Seattle weekly magazine focused recently on a transgender story few want to talk about.

That is, unless your agenda includes seeing transgender people as a big problem.

The topic: detransition.

According to the article, this topic riles all fringe elements of communities affected by people who come out as Trans. The Alt-Right, radical feminists, even people I would call radical trans-activists seem to bristle at the possibility that people sometimes don’t know either what they want, or who, or what they are.

But that is life.

Some people grok their identity early on. Others take years. Others change their mind. Someone who changes their mind doesn’t invalidate decisions others have made who haven’t changed their mind.

Which is interesting because the anecdotal examples in the “take caution” perspective towards becoming transgender point to destransitioners as more than exceptions. They are examples that some people (maybe a lot according to these people) don’t know what they are doing and are therefore being harmed or unduly influenced by society, peer pressure, what they call a trend or worse.

But the article quotes Ami Kaplan, a therapist in New York who has worked with transgender, gender variant, and genderqueer clients for more than 20 years as saying that after two decades in practice, she knows of only one client who fully transitioned and then later detransitioned. Twenty years of practice seems to me to be a strong body of evidence.

In some cases, the transgender community may not be helping the issue. A few people, such as a person quoted in the article, claim that some medical practitioners, fearful of being seen as a gatekeeper, “lean toward wanting to help people transition.”  This fear obviously is coming from clinician’s concern about how the transgender community sees them. And, that probably has to do with their livelihood: if they make a living serving the community, certainly being seen as a gatekeeper could have income-limiting effects.

Says one detransitioner:

“I didn’t really feel like I could talk to my counselors about detransitioning in the way that I wanted,” she said, “because they have specific political views, and I felt like if I said I had these criticisms of the whole concept of transitioning, they would have thought I was being brainwashed by transphobic bigots or whatever.”

 

The world is a big place. There are a lot of people in it. That means a lot of stories. This article has a lot to say to those open-minded enough to read it. Ultimately freedom-to-be seems to be the key here: while our society pushes against us in so many ways, ultimately, people must come to the point where “I am free to choose” is the guiding light of their life experience.

Read the full article. It’s worth it.

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Transgender: suffering is optional

Tolle**Trigger concepts in this post. If you’re easily triggered about certain transgender topics, you might want to read this post first.**

If you’re a transgender woman and you’re suffering some situation, or a transamorous man living a life of shame, lying to loved ones, including yourself, about who you are, it may be hard to hear that your suffering is optional.

As soon as you become aware of your origins and your choices, your options become literally infinite, including the option of bidding adieu to suffering.

How can that be?

It all lies in how we got here, why you’re transgender. Why I’m transamorous.

Here’s how science describes how cis people become cis:

“Embryos start to become male or female at about six to eight weeks. At that time, those with an active gene called SRY, most often found on the Y chromosome, starts to produce the male sex hormone, testosterone. Without the flood of the hormone, embryos remain female. With testosterone, masculinisation begins. It is the fork in the road that shapes a person’s anatomy and physiology, and potentially their behaviour.”

Notice that science presupposes no “existence condition” prior to the embryonic state. Science usually leaves that condition to religion or spirituality. Pity. Because that’s where things get really interesting.

(All of the following can be verified by you with a little focus and effort.)

There has to be (and there is) an existence condition prior to being formed as an embryo. Random chance of you being transgender or transamorous doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. It seems much more logical, from where I’m standing, that we set up the conditions which are our physical life, including how that embryo forms into who we ultimately, biologically, become. And we do this in this existence condition which precedes embryonic formation.

This doesn’t have to negate our freedom-to-choose if we freely choose our circumstances, prior to living them. I mean, isn’t that logical?

If in that existence condition before birth, we were free to set up whatever life circumstances we want, then it makes sense we also have freedom once we get here, bounded only by the circumstances we have set up, doesn’t it? And wouldn’t that freedom include being free of suffering?

By now your stories may be kicking into high gear. If you’re anti-judeo-christian, for example, you might have two story constellations, tightly related: Those stories making up “judeo-christian belief” – the Bible, what your parents told you, what church told you –  and all those stories you’ve made up about “belief” or “faith” that perhaps has you no longer believing in those religious stories.

I’m not saying the judeo-christian stories are right. An atheist or agnostic could be equally resisting what I’m writing here. Stories are stories. They are living things and defend themselves. Are your stories rising up right now to defend their territory (your life view)?

Can suffering be optional?

What I am saying is, you are more free than you think. Even if you are in a situation that seems so bleak, you couldn’t possibly have wanted to experience it, you can find yourself in a far better place, and from there, you can change those circumstances. For good.

Next time, I offer reasons why you might have wanted to come into the world as transgender and why I wanted to come into the world transamorous.

 

 

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Where does transgender come from?

Born this way but whyLet’s presume you’re a transperson, trans attracted person or a sympathizer or ‘ally’. Why on earth would you willingly choose to be born as something seen by the mainstream as such an affront that the chances of you being killed (in the case of a trans person) or at least ridiculed (in the other cases)?

Lady Gaga says we are all “born this way.”  Ok, but why?

Why were so many people born black in the slavery days, jews during the holocaust, or residents of Hiroshima or Nagasaki on those fateful days in WWII? How about the people born to live in Syria or Iraq? Why would someone be “born this way” only to become a murder victim?

Is it all random?

Really?

I don’t think so. And I don’t think science is going to be much help.

Science admittedly doesn’t know the answer to the question “where does transgender come from?” Hell, they’re still trying to figure out how “boys” and “girls” happen. And so long as it denies existence of a condition requiring no-time and no-space, I don’t think it’s gonna find it.

I believe “transgender” comes from the same place “transamorous” comes from: That no-time and no-space state we all come from. Religion calls this state “heaven”. I have had a long-running beef with this concept, but now I can see why religion calls it that (in various permutations). It is, indeed, a state of pure positivity, where all things are known and possible and All Things are eternal. But it’s not a white robes and harps kind of place.

How do I know? I’ll get to that.

Words come with so much baggage, it’s challenging to talk about our origins.  “Heaven” comes with so much baggage, it makes understanding where transgender and transamorous originate a sticky topic. Especially when, supposedly, the “boss” in heaven, according to some people, abhors what transpeople are.

So I prefer a less-loaded phrase such as “Infinite Intelligence”, “All That Is”, or “Source” to describe our origins. These words tend to come with less past meaning.

What if there were very good reasons for why people come into the world and face such seeming horrendous experiences. What if there were very good reasons why you came into the world as transgender or transamorous? That’s what I’m going to explore over the next series of short, pithy posts.

 

Stay tuned.