Yes, Christians love you too.

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#TitheTrans invites Christian LGBTQ allies to raise money for trans surgeries

Sheesh.

Just a few weeks ago, I published a post about how great it is that so many people and organizations are rising up in support of the transgender community. It’s almost as if (wink wink) for every negative ned that rises up against those people we love, another person or organization rises up to counter him.

But this most recent one was a pleasant surprise even to me. A Christian organization has come out not only friendly to transgender people, they are asking church-goers to tithe to raise money to support confirmation and other surgeries for trans people. How cool is that?

According to many news outlets, including HuffPost, FaithfullyLGBT is running, for the month of September their new campaign called #TitheTrans. Their goal is to raise at least $10,000 which they will give to the Jim Collins Foundation, a charity which grants money for trans surgeries.

Now FaithfullyLGBT seems to be a website representing “a collection of stories from people
living at the intersection of faith, gender and sexuality.” It’s not so much a group as it is a photo-essay website. Eliel Cruz, the founder says in a newspaper article:

“Meeting so many LGBT people of faith made me want to share their stories to begin to put a face to those of us who live in the intersection of faith and sexuality,”

So he curated a number of willing folks to tell their stories. That was back in January this year. The site is still going strong.

As of the time of this post, the #TitheTrans funding campaign on indiegogo has achieved five percent of its $10,000 goal.

If you’re not recognizing how many people support you, you’re not paying attention

Now more than everThere is ENORMOUS outpouring of support from all over the place indicating the tide has turned. More and more people are supporting you, transgender folks. If you’re still wallowing in negative stories, there’s no better time than now to start examining them.

Trans-loving men (you trans-attracted and transamorous ones), there’s no reason for you to remain in hiding. The women you love are increasingly being not only defended, but supported by larger members of society.

Even in the midst of turmoil under Trump, that turmoil has not silenced the support outpouring. It has done the exact opposite. Check it out:

All across America, people are fighting for your rights. In Texas, the dreaded bathroom bill collapsed again, due in part not only to families of transgender people, but, get this, republican legislative leaders. I’m not making this up. Meanwhile, this awesome camp for transgender youth is getting tons of media coverage as an early-stage refuge for these young pioneers. Here’s another doing the same thing.

Here’s a lawyer fighting for the community on his own.

And even Richard Simmons is getting in on the act in his own weird way.

You can choose where to put your focus. But where you choose to put it has a profound effect on your personal life. If I were you, I’d focus on all the good coming your way. Celebrate it, tell your friends about it, Facebook about it, and see how your life gets better.

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.

Your circumstances match your stories

FullSizeRenderOk, in my last post I explained how most people’s life-experience-creation mechanism is operating on autopilot or default. Odds are good that you’re in the same boat: you don’t know much about stories and how they create your life experience. Heck, you may not even believe – let alone know – that you’re eternal or that you control your life experience.

Or maybe you do. I actually don’t now everyone who reads the stuff I write. But a LOT of people don’t. So the odds are, you’re among them.

And so you may be going through life ignorant that every time you complain about something you’re telling a story. And that story is creating circumstances which match your story. It doesn’t matter that it is something you don’t want. This is how the process works.

The good news is this mechanism comes with an indicator. We call it our emotions. Stories you tell that are not creating circumstances you want to experience cause you to feel negative emotion. Those that are leading to circumstances you’re wanting to experience cause you to feel positive emotion.

Now I want to explain what that means in terms of dating and getting what you want in that area and other areas of life experience.

If you’re telling the story that all men are chasers, it is not possible for you to meet men who aren’t.

If you’re telling yourself that your family disowned you and wants nothing to do with you, it is impossible for them to be anything other than what matches your story. In other words, they can’t change in the face of the story you’re telling about them. Yes, other people are part of your life experience and they, just like everything else in your life experience, is a result of your stories. That includes how they behave towards you.

I know, that sucks. But that’s what’s happening.

If you’re feeling shame, embarrassment, lack of confidence, insecurity, or fear as a trans person, you are telling extremely powerful negative stories, stories which are unconscious to you (you aren’t aware of them). But the feelings of shame, embarrassment, lack of confidence, insecurity, or fear you do feel are trying to alert you to them.

If you’re a trans attracted guy and feeling shame, embarrassment, lack of confidence, insecurity, or fear as a trans attracted person, you are telling extremely powerful negative stories, stories which are unconscious to you (you aren’t aware of them either). Others pick up on that shit. So they say things (like jokes and jabs) that further confirm your negative stories. They do things which indicate you are to remain feeling shame, embarrassment, lack of confidence, insecurity, or fear as a trans attracted person.

Those are just three examples of what is going on as you create your life experience as you go, and reap the benefits thereof.

So there is a purpose to suffering. What is it? It indicates the stories you’re telling are leading you to what you don’t want. Meanwhile, your life experience matches the stories you tell yourself. So there really are two indicators letting you know how you’re doing creating your reality: how you feel and what you’re getting in your life experience. If your life experience is sucky, you’re telling sucky stories.

BREAKING: Dear Donald: There already are transgender servicemembers

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Ex-Navy SEAL Kristin Beck: Was she any less lethal a Navy Seal?

This morning President Trump announced via twitter that no people who happen to be transgender will be allowed to serve in the military citing the need for our armed forces to be “…focused on decisive and overwhelming…..victory…and [therefore] cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender [sic] in the military would entail.”

This is a strange decision, and an interesting way of announcing a major military policy reversal, but that’s beside the point. The main point: there already ARE and have been transgender armed service members. They serve everywhere, including the Navy’s elite special warfare combat crew, which works along with Navy Seals. It should also be noted that a former Navy Seal also has come out as transgender. Our armed forces are lethal. Even with transgender service members in it.

It seems this action may be less about military lethality, and even less about being transgender. It may have far more to do with politics in our opinion. Or maybe race: The right has avowed to reverse all decisions the first black President of the United States made during his two-term presidency.

Before the transgender community gets up in arms, or worried, check your stories. Those who follow our content know this is a crucial moment in time-space reality. You must respond in a way that creates future realities you’re wanting to see, not the ones your fear-based stories will create. So create interpretations of this situation that give you positive feelings. Not feelings of worry, anger, frustration or powerlessness.

  • “This is ok. Things change.”
  • “There will be another president. This will not stand.”
  • “I’m happy to know that in the long line of time, justice always prevails.”

You can’t go from feeling despair, powerless or grief, to feeling happy, joyful and optimistic. That’s too far of an emotional jump. But you can make your way from that really negative story to one of “less negativity”:

  • If you’re feeling powerless, and you can get yourself to feelings of anger or desire for revenge, you have improved your story. A story generating feelings of powerlessness sounds like this, for example: “Transgender people will never be respected in this world” or, “Transgender people will always be denied their rights.” You can move from powerlessness to anger or revenge with this kind of story, for example: “That motherfucker Trump is a fucking DICK!!!!” or, “I’m glad I’m not in the military, because if I was, I would get medieval on those cis-het-white PRICKS!!!!!!”
  • If you can move from anger to worry or frustration, you have improved your story. For example, you can move from the anger-inducing stories above to these: “I’m concerned about what my friend, who is in the service and trans, will do. I guess I’ll call him and see how he’s doing.” Or: (if you’re in the military) “This sucks. I’ve just come out to my Guard command. Now I gotta wait and see how this is going to affect me. But I know I have friends here. So I’m good. Just frustrated. It’s all going to work out.”
  • If you can go from frustration to pessimism, you have improved your story. For example, you can relatively easily get from the above stories to the following: “I’m not sure this is going to turn out well, but we’ll see.” Or: “This means people in the military who are transgender are going to have to be discharged. That’s not good.”
  • And if you can go from pessimism to boredom, contentment or hopefulness, you have improved your story. For example: “Ok. I’m glad I’m not in the military so I don’t have to worry about this. Trump sucks, but at least this doesn’t effect me.” Or: “You know, hopefully in four years (or less, if he gets impeached), we won’t have to deal with this silliness.”

These kinds of things take time to unfold. Just because the Trump Administration made this decision today doesn’t mean it will remain in place forever. In the meantime, transgender people will still serve. They will, for the time being, have to do it the way they had before President Obama allowed them to serve openly. But they will do it nonetheless.

Remember this: if one president can decree it perfectly acceptable to serve in the military and be transgender, so can another. Just like with healthcare*, the cat is out of the bag. Transgender servicemen have tasted the sweet life of serving “out”. They won’t for long allow that sweet life to be denied. And neither will their allies, friends and families. Including those transgender community members who succeed in taking political office in the future.

Chin up. Life is great. All is going well.

 

*Today, while the right continues to “repeal and replace ‘Obamacare’”,  two-thirds of Americans believe healthcare is a right and that government should ensure healthcare coverage.