Category: Blog

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Creating suffering by default

IMG_0987So last week I explained that a lot of people are suffering because they don’t know two critical components of what they are: (1) that they are eternal, and (2) that they are in control of their life experience and they exercise that control through the stories they tell.

As a result of this lack of knowledge, their life-experience-creation mechanism is operating on autopilot. Rather than deliberately telling stories about experiences people want to have in their life experience, they are telling stories by default, in obliviousness, unconsciously….however you want to put it, by looking at their life experience and then complaining about it.

A complaint is a story.

So people, generally, are looking at their life experience and selecting things to complain about, more than they are looking at and selecting things to praise. An even better option would be to ignore altogether the “now” reality and focus totally (or as much as possible) on the life experience one wants to have.

If you look at the transgender community, a lot of women are complaining about their life experience. They are telling stories about situations in their life experiences that they want to be different, instead of telling stories about situations they want, and situations they have which please them. They don’t know they are telling stories and that those stories are resulting in more of what they’re telling stories about, but it doesn’t matter that they don’t know, because awareness is not a prerequisite to the mechanism working!

Next time we’re going to bring this full circle back to you and that trans attracted man you keep calling a chaser.

 

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So why are so many people suffering?

belief or know

In my last post I posited an idea about how suffering is logical. In that post I suggested that perhaps there is a mechanism we are each empowered with, that allows us to have any experience we might want to experience. But lack of knowledge about that mechanism creates a bunch of mess in people’s lives.

Specifically, I wrote the following:

What if, you were totally free to choose your life experience and that this life experience was just one of an infinite number you have experienced and will experience. If you were totally free, you’d need some kind of mechanism through which you could exercise your freedom and design your experience right? Such a mechanism would need to preserve your total freedom, even when you’re in the midst of your chosen life-experience. What better mechanism than the ability to use “creativity” to create stories which, in time line up life experience with the content of a given story?

In the last post I also described how that mechanism includes a set of indicators – our emotions – which tell us whether we are using our stories to head towards what we’re wanting or away from it. We know when we’re heading in the wrong direction when we experience negative emotion. Negative emotion is suffering.

The logical question that follows such a proposition is: then why are so many people suffering?

My answer to that question is: How many people would read that quote above and agree with it? In the answer to that question, you find the reason why so many people today suffer. It’s because the vast majority of people don’t know two critical components of what it means to be human:

  1. That they are eternal
  2. That they are in control of their life experience

Now there’s a difference between “believing” something, and “knowing” it. Some people believe they are eternal. Their religion or philosophy they subscribe to may tell them so. And so they may “believe” it. But their life – i.e. their actual day-to-day behaviors – doesn’t reflect that belief. And, sometimes “belief” isn’t really belief, but more of a “ok, I get it” non-committal type position.

Knowing is born of life experience. You may believe you can fly a plane, but you don’t know it until you actually leave the runway in an actual airplane with you at the controls. The same is true for the two points above. And this is why so many people suffer: they don’t know these two critical components. As a result, they are not “at the controls” of the mechanism that is creating their life experience.

We take a deeper look at this mechanism’s autopilot next week.

 

 

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How suffering is eminently logical

FullSizeRender 2In my last post I suggested there is a logical reason why some transgender women (and some trans attracted men) suffer. The same is true for anyone who suffers. But to understand suffering, one has to understand the nature of stories and why they are so important.

Stories are the tales you tell yourself about everything you experience, including your self. Told often enough, they become beliefs. Stories told often, or shared by many, determine what the story-teller experiences in her life experience. In this way, each of us as individuals, shape our experiences. This is quite easy to prove to yourself with a bit of practice and guidance on what to look for while practicing.

Why would stories we tell ourselves create our life experience?

That is a splendid question. One quite logical reason why our stories might create our life experience is because each of us is a powerful, creative being, who, through life experience gains tremendous satisfaction and joy. Through such experiences, one becomes more aware of one’s identity, the identity that endures even after the physical body can no longer sustain us.

What if, you were totally free to choose your life experience and that this life experience was just one of an infinite number you have experienced and will experience. If you were totally free, you’d need some kind of mechanism through which you could exercise your freedom and design your experience right? Such a mechanism would need to preserve your total freedom, even when you’re in the midst of your chosen life-experience. What better mechanism than the ability to use “creativity” to create stories which, in time line up life experience with the content of a given story?

But how would you know if your stories are leading you to what you want, instead of what you don’t? That is where negative emotion comes from. Negative emotion is what suffering is. So suffering is an indicator telling a person the stories they’re entertaining aren’t creating the life experience they want.

Sounds crazy to say one’s stories are “reality-creators” and that negative emotion is an indicator that we’re using our creativity to create life experiences we don’t want. But diligent practice with this mechanism will reveal to anyone who tries that this is indeed the case.

So why then are so many people suffering? Why doesn’t everyone enjoy blissful lives? Another good question, which I tackle next time.

 

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Are transgender people meant to suffer?

sufferA speculation borne of personal experience, which is being verified as accurate in my own life experience.

As I wrote in the previous post about all those instances of mass suffering: is it random chance that people end up in these situations? If so, I could see how one could come to a conclusion like this:

“[the Universe is] a cold, uncaring place…[where our role is] to white knuckle my way through it, doing pointless things…until the day I die. At that point, if I’ve lived by my ideals, maybe God (or the universe) will give me some rest.”

Maybe this is the point transgender people (and others) come to shortly before committing suicide. I don’t know if transamorous men ever feel that level of despair, but we know many gay men have. And I would include them among us as “people born into potentially risky circumstances.”

But if the Universe is as nasty a place as that quote suggests, and there are many who believe it is, then the logical conclusion for some – the obviously rational and reasonable one – is to kill ones self. I mean if the person in question had no choice in the matter and  that choice was random and foisted upon them by some random-chance Universe, why can’t suicide be a logical response? I might consider the same option…

But that’s just shallow, lazy thinking.

Not the suicide part. I’m not here to judge such decisions. I’m talking about thoughts and conclusions which lead to beliefs that the universe is an uncaring, cold place.

I write that because there is literally overwhelming evidence to the contrary, including overwhelming evidence that every transgender person – and every transamorous one – came into the world clear of the decision to be such a person, with clear purposes for making that choice.

I explain how that could be, next week.

In short, transgender people and transamorous ones, aren’t meant to suffer. That they do is eminently logical when viewed from a particular perspective.

 

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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.