Tag: lgbt

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More people are liking our content

Aaarrrgghhh

And some aren’t. That’s just how society is. Especially the transgender community. We are steadily gaining accolades for our work. More people are beginning to follow what we do, which is great, because there is no reason why the approach we advocate for living can’t be practiced – to beneficial results – by anyone.

But I’m not stupid.

Not everyone is ready for this approach. By that, I mean some folks are just too deeply wedded to their stories, stories which convince them that life (as Remy has put it) “happens TO them”. We’re having a conversation with such a person right now on one of our YouTube shows.

The momentum of one’s stories can be seemingly irresistible. Particularly stories that have been repeated many, many times…to the point they become beliefs. Beliefs are simply hidden stories. They are hidden from the storyteller.

But the results aren’t. Everyone can with relative ease discover what stories they are telling, simply by looking at two things:

  1. What’s happening in their lives.
  2. What’s coming out of their mouths.

There are quite a few illustrious stories in that YouTube conversation. Worth a read.

So while our numbers continue to rise, it’s no surprise there will be those who are turned off by something we publish and stop following our work. That’s ok.

It can be for everyone. But it doesn’t have to be.

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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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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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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.