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Manifest

  • Posted on January 24, 2015 at 2:16 pm

Nothing to do with celebrating a festival of men! No, I’ve come down quite decisively on my sexuality … Rather, this is about making things happen.

As with many couples who fall in love, my partner and I stand in either of our kitchens from time to time, lost in a bit of wonder, and ask: why me, why you, why us, and how? Pure coincidence of course. Is it? We both know that even a month earlier would not have been a good time for either of us in terms of readiness, and neither of us would have frequented the typical dating places. There is little of logic, in terms of matching profiles in the traditional way, or even within our normal expectations. Neither of us will be Miss World (or even Miss Brighton) but what we see in each other is just the kind of beautiful we are each looking for and noticing. What we have, even challenges us in some ways, and we have to choose whether we are looking for a long-term relationship without known challenges, or a love that faces everything honestly. There is nothing simple about falling in love as an adult, just because you have the freedom and a bit of experience.

So how is it, after my rather doubtful expectations on this blog over the past few years, that suddenly I have someone to love deeply?

Well – I asked.

I’ve written before about my sense of guidance and being looked after, one step at a time throughout my transition. I learned something, and it isn’t about transition at all. I’ve changed in my sense of belonging in the world, and in the world in a wider sense. I’ve learned about now, and about trust, and a sense that I am not alone. Somehow I am connected with everything around me, and whether I have a guardian angel, or it helps to believe I have, or whether the connections with lives and events are simply more real than we perceive, doesn’t matter. I asked for someone to love, and when I was finally ready to give my all and freely, there was someone in a similar place needing to learn love with me.

What do I mean, ‘I asked’?

I don’t pray to anyone, I don’t have a god to appeal to. No, I just feel subtly heard, and I believe this affects me just as much as it does anything ‘out there’. Clarifying my needs and values in myself, helps me to see more clearly what is important and what gets in the way. I do actually believe that human life is not the only life with which we can connect, and that there are energies interacting. I don’t know whether that is unscientific, pseudo-scientific, or just a belief, but I do find my mind somewhat limiting, and have an inkling that there is a lot more than we can know.

And so I ask. I talk and I seek understanding. I feel it is perfectly valid that every time I go out I bless my home to be a place of loving-kindness, and that love be attracted to it, whoever and however that is. I bless my neighbours, and if all this does is to remind me to show loving-kindness, so be it. Meditation and good intent should be everywhere. It can’t be bad.

Intention?

The word is often used to mean you meant to do something and then didn’t. But intention here is more specific. When I learned that I could dowse, I was introduced to purposive direction. You find a feature because you intend for it, expect it and become alert for it. I have seen sceptical people take the dowsing rods, set their intention and unexpectedly, find what they intend for. In electromagnetic resonance principles, it is ‘tuning in’. You can’t dowse without intention, and at the very least, in general, intention helps you to see things more clearly and intuitively.

And then there are the cards.

I have a deck of ‘angel cards’. They are illustrated, each with a concise caption, and come with a book to aid interpretation. You shuffle and cut and turn cards over, rather like tarot, with an intention: an unresolved question, a difficult decision, a specific need or situation. You consider what is presented to you and allow the message and image to find meaning. I don’t believe that a card with words from the divine is being presented to me like a message from the other side, or a word from a god. The cards are random and it is my hand that turns them. I do believe that they act as a prompt to my intuition and subconscious, however, and to that extent I find them useful. They are very well made, so I also believe that their selection, especially as they become smoother around the edges, is random. And so it was, as I considered whether in fact something special was starting to happen between my partner and I, that I used the cards. Was this just me imagining something? Was it wise? Was it mutual? Could this be real love taking hold? Over a couple of weeks or so, I turned to the cards several times, shuffling really well each time, and setting my intention before drawing a single card.

The first time, I drew the card with: ‘You already know’. So I thought carefully, settled into: what do I already know?

The second time, a few days later, I drew ‘You already know’. It happens. Maybe I did have a firmer idea of what was happening and what to do.

The third time, a week later, I drew ‘You already know’. Was my shuffling so bad? Was this card sticking out somehow? Or was I being reassured in my intuition? I shared this coincidence (‘about a decision’) with the group where my partner and I met, the week she wasn’t there, because we were talking about such things.

By the time we then ‘got together’ I turned the cards once more, to see if I could confirm this was right and good. I drew ‘You already know’.

So you tell me. Asking? Manifesting? Intention? Guidance? It seems a better way than living under the burden of things never changing, of surviving rather than living. Whenever I think something off-centre, an idea that couldn’t be logically right but that would be good or beneficial, I just think ‘why not?’ and go for it. I don’t live a deluded life, and if I manifest something good, then I accept that my normal logical and analytical way of thinking isn’t all there is to know.

And I just continue living a life filled with gratitude.

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Vulnerability

  • Posted on January 21, 2015 at 1:16 pm

Events in Paris over Charlie Hebdo raised many issues about respect, offence, abuse and freedom. Freedom to cause offence? Freedom to be offended? Not quite the same as freedom to abuse, is it? Do we defend the abused but not the offended? When is offence abuse? It isn’t just about physical versus psychological effects, since neither is a lesser experience. Is it about degree?

I have spoken recently with friends over people we know, who accept a level of what might be regarded as domestic emotional abuse. Why do they put up with it, rather than name it and act against it? How can they feel more secure this way? It seems we all have ways of surviving, turning a blind eye (or the other cheek), buffering offence or abuse even to protect another, taking the blows so that perhaps children don’t have to. Much of the time we want someone else to stop the offence or abuse for us; we aren’t strong enough.

There will always be people who offend, deliberately or otherwise and with various motivations. We persist with our struggle to balance respect (perhaps calling it political correctness) with freedom of expression, because too easily we can end up oppressing social difference simply because we haven’t learned to embrace it.

Are we looking for respect, or acceptance, or tolerance from each other? (How are they different?) Where are the boundaries, even when we think we can find a balance, such that we can begin to speak of some being ‘over-sensitive’, others ‘thick-skinned’, or most, ‘normal’?

Responsibility

I have listened to interviewees and read media comment from people with very different views, and there is no simple answer. The background story of Charlie Hebdo as a satirical outlet is very different from the simplistic descriptions of its edgy cartoons that poke fun at anyone’s expense, which are too offensive to tolerate, or deserving of the violence perpetrated. More generally, we often don’t know the backgrounds from which those who offend and abuse come, nor from which those who feel injured by the actions come. So the responsibility lies with each of us, to show loving-kindness in all we do. And this may be expressed differently from person to person and place to place. One person may enjoy a jibe, whereas another is simply in a bad place and cannot – today.

This is the much-argued blame or responsibility side of the argument, and I would not defend any form of abuse or deliberate offence to hurt anyone. But let’s now take a view from the side of the potentially offended, abused and misunderstood.

I had a lengthy conversation with a colleague, comparing the hurt felt by some Muslims, with that experienced by trans* people, especially whilst going through transition. Sometimes it is humour, which everyone finds funny except them, possibly because it misrepresents reality, or simply makes it harder to be understood by perpetrating a stereotype. How different does it feel to be a Muslim in a secular country, where stereotypes reinforce a view of religion as primitive and unthinking, or a trans* person, where stereotypes reinforce gender identity as of sexual fetishistic origin? When the media get it wrong, either story can end with violence, and people suffer and even die.

I would argue that fundamentally we must always challenge stereotypes, wherever we find them, because we live in a world of great diversity and constant change, where our ideas have to also develop with better understanding of ourselves and each other. What is my experience of feeling offended; did I learn anything from it?

Response

I have lost count of the exchanges between trans* people that discuss misrepresentation and how to respond to it. Do we complain, perhaps formally or even legally? Or make our case for change and improvement, through proper channels? Or write blogs and columns that discuss the problems that are felt, in an educative way that slowly nudges awareness forward? Do we end up complaining and objecting too much, and encourage each other to grow a thicker skin? Let’s face it, those of us who shake off the insults by being super-confident of our identities do get away with an easier life than those who crumble easily and become an easy target. Those of us who simply don’t frequent places at times where others feel more free to abuse or attack, avoid some of the worst threats.

But why should I have to grow a thick skin and avoid places I would like to walk, just because someone else has the freedom of expression to hurl abuse at me? Or why should I have to walk on eggshells for fear of offending another? Rather than being a rhinoceros, sitting carefully on eggshells under a shady tree and not going out (I love that picture!), I end up asking about how my life can be the best learning experience, rather than the most protected.

We tend to regard vulnerability as a weakness, a situation within which we can be attacked and injured; it is the gap in the armour, or the moment when a skin or shell is shed before the new layer has hardened.

But you cannot grow in an old shell, or bend easily in armour.

Vulnerability

Maybe my years in transition did strengthen me, but not through hiding. I decided very early on that to be very visible and honest and to learn fast, might just be the best strategy. Maybe that way I would be more self-aware and responsive, to avoid the worst. That way I would be seen for exactly who I am, unmistakeably different from the stereotypes – or as I said at the time, ‘acceptably different’. At least someone somewhere, from time to time, might actually notice when I really needed help, and be there for me.

What I found was that I didn’t avoid hurt, or grief. I didn’t become inconspicuous and I didn’t altogether avoid abuse or feeling offended. Instead I felt it all, and allowed myself to feel strong, because my authenticity meant much more than others’ views or impressions. I needed the feelings, I needed the sensitivity; I needed to hear myself above the noise, not drowned by it. Even now, I am quite sure there are people who see me as not normal, not one thing or another, and who have opinions about it. But I don’t have a thick skin, and I don’t stay under my tree. I am vulnerable because it’s the only way I can grow, and the only way I can know love.

I really do dance as if no-one is watching; I do love like I’ll never be hurt.* And I do this with a passion, because the alternative is not really dancing, it’s only a performance; and the alternative is not really loving, it’s only a romance or comfort.

Being diagnosed and treated for gender dysphoria has been the single biggest thing in my whole life, not just as upheaval, but in learning myself. I can be offended, be the butt of jokes, I can be misunderstood and abused. I can be hurt. This is what other people will always be able to do ’to me’. If I don’t see it as offensive or abusive, but instead as only revealing another’s weaknesses, or incapacity to respect or understand, then I don’t need a thick skin. I can see them and I can see myself, and I can know where the real authenticity lies, and I can learn and grow. I can break the stereotype.

In summary, yes, I can be hurt, physically and emotionally. In writing, in cartoons, and with real stones. But I have to be hurtable, because that’s what it takes to be truly me. I don’t ask to be defended, only that you understand your responsibility to live with loving-kindness.

And it is in this context, as I learn love afresh, that I keep myself vulnerable, honest and eyes-wide-open. I shall be hurt along my journey, I shall heal, I shall grow. All the way to the end. But above all, I shall love.

All of it is an honest poem about what it means to fall in love long after your teens, seeing the realities and embracing the rich opportunities that love has to offer if you are prepared to be vulnerable.

 

* William Purkey (I won’t comment on my singing.)

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Evolution and entropy: the fear of falling apart

  • Posted on December 26, 2014 at 8:37 pm

This blog is more an emergence from cloud than an incisive argument. I feel many thoughts converging, which may or may not cross in the middle, or perhaps only obliquely. But I like ‘thinking the opposite and seeing what happens’. I like ideas thrown into the air, where everyone seems to know how they fall – and then they don’t.

I am interested in why we are so afraid of our lives, why we make plans expecting them to work, why we are disappointed so often, and why we even think we have to measure up to some constructed ideal in order to feel life is correct or successful. Why did I live in fear, for example, for so many years, afraid of losing the only love that life would ever have to offer? I never thought of myself as possessive until now.

In the beginning

We think of life as starting with simplicity and innocence, followed by the accrual of many skills, emotions and abilities, by growth and strength, maturing to a point of complex fulfilment. I wonder whether it is really the other way round, like entropy, tending to maximum disorder, to basic simplicity.

The baby begins with great certainty, rooted entirely in fixed instincts, with few structured points of awareness, no muddled concepts in their head, no mistakes, nothing mis-structured, just aware of being alive and needing to be alive in every sense. Everything is connected to what it needs, in order to get life right. It’s like Lego out of the box with clear instructions and diagrams. It’s designed to go together from little pieces into a beautiful whole. A pirate ship or a castle, maybe. And yet it may never be that again.

Imagination, mistakes and lost pieces intervene, pieces that belong elsewhere come in, until the original set of pieces is part of a muddle in a common box.

Do we really move towards a better design, a clearer purpose, a more completely ‘correct’ idea of who we are and can be?

Too often we end with broken ideas, false certainties, failed hopes, lost direction and a sense of being alone, being deserted by life itself. Like an idealistic housing project in which no-one has lived because it was a great idea that did not reflect the reality of living. Don’t you wish you could find the original plans again? The older person fixed in ideas and failures, unrepeatable successes, dragged down with fears and grief, struggling to believe in themselves – is the one without fulfilment in being alive today, and today, and today. How then, are we to preserve the joy and meaning of life, to grow younger as we grow older?

Grief is a remarkable teacher, if you let it be

Let me take your hopes and aspirations, your ambitions and goals, your images of what life is all about and which give you your basis, as of now. Let me take those forward agendas, those lists and prescriptions, those expectations and wish-lists, and let me tear them slowly into small pieces before your eyes. Let me cast them into the air between us, openly. Let’s watch the fluttering fragments descend to the dirty floor. How will they fall? In chaos? Certainly any pattern will be a measure of your psychological response, not of orderedness.

Now stand with me and take this in. How do you feel?

There lie all your future loves. There are your future rewards and achievements. None of them are real, all are based in everything you have learned, embedded in yourself, or to which you have anchored yourself. Do you feel freedom – or fear? Which do you most feel like doing: fitting the fragments together with shaking hands? Or blowing gently on them and taking a fresh, clean, rather smaller piece of paper, on which to rest not a pen but your ever-changing thoughts.

Yes, the sense of loss is unbearable, isn’t it?

You are thinking: such a waste! But is it? Where is this fear coming from, and of what is its substance? What are those pieces on the floor, what do they represent, and why this profound grief? I want to try this idea: what you have lost is possession. Everything in pieces is what you felt secure with, that you owned, that was yours, that maybe even was a part of you. And yet you were born with not one letter of one word on one fragment of this agenda, this list, this future you.

Possession and fear are inextricable

The moment we have anything in our lives – from a realisation that we can do something, to a material thing like a shoe, a coin, or even a home, to job or responsibility, or a friendship, to a deep love for another – we enter the fringes of fear. Grief stands waiting from that first moment, hand outstretched for the dawning of doubt, the fragility of hope, the impossibility of anything good lasting, or of being good enough to deserve this thing at all. We are terrified of our aloneness. We are terrified of ever being that baby again, one hundred percent potential, surrounded by grown people balanced on their uncertainties and fears, ready for grief.

What must we learn about life in order to regain its potential, and let go the fear of losing everything, the moment we find something valuable in our lives?

Not much of a Christmas/Seasonal message is it (apart from the Lego bit)! I want to know why, though, because I feel that it is true, and yet avoidable. What must we learn about life in order to regain its potential, and let go the fear of losing everything, the moment we find something valuable in our lives? I want to learn something here in a new way, because this is where I am. I have known loss, I have known grief, I have stared into the gaping pit of becoming nothing, of life becoming completely not worth continuing, or preferring to be dead than to being alive. And I know I am a ‘mild case’ of this so I don’t take it lightly at all.

If nothing else, we must let grief teach us honesty. We must take in the pieces on the floor and know they mean nothing.

To belong is not to possess; to be possessed is not to belong

I belong to no-one. No-one belongs to me. I ‘owe’ nothing, and I am ‘owed’ nothing. I have nothing to give, I have only myself to be, and to choose how to be. If my being alongside another helps that person to be, then I have done what every particle in the universe, dark or bright, does. I have created a resonance that makes a bond that creates something new, that influences the next, even at the most fantastical relative distances.

And yet I see this so easily as being vulnerable, as feeling intensely alone. Is this actually where we find real strength? If the ability to belong wherever we find ourselves is the most real we can be, then we can begin truly to live only when we realise we shall always belong. Perhaps in different ways or places, but always belong, simply because everything belongs – simply because that’s how things are. How can you dance through life if you can’t hold hands, let go, and hold hands again? (With anything or anyone, not in a romantic sense.) How can you receive if your hands are full with not giving? And why is this so frightening? Why does everything new have to immediately feel permanent and safe, when we know nothing about us is permanent?

The baby simply belongs, the adult fears. The adult sees the baby as insecure. The baby does not yet know how insecure the adult is. The baby possesses nothing, the adult fears losing their possessions. The baby is all life and potential. The adult is too often trapped in their own misunderstanding.

Lego, just let go

Sometimes I think we learn life like accruing Lego bricks. We get one, we place it, another and it clicks on top. We keep going, with occasional adjustments and rearrangements, building our idea of a house (or pirate ship or castle), hoping to finish it and explain the pieces by means of our construction. At worst we fear the bricks falling apart (the early ones did!) and apply our glue. This, we say, is how life is.

But maybe we are building false complexity, mistaking order for availability to live. Maybe the simplicity of simply belonging as we are, rather than possessing some whole construction, is what this life is all about.

Lego does not mean ‘let go’. It actually means ‘play well’. So let’s go and play, not possess. And lose our fear of life.

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Midas disenchanted

  • Posted on December 20, 2014 at 11:40 am

‘I am not a lesbian …’, she said, as she lay in my arms, aglow.

‘No’, I replied, ‘I don’t make you anything. You are a lover.’

Midas sulked. We had found gold, because we had touched each other without enchantments, neither to gain nor to grasp, not to enrich ourselves nor possess, but to share what we had to give. We did not turn each other into anything; only lovers.

From the beginning of this blog, I have known that for very many people, simply to know me is almost too much. I evoke a response by being present. I disturb expectations with my confidence, with my presumption that I belong wherever I go. I confuse by not enacting that I am different. I am who I am, not changed, but released; but I am also an influence, a provoker of response, simply by being there.

Just over three years ago I would walk on the side of the street in the same direction as traffic, so that no-one driving would have time to look at me and decide I was not a woman after all. Once, when I didn’t, I was shouted at from a car. The story is Hey, Mr Transvestite, where I learned that people’s responses said more about them than about me. Always. Even my then wife, who would no longer undress fully in front of me, because of the implication of having a woman in her bedroom, even if I did not look like one, at the end of each day.

And so I learned to think of Midas, of the awful truth, that anyone who touched me would be changed, would be afraid to touch.

Over the years I have missed touch more than anything else, but yes, I have changed people. Those who have said that at first it was hard to be with me, but who came to see that I was real and honest. Those who decided that I am unacceptable, and in whom something of themselves has fossilised. And those I have met for the first time with my subsequent complete confidence in being alive, who may have been surprised that I dare be ‘normal’. Or who did not, or do not, know my past, and then come to find out, with a realisation that I am authentic, not acting, trustworthy.

Yes, I change people, but none of this is about me.

This last week, I and a woman I really like and trust, fell in love. Without expectation or condition, we could never have matched up in online dating, only in meeting minds and finding that unspoken connection. Guided? I feel so. But the most wonderful part of it all has been having no need to explain in order to be touched and experienced. We left the labels on the floor by the door. She is. I am. We are. And together we experience togetherness in a way I feel I have never known. Maybe because I have never been so honest and uncomplicated. Maybe because I ask nothing but honesty in return. Mostly, because there is no strength in anything without honesty and complete vulnerability, and I would rather give of myself out of this, than make deals on anything less.

The advantage? Well, maybe hundreds of pages of this blog, in which I have bared my soul, and at times my body, almost. I can have no pretence, and I no longer can bear to. So I have few secrets from my lover, who has read so much.

And yet we still face the shadow of Midas, sulking, disenchanted. Am I a woman? Or am I just forever trans, suspect, ambiguous? Which, if either, of us is lesbian to other people? What does this mean to friends and family? The chain reaction goes on, because to us we are simply what we are together, and only when we part and move with others does any of this matter. Midas’s shadow is out there, with all the wrong values, whilst we have found something far beyond gold.

Dieses Blog ist für dich, mein Herz … Midas ist tod.

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Guided

  • Posted on December 14, 2014 at 9:01 am

Last night in a feeling of sheer gratitude as I drove home from a concert, I thought through all the people who have most helped me over my transition years. I began with one or two, and then remembered more. Someone who spent hours, helping me explore and express, unselfconsciously being out in the city with me, protective. One who had been very close, being a friend who stuck with me. Another who became a best friend for some time and made me believe I could go it alone. And another, and another, until the number grew and grew. People who were there when I needed it. And I thought too of how I have been brought to others, who I in turn have befriended, supported, helped. And so with immense gratitude I have become who I am and where I am today.

One of these I may have spoken of before as leading me in a guided meditation, long before I became visible. I was redundant and looking for a bit of vision as to my future. It was a skill swap: I would give some business marketing advice in return. It was a beautiful meditation, and at least, it was nice to know someone was helping at a difficult time in my career. Something was stirring, and I needed to understand. As many, this meditation began in a meadow, on a sunny day under blue skies, birds in the high air, insects buzzing peacefully, a breeze gentle on my skin. I was there. And so we went on a journey, and the rest was very useful. At the end she asked about how I was in that meadow. I replied that I was a woman in a long white summer dress with my hair moving in the breeze. This was before I even had a dress at all.

This week I had another meaningful guided meditation. I don’t think these things are supernatural, or divine, or necessarily spiritual, but what they do is release parts of your mind, your self-awareness and intuition, from the restrictions of what we think possible today, tied down to what others, or even we, expect or feel safe. Here we can move into a safe place where we can become free to find our deepest understanding, wisdom and authenticity.

And yet … and yet I do speak as if an angel, a helper, some connected other being, however you describe it: has been standing at my shoulder all this while. Asserting nothing, just helping me to see the step ahead, even when the step beyond that is unknown. So many times I have not known, worrying about three steps ahead, fearing I shall miss the next or be left stranded, unable to move back or forward, or sideways. I now feel it is as much as anything about readiness to understand, or make that step with complete freedom rather than sticky doubt from past experience. I can say no more than that. Deep inside me is an appreciation of trust.

I have met the philosophical difficulty with this, of course. It is easy for me, living in this country, society and era, where my basic needs are fairly secure. Would I speak of guiding angels, connection with the universe and so on, if I had no money, no food, and no home? I won’t try to unwrap that one now; too many arguments provide too many get-outs from harsh reality. All I can say, is that I have this awareness, and maybe it is all within me. Either way, it is about trust, not fear.

This week the meditation was about meeting your Powerful Self. Imagine, this powerful you has attained that empowerment, which will help you reach real fulfilment in life, in living. Maybe ten years from now? The meditation places you in a beautiful and relaxing place; a meadow, the smells, sensations, sounds of a blissful and free summer day. You follow a small river and round a bend see someone, who turns and welcomes you. You see that it is your Powerful Self. The rest (not to spoil it if you should do this properly) is about how they seem to you, the guidance they offer, the resources they say you will need, what you need to release and let go, what you need in order to really find and be yourself. What do you want to ask them, and what are their answers? She gives you a gift: what is it, what does it signify? And as she leaves, what is her message to you, and how do you feel?

As I say, I don’t believe this is a voice from outside; this is from within. Sometimes deep within. For someone who writes at length, my experience was very succinct! My Powerful Self was younger, very strong, radiating joy, and very complete in herself. She was serene. Her message to me was simply: trust. What do I need to do next? Allow. Allow things to happen naturally, like the river to take its course; not to ‘go with the flow’, but to be the flow. And what to release? Again, a very short list: everything. All my precious hopes, all my fears and doubts, my preconceptions of how things were going to be. And what would I need in order to become her? She just laughed, for me, not at me: ‘it’s all there! It’s in you; just be you.’

One question came to my mind, to this self, ten years from now and younger: ‘Did you love?’

Her answer, equally short: ‘Always.’

‘And were you loved?’ She smiled lovingly back, and said; ‘that’s not the point.’

Her gift in this meditation, or vision, or intuition, was a ring. To me it signified continuity, strength, connectedness, bonding and being unbroken.

Even if this is all already inside me, I do find it profoundly liberating. I have spent too much time in fear, in looking back, in regretting, seeing change as loss, doubting I can ever be loved again, or find really meaningful work, fearing loneliness, or simply being too afraid to make changes and welcome new things or people in. And too clear, often, of how things are going to happen. As if I knew. And quite coincidentally, this is just the moment I feel completely free to move on.

The ship, the harbour, that I wrote of two blogs ago? I am ready and sailing. But feeling strangely guided.

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