Trans spirituality

[yodajazz]

As a spiritual person, and long time member here, I have long felt that an issue many trans people have is spiritual in general. That spirituality is a connection, and understanding that they are part of the greater human race, and important to human development/evolution. People in general who have a larger sense of purpose in life, have greater strength to deal with negativity and rejection. While I don't agree with all she says in this video, she (a non transperson) makes some important and good points about things. I wouild be interested in any response, but particularly trans people.

Transgender (Ask Teal Episode on Transgender and Transsexuality) - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6u6TTorNjL4)

[trish]

Alvays, alvays Tooter I tell you: be vot you is...not vot you is not...folks vot do dis ist de happiest lot.

mr. wizard.wmv - YouTube (http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZuvQRdDJtLA&feature=related)

(The trick is in knowing and being)

[Stavros]

As a spiritual person, and long time member here, I have long felt that an issue many trans people have is spiritual in general. That spirituality is a connection, and understanding that they are part of the greater human race, and important to human development/evolution. People in general who have a larger sense of purpose in life, have greater strength to deal with negativity and rejection. While I don't agree with all she says in this video, she (a non transperson) makes some important and good points about things. I wouild be interested in any response, but particularly trans people.


In my experience most of the ts I have known were Christians and mostly Roman Catholic, although I do know a Filipino who never goes to Church and isn't religious as most Filipinos are. I did read some years ago about some ts who were involved in a mystical cult based in Mexico but I can't find any links to it; the link below is quite interesting in its discussion of the ancient cult around Cybele, although I feel, wrongly perhaps that an attempt to resurrect (if you pardon the expression) an ancient religion is pointless, rather as I consider the 'Druids' of this country to be closer to pantomime than religion. The author, Cathryn Platine, has two web sites about ten years apart, earliest first.

http://gallae.com/cathy/essay18.html

http://gallae.com/

[yodajazz]

I was not talking about any particular denomination, or religion. I was thinking about things like feeling that you are connected with other people, even those you do not personally know. That's part of the 'love thy neighbor' thing. That would include understanding that there are consequences to our behaviors, beyond immediate reactions. A person who thinks this way, would not steal, knowing that if they did, it would send out negative waves, that would eventually come back, not just because of the possibility of being caught.

One thing I see in the ts community, is the failure to look at a bigger picture. for example, all women have do consider that there are 'chasers', out there only for a sexual thrill. And then men can be concerned about someone after them for financial gain, not for who they are as a person. Although our direct relationships are always most important, if we have a sense of the greater humanity, it can be easier to face life's difficulties.

[Prospero]

I've met a fair number of girls from Thailand and China who are Buddhist

[trish]

Personally I have a stong sense of connection between actions (small and large) and consequences. But even the criminally insane can understand the propagation of effects via causality. What is important is a concomitant desire to benefit (or at least not harm) others. These realizations and attitudes may be described by some as spiritual and others as humanitarian. The latter description is (IMO) more inclusive.

[Stavros]

I was not talking about any particular denomination, or religion. I was thinking about things like feeling that you are connected with other people, even those you do not personally know. That's part of the 'love thy neighbor' thing. That would include understanding that there are consequences to our behaviors, beyond immediate reactions. A person who thinks this way, would not steal, knowing that if they did, it would send out negative waves, that would eventually come back, not just because of the possibility of being caught.

One thing I see in the ts community, is the failure to look at a bigger picture. for example, all women have do consider that there are 'chasers', out there only for a sexual thrill. And then men can be concerned about someone after them for financial gain, not for who they are as a person. Although our direct relationships are always most important, if we have a sense of the greater humanity, it can be easier to face life's difficulties.

Although I understand what you are saying, I would re-locate it in morals socially understood rather than spirituality. In the sense that as a child when growing up I learned about right and wrong from family, church and school, and passing through that formative portal has been crucial in how I perceive my personal and social relations, notwithstanding personal failures at precise moments due to things such as selfishness, indifference, and so on. A broader view on social relations can change if one becomes 'politically engaged' or aware, yet I think for a lot of a persons politics is also shaped by something they learned in those formative years. It may be that transexuals who go through a crisis of identity question the norms and values they were imparted, if they were in any formal sense, yet I think once they are at peace with themselves, inasmuch as anyone ever is, they become a new person, or adjust to the person they always believe they were, but do not fundamentally change their attitudes to core values of life and death, even they like all of us as we grow up become aware of the powers of deception, lying, violence and desperation.

As for spirituality, in this context it must mean going beyond human relations to probe the unseen ties that bind all humans, not just in the here and now, but across space and time -whether it is an appreciation of ancient cultures, music and art, or landscape which is also a record of time and space: those coming from established religion will link these phenomena to the glory of God, in which they feel a kinship with all other people; non-believers can still see the connections through the evolution of living things, but I don't know if this perception brings with it a key element that it is said believers have, which is ecstasy, a physical, emotional and spiritual ecstasy. As humans, we do not just share the planet, we share time and space, we share language and behind it, the meaning of meaning, even if context can shape a precise but local expression of it: If you stand next to an Iroquois from 1313 on the banks of a river in Virginia, the words will not be the same, and what you think you see will not be the same, yet, if you were to probe and compare ideas about family, food, the river, the here and now and the beyond, a large proportion of what is exchanged verbally would be understood.
Spirituality, which one assumes imbues a person with a sense of balance and peace, possibly of a mission, which leads into a sense of ecstasy which is assumed to be positive, does not always express itself positively, I think this is a critical problem for some religions and systems of belief, whether it is suicide missions, or Sati or self-flagellation, to take three examples. Perhaps because we are, after all, merely human and cannot live in a permanent state of grace?

[buttslinger]

As usual, one of Yoda's posts had the chance to explore important stuff, but as long as Estrogen-laden minds are involved, you can count on the mystery getting even deeper and wider.

All the girls that post on this site seem to be in the sex business somehow or another, I would say everyone else suffers from sex-on-the-brain, and I think that throws a skewer into one's self esteem. Sex is the lonely hunter.

The hoes I knew, their spirituality was called "THE LIFE"......
A working girl I knew who was getting on in years and looking at a long prison term told me she regretted nothing, she had her fun.