And They Burned Witches

 

So many of us suffer needlessly with feelings of low self-esteem, guilt, and embarrassment. That shouldn’t really be a surprise when our society is rooted in a belief system that has little room for anything or anybody outside the status quo. Most of us were raised in that belief system. It’s ingrained in the depths of our subconscious, and so to express ourselves outside the norm contradicts what we were taught. Larger groups, and even countries many times deal with conflicting views by killing each other – so apparently they don't appear to have all the answers either. After all, killing defies the very God that Christians, Muslims, and Jews (to name just a few) say they worship. I was raised in a mixed religious household, both Jewish and Christian, which either makes me more confused, or less, I’m not sure which.  

I was at a family reunion during the 4^th of July weekend and was -- in my brother’s absence -- confronted with questions, and fishing expeditions, as to how I felt about my brother and his partner raising an adopted 16-month old baby. My Midwestern relatives love my brother, but don’t agree with his lifestyle, they say. The idea of a gay couple raising a child to them is “against the laws of nature.” On the more practical side, they argued that a child needs a mother and a father. I informed them that a child mostly needs love. But the conversation was mute I told them, because their approval wasn’t required, that my brother and his partner would make great parents, and by the way, it wasn’t so long ago in Salem that they burned witches too! 

I went to Sunday school, I was taught the Bible, the stories, and what it meant. Suddenly, the recent events got me to wondering who gets the privilege of determining the social order by which we are told we have to live? If time has shown us anything, it is that things evolve. One cell became two, and the world, as it was, changed. The dinosaurs no longer roamed the Earth - except of course those on the extreme right. Hey, the 50’s have come and gone, get over it, move on! 

Conservative societies need to recognize that their way isn’t the only way. Transgender people existed in some native Indian and Buddhist cultures – referred to as “two-spirited,” and were accepted in those societies with jobs of great importance. Today they have been called freaks, deranged and sick. On a weblog were comments that concluded that (gay, transgender, etc.) were an affront to God. I believe in God, but what does that mean? Is it possible that the religious teachings could have been misunderstood? 

The thing that has caused transgender people such hardship is that they crossed the boundaries of gender expression. Some felt trapped in the wrong body, some identified as feminine men, while other’s just liked to cross-dress. Maybe that’s not such a bad thing, how many guys would be killing each other in their Sunday best? “War? I might get a stain my new dress, no thanks, I’ll sit this one out.” Society seems to prefer a frustrated, angry and dangerous-to-society “macho” guy as opposed to a happy man who simply likes to expresses himself with feminine things, or, a well-adjusted contributor to society who happens to be attracted to the same sex. I'm not suggesting that all men should engage in such practices, but what is it about being different that scares everyone so?

Many people outside societies description of “norm,”  have felt embarrassed because they were made fun of, guilty because they were “taught” that it is wrong, and continue to believe it because it is enforced in the collective social mindset. To break the emotional and psychological chains that society tries to bind people to, might require a change in thinking altogether; questioning everything you’ve been taught about God, heaven, hell, society and nature. In the end the only person who can answer those and other questions … is you. If you choose to believe what you’ve been taught, that’s fine, as long as you have questioned it, and then decided it makes sense to you. Not that you believe it because you were told to believe it. So what do you believe?  Are we physical beings created by God in search of the spirituality necessary to get us into heaven, or are we spiritual beings simply experiencing a physical world? There are many books with views that go from one end of the spectrum to the other: one version describing us as eternal beings, and another defining us as animals that live and die – game over.   

In a world that is so marred with the here and now, it is easy to loose sight of the larger picture.  We all find ourselves caught up in the drama of life, you know, the little things that in the end weren’t really all that important. So I asked myself one day, “Why are we here? What purpose could it serve?” While I don’t profess to have any of these answers, I wanted to explore the possibilities. Maybe, as it has been theorized for centuries, we are born out of a collective entity; part of, yet less than God - a collective consciousness. This is not a new theory, but let’s take it a step further and then ask why we are here, on Earth? One explanation might be that we are here to experience that which we can’t experience in our higher form: an individual mind and body.  Such a thought would suggest that the “human experiment” is simply to “experience” individuality. By experiencing what you’re not, you can better understand what you are.  Coming from a united body of collective consciousness connecting all things, it would then be reasonable to understand why we as humans feel the need, are comfortable with, and engage in belonging to groups - whether they were ideological, social, political, racial, religious or any other like minded circle. But if the singular consciousness theory were correct, then the purpose of being here would be exactly the opposite of what most of us do: to celebrate our diverse individual expressions, rather than engage in “herd-like” behavior.  

How does that make you feel? Does it make you fearless or afraid? Are we limitless? When we look in the mirror is that WHO we are, or is our body merely the taxicab to carry "us" around in this dream on Earth? Are we really then just the sum of our thoughts, love and spirit? And if we are limitless in our abilities, are we confined to a belief system based on form that "we", the collective masses have taught ourselves? Like the Elephant, who as a baby had his leg shackled to the stake in the ground, are we like the adult elephant that cannot shake loose the concept of not being able to break free? Does the idea become the reality?

I recognize that all of this may be a bit extreme, but it is in creative thought that we can mentally run free to consider all the many options. For so long the medical and psychiatric community has tried to understand why a person is “gender dysfunctional.” What if being transgender isn’t dysfunctional at all. What if the quest to express our individually is in fact the entire object of the exercise?  

I don’t know the answer. There is no real explanation as to why some people fall outside the lines that society draws; perhaps it’s simply evolution. Maybe it’s our subconscious mind resisting the horrors of what our society has created in the form of an escape mechanism, or just perhaps, we are experiencing our individuality. But either way, I do know that if you are not ready to question everything, to discover what rings true to you, then you will always be at the mercy of someone else’s belief structure.  

 Have a thought? Feel free to email me.