I am on my way back to my home city of Melbourne. I’ve just spent several weeks in Brisbane, sharing my mothers’ last few days on this plane, attending her funeral, and helping my father move into the new phase of his life. I should probably be specific at this stage, and point out that these are my adoptive parents: they are, to me, my parents – they loved me, they nurtured and raised me, and I have never questioned the role they played - and play – in my life. I have also never questioned the love that my birth parents had and have for me, and the role my surviving birth mother still plays (I made contact with her a few years ago: my birth father had died of throat cancer from smoking before I found them). I, until recently, could clearly say that I had two mothers – and I would challenge any who dispute that. They both loved me; the circumstances of this life dictated that their love was manifested into my life in different ways – and different, overlapping periods.
Does that make you feel uncomfortable, that I write I have (or had) two mothers? After I have explained the situation, I would have to question any discomfort with my statement about having two mothers – are you scared about new things, situations or ideas? Things that stretch your boundaries? Hmmm. Let us hope not.
It’s been quite a learning experience – including how much funerals are for the living, not the dead. I had been planning on coming up to Brisbane for a while, possibly a couple of months, to give my (adoptive) father and (adoptive) sister a hand in caring for Mum. I was going to fit this in with working at the Brisbane office of the company I work for (that company has been very supportive). I drove up over a weekend, as I’ve done a few times in recent years – particularly after we were told bout of cancer would be Mum’s last (she’s had a few bouts over the last four or five years. The extra car helps with the logistics, particularly of me going from hospital to work and back. I’ve jumped ahead there a little: Mum had a couple of falls, including one with a home care nurse, so she was put into palliative care earlier than anticipated – and I brought forward my plans for my temporary move.
I hadn’t planned on starting this blog with so much personal stuff: I apologise, it’s probably just part of my grieving process. I (I coped with the time with Mum in the palliative care unit by writing poetry [baaad poetry – you won’t see it here]). will get to some topics of more general interest soon.
Anyway, I arrived at Brisbane just in time: Mum was lucid enough to recognise me and kiss my hands, and I gave her the last two mouthfuls she ever ate. That was on a Sunday in late October. The next night we were told she was likely to pass, so all of us stayed in the palliative care room the whole night. She hung on in there, though. The night had started with a crisis, with all of us taking turns holding her hand, and talking to her, although she was largely non-responsive. After that, we settled in to a routine. My part of the routine was to take the evening shift: I would go there straight after work, hold Mum’s hand and talk to her about who was there, what we were doing, what my day had been like, and so forth. While I was doing this, whoever was going to be taking the night shifts, after midnight, would get some sleep. I would leave near midnight, go “home” (my parents’ house was a temporary home for the duration), come back for a while the next morning while my father and sister and anyone else who had stayed went home for a shower and a quick nap, and then off to work (often I could leave as soon as someone else turned up). Mum had a couple more crises during that week; and this is where I start to diverge from what many would consider “typical”.
You see, I have been doing “rescue”, or guiding the souls of the dead, since I learnt that ability at ASPECTS in the 1980s. I tend to do this mostly during sleep state these days, but still occasionally have a formal rescue session (often largely for teaching purposes). As such, I am reasonably well able to tune in to the astral world (although not so well at the etheric). As we were all gathered round Mum in the physical world, I could see Mum’s parents, our Nan and Pop, with her – and others who had passed. I could see the distance between Mum’s soul and her spirit helpers close as she became more aware of them, and more comfortable with the preparations for her passing – and then, everything stopped.
I’ve had someone who was partly friend, partly foster mother to me in the late 80s when I was making my way in Melbourne and dealing with quite a few emotional issues, pass around 15 years ago. She still pops in for a chat from time to time, and has even asked me to check on her daughter once. When Cheryl, the woman’s name at the time, passed after 18 months of extremely tough struggle, events happened much more quickly and easily at the end. Maybe that was Cheryl’s greater familiarity with matters of the spirit (she was a spiritualist, and also had performed rescue work); maybe Cheryl was worn out after 18 months of being in and out of hospital. I wasn’t there physically, but saw, from the astral, the ties to her chakras – including the Silver Cord – ease off and part, and “the Golden Bowl shatter’d”: the emptying of her aura as Cheryl passed.
With Mum, I even had glimpses of an Angel of Death, just hovering round, in the background. Some of the trouble passing was, I thought, partly Mum’s tough Scottish constitution – her parents had been the same with their passing. I consulted with my teacher and a few other trusted friends, and eventually the answer seems to have been tied up with Mercury being retrograde – which, apparently, is associated with (amongst other things) problems with journeys. Within a few minutes of Mercury going direct, Mum had passed.
She’s still resting, a bit confused, on some of the “introductory” levels where people receive healing – and, after her years of ill health, Mum needs it. A few months after her diagnosis, Mum said she had accepted her coming death, but just wished she could have a bit more time. Maybe Mum wasn’t as well prepared as she thought ...
Now, I’m well familiar with the stages of growth that go with death (anger, denial, negotiation, acceptance, etc), and have even had the privilege of hearing Elisabeth Kübler-Ross speak at Melbourne’s Dallas Brooks Hall in the 80s (she told a rather amazing story about – as one of triplets - standing in for her sisters on dates that I’m still deciding whether or not I believe J ). Coping with those stages was part of the planning my (adoptive) sister and I went through when working out how to help Mum and Dad. But there’s more to this than that. I have spent most of my life, from my teenage years, as a Tibetan Buddhist. That is a belief system which is well capable of helping prepare for death, but I think the symbology needs some minor reviewing and updating. I think living life so one doesn’t have any regrets is one thing everyone, irrespective of their belief system, can do to prepare for their passing. Having no regrets, by the way, does NOT mean having lots of parties and raves (ever hear the joke that, if, when asked whether you can remember the sixties, you say “yes”, then you weren’t there? [Well, you weren’t part of the drug scene, at least]): it means things like the last words I ever spoke to my mother as I left to go to work (I got the call about her passing just as I arrived) were “Love you”.
That’s something my partner and I have made a point of saying when we part or end a phone call: we started that because of some serious health problems she had a few years ago. On my partner, I had eventually settled on going to Brisbane for four weeks, but am heading back a week early: I miss my partner and my own space, she’s been missing me, I’ve been missing those segment of my family called “friends”, and I’m reasonably sure Dad will be OK. He coped with the funeral, and we’ve been talking about the waves of grief we experience each day. Mum was brought back for the funeral, but the main part of the funeral was for the living (around 80 or show) to show respect for Mum, and for the remaining family to move through some of the stages of grief.
So I’m back on the road again (with apologies to whoever sang that). And it’s my experiences on the road that are the driving force behind this post.
I’ve currently stopped in Forbes: I’d planned on trying to get to Wagga Wagga, but found the heat affecting me – I even had to turn the air conditioning on (which I don’t have to normally do with this sort of long distance driving until the air temperature is around 40 deg. C). That, however, didn’t help, and I stopped driving early as I just wasn’t in a fit state to get to the next town. So I have been reflecting as I recover, and my thoughts over the last few weeks have crystallised enough that they demand to put down, before they fade and blur.
I stopped at Glen Innes for a day, all yesterday. On our (my partner and I came up for a while son after Mum’s diagnosis) last trip up here, we took a “wrong” turn, and wound up there. We sometimes take off for a weekend and see where we wind up, so no major problems there (a few of the photos for this blog have come from such trips). Anyway, in Glen Innes we found the Australian Standing Stones (see http://www.australianstandingstones.com/ for more; a couple of photos are in the “Superheroes” post). On that trip, though, only having two days to get back to Melbourne we couldn’t stop; on this trip, I had a couple of extra days leave, and could take my time.
The stones were erected as a Southern Hemisphere version of Scotland’s Ring of Brodgar: it’s creators make no claims for any mystical or spiritual power – it was done to celebrate this area’s Celtic heritage, brought in by the white settlers in the area. The winter and summer solstices are observed at the stones, and there is some sort of ritual at the annual Celtic festival. In any case, having time to walk amongst the stones, show my respect for them, and just sit and enjoy the power of the place which has evolved (maybe though others wanting it to have a power overcomes any lack of ritual for that purpose, a bit like my wandering whether Harry Potter’s Expecto Patronum charm will lead to something). The power is of peace: I hope, dear Reader, you would notice it if you went there, or anywhere similar. I’ve read a few stories of people who missed the power of a place because they were expecting something spectacular J
I enjoyed doing the usual tourist things, I was able to find out more about my mother’s Scottish heritage and I bought a unicorn wand necklace. I also found I was being comforted by many animals: a pet dog at every motel I’ve stayed at so far, a pet cat at a museum and another pet dog at an art gallery.
I also found a few people uncomfortable because I am “different”: I have a fairly butch image, and that obviously unsettled some people, mostly males although one woman in a restaurant in Cootamundra was rude enough to make a comment in a stage whisper. Having a lesbian symbol tattooed on one shoulder probably didn’t help their discomfort, as it confirmed my being a lesbian.
Are you comfortable with same sex attracted people? Do you know some, or have some as friends? How about bisexuals – or transgender or intersex people, or people from other ethnic groups or religions? Do you have friends of the opposite sex if you are heterosexual, or same sex if you are gay or lesbian?
If not, you have a (spiritual) problem.
If you live in a small country town like the ones I am travelling through now, or the one I left many years ago, and don’t have around 10% of the population being openly and safely same sex attracted, your town has a spiritual problem.
Spirituality is not about setting arbitrary rules that exclude people, or prejudge them on any basis other than their actual, known personality. Spirituality is about being the best that you can, and helping others be the best that you can, and maybe establishing a relationship with Deity in the process (the maybe is because of the spiritual growth I experienced as a Buddhist [see Note 1]). Setting rules so you can stay in your comfort zone, and force others to stay in their comfort zones, in not being spiritual.
Men setting rules about what women can or cannot do is purely and simply wrong – ESPECIALLY if they spout that crap about “respecting women” while doing so (and don’t assume that is a characteristic of a particular ethnic or religious group: it isn’t).
Let’s look at the issue of gender for a moment:
- there are women who are “butch” in their image who are not lesbians (and deep voiced, but are not transgender), and who are no less female for that (and transgender females are unquestionably female, just as transgender males are unquestionably male);
- there are men who are effeminate and straight, and are no less male for that;
- women can be as sex obsessed as many men: more so, and cruder, in some cases;
- there are men working in professions that are predominantly occupied by women, who go through similar experiences to those of women in non-traditional workplaces (such as engineering)
- there are women who don’t want children, and are no less female because of that (and there are women who want children but are infertile: I feel sorry for the sorrow they go through when around fertile women who assume all women are fertile);
- men can be gentle and caring, and as besotted by their children, as women (despite not bearing the child for nine months).
Does that last point surprise or shock you? Then perhaps you are falling in to the trap of believing stereotypes, or the trap of wanting to live an aspect of life (e.g., mother) so fully that you forget it does not apply to all others. There is a term gay and lesbian advocates have developed: “heteronormative”. It means presuming that being heterosexual is “the norm”. Well, it isn’t, and there are a lot of people who make that mistake in their circumstances. In the case of lesbian and gays, it sets up a barrier that discourages being open: it creates doubt as to how the heteronormative person will behave.
Think that it shouldn’t? Try living on the receiving end of such bigotry and prejudice for a few decades (yes, I mean decades!) and see if you still think so.
I’ll give some more examples of what can happen to members of minorities – consider the experiences of just one transgender woman:
- having a transgender friend, one who “passed” extremely well (meaning she looked and sounded female in the stereotypical sense), who a neighbour had tried to kill (knife attack) disappear because she couldn’t handle the flashbacks from the attack
- burying one transgender acquaintance who committed suicide because of the lack of acceptance (i.e., discrimination) she experienced (have you ever lived with such widespread, fundamental rejection that it is powerful enough to drive you to commit suicide? This is, incidentally, an unusually low number – research shows that transgender people experience one of the highest levels of assaults and harassment of any group in society: no wonder there is a profound reluctance to be “out”)
- physical threats
- the extreme, personal violence of being referred to incorrectly (i.e., as a male; this behaviour also has been indulged by some women who consider violence a male problem – I, incidentally, consider the woman in Cootamundra I referred to earlier to have been violent [verbally] in her behaviour towards me)
- discrimination on the basis of being female (interestingly enough, some trans women who try to do something constructive about discrimination against women [e.g., in the workplace] may be attacked for doing so - even if they had been doing that before they transitioned, in the case of this example, her experiences were used to illustrate that things like discrimination against women doing the same work in pay do exist; this woman has also experienced presumptions that attempts to get other women to be more assertive were actually an attempt to get women to be more violent! (women can be violent – almost anyone can be, if they are pushed enough: see my previous posts about the problem of the “them and us” mentality);
- discrimination because her body used to be male (her real, essential spirit has ALWAYS been female in this incarnation, and she is in far greater harmony/alignment with the Goddess than some women who were born female; incidentally, some lesbians have also been subjected to a presumed lack of balance in their relationship because there is no male genitalia involved);
- discrimination; prior to her having surgery, because she hadn’t had surgery: this sort of stupidity fails to take into consideration issues such as men who are castrated through, perhaps, a fire or a car accident – they don’t suddenly become female, or want to become female: one’s sense of gender does not come only from genitalia);
- lack of acceptance until she could prove she had experienced sex as a female (I kid you not! This is about as brainless an attitude as those who think female pets somehow “have” to have a litter before they are neutered)
- having people (male and female) walk in on her while she is showering, under weak pretexts, to see if she has had surgery or not;
- discrimination because the surgery isn't perfect and she doesn't have periods (although she has, at times, taken the hormone tablets in a way that replicates a cycle)
- discrimination because some women attracted to her find the notion of possibly being attracted to a woman so repugnant (think about social conditioning [heteronormativity, etc] biasing those women against anything other than heterosexuality) that they would rather join in the behaviour that drives some transgender people to commit suicide rather than admit to being broad minded enough/developed enough to be bisexual;
- discrimination because some men fear the possibility of being attracted to her (which in itself shows an incredibly deep fear of homosexuality - and incorrect ideas about gender identity);
- discrimination justified on the basis of “respecting” women (how is being disrespectful to one particular woman because of her medical history being respectful to women?);
- discrimination because she is lesbian (gender and sexuality ARE DIFFERENT - see http://www.transgendervictoria.com/?p=p_2&sName=definitions; transgender people include opposite attracted, same sex attracted, either/both sex attracted and not interested in sex people JUST AS DO THE REST OF THE POPULATION);
- discrimination because she is different, and people have to grow/expand their personal world and its concepts to cater for my existence;
- discrimination because she doesn't fit stereotypical images of women (her voice is unusually deep, and there are a few other differences - all of which occur in some women who were born female, such as this woman’s partner).
These experiences were all inflicted by people who were, amongst their other faults, incapable of accepting new experiences constructively. I’ve been involved in lobbying for human rights in a wide range of situations, and the lobbyist is always graceful enough to give the person being lobbied “the benefit of the doubt” - maybe the person being lobbied is a nice person, and just need a bit of educating. (For example, there is plenty of medical evidence to support the transgender person’s statements that they are of the gender they identify as [including some brain research, albeit from a small sample], and lots of research showing that same sex attracted people are the same as others – no better, no worse, and that goes back to the 1950s).
Well, I’m not lobbying in this blog, and to that attitude I say: bollocks.
There are people who are capable of, say, meeting a transgender woman and – without having been educated on transgender issues at all – are capable of behaving with respect and consideration and manners, shown by accepting the trans person on her or his terms. The difference is that these people are in tune with their Higher Self, and the more noble aspects of life that that attunement gives.
Those people can genuinely say they are spiritual: not the small minded person who is afraid of being stretched by meeting someone who is different. If you cannot handle such experiences, you are certainly far away from being ready to leave this world and start exploring some of the other glories of creation.
I’ve found it interesting – sadly so, at times – watching the reactions of people to me at Mum’s funeral and while I am travelling to me. Most people at the funeral were quite accepting, welcoming and supportive of me, despite not having met from times before I came out. In those cases, they knew that Mum accepted me as I was, and maybe that influenced them. Sadly, I know there are some families who reject LGBTI (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex) members, or those who, perhaps, change their faith. As I’ve travelled, I’ve found people who would probably be inclined to reject such people from their own families: in my opinion, those people are being totally, completely and utterly disrespectful of my mother, and I absolutely will NOT tolerate that disrespect. Who the hell do they think they are, to prejudge me, when my MOTHER, the woman who raised, nurtured and loved me, thought I was still as deserving of that love after all I’ve been through?
Their lack of spirituality is, under the present circumstances, a rather small matter to me :)
I’ll give another example from when I was driving up to Brisbane. I heard an interview with the former partner of a now deceased racing car driver. In that interview, she claimed that her now deceased husband was not happy with his new girlfriend, and that the new woman was staying out of the public view because she didn’t want to be challenged on "being a scarlet woman". Now, I can understand the former partner being emotional, and I don’t know – or care, particularly – about which side is telling “the truth” (my experience is that it usually lies somewhere in between), but there is also the possibility of the new girlfriend not going out in public because that is her way of grieving. I always thought those people who got stuck into Lindy Chamberlain because she didn’t react the way they thought she should were appallingly ignorant of human behaviour.
In your life, dear Reader, I would like to suggest that you be very wary of falling into the same trap I’ve just illustrated: the discrimination of assuming others will – or should – be the same as oneself is a subtle one, but it is a significant (spiritual) problem nonetheless, and underlies many of the examples I’ve included on discrimination.
I have one more point related to the situation between these two and the new woman: polyamory. One of the biases that exists and is very widespread in this world (well, amongst Western cultures, at any rate) is that intimate relationships should be between only two people (whether they are same or opposite sex – and I don’t know how you start considering some of the other genders/sexes). That isn’t necessarily so. Quite a few years ago, I found myself in a relationship where my partner was seriously torn between myself and her ex (with apologies to the singer of the 1976 song “Torn Between Two Lovers”, Mary MacGregor). She basically loved both of us, and couldn’t work out which one of us to choose: so I told her not to choose. She didn’t, and we wound up in a sort of ménage a trois - technically, a vee, rather than a triad: look at the Wikipedia article on Polyamory for more on this. At the time, I didn’t know the term polyamory: my life would have been easier if I did, but I was in tune with my soul enough, and caring about the other people involved enough, to come up with and suggest something which didn’t fit society’s rules, but was for the best of all involved. That is an example of the sort of attunement I am talking about.
That same sort of attunement and willingness to embrace the new helped me, as a child, to move away from Christianity to Buddhism (the priest who presided over my mother’s [Anglican] funeral never realised that he had a Druidess giving the eulogy). On the topic of Christianity, fairly obviously I do not consider the Pope to be a spiritual person. I hope you, dear Reader, can cope with matters better than the Pope.
May you always greet new things bravely, and never be afraid of broadening your mind.
Does that make you feel uncomfortable, that I write I have (or had) two mothers? After I have explained the situation, I would have to question any discomfort with my statement about having two mothers – are you scared about new things, situations or ideas? Things that stretch your boundaries? Hmmm. Let us hope not.
It’s been quite a learning experience – including how much funerals are for the living, not the dead. I had been planning on coming up to Brisbane for a while, possibly a couple of months, to give my (adoptive) father and (adoptive) sister a hand in caring for Mum. I was going to fit this in with working at the Brisbane office of the company I work for (that company has been very supportive). I drove up over a weekend, as I’ve done a few times in recent years – particularly after we were told bout of cancer would be Mum’s last (she’s had a few bouts over the last four or five years. The extra car helps with the logistics, particularly of me going from hospital to work and back. I’ve jumped ahead there a little: Mum had a couple of falls, including one with a home care nurse, so she was put into palliative care earlier than anticipated – and I brought forward my plans for my temporary move.
I hadn’t planned on starting this blog with so much personal stuff: I apologise, it’s probably just part of my grieving process. I (I coped with the time with Mum in the palliative care unit by writing poetry [baaad poetry – you won’t see it here]). will get to some topics of more general interest soon.
Anyway, I arrived at Brisbane just in time: Mum was lucid enough to recognise me and kiss my hands, and I gave her the last two mouthfuls she ever ate. That was on a Sunday in late October. The next night we were told she was likely to pass, so all of us stayed in the palliative care room the whole night. She hung on in there, though. The night had started with a crisis, with all of us taking turns holding her hand, and talking to her, although she was largely non-responsive. After that, we settled in to a routine. My part of the routine was to take the evening shift: I would go there straight after work, hold Mum’s hand and talk to her about who was there, what we were doing, what my day had been like, and so forth. While I was doing this, whoever was going to be taking the night shifts, after midnight, would get some sleep. I would leave near midnight, go “home” (my parents’ house was a temporary home for the duration), come back for a while the next morning while my father and sister and anyone else who had stayed went home for a shower and a quick nap, and then off to work (often I could leave as soon as someone else turned up). Mum had a couple more crises during that week; and this is where I start to diverge from what many would consider “typical”.
You see, I have been doing “rescue”, or guiding the souls of the dead, since I learnt that ability at ASPECTS in the 1980s. I tend to do this mostly during sleep state these days, but still occasionally have a formal rescue session (often largely for teaching purposes). As such, I am reasonably well able to tune in to the astral world (although not so well at the etheric). As we were all gathered round Mum in the physical world, I could see Mum’s parents, our Nan and Pop, with her – and others who had passed. I could see the distance between Mum’s soul and her spirit helpers close as she became more aware of them, and more comfortable with the preparations for her passing – and then, everything stopped.
I’ve had someone who was partly friend, partly foster mother to me in the late 80s when I was making my way in Melbourne and dealing with quite a few emotional issues, pass around 15 years ago. She still pops in for a chat from time to time, and has even asked me to check on her daughter once. When Cheryl, the woman’s name at the time, passed after 18 months of extremely tough struggle, events happened much more quickly and easily at the end. Maybe that was Cheryl’s greater familiarity with matters of the spirit (she was a spiritualist, and also had performed rescue work); maybe Cheryl was worn out after 18 months of being in and out of hospital. I wasn’t there physically, but saw, from the astral, the ties to her chakras – including the Silver Cord – ease off and part, and “the Golden Bowl shatter’d”: the emptying of her aura as Cheryl passed.
With Mum, I even had glimpses of an Angel of Death, just hovering round, in the background. Some of the trouble passing was, I thought, partly Mum’s tough Scottish constitution – her parents had been the same with their passing. I consulted with my teacher and a few other trusted friends, and eventually the answer seems to have been tied up with Mercury being retrograde – which, apparently, is associated with (amongst other things) problems with journeys. Within a few minutes of Mercury going direct, Mum had passed.
She’s still resting, a bit confused, on some of the “introductory” levels where people receive healing – and, after her years of ill health, Mum needs it. A few months after her diagnosis, Mum said she had accepted her coming death, but just wished she could have a bit more time. Maybe Mum wasn’t as well prepared as she thought ...
Now, I’m well familiar with the stages of growth that go with death (anger, denial, negotiation, acceptance, etc), and have even had the privilege of hearing Elisabeth Kübler-Ross speak at Melbourne’s Dallas Brooks Hall in the 80s (she told a rather amazing story about – as one of triplets - standing in for her sisters on dates that I’m still deciding whether or not I believe J ). Coping with those stages was part of the planning my (adoptive) sister and I went through when working out how to help Mum and Dad. But there’s more to this than that. I have spent most of my life, from my teenage years, as a Tibetan Buddhist. That is a belief system which is well capable of helping prepare for death, but I think the symbology needs some minor reviewing and updating. I think living life so one doesn’t have any regrets is one thing everyone, irrespective of their belief system, can do to prepare for their passing. Having no regrets, by the way, does NOT mean having lots of parties and raves (ever hear the joke that, if, when asked whether you can remember the sixties, you say “yes”, then you weren’t there? [Well, you weren’t part of the drug scene, at least]): it means things like the last words I ever spoke to my mother as I left to go to work (I got the call about her passing just as I arrived) were “Love you”.
That’s something my partner and I have made a point of saying when we part or end a phone call: we started that because of some serious health problems she had a few years ago. On my partner, I had eventually settled on going to Brisbane for four weeks, but am heading back a week early: I miss my partner and my own space, she’s been missing me, I’ve been missing those segment of my family called “friends”, and I’m reasonably sure Dad will be OK. He coped with the funeral, and we’ve been talking about the waves of grief we experience each day. Mum was brought back for the funeral, but the main part of the funeral was for the living (around 80 or show) to show respect for Mum, and for the remaining family to move through some of the stages of grief.
So I’m back on the road again (with apologies to whoever sang that). And it’s my experiences on the road that are the driving force behind this post.
I’ve currently stopped in Forbes: I’d planned on trying to get to Wagga Wagga, but found the heat affecting me – I even had to turn the air conditioning on (which I don’t have to normally do with this sort of long distance driving until the air temperature is around 40 deg. C). That, however, didn’t help, and I stopped driving early as I just wasn’t in a fit state to get to the next town. So I have been reflecting as I recover, and my thoughts over the last few weeks have crystallised enough that they demand to put down, before they fade and blur.
I stopped at Glen Innes for a day, all yesterday. On our (my partner and I came up for a while son after Mum’s diagnosis) last trip up here, we took a “wrong” turn, and wound up there. We sometimes take off for a weekend and see where we wind up, so no major problems there (a few of the photos for this blog have come from such trips). Anyway, in Glen Innes we found the Australian Standing Stones (see http://www.australianstandingstones.com/ for more; a couple of photos are in the “Superheroes” post). On that trip, though, only having two days to get back to Melbourne we couldn’t stop; on this trip, I had a couple of extra days leave, and could take my time.
The stones were erected as a Southern Hemisphere version of Scotland’s Ring of Brodgar: it’s creators make no claims for any mystical or spiritual power – it was done to celebrate this area’s Celtic heritage, brought in by the white settlers in the area. The winter and summer solstices are observed at the stones, and there is some sort of ritual at the annual Celtic festival. In any case, having time to walk amongst the stones, show my respect for them, and just sit and enjoy the power of the place which has evolved (maybe though others wanting it to have a power overcomes any lack of ritual for that purpose, a bit like my wandering whether Harry Potter’s Expecto Patronum charm will lead to something). The power is of peace: I hope, dear Reader, you would notice it if you went there, or anywhere similar. I’ve read a few stories of people who missed the power of a place because they were expecting something spectacular J
I enjoyed doing the usual tourist things, I was able to find out more about my mother’s Scottish heritage and I bought a unicorn wand necklace. I also found I was being comforted by many animals: a pet dog at every motel I’ve stayed at so far, a pet cat at a museum and another pet dog at an art gallery.
I also found a few people uncomfortable because I am “different”: I have a fairly butch image, and that obviously unsettled some people, mostly males although one woman in a restaurant in Cootamundra was rude enough to make a comment in a stage whisper. Having a lesbian symbol tattooed on one shoulder probably didn’t help their discomfort, as it confirmed my being a lesbian.
Are you comfortable with same sex attracted people? Do you know some, or have some as friends? How about bisexuals – or transgender or intersex people, or people from other ethnic groups or religions? Do you have friends of the opposite sex if you are heterosexual, or same sex if you are gay or lesbian?
If not, you have a (spiritual) problem.
If you live in a small country town like the ones I am travelling through now, or the one I left many years ago, and don’t have around 10% of the population being openly and safely same sex attracted, your town has a spiritual problem.
Spirituality is not about setting arbitrary rules that exclude people, or prejudge them on any basis other than their actual, known personality. Spirituality is about being the best that you can, and helping others be the best that you can, and maybe establishing a relationship with Deity in the process (the maybe is because of the spiritual growth I experienced as a Buddhist [see Note 1]). Setting rules so you can stay in your comfort zone, and force others to stay in their comfort zones, in not being spiritual.
Men setting rules about what women can or cannot do is purely and simply wrong – ESPECIALLY if they spout that crap about “respecting women” while doing so (and don’t assume that is a characteristic of a particular ethnic or religious group: it isn’t).
Let’s look at the issue of gender for a moment:
- there are women who are “butch” in their image who are not lesbians (and deep voiced, but are not transgender), and who are no less female for that (and transgender females are unquestionably female, just as transgender males are unquestionably male);
- there are men who are effeminate and straight, and are no less male for that;
- women can be as sex obsessed as many men: more so, and cruder, in some cases;
- there are men working in professions that are predominantly occupied by women, who go through similar experiences to those of women in non-traditional workplaces (such as engineering)
- there are women who don’t want children, and are no less female because of that (and there are women who want children but are infertile: I feel sorry for the sorrow they go through when around fertile women who assume all women are fertile);
- men can be gentle and caring, and as besotted by their children, as women (despite not bearing the child for nine months).
Does that last point surprise or shock you? Then perhaps you are falling in to the trap of believing stereotypes, or the trap of wanting to live an aspect of life (e.g., mother) so fully that you forget it does not apply to all others. There is a term gay and lesbian advocates have developed: “heteronormative”. It means presuming that being heterosexual is “the norm”. Well, it isn’t, and there are a lot of people who make that mistake in their circumstances. In the case of lesbian and gays, it sets up a barrier that discourages being open: it creates doubt as to how the heteronormative person will behave.
Think that it shouldn’t? Try living on the receiving end of such bigotry and prejudice for a few decades (yes, I mean decades!) and see if you still think so.
I’ll give some more examples of what can happen to members of minorities – consider the experiences of just one transgender woman:
- having a transgender friend, one who “passed” extremely well (meaning she looked and sounded female in the stereotypical sense), who a neighbour had tried to kill (knife attack) disappear because she couldn’t handle the flashbacks from the attack
- burying one transgender acquaintance who committed suicide because of the lack of acceptance (i.e., discrimination) she experienced (have you ever lived with such widespread, fundamental rejection that it is powerful enough to drive you to commit suicide? This is, incidentally, an unusually low number – research shows that transgender people experience one of the highest levels of assaults and harassment of any group in society: no wonder there is a profound reluctance to be “out”)
- physical threats
- the extreme, personal violence of being referred to incorrectly (i.e., as a male; this behaviour also has been indulged by some women who consider violence a male problem – I, incidentally, consider the woman in Cootamundra I referred to earlier to have been violent [verbally] in her behaviour towards me)
- discrimination on the basis of being female (interestingly enough, some trans women who try to do something constructive about discrimination against women [e.g., in the workplace] may be attacked for doing so - even if they had been doing that before they transitioned, in the case of this example, her experiences were used to illustrate that things like discrimination against women doing the same work in pay do exist; this woman has also experienced presumptions that attempts to get other women to be more assertive were actually an attempt to get women to be more violent! (women can be violent – almost anyone can be, if they are pushed enough: see my previous posts about the problem of the “them and us” mentality);
- discrimination because her body used to be male (her real, essential spirit has ALWAYS been female in this incarnation, and she is in far greater harmony/alignment with the Goddess than some women who were born female; incidentally, some lesbians have also been subjected to a presumed lack of balance in their relationship because there is no male genitalia involved);
- discrimination; prior to her having surgery, because she hadn’t had surgery: this sort of stupidity fails to take into consideration issues such as men who are castrated through, perhaps, a fire or a car accident – they don’t suddenly become female, or want to become female: one’s sense of gender does not come only from genitalia);
- lack of acceptance until she could prove she had experienced sex as a female (I kid you not! This is about as brainless an attitude as those who think female pets somehow “have” to have a litter before they are neutered)
- having people (male and female) walk in on her while she is showering, under weak pretexts, to see if she has had surgery or not;
- discrimination because the surgery isn't perfect and she doesn't have periods (although she has, at times, taken the hormone tablets in a way that replicates a cycle)
- discrimination because some women attracted to her find the notion of possibly being attracted to a woman so repugnant (think about social conditioning [heteronormativity, etc] biasing those women against anything other than heterosexuality) that they would rather join in the behaviour that drives some transgender people to commit suicide rather than admit to being broad minded enough/developed enough to be bisexual;
- discrimination because some men fear the possibility of being attracted to her (which in itself shows an incredibly deep fear of homosexuality - and incorrect ideas about gender identity);
- discrimination justified on the basis of “respecting” women (how is being disrespectful to one particular woman because of her medical history being respectful to women?);
- discrimination because she is lesbian (gender and sexuality ARE DIFFERENT - see http://www.transgendervictoria.com/?p=p_2&sName=definitions; transgender people include opposite attracted, same sex attracted, either/both sex attracted and not interested in sex people JUST AS DO THE REST OF THE POPULATION);
- discrimination because she is different, and people have to grow/expand their personal world and its concepts to cater for my existence;
- discrimination because she doesn't fit stereotypical images of women (her voice is unusually deep, and there are a few other differences - all of which occur in some women who were born female, such as this woman’s partner).
These experiences were all inflicted by people who were, amongst their other faults, incapable of accepting new experiences constructively. I’ve been involved in lobbying for human rights in a wide range of situations, and the lobbyist is always graceful enough to give the person being lobbied “the benefit of the doubt” - maybe the person being lobbied is a nice person, and just need a bit of educating. (For example, there is plenty of medical evidence to support the transgender person’s statements that they are of the gender they identify as [including some brain research, albeit from a small sample], and lots of research showing that same sex attracted people are the same as others – no better, no worse, and that goes back to the 1950s).
Well, I’m not lobbying in this blog, and to that attitude I say: bollocks.
There are people who are capable of, say, meeting a transgender woman and – without having been educated on transgender issues at all – are capable of behaving with respect and consideration and manners, shown by accepting the trans person on her or his terms. The difference is that these people are in tune with their Higher Self, and the more noble aspects of life that that attunement gives.
Those people can genuinely say they are spiritual: not the small minded person who is afraid of being stretched by meeting someone who is different. If you cannot handle such experiences, you are certainly far away from being ready to leave this world and start exploring some of the other glories of creation.
I’ve found it interesting – sadly so, at times – watching the reactions of people to me at Mum’s funeral and while I am travelling to me. Most people at the funeral were quite accepting, welcoming and supportive of me, despite not having met from times before I came out. In those cases, they knew that Mum accepted me as I was, and maybe that influenced them. Sadly, I know there are some families who reject LGBTI (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex) members, or those who, perhaps, change their faith. As I’ve travelled, I’ve found people who would probably be inclined to reject such people from their own families: in my opinion, those people are being totally, completely and utterly disrespectful of my mother, and I absolutely will NOT tolerate that disrespect. Who the hell do they think they are, to prejudge me, when my MOTHER, the woman who raised, nurtured and loved me, thought I was still as deserving of that love after all I’ve been through?
Their lack of spirituality is, under the present circumstances, a rather small matter to me :)
I’ll give another example from when I was driving up to Brisbane. I heard an interview with the former partner of a now deceased racing car driver. In that interview, she claimed that her now deceased husband was not happy with his new girlfriend, and that the new woman was staying out of the public view because she didn’t want to be challenged on "being a scarlet woman". Now, I can understand the former partner being emotional, and I don’t know – or care, particularly – about which side is telling “the truth” (my experience is that it usually lies somewhere in between), but there is also the possibility of the new girlfriend not going out in public because that is her way of grieving. I always thought those people who got stuck into Lindy Chamberlain because she didn’t react the way they thought she should were appallingly ignorant of human behaviour.
In your life, dear Reader, I would like to suggest that you be very wary of falling into the same trap I’ve just illustrated: the discrimination of assuming others will – or should – be the same as oneself is a subtle one, but it is a significant (spiritual) problem nonetheless, and underlies many of the examples I’ve included on discrimination.
I have one more point related to the situation between these two and the new woman: polyamory. One of the biases that exists and is very widespread in this world (well, amongst Western cultures, at any rate) is that intimate relationships should be between only two people (whether they are same or opposite sex – and I don’t know how you start considering some of the other genders/sexes). That isn’t necessarily so. Quite a few years ago, I found myself in a relationship where my partner was seriously torn between myself and her ex (with apologies to the singer of the 1976 song “Torn Between Two Lovers”, Mary MacGregor). She basically loved both of us, and couldn’t work out which one of us to choose: so I told her not to choose. She didn’t, and we wound up in a sort of ménage a trois - technically, a vee, rather than a triad: look at the Wikipedia article on Polyamory for more on this. At the time, I didn’t know the term polyamory: my life would have been easier if I did, but I was in tune with my soul enough, and caring about the other people involved enough, to come up with and suggest something which didn’t fit society’s rules, but was for the best of all involved. That is an example of the sort of attunement I am talking about.
That same sort of attunement and willingness to embrace the new helped me, as a child, to move away from Christianity to Buddhism (the priest who presided over my mother’s [Anglican] funeral never realised that he had a Druidess giving the eulogy). On the topic of Christianity, fairly obviously I do not consider the Pope to be a spiritual person. I hope you, dear Reader, can cope with matters better than the Pope.
May you always greet new things bravely, and never be afraid of broadening your mind.
Love, light, hugs and blessings
Gnwmythr
POSTSCRIPT: one of the unexpected side effects of my mother's passing that I have found is that I am dealing with a few areas in my life that are potential regrets when I pass - situations where I didn't see opportunities, or thought I didn't deserve them, etc. I have long thought I wound up being different to many other people because of the number of situations where I felt I came close to death (e.g., having a car travelling in the opposite direction on a hot Queensland summer's days pick up a large chunk of bitumen and throw it into my windscreen). Whether I was in actuality close to death is immaterial: I genuinely felt I was, and in some cases even went through the sensations that the pilot Blackthorne went through when he almost died by attempting Hari Kari in James Clavell's novel Shogun (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shogun_%28novel%29, or better yet, read the book - it has some good lessons on socialisation, and the various forms that courage can take). I now live a far less risky life, and am emotionally more settled (not settled, mind you!), so haven't had any of the spurs to rethink my life that the half dozen incidents before I turned 28 gave me: maybe this is one way I will still get those motivating influences.
This post's photo is from Langwarrin Flora and Fauna Reserve, near Frankston (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Langwarrin). This was established as a military training reserve at the time of the British Empire's war in the Sudan in the 1880s, was used for training in the Boer War and then was converted to a hospital/recovery base for soldiers in the First World War. In the last part of the 20th Century (about 1970s, I think) it was converted to a Flora and Fauna reserve.
Tags: life lessons, personal characteristics, polarity, responsibility, respect, family
First published: Tuesday 20th November, 2007
Last edited: Saturday 1st December, 2007
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