All of this incarnation, it has been a struggle – perhaps a progressive struggle is a better term – to both know and be myself, and to get acceptance.
Progressive struggle as one thing leads to another, just as, say, climbing a tree or a mountain opens up the possibility of climbing a little further, using new branches or new climbing routes.
As a bit of a brief review, my life began by being adopted out – partly at the instigation of those grandparents who included my indigenous grandmother (which is ironic). I was eventually able to find my wonderful birth family (and my adoptive family are also wonderful & loving and still are a key part of my life) only after laws had been changed in Queensland and following a subsequent search – which was complicated by my being transgender.
And being trans has involved decades of struggle - from the time I was four – against officious petty tyrants, the personally insecure and too unaware to know that they have that problem, and outright bigots such as the prominent author who claims they accept those who have “medically” transitioned (because said author wants to control who comes into her club, in essence – no matter what they claim happened to them) and yet blithely continues to stir up and egg on hatred and violence towards all trans and gender diverse (TGD) people.
There’s a fair old lack of self awareness and self accountability there, in my opinion (IMO).
On that, the hypocrisy of people who claimed to be Christian but would talk about love in church on Sunday and stab people in the back on Monday is what drove me out of neochristianity as a teenager – I wrote about that in my ninth post on this blog (“On changing paths”, on the 30th June, 2007 – and also see my 6th post here, from the 13th June that year, and my 5th post here, on the same day, about living future dreams now – so these posts have a long tradition on this blog of mine).
But the struggle for social acceptance of me as a woman (which fact is the truth – spiritually, as well as psychologically, physically, and legally), particularly in the workplace, led me to the greater (but flawed) field of diversity, equity & inclusion (DEI) and human rights generally, where I have been an activist/advocate/whatever the term of the day is when you, Dear Reader, are viewing this (which may be years from the day it is being written).
As recent articles I’ve read (and included in my weekly news posts over at my political blog) have pointed out, words can kill (and bigots are intellectually inept), but words can heal and save lives as well, so I started writing letters for Amnesty International in the 1980s (which was my experience of being in a genuinely and actively caring community, in many ways).
I still am writing for human rights – albeit emails, now.
I also started projecting love to the world in the 1970s, as a result of reading the books of the controversial author T Lobsang Rampa … and I still am (projecting love, I mean).
And I am still running into obstacles to acceptance from others – sometimes from those who have good or at least reasonable cause to be cautious.
As an example, I know what “nations” my Indigenous connections are with, but I don’t yet know my skin name(s). That limits the types of interaction I can have, given that knowing skin names is becoming more prominent as an issue. Tracking those names down through official channels may require the evil abuse of deadnaming; and I doubt I will ever make contact with people from those nations who may know my skin name (other than my birth family) because of a reluctance I have to travel far - partly because of my health problems, and partly because of resurgent problems of officious bloody-mindedness and wilful blindness to suffering in various sets of officials / authorities associated with various forms of travel.
(One day I will get my skin name(s) from my birth family, but we have other, higher priorities for now.)
Those resurgent problems also crop up in the workplace. I have personally witnessed decades of education, legal reform, and activism, and yet we still have problems ranging from the gender pay gap to toxic masculinity including domestic violence, problems that have worsened under neoliberal governments after progress had been made. In fact, in workplaces generally, we are only in recent years starting to address psychosocial safety.
I also want the psychological security of owning a home for my family, but every fool who wrongly thinks houses are for building wealth (including every coward who fails to open their mouth and challenge that lie when it is spoken) has been a sock puppet of the evil John Howard and made that impossible – along with every builder and architect who maximises building coverage of land (or, in this era of climate crisis, fights against decent insulation/eaves/verandahs – or against compulsory insect screens in rentals).
There is also an element of cluelessness in every person who pushes for social housing without acknowledging, let alone trying to address, the problems of (sometimes physically violent) discrimination, noise, and overcrowding (especially psychologically) in public housing (and public transport – why don’t we see statistics on the rate of sexual assaults vs. passenger density?).
That cluelessness and hypocrisy also exists in the nominally spiritual world.
As I have already written, I first came across that amongst those who claimed to be Christian but were actually neochristian (I do also know people who are genuinely Christian), but that also includes Buddhists who were (and probably still are) arrogant intellectual elitists (as opposed to the Thai colleague of mine in the 1980s who had spent six months as a Buddhist monk and was an excellent exemplar, guide, and friend), shamans in the 1980s who may have been using cultural (mis)appropriation (I have posts which touch on that here, here, and here, but also consider how connections may carry forward from one life to the next, even though those lives may be in different cultures), Wiccans who were transphobic (and their attempts to justify those acts of hate have been shown to be lies by more recent Wiccans who are genuinely inclusive and agents of the Goddess or God & Goddess or multi-gendered Deity – but I had left by then), heathens who are white supremacists (and thereby damage the standing and situation of those who aren’t), Druids who are addicted to words at the expense of service (unlike, for instance, John Beckett or Damh the Bard), the selfishness of those who are focused on personal growth (whether New Agers or Pagans or other), those in the UFO/UAP field who are focused on physical evidence solely or conspiracy fantasies or who have moved into an awareness of the importance of consciousness but without accepting the obligations, duties and responsibilities that come with that, and thus do nothing to make the world a better place (or even make it worse by supporting evil despots like former POTUS45), and other problems including serious criminal offences.
My disappointment has been enough for me to give up searching for a community, but, much as it is rare that one friend can meet all the friendship needs of one person, or a job can provide all the fulfillment needs of a single person, so too I have to accept that my spiritual needs cannot be met by a single path.
And that is why I have decided to start moving beyond the term Pagan.
I came across the clue I needed when I came across an oath based on serving Life – and realised that that is what I have been working at doing throughout this incarnation: serving Life. I’ve often even used that phrase!
So, my preferred spiritual self designation now is “Servant of Life”.
I know that it opens me up to mockery, and it is a term that is unfamiliar to most humans – and that I may yet tweak the wording, but … many humans aren’t familiar with a lot of things they should be (such as being inclusive … ) and I will still use Pagan as a short hand for those I have no interest in deep interactions with.
But from a personal point of view, it enables me to move beyond the constraints of sets of Deities that are limited to one planet – and I know I have had lives on other planets – and the constraints of feeling obliged to be loyal to any one particular path.
So, welcome to me identifying as a Servant of Life (sometimes psychic warrior).
Possible flaws
Where I can, I will try to highlight possible flaws / issues you should consider:
- there may be flawed logical arguments in the above: to find out more about such flaws and thinking generally, I recommend Brendan Myers’ free online course “Clear and Present Thinking”;
- I could be wrong - so keep your thinking caps on, and make up your own minds for yourself.
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Finally, remember: we need to be more human being rather than human doing.
