Does it ever get better?

I am well acquainted with the depths of despair; that place where words hurt in every way and never more than when they give the faintest glimmer of the only thing that could possibly be worse than despair: hope.

Hope makes you drag yourself through the hell you’re trapped in when you’re so broken it’s a miracle you can even move. Hope makes you choke down the agony and anguish, and endure whatever punishment life heaps on top of it, for the unlikely and virtually impossible chance you will survive the pain long enough to discover what it’s like to be free of it.

To be honest, you need hope to suffer. Things can be so bad, you believe there is no hope, but the fact that you’re suffering is evidence that you still have hope even if you no longer know what you hope for. It’s still there, telling you that what’s happening to you is wrong. Hope defies reason, and at some point reason rejects hope.

We reach a point where we become afraid of hope, the certainty that we can always suffer more, especially when our suffering never seems to ease. We want it to end, so we call our hope foolish and blind. We try to deny that it exists, but we cannot bear the thought of a pointless, hopeless, miserable existence. So, we reject existence; we reject ourselves.

We cling to the idea that we’re not worth our suffering. The irony is, when you try to confront Nothing, you end up confronting yourself. When you stand there, truly believing that life is impossible, you overlook the obvious: You have to be alive to feel enough pain to think that way. So, impossible or not, there it is.

Maybe it’s not as hard as you think, to do the impossible. If the only way to escape from hope is by escaping from your very existence, maybe you can finally understand that no one has hope. The truth is, we are hope.

When you start to think about killing yourself, what’s really happening is that you’ve realized that even when your pain has become overwhelming, you can still endure worse–but you don’t want to. The pain you’re in has gotten completely in the way of living.

You’ve withdrawn so far into yourself, you’ve cut yourself off from the world, from the people and things you need to just get by. Killing yourself seems like the only way to end your suffering. You cling to that hope, ignoring the fact that dying will involve unimaginable suffering, because you’re so desperate to stop hurting.

But consider, if you’re that desperate–enough to brave death–can you be brave enough to admit you need help to cope with the problems you have? Can you be brave enough to be honest–first and foremost, with yourself, but ultimately–with others, to say you’re in too much pain to think?

The help you can get will have limits, but you have to be able to ask. Mostly, people will only be able to help you discover what you can do, but you will discover that you can do more than you thought you could, once you start doing things in spite of the pain. Just hold onto what you learned in your darkest moments; you can endure more pain than you are in.

You are the one to decide, but the only way to get out of Hell is by going through it. Your pain is the cost of your passage. It’s your burden to carry, and it’s up to you to shoulder enough to grow in strength and endurance, to increase the pace of your progress.
There’s no need to kill yourself, taking on more than you can handle. There’s no good reason to lie helpless for longer than you need to collect yourself for another attempt.

You never have to give up on yourself, even if everyone else does. Respect your limits, but don’t be afraid to push them. After all, that’s what your hope has always challenged you to do. The frustration you feel with yourself is simply a reflection of what you truly believe yourself capable of. Don’t be disappointed or mad at yourself. It’s hard to figure things out when you’re not consciously making an effort.

Above all, don’t cheat yourself by looking for the easy way out. If it looks easy, it will cost you more–in pain and suffering–in the end. Accept that there is a price to pay; it’s part of the value of being you.

Impulse

Who am I? Why am I here? What is the point of my existence? These are questions we all ask at some point in our lives, and we can go our entire lives without knowing the answer. I suspect that a lot of people try to avoid thinking about it, not knowing how to begin answering, and I wonder how long a person can go without asking them. There are an endless number of situations and circumstances that can force us to confront these questions, and other soul searching questions like them. For me, the question can come up as a result of gender issues, but I’ve had it come up in many other circumstances. The answers, whatever they are, test the limits of my understanding, because in many ways I am the awareness brought into focus by both the sum and the gestalt of my understanding. In the scope of my understanding, I am aware that I am not driven by a desire to be female. I am driven by an impulse that is at once too simple and too complex for words, because words will never serve to express that impulse. Because I found myself in a body that I was not able to express myself properly in, it was only natural for me to become obsessed with finding a better way to express myself. I put a lot of thought and effort into figuring out the best way to embody myself in human terms, and because I was thinking in human terms, my self image is based on understanding the compromises that allowed me to be as true to myself as possible. Of course, human limitations are based on the limitations of reality, which are the perceived limits of existence — or rather the limits of perception. The plain, simple and painful truth is that I am driven to do something that can not be done within those limits — as we understand them.

I am a person who would have to change the world in order to show myself in it. It is who I am, it is why I am here, and the end — the point — is to have a beginning. It took a long time to understand that I was not limited by what anyone else knew or understood about reality; I can only be limited by my own understanding. At the same time, I realized that people understand a great deal more than they know, and that the truth is pretty much always hidden in plain sight. As I began to see and understand more, I felt the temptation to try to share what I discovered and help enlighten others. I got side tracked trying to figure out how to describe and explain what I perceived, losing sight of my original purpose. I do not need anyone to tell me that what I intended to do was “impossible” and I got tied up in wanting to be able to explain how to do the impossible before I went off and actually did what I intended. I just ended up spending a lot of time thinking about how impossible it was to do what I needed to do. I should have obeyed my original instinct, which was to try to do the impossible without attracting any attention to what I had done, but I did not know how to do that without hurting people I loved. I was also bothered by the implications of what I intended, and the peculiar insight that motivated me to act. I intended to transform my body, but that was simply how I intended to use the power I perceived in myself, how I would truly show myself. I am not actually interested in trying to change the world, but I find myself in a position where it is necessary in order to be true to myself. But, as Morpheus reminded Neo, “there is a difference between knowing the path and walking it.”

I know it sounds insane, and I’m not inclined to convince anyone that it is not. This is mostly a case of me thinking aloud and not much caring who hears. I have spent decades trying to figure out what it would take to accomplish this task, and discovering where I am obstructed by a lack of knowledge, or experience, or resources. I’ve shared bits of speculation in past journals and blogs, but I can never really capture my thoughts in words. Writing allows me to slow my thoughts down and get some of them out where I can focus on specific ideas. I needed to get to the root of what was really bothering me, and even if it sounds crazy, I am more comfortable with what I have said in this post than I have been with any of the posts about being transgendered or needing to transition. Those other posts have forced me to revisit the things that have torn me apart, but in the hope of being understood and accepted I tried to stay within the bounds of what seemed socially acceptable. The problem is that transition falls bitterly short of accomplishing what I really need to do. I have paid a huge price to give myself time to think this through, and for the second time in my life been tempted by the practical alternative and found the cost in terms of personal compromise to be too high. It was never an option, because I always believed in myself, even when that belief was undermined by all the doubt in the world. If I cannot act on that belief, is there really any point to living?

It Takes a Village to Break a Child

I do not often get comments on my blog; if I exclude the pingbacks, spam and my own replies, I’ve received twenty-two comments from ten different individuals since I started the eye of paradox two years ago. Four of those people have identified themselves as transgendered, and like every transgendered person I’ve known, it has affected their lives as bad or worse than mine and I do not have to explain myself to them to be understood. For a long time, I’ve understood that this condition is difficult or even impossible for people who have not experienced it to comprehend. In order to live with normal people, the “cisgendered” if I use the term that’s come into use to describe those who identify with their birth sex, I’ve had to go to incredible lengths to comprehend and empathize with them. I’ve tried many, many times to find a way to describe what it feels like to live with this condition, hoping to make it easier for my family and friends to understand me. As I mentioned, I do not always like what comes out when I write on this topic, because it is a very intensely emotional issue and intensely emotional writing just encourages people to accuse me of being mellow-dramatic. I honestly expect most people to be driven away by the things I have written. Growing up, it did not take me long to learn how incredibly unsympathetic most people are about this issue. I was never asked to explain myself. With the exception of my adopted mother, who confronted me when I was six to ask if I wanted to be a girl, no one ever asked me why I acted like a girl. By the time she asked, I knew better than to admit it, since every other time someone noticed I was just slapped, spanked, or jerked around while being criticized for acting like a girl and being commanded to stop. That does not mean I was not asking myself why I acted like a girl. Even though the question was often on my mind, the only answer that ever rang true was the one that the facts denied.

Because I was being held to a standard of behavior I truly did not understand and which did not come naturally to me, I had no choice but to conceal my pain and confusion in order to conform to that standard. As I’ve said before, it had been made clear to me that my “disobedience” was justification for punishment, rejection and abandonment, so it did not take long before I was conditioned to assume that anyone who enforced the male standard of behavior could not be trusted. I could not ask anyone why it hurt so much to not be a girl or why nothing about being a boy made me happy. I could never understand why compliments and praises highlighting my qualities or accomplishments as a boy left me feeling hurt, hollow and unhappy. I did at least feel relief and gratitude for the fact that it made people happy with me, and at the time I thought that was what happiness was. I was not always caught on the double-edged sword of gender conflict. No one can be, because one thing that Sophia Marsden pointed out is true; life is full of things that can be appreciated no matter who or what you are. In fact, I pretty much lived for those things, using them to distract myself, and in my preoccupation I pretty much forgot myself and acted like a girl — perhaps a tomboy, I should say, since I managed to get away with it more often than not. If there is a bright side to my childhood, it was that I found ways to be as much like a boy or a girl as I wanted to, as long as no adults were observing me. Unfortunately, I was never comfortable with my genitalia, or the fact that the sensitive organ served as a constant reminder of why I was not a girl. It pissed me off that I was never allowed to let my hair grow, and I hated the clothes I was forced to wear.

The simple fact is, there was always something bringing the gender conflict to the fore. No matter how hard I tried to be obedient, practical and realistic, the notion of myself as a boy never took hold. I was always caught off guard by the realization that I was male, and even when I was trying my hardest to keep that fact in mind, I would look at the girls around me with admiration and envy, forever underscored with an ache of loss. I did not really wonder why, because I knew why I felt this way, and knew it was forbidden, so I simply did not allow myself to think of it most of the time. I just locked myself away and died a little more each day. In a sense, when I got my hands on an anatomy book and finally found out why I was not a girl, I understood what was expected of me. I still did not know why I felt like a girl, and I still do not know. I do not know why I feel like I am lying whenever I act like a man. It is a feeling that makes me feel so sick, I cannot even get past the stupid “male or female” check-box on a job application. I mean, if you look at me and assume I’m just another guy, then, well, whatever, I cannot blame you for what you see, but if you ask me, I no longer know what to say. I am no longer a child to be threatened with abandonment, I am no longer willing to give anyone the power to reject me. I am more than willing to do any job asked of me, but I am no longer able to ask for a job, and if I care even an ounce for my own well-being, I cannot say anyone can pay me enough to endure what I have to do to myself in order to work. I got into temping and contracting because, for the most part, I am never in a position to ask for work, I am asked for; unfortunately, even that is drying up, and once my savings run out, I’ll be stuck homeless in Alaska with winter around the corner. The scary thing is, that doesn’t frighten me. I’m long past the point where I can be motivated by fear. Or, I am more afraid of compromising myself ever again.

I do not want to die, and I do not want to quit, but I do not trust anyone, I know I do not fit in, and even though there are people who understand and care, I know they have to take care of themselves first. I have made little appeals for anonymous help because I know I need it, and since I do not really expect anything to come of it, I really feel no guilt for asking. When you hurt enough, you scream. It’s human nature. Walking by and pretending not to hear the screaming is too. I really have no idea what I would have done if anyone had stopped and asked what was wrong. I would really be at a loss if someone thought they could help and offered. If someone wanted to throw money at me, no strings attached, I’d take advantage of it; it would be stupid not to and even if I’ve lost the will to go on living like this, I’m still too stubborn to die. I go through these spells of crying for help unable to decide for myself if they’re the remnants of my morbid sense of humor, a way to make it clear that I can manage a cry for help without killing myself, or simply an example of believing in people even if I am no longer able to trust anyone. In the end, the reason I write is not in the hope of salvation, but in the hope of understanding the answers to questions I do not even know how to ask. The people who shaped my childhood did not understand me, and their actions hurt me because they were carried out by kind and caring people I depended on. I could not tell you who is responsible for breaking my spirit, or failing to simply ask “why does this boy think he’s a girl?” My father stepped out of the picture when I was three, my mother’s parents convinced her to put me up for adoption when I was four, I was passed around between extended family members and foster care like a hot potato. Someone, perhaps more than one, saw my natural personality as a problem and whatever they did, the damage was done by the time I found myself in a safe and stable environment. I guess that just means that sometimes it takes a village to break a child.

Point Penetrating Points Overlapping

A number of my posts, particularly the ones dealing with transgender issues in my life, have been written on a long, dark night of the soul. It can be difficult to come back and read what I’ve posted and resist the urge to delete what I’ve written, because of how dark they are. I have moments when I think, if ever a family member happened to read them, some of what I’ve written could really hurt them. That was never the intention, and yet, there is a ring of truth to the posts I am not able to deny. It is an unfortunate fact that I’ve been hurt a great deal by people who never meant me harm because of things neither I nor they had any control over. It is not their fault that efforts to encourage my growth and development as a son or brother caused me so much pain; they were simply responding to what they perceived me to be. Our current society is the end product of thousands of generations of people struggling through life trying to make sense out of it. If that resulted in the division of human traits into masculine and feminine, and if the cultivation of gender roles led to a society that could not understand that there was a difference between the things that make people who they are and the things that make them what they are, it is not possible to assign fault or blame to any specific group, let alone a given person. As much as it would have made a difference in my life to have been raised among people who were more perceptive, or in a society that was more accepting of individual differences, I would still have grown up with the more difficult problem of being a girl in a boy’s body.

I can look back now and say it would have been better if I had been more assertive, but like most people I did not come into the world with all the answers and because I understood the reality of my situation, I tried to adjust to it. It took a long time to prove to myself that I was right from the beginning to think of myself as a girl. I had to destroy myself trying to be a boy and a man to understand that the only way I could survive as a person was by being true to myself. That was hard, and it is still hard, because there is nothing I hate more than the idea of being a woman trapped in a man’s body. How can I possibly be true to myself when I am betrayed by my own flesh? What future is there for a living contradiction like this? So, even when I am tempted to regret allowing myself to be forced into a role I cannot endure, I can understand how I could try to hard to be what everyone else expected me to be. I tried to be the person everyone thought me to be in the hope that, if I could not hope to live for myself, I could at least live for the people I cared about — the people who cared for me. I had no idea it would cost me so much, or that in the end I would be driven into isolation and have to face the simple, horrible truth of my existence. I lived a lie, and that is why I do not feel deserving of the love my family and friends have had for me. I hate the person I tried to be, and in that irrational way of such emotions, I hate everyone who ever loved that person. I’ve never been the type to hold on to negative emotions; I know that they arise in response to things I perceive to be wrong, cruel and unfair. I could never point a finger of blame, because I keep analyzing the problem until I understand it and what I did, or did not do, to bring it about.

I am a girl in a male body because I found myself and believed in myself, and it ended up hurting me because I allowed the circumstances I was in to overwhelm me. I knew the truth and allowed myself to doubt it. That doubt was all the leverage needed to turn my life into hell. I tried to deny the truth and struggled to believe the lie I created to survive in the world of doubt I had embraced. Why? Do the facts really matter if they contradict the truth? Is reality worth holding onto if you have to dispose of yourself in the process? I could never silence these questions, and part of me struggled to hold onto the one truth I had. I know there have been times when I wondered why this was happening to me, and there are answers I could give myself, but in a lot of ways it was not the question that mattered. If I tried to look at my life as a story, then everything that happens is just part of the plot, and if I think of myself as the protagonist of the story, then it’s all a puzzle I have to figure out. Even if I just call it a life, then the challenge of every experience is to find meaning in what is happening to me. When I open my eyes and consider what is happening with everyone all over the world, then it begins to look like a proving ground, and the purpose of everything that happens in life is to find out what it takes to destroy us. When I think about it, though, I feel like I’ve survived too many things that should have destroyed me, often in ways I would have preferred not to have survived. Even worse, it often seems that it has been because of my weaknesses, not my strengths, that I have been able to survive. I mean, if a person can really die of a broken heart, I could have died a thousand times a day.

The hardest thing to endure is the idea that this is a world without magic and miracles, a world where it is not possible to transform this body of mine in a way that would make it mine. I cling to my sanity in the face of a reality in which the very thing that supports my existence is the thing that denies me the ability to truly live. I’ve always known that there are others who have experienced a conflict between who they are and what they appear to be. I also know that appearances matter no matter what anyone says to the contrary. It is not necessary to be gender dysphoric to feel betrayed by one’s body. It is enough to simply look different. In many ways, it is easier to accept what other people look like than to accept our own appearance. I always had a hard time with the fact that I appeared perfectly normal to other people but felt horribly deformed, with parts of me literally turned inside out. I feel the distortion of my body image by my physical senses as a constant dislocation and disorientation, like I have two bodies, a male body overlapping a female body — which is a lot like wearing over-sized boots all over. That should go a long way towards explaining my instinctive understanding of four-dimensional space, as well as my intuitions about the nature of the mind, soul and spirit. Even as a child, I found it easy to comprehend magic and miracles in terms of multi-dimensional functions, though even now it’s difficult to describe what is clear in my mind using words. Of course, what I think of and associate with the terms “magic” and “miracle” are a bit different from what I find in most literature. For a while, I thought it might be more appropriate to use the term “psychic” or “psionic” instead, but even those terms are met with suspicion and skepticism these days, and I can understand why.

I recall pointing out somewhere that magic is the ability to change reality in spite of what you believe, while a miracle is a change in reality based on belief, and that both are expressions of psychic potential. These were clarifications I made to distinguish the concepts for my own use, both in fiction and in philosophy. As far as I am concerned, there should be no stigma attached to these words, or any mystery or occult terms passed down into the English language, even if scientists and skeptics do like to view them with contempt. Concepts are necessary to communicate ideas, and even if there is no scientific basis for their use, they provide a rich vocabulary for expressing ideas that are otherwise hard to articulate. It’s an approach I’ve been using all along, in previous posts. It was inevitable what I would reach a point where I would feel the need to comment on my use of such terms, just as it is inevitable for a child born in the wrong body to wish for metamorphosis. If all I had done was wish for change, I would have lost it a long time ago. The part of growing up and outgrowing fairy tales and children’s fantasy would have left me hopeless. So, I had to put more effort into searching for a way to change, which meant doing my own research into miracles, magic and medicine. Since I did not have money to throw into it, I was pretty much limited to what could be found in libraries and book stores or what could be learned from other people. It is not hard to find people with strong beliefs about magic or religion, and medical practices are pretty well documented; it did not take long to conclude that what I was looking for was beyond the reach of medicine, and what most people who believed in magic or divine intervention would consider possible.

I should say, anyone who believes in God would say He has the power to transform a body, but since He is our Creator we are meant to be the way He made us. To believe otherwise is perceived as a sign of demonic or satanic influence. I have had this kind of theology used against me, and it falls apart with just a little analysis. We could not be vulnerable to demonic or satanic influence upon our identities unless we had the capacity to redefine ourselves, and we would only have the capacity to redefine ourselves if we were meant to assert our own identities. God might determine where we start out in life, but I don’t think we would be able to live without free will; if it’s all God’s will, then there’s really no one here but God playing with meat puppets. If we are free to make our own choices, who we are is a reflection of those choices, even if we cannot act on them. The problem most of us face in life is not having the opportunities to make the choices we really want to. One of the ways you find out who you are is by understanding the path you choose to take, and why. In any case, the world we live in only makes sense if we have true free will; there is clearly nothing limiting the choices people have except the consequences of those we act on. By chance or design, we are free to do anything we take it upon ourselves to do, and it’s up to us to figure out what the right thing to do is and to do the right thing because it is what we choose to do. In the end, we become better people by choosing to be our best, without the need for threats or coercion.

For all I know, the point of my life was to come to this understanding, to live a lie long enough to want nothing more than to be true to myself and find a way to be true to others, to understand how vital it is to be true even if the truth is out of reach. Perhaps that is something that can only be understood when you need something you cannot have, when you aspire for something that cannot be obtained with words, or actions. The thing I have sought my entire life is the power to change myself, not because I want power for its own sake, but because I need that power to become the person I want to be, the best person I can be. I can be honest and say I am not happy to be the best I can be; it’s not enough to make the most out of what I’ve been given. I want to be the best I can dream of being, and I wish I could achieve that on my own, without compromise. I’m not sure if that is possible in this world. I believe in the possibility, but what I believe only affects what I can accept as possible. In all probability, I will die for that belief because I don’t want to live in a world where it will not come true. Until then, however, I will keep thinking about what it would take to change the world just enough to make myself truly part of it.

Awakening

I have pointed out before that my struggle with gender dysphoria prompted me to search in all directions for a solution to being born in the wrong body, and the determination with which I pursued that goal in spite of all doubts and discouragements — even attempts to accept things the way they were, adapting to and adopting the identity imposed on me by circumstances — says a lot about me, and even about what I ultimately concluded. My existence may be supported by reality, the physical, chemical, biological and sociological fabric out of which we all seem to be spun, but none of these things are me. I exist in my mind and that is why the way I perceive myself in my own mind can not only contradict my physical form, but trump it in importance to my survival. I have heard the theories and arguments on nature versus nurture and taking my own experience into consideration I can say that there are elements in both that can help shape who you are, but only by presenting the options or stimulus necessary for you to determine who you are. I cannot tell you if this is a process of creation or revelation; it feels like both. I am the driving and defining force within my own mind; my mind is the structure and articulation of my soul.

I was born in a context in which everything and everyone seemed to deny my existence, in accordance with the belief that who I was was based upon what I was and where I came from. I was not encouraged to express myself in ways that were inconsistent with my appearance. I’ve described some of the ways I was discouraged in other writing, and how it affected me. The most important result of this situation was that it did make me conscious of the fact that there was more to me than just my body. I have long since realized that most people are not very clear on what a spirit or a soul really is, but I never really had a problem with that. It was difficult for me to understand the modern view of consciousness and things like mind, spirit and soul as mere epiphenomena. I eventually understood the limitations of scientific thinking responsible for promoting this view, as I understand the way it drives scientists to look for a physical mechanism for the origin of consciousness. On the other hand, I had no difficulty understanding that the mind was central to everything that really mattered about existence. Perhaps that is a result of being hyper-conscious of every thought and action I took as a consequence of being forced to override all of my natural instincts and impulses to conform to people’s expectations of me.

I spent my childhood engaged in a constant, intensive observation of myself and everyone around me. I analyzed the world and all my experiences in it as if my life depended on it, often discovering new ways in which it clearly did. In my day to day life I was as deliberate in the control of my thoughts and emotions as I was in the control of my body. I had to understand as much as possible about how my mind and body worked to achieve that degree of control, which included managing or bypassing a number of “hard wired” behaviors and responses. I was thinking hyper-dimensionally long before I learned that was the way to describe what I was doing, or how to explain the process to someone else. I think the first step in thinking hyper-dimensionally involved the unstated realization that everything in my existence occurred in my mind; the “outside” world distinguished from my “inner” world by my physical perspective in it and limited influence over it. In my “inner” world, I was everyone and everything, everywhere at once — all on the verge of being nowhere, nothing and nobody. My consciousness was an all encompassing point with unconscious depths in the shadow of oblivion.

I began to understand that there are many things you have to figure out for yourself, in order to know and understand them, and consciousness is one of those things. I suspect that the scientific study of consciousness will inevitably conclude that it is a complex form of a basic property of “awareness” inherent in energy as the combined medium of information structured in space, time and mind. It might arrive at that conclusion with more esoteric and granular terms, but that is pretty much what it will amount to. Any other proposition runs into the problem of spontaneous generation of the subjective state phenomenon that is the prerequisite for any observer of the objective state. The consequence of any reductive analysis is an increase in relative potential; which is to say that everything is implicit in nothing. The information potential of a singularity is infinite. The interesting thing is that I am not saying anything new here. The same observations have been made again and again in many different ways. None of them make any sense to people until they observe it for themselves. I have no idea what conclusions a scientifically valid description of it will lead to. The first steps in this direction were taken when science confronted the quantum paradox and the possibility of observer based reality.

For my purposes, this observation is not the end; it is just the beginning. To be perfectly frank, I find myself in an untenable position and this can only be corrected in a world where things we would think of as magical or miraculous can occur. In part, this is because any question of physical transformation runs into problems related to the preservation of the mind. I ran into this while contemplating the use of future nanotechnology to remodel a living body, picking this as the most scientifically plausible method of turning a man into a woman. Biological processes can and should be viewed as proof of the concept of nanotechnology, in which complex organisms are constructed on a molecular level. We know that some aspects of personality can be passed on biologically, but there is no indication that the subjective consciousness is transferable. If you were cloned, the clone would be his or her own person, with a unique subjective consciousness. He might be like you, and assuming your exact brain structure and chemical memory was copied precisely, think he was you, but you would not be him. Nothing we know of suggests that there is any continuity of consciousness in that kind of situation. In a transformational process, there is every chance that the thread of subjective consciousness would be broken as one form was broken down and another built up.

The possibility of transitional death forced me to focus on understanding the nature and survival requirements of the mind, and this is ultimately a question of significance for all of us in the face of the inevitability of death. Death is the inescapable paradox. It is reasonable to assume that it inspired the concepts of spirits and souls. The prospect of oblivion is something that drives us to truly assert ourselves, to dream of and strive for immortality. In our lives we experience oblivion in different ways. In a way, the singularity of our consciousness exists in a bubble of oblivion. It is not hard to argue that individual consciousness can only exist if it is shielded from universal consciousness. Until we actually die, we cannot know if death is the end of consciousness, the end of individuality, or the beginning of something else. All we can do is ask what the existence of the mind really depends on. One possibility is that the body and brain is the foundation on which the mind is built, while the other is that the body and brain are merely the scaffolding used in building a mind that can stand alone. We might as well be asking if the world is really what it appears to be. As it happens, it is not. The world as we know it exists only in our minds.

To be more specific, we exist in our minds and the world we perceive is constructed in our minds based on information provided through our senses. What we can know about the universe is based on the information that can be derived through its structure. Perception is the conversion of structure into information, through the structure itself, into our minds. Our bodies, our physical senses and our brains are part of and can be found in that structure, but our minds cannot. Our minds possess structure, based on they way they use information, however; this gives us information and structure in both abstract and manifest states. The process of transition from a manifest state to an abstract state presents us with one dynamic. The constant transformation of structure in the universe and in the mind gives us another dynamic, in general terms “change” or in more specific resolution “time” which we derive from the continuity of perception. It is possible that consciousness emerges from the organization of awareness in the structures of perception through the interpretation of information derived from static interactions with dynamic structure in the universe. The interesting question, of course, is what does the existence of the universe depend on?

I am not sure anyone claims to know an answer to this question, but science has given us a lot of ideas derived from tested information about the universe. It does not give us an origin for the medium of space-time or energy, but it can tell us that all matter is derived from energy and structure. I am strongly inclined to look at space and time as part of the way energy is structured, viewing dimensionality as a component of structure along with size, scale, position, etc. If, as I suspect, awareness is a property of energy, then even the mind can be fully encompassed in the universe. Mostly, energy seems to be the most persistent and pervasive thing encountered along the spectrum of extrapolation or reduction. I would hope that anyone critical of my inclination to view awareness as an inherent potential of energy will understand that I simply find awareness too fundamental to our experience of existence not to be implicit in energy. I think that the obvious complexity of structure found in the human brain and perceptual processes is evidence enough of the difficulty of focusing potential awareness into coherent consciousness. I do not pretend to have a hypothesis for how the structure and organization works, or where in the process proto-awareness becomes awareness or proto-consciousness becomes consciousness. I just see it intuitively in life in the world around us.

I did not get to this point in my speculation following a straight and direct route, and some of the most interesting and useful things I spent time on were essential to getting me this far, such as a study of dimensionality, part of which I have elaborated on in explaining the different dimensions and part of which I only hinted at in this post — dimensions of mind. It is a lot to go over and again, too much to really explain inside another topic. We do not truly know what energy is, but it does seem to be pervasive and universal enough to be a base medium that, through structure in manifest, static, dynamic and abstract ways would give us space, time and mind, the three media that encompass existence as we know it. Information and structure both have intimate relationships with energy. Our bodies and our minds can easily be seen as structured energy. We are energy and information forged into a truly dynamic state. With all the universe to show us that energy sustains information, it seems absurd to think it would simply delete information like us. Most of all, I would think that energy organized to the point of self-awareness would somehow be self sustaining. If we could become more complex by one dimension of space-time-mind, I suspect that maybe we would. Of course, that’s just me commenting on a mountain of unshared speculation.

Slightly Left of Nowhere

I rarely have time to write or draw, and as my friend keeps reminding me, I’ve little hope making a living as an artist or writer. I have to agree, knowing that even brilliant writing and art takes a massive investment of time and effort up front. That seems to be a recurring theme in my life, however. I have never really had the things I needed to succeed in life. I have almost always had a reasonable substitute for the things I lack, which I am sure could have been used to achieve success, if success meant anything in the absence of a life worth living. The hard, cold facts of life undermine my identity and force me to live the life of a person that does not exist. I succeeded in earning enough to live and function as a man, but the process left me with no sense of myself as a person; nothing that I did felt real to me and nothing that I engaged in felt meaningful.

I tended to find purpose in living for other people, and that worked when I was close to the people I cared about. I did not do that well when I was removed by one degree, living on my own. Alone, I shift from positive distractions as a productive member of a household of family or friends to negative distractions, focusing on work, school, art, writing, reading, and latching on to anything I can do to entertain or amuse myself so I do not dwell on the problems I am not able to solve. I do not go about it in a healthy, productive way. It is more frantic and desperate than anything healthy should be. I get a lot done, but I am never satisfied by my accomplishments, because I know they are not contributing anything to my true well-being. I know I am distracting myself and that I am neglecting many of my real needs, but I keep doing it because I will fall apart if I stop.

Work and school take the bulk of my time and effort, and while one allows me to pay the rent and other costs of living and the other improves my future career prospects, I’m really just treading water as I drift out into the ocean. A degree is a bit of a plus on one’s resume, but it is no guarantee of a good job, and may not offset the negative impact of any transition attempt, and the financial aid debt will drain the financial resources I need to transition successfully. So, even doing all the right things, I am digging myself into a hole I might not be able to climb out of. I have tried to use my need for distraction and love of art and writing together in a positive way, to kindle a creative source of income, but my creative impulses are driven by a need for self expression and I end up putting too much of myself into them. I do not mind that, but I doubt there is a huge audience for transgender themed art or fiction. I have put a few things out on the Internet to test the waters, and while I have gotten some great responses, they have been pretty scarce. Not very confidence building!

I’m a pretty stubborn person, though. I feel pretty fragile because I seem to be bruised inside and out, and that makes everything painful — but it does not really stop me if I accept the pain and push forward. I have mostly been tripped up by indifference. Yeah, okay, I know I’m no one important, and I’m slightly left of nowhere, but it is humbling and humiliating to put myself out here about as naked as I can get, and not even get rude cat calls! Personal feelings aside, though, I realize that I am not catering to anyone’s tastes here. I am just being my self, commenting out loud on topics of random interest between fits of bitching and moaning. I use my blog and various journals as a relief valve, and pretty shamelessly at times. I try to share thoughts of greater interest, and I present only observations and insight — I do not try to present myself as an authority. I am happy if I simply inspire thought, and I would like to get enough feed back to know that I do on occasion. I do not think I would change how I express myself to win over an audience as a professional blogger.

On the other hand, if you have ever been slightly left of nowhere, you are my target audience. If you are a misfit or a dreamer and yet believe there’s a place for you in the world, and that our dreams are worth sharing, you’re my people.

A True Identity is Nothing to Fear

The response I received to my last post, Conundrum, prompted me to check out the recent posts of the people who commented or posted blogs in the transgender category yesterday. As a result, I became aware of the outcry against the appointment of Dr. Kenneth Zucker, Dr. Ray Blanchard, and J. Michael Bailey, by the American Psychiatric Association (APA), to the work group responsible for revising the entry for Gender Identity Disorder (GID) in the Manual for Diagnosis of Mental Disorders. The first blog I read on the subject, posted by Gender Outlaw, struck a very personal chord with me. In addition to being transgendered, I was put up for adoption when I was four and spent a year in foster care while the state attempted to contact my biological father so that he might claim his custody rights. It was during my time in foster care that I was terrorized out of identifying myself as a girl and learned to keep my true identity a secret. It took time to learn how to restrain my natural impulses and act like a boy, and the threat of abandonment and rejection was used to reinforce “correct” behavior. By the time I was adopted, this conditioning had scarred me for life, rendering me incapable of trusting anyone with my true thoughts and feelings. When my new family noticed my feminine traits and confronted me with questions about my behavior, or offered even a mild rebuke for “acting like a girl” I was consumed with that fear of rejection and lied to deflect any suspicions.

To this day, I can not remember where I gained the fear of being institutionalized and subjected to shock or aversion therapy. It could have been something someone said to me, or around me. I do not recall, but having suffered an accidental electrocution when I was five I knew what it would do to me, and that fear ensured that my distrust extended to medical professionals in particular. I tried to understand why no one accepted me. Between the ages of five and six I learned the physical facts, and by the time I was seven I knew what a sex change was and how society viewed transsexuals. It confirmed my belief that, as far as the rest of the world was concerned, the thoughts and feelings that made me who I am marked me as abnormal and insane. To protect myself, I could never allow my true thoughts and feelings come to light — no matter how painful it was. The promise of abuse, the threat of violence and possibly even death was certain. I did not want to live like this. I wanted to be a boy, to be sane and normal and wanted in the world.

I did everything I could to accept the reality, carefully controlling my thoughts and feelings, training myself to think and act like a boy, even though I was often clueless about how. I observed and studied boys intently, trying to understand why they did the things they did so that my own actions would seem appropriate. I learned how to be friends with boys and stopped being friends with girls. I became lonely and miserable, my confidence tattered and thin because I could never trust my own instincts. Nothing I did could alter or prevent my true thoughts and feelings from asserting themselves, however. The plain and simple fact that I was not a girl caused instant agony, whenever it crossed my mind. I could understand girls without trying; often better than they understood themselves because my intuition flowed into an analytical mind that questioned everything that others took for granted.

I knew I was supposed to be female, but I did not have the right body and no means of changing it, though I pursued every possibility in secret to the point of absolute frustration and disappointment. I have not given up. I never gave up on finding a way to get the body that goes with my soul, but I struggle and fail to obtain the resources needed. The pose that I maintain, even now that I have overcome my fears enough to assert myself, costs too much. It takes so much out of me. I pay a price for every thought, word, or gesture committed to disguise the emotional tempest that has built up inside of me.

I do not like to answer people when they ask me how I am doing or how I feel. I have to lie, because there is no way to tell the truth. There is no way to describe how I feel, but I would not ask my worst enemy, the most abominable thing in existence, to feel this; how could I ever ask a stranger? How could I put that on a loved one? One moment of this pain is too much to bear. Sadly, when it is there every moment, you learn to. It can not destroy you because it can not exist without you. It is you. It is me.

…

I followed the posts to a petition against the appointment of Dr. Kenneth Zucker, Dr. Ray Blanchard, and J. Michael Bailey. I started this post to include the comments I left along with my signature, not realizing that cracking open that door would let so much out. Now I can see that my comment expresses the conclusions I reached on the repression of identity.

The use of any method to impose a state or frame of mind upon an individual to subvert or subdue that individual’s free willed expression of identity is nothing less than assault with a deadly weapon. No external agent or agency should be permitted to impose a belief, theory or system of thought upon any individual against that individual’s will. Voluntary self examination or constructive therapy should be sufficient to ensure that an individual with ambiguous feelings or confusion is able to resolve any uncertainty that could have negative consequences if an individual were to act in haste.

No one has the right to tell a person who he or she is. A body might house the mind, but it is the mind that makes a body into a person. It is a person’s privilege and natural obligation to assume and assert his or her own identity in accordance with his or her best understanding of him or her self; no one else has sufficient access an individual’s psyche. Social pressure of this nature is threatening enough to the formation of identity and causes significant trauma by itself; as a medical practice it would be an abomination.

The Paradox of Death

There is more to this, to existing, than meets the eye. Is there existence merely because existing has a way of affirming and asserting itself? Is there anything that is not existing that is itself valid? Is there anything precursive or external to existing? If existence is all there is, does it make any sense for our existence to be virtual and illusive. If existence itself is just an illusion, is there anything that is otherwise real?

The idea of appreciating what you have and not wasting it or throwing it away for what you do not have has been used to prevent people from striving to take control of their lives, but does the advice apply to existing—cherishing this state and striving not to trade it away for something that is not existence? Or is it all just words, and we are really missing the point?

I have tried to find a way to seize the means to master my own existence; choosing this as the most worthy endeavor. I already understand the spice of life, and the paradox. I have yet to conceive of a wider arena in which to grow and participate; an alternative to existing. I do not limit myself or my interests in the world as I have encountered it, but have sought to reach into the more extraordinary concourses and viaducts of being.

Indeed, if just basic survival in such a taxing world as this were not so antagonistic to personal development, I would have opened doors only dreamed of in our lives. There is too much holding on to really be able to let go and embrace the possibilities.

I have entertained doubt. Out of respect to the idea that I may not be the clearest sighted or the surest minded. With the limited experience at my command I have achieved answers to questions that, in spite of doubt, confirm the intuition I have always had about the possibilities of existing. In my pursuit of these answers, I have staked my assets on accuracy of thought and action. I have had to blaze new areas of information, and have refined the information I have found. I have tended to find my own answers before finding them echoed by the world.

If what I am learning is to be invested in, then existence is shaped by the available information and it is the integrity of this information that creates the integrity of existence. Existence can be altered and upgraded simply by positing new, more accurate and applicable models. Existence is not an absolute, but more of a very coherent dream. We are the dreamers and the dream. Or as I like to think, the artists and the art.

There are many ways to pose this same idea; the thinker and the thought, has a special ring that should strike chords in anyone, simply because it is accurate, and may well be true. Ideas like these do not ask for fear, but that people consider very carefully what dreams, art and thoughts are—with such influence upon existence.

We are like children, making the rules to our own games, and measuring ourselves by how well we adapt and function under these rules. But, what I think is that the rules are only a tool; a way to place context and consequence on our actions. It suggests an odd idea. Existence is not bound by rules, but experience is. Existing is making one’s own rules for one’s own reasons. In fact, rules don’t even seem like the right concept; designs, ideas, patterns, all serve, since the point of existence deals with seeking definition.

There are so many paradoxical aspects to the basic perspective of being. Is this all the creation of something from nothing? Is this actually the distinction of something from everything? Is this the recognition of things that were always there, just unrecognized and overlooked? Is this just self, and the expression of self? Is information just there, or is it created for the use and then discarded?

Where is the true initiative in existence; which things are side effects and which things are primary causes? Are we decisive creatures or reactive creatures? Meaning, do we initiate, or are we initiated? Or are we self initiating? Have we perhaps gotten ourselves too tangled in our rules (our game), and been forced to stop and decide if we value our rules (our game) more than we value ourselves? Or have we suddenly realized that the rules were so twisted that we were supposed to realize that they were just ideas and that we could outgrow them and live by our own?

Whatever the question, it all boils down to making a choice. In that case, perhaps we should try to make it an informed choice. Since we cannot count on reliable authorities for information on the mystery of existence, we will simply have to put it together ourselves as best we can. Thinking the most daring and integral thoughts, always striving for the most accuracy, there will still be paradoxes to thwart us.

Each paradox is an indication that there is more than just an idea to consider, but a condition, aspect or quality of existence. Since the best definition of a thing is the thing itself, it is important to be able to recognize something when we encounter it or refer to it. Since there is always more than one way to look at something, we have to look at each thing from a number of perspectives; generally the perspectives indicated by the matter in question.

To study ourselves, we have to look at ourselves from our perspective as well as that of science, philosophy, psychology, belief, and so on. There is bound to be some perspective that has more bearing. Now, each of these perspectives also has its way of imposing its rules, and any of these designs will be valid. The task is to decide which of these really goes anywhere viable.

If an option leads to stagnation and entropy, it obviously is not a very good option. Since the worst that could happen would be for our choice to be wrong—though there is no right or wrong—it really has more to do with application. So, the worst that could happen is for us to think that we will choose the best, but choosing the worst out of habit or indecisiveness.

One of the things that has always bothered us is the fact that when we begin our lives there is no handbook explaining what we are and what we are supposed to be doing. We grow up being told what other people have decided and being asked to accept other people’s opinions on what this all means. Most often, we are conditioned to accept that the rules of the game are more important than the players.

However, any child will tell us that a game is meaningless if no one wants to play it. Add to that the fact that any game that has pointless or insufferable rules will quickly loose the interest and support of the players, if not the players themselves. Our game is rather interesting. The rules really suck and one of them is that we have to play or we will be denied the option of playing any game at all.

We begin the game by learning that everybody loses in the end, and the only alternative to losing the game is to lose it even quicker. Even the best players ultimately lose. And the very worst thing we can do is to try to change the game, its rules, or ourselves outside of what the rules allow. The only nice aspect of this game is that we are allowed to have our own little games within it, so long as these games do not conflict with or contradict the main game itself.

But, that is just another opinion, and should be registered as such. Regardless of what game we are playing with our existence, our existence itself is there just the same. That is what is important. Some of us are not really playing games. Some of us are aware that existence asks more of us than any game.

Until thinking is outlawed in this game, we have a right to be concerned with our existence and where we are going with it. Thinking, if it ever is made against the rules, will become the sole asset of those who are forced to oppose the game; which would put those obsessed with playing games at a great disadvantage in keeping their game alive.

Even from within a situation as disadvantageous to our existence, our evolution, as such a game, there are things to learn that still apply to our evolution. Perhaps because it is in our nature that we tend to see what we are forced to confront better than what we are not, one of the things we see in our world is pattern decay.

A living pattern that is growing is very self-maintaining. It can still become distorted, but for the most part, it doesn’t fall apart as easily as a non-living pattern. In any structure built to house life, a certain amount of debris begins to collect as part of life that has to be confronted and dealt with constantly or it soon overwhelms the edifice and begins to choke the life out of it.

When the inhabitants of the establishment are determined and responsible to the edifice, they maintain the patterns, and it remains close to the original expression. If the maintenance is slack, then chaos inevitable takes over. In the mystery of existence, this is found even in the decay of transmitted signals; they have to be boosted and reinforced to carry further. Mountains crumble, deserts spread, and rivers grow clogged with silt or pollution. Stars grow dim or explode. Words, ideas, games lose their meaning.

Memory fades.

Anything which once exists in a deliberate form eventually becomes random and hazy. This is why the new replaces the old. Because the old stops being really alive. We see entropy; degeneration of the patterns that we worked so hard to establish. Do we want this to happen to us? To humanity? It doesn’t matter how hard we try to hold on to something; if we don’t use it, we lose it. Ourselves included. It is impossible to hold on, but it is not impossible to go on.

To stay alive, we have to keep moving. We have to keep recreating ourselves; renewing each gesture and affectation. The best way to keep life is to keep living life. The best way to keep living life is to keep growing. Not literally in an organic mass; but as a constant refinement and exploration. The organism is growing to achieve a temporary design of adulthood.

In doing so it rushes past the marvelous condition of childhood. As much as adulthood has the purpose of reproduction to renew the race, there are no provisions to renew the individual. But individuals are the heart of existence. To survive, the race has to keep replacing its heart.

An individual comes so close to really being alive. An individual holds all of the experience gained from a life, and an individual takes it all with him or her when the flesh decays. Which is a shame. Granted experience is in the past, but that passing experience is the seed of greater and more refined experiences to come. Why does all our sophistication have to die? Especially when sophistication is what our world needs to really grow; what our race needs to grow.

Death has a place in the design, along with destruction and decay. These are all expressions of change, and existence needs change. The problem is, death is a meaningless end. It is illogical for existence to end in death. I shouldn’t have to convince anyone. The answers, and the questions, are all there. It’s my life. It’s your life. I have to live mine, and you have to live yours. Some day we will have a world worth living in, if we have to create it from scratch.

The Impact of Social Stratification

We’re all human. None of us have a say in what circumstances we are born. Pretty much any other characteristic by which people can be defined produces some form of social stratification. Thinking about it boggles the mind. I’ve grown up with the ideas of caste and class, and tried to understand how anyone can willingly accept being “put in their place” by the people around them. In the end, I think it all comes down to the perception of power, the ways in which circumstances can be used to dominate society.

It is fair to say that society, like reality itself, is created and sustained by our participation. Society is an unspoken contract, and one that is sort of worked out on the fly and passed down in its present, imperfect form through each generation. We pride ourselves on the progress we have made, but honestly it seems that whatever progress we have made has been in spite of ourselves. But, how can we address it critically and sensibly?

It is so easy to point the finger of blame, or to rationalize human behavior, but I’m still asking myself, “Why does anyone put up with this?” There are certain things, things we have created, that make us desperately unequal. Consider the tendency of formal organizations to create authority, or formal systems to create wealth, or formal status or merit to create prestige.

These are useful things, but they need to be paired with responsibility, integrity, and humility. Look at the way that groups are formed on the basis of common identity or purpose, but create trends of positive and negative discrimination, and the guidelines for institutionalizing them as caste or class. Think of the many ways that individuals who have gained a privileged place in society have acted to protect their privilege by limiting opportunities, controlling resources, creating surplus labor forced to compete for reduced wages.

The fact is that any system or organization can be leveraged to create power, in one of many forms. Money is economic power. Prestige is social power. Authority is political power. This is power we all have, but depending on where we are in the system, that power is either channeled away from us, or right into our hands, and it happens because we allow it to happen. The problem is that social stratification dramatically shifts the balance and flow of power. The more concentrated the power structure becomes, the more severe the inequalities of society.

The ultimate danger is not revolution, however. The more extreme the imbalance is, the more coercive the power structure becomes, the more controlling it becomes. The real danger is not that people will fight the system. The real danger is that they will simply abandon it. They will try to escape their miserable lives through drugs and debauchery, they will turn to crime and simply take what they require, or they will quietly, desperately, take their own lives.

The Best Way to Fit In? Don’t Stand Out

Grouping is an activity that comes instinctively and automatically to people. It is part of a filtering process that allows us to make sense of our universe. Anything can serve as criteria for grouping, but because this is a perceptual-interpretive process; differences and similarities in physical characteristics are the most prevalent. As we learn and grow, we also associate ideas and experiences with the items in our cognitive inventory. We give values to people, places and things based on personal experience, inherited attitudes and beliefs, and assumptions. Part of our ability to form instant impressions and make immediate judgments is based upon preconception — ideas we have formed previously.

Stereotyping is the result of reaching conclusions based on limited observation or information — often inaccurate or unreliable information. The thing that really differentiates the act of grouping people from the act of stereotyping is thinking. When grouping, you are engaged in a thinking process, perceiving and interpreting raw information, but when stereotyping you are simply calling up some predigested conclusion to save the time, effort and attention required to make an accurate and appropriate judgment. It is called “jumping to conclusions” and it is something we do so much that we rarely even notice it. What this means for social relations is disastrous. By assuming that we “know” what we are confronting when we encounter another human being, we actually fail to perceive that individual as a person. We not only take him or her for granted, we automatically dismiss them as being worthy of greater consideration.

The tendency to concentrate into isolated ethnic groups is a natural instinct for most people. It stems from the desire for a common identity or a desire to belong, and apparently the easiest way for a person to fit in is to not stand out. It is an almost universal aversion to being different. It is the differences between us that become the focus of conflict, as immature as it is. The ability to single a person out of a group gives the group power or justifies decisions that would otherwise be unjustifiable. There are no human traits that are immune to discrimination.

Height, weight, color, sex, intelligence, class, nationality, regionality, whatever it is that makes an individual unique can be used to shut them out of the group. Racial discrimination gets a lot of attention, but what about gender-identity discrimination? When a person who has female psychology and male anatomy acts normal (that is, dressing and acting feminine) and gets raped and or murdered, that is an example of extreme prejudice and discrimination.

The fact is, being different is enough to get a person killed. The reality is, civilization is founded on an impulse that encourages intolerance and breeds fear of individuality.

Each new generation is raised in an environment defined by lingering prejudice and emerging enlightenment, responding to the lingering injustices in positive and negative ways that inform the next generation’s prejudices. The victims are not just disadvantaged minorities isolated from “mainstream society” in ghettoes, or resentfully integrated into “suburbia.” Most of the people in the world struggle with poverty and discrimination because poverty and discrimination tend to be self-sustaining and mutually reinforcing. The thing most people overlook is the fact that the rich are a minority isolated from mainstream society — including the majority of individuals of their own race or ethnicity.

While this may sound like a discriminatory statement, minorities continue to struggle with the System mostly because it is not their System. The government and industry of the United States was created by a specific group with the specific purpose of supporting and promoting their own group. It is a privileged system and while it’s laid out on paper as ideals and laws, it is made real by people who do discriminate and are prejudiced — sometimes negatively, against people of other races or ethnic origins, but primarily positively toward their own race and ethnic group. It is perfectly reasonable to point out this selfishness on the part of the elite, and it is not entirely enviable, but it is human. A better system can only be created by people who hold less exclusive views of people.