So here are a few more experiences and observations from my current gender transition.

Experience With Transphobia

In general people have been far more accepting of this than I expected. Though a lot of people *do* get wierd about all this, I haven’t been attacked, which was kind of a fear I had since I’d heard the experience of the friend of a friend who got mugged (as I understood, because of transphobia). Sometimes people treat me a little less politely, or slightly wierdly, giving me funny looks. Sometimes, I seem to be treated better, especially by women. I suppose it’s normal that bringing out your feminine side could bring out sympathetic reactions from women.

I think women are generally more comfortable or even happy about transsexual men because they’re used to men being on the “other side” of the Battle of the Sexes, and it must be refreshing to see a man willingly change over to this more disadvantaged side of society. In the same vein, I think some men see this as a kind of trechery, consorting with the enemy or betraying men’s mandate to reign over women. (This seems a bit exaggerated but I think something like this happens on an unconscious level).

As I said, I haven’t had many problematic reactions from people. The first couple of days I got funny looks on the metro, but since then I’ve somehow learnt to blend into the crowd. At the first glance I definitely appear like a woman, without any major inconsistencies, and I think you have to look a bit closer to notice. I think it’s cause I’m now so comfortable and confident in my womanhood, and subconsciously people pick up on that. I’m not sure because I haven’t asked, but I think I’ve had a few longish interactions where I didn’t get found out at all.

The worst reactions have come from my girlfriend’s friends, who are very “normal”.

I purposely filter my friends by being very overt with my nonconformity. Anyone who isn’t okay with nonconformity just naturally finds the exit and disappears from my life, usually without fuss.

However, María José is more covert. She doesn’t really hide anything, but she also doesn’t expressly communicate everything that she is to everyone she meets. (I pretty much do. There is practically no such thing as a secret in my world. Well, you’ve seen how I write in my blog).

I think that’s fine, by the way. I admire how she lives her life and think she does it in a way that’s consistent with her values. At the same time, it’s not for me, which is also fine.

So — María José still has some more or less “normal” friends. There were some amusing, and occasionally not so amusing, happenings caused by that.

The first time María José came out as having a transsexual girlfriend to her friends was at a party she held at her house. I hadn’t arrived yet, and they took that opportunity to quietly freak out about me.

“What shall we say??”

“What will he look like??”

etc etc.

During the party, there was not a single mention of my transsexuality, which is odd considering that they certainly seemed to have found it interesting before I arrived. I introduced myself to everyone with the standard Spanish two kisses. Men normally shake each other’s hands rather than kissing each other. Watching the expression on their faces to my kisses was rather amusing.

Worse was yesterday, where the husband of one of María José’s friends wrote to her saying that he didn’t want me in his house (I’d been there for a “girls’ night” with María José’s girl friends) and that he didn’t want any hint of me in his life. Actually, he referred to himself as “we”. This either means he was trying to be more imposing by pretending to have the support of other guys in that social circle, or that the social circle actually was so sheep-like as to have a homogenous opinion about me. Pretty incredible either way.

I haven’t been very affected by this, because I didn’t read the message, don’t particularly care to be friends with most of these people, and I managed not to take it personally. María José had a very hard time of it emotionally, though.

Exhaustion

I’m starting to feel a sense of general exhaustion recently. These last three weeks have been a very sustained effort and of course emotionally very intense too. I’m starting to feel the need to pace myself, go easy on it for a while.

I think for now that means stop being scared of what people will think or whether people see me as a transsexual.

I’m generally pretty good at that, but this time it wasn’t so easy, particularly because I was scared of being actually physically attacked or mistreated, and also because this was something that mattered to me and not just an attempt to screw with people’s minds like a lot of my stunts are.

If I can wake up to the fact that most people just aren’t making that big a deal of me, I think I can maybe then slow down a little and give myself some space to breathe and regain my strength. I think I need that. While I’m very enthusiastic to see this project completed and just enjoy being a woman without all this awkwardness, I think I should be able to relax and accept this step of the journey too.

I put up with being male for 22 years, another year or so of ambiguity can’t be so bad. Besides, I’ve already come really far; a lot of people say I really look like a woman now. So I should be proud of that. <3

Feminism

The experience of being suddenly, and pretty much unexpectedly, a woman is almost surreal. For this reason I think I still have these thoughts of, “Can I really be trans?”. Well, I have that thought too because I know I have to be sure before taking certain steps, but I’m trying to chill out on that for a while; I know I don’t need to do everything at once and answers will, as always, come in their own time.

One of the things that made me question recently, and have done in the past, is that having an idea of myself as a woman can occasionally feel… humiliating.

And that is such a terrible thing to say. But I think in society we have such a twisted way of viewing women that it’s seen as somehow slightly degrading just to be a woman.

If I look at being a woman through that lens, obviously it’s not such an attractive thing. But I know I don’t have to look through that lens, and becoming a woman is an excellent time to get rid of that. (I know many women, despite it being their own sex, haven’t done so yet, but perhaps doing this change gives me an extra chance to be aware of it).

I’m seeing now clearer than ever that being an awake woman basically forces you to be feminist. There are so many stupid ideas attached to society’s definition of woman. To live as a healthy being, you basically have to be defying people’s expectations at every turn.

My special challenge is to break down my subconscious sexism and find a personal concept of “woman” that contains dignity and unabashed strength on one hand, and unrestrained femininity on the other.

What It Means To Be Female

Since the last post I’ve been pondering what it really means to be female or male. I don’t presume to have an answer to that, though I did come to a metaphor which may help to shed light on the matter, or not, as the case may be.

We have feminine or masculine energy. They are independent of your body or chosen gender. Spirits, by which I mean our non-physical aspects*, have both feminine and masculine energy and can even be roughly classed into “feminine” spirits and “masculine”, though I don’t think they usually have a gender as such.

*This works as a metaphor if you can’t stomach New Age type concepts.

Imagine each of us is a painting. There are many things in the painting, many different aspects of ourselves.

By “aspects” we could mean interests, habits, forms of presenting oneself, and so on. I hope this is understood. Let us continue.

Some of these aspects will be more feminine – let us imagine these to be red. And some of these aspects will be masculine – let us imagine them to be blue. And of course some aspects will be varying shades of purple.

All of us can have both feminine and masculine aspects and that says nothing about our gender whatsoever. It’s common for women to be have mostly feminine aspects and men to have mostly masculine aspects, but the opposite can happen. It’s not healthy or even really practical or possible for anyone to have ONLY feminine or ONLY masculine aspects.

Our gender can be considered to be the colour of the background which all of these aspects are painted upon. For instance a masculine girl could have a red background with lots of blue things encompassed within that space. Or a feminine man could have a blue background with lots of red things within that. A feminine girl would be red on red, and a masculine man, blue on blue.

While you’re free to have as many feminine or masculine things in you whatever your gender is, your gender serves to give a context for that, and flavours it by its contrast or concordance.

I have no idea if this metaphor is accurate but it sounds good.

Finding Sophia

My biggest challenge I think now is finding out who is this Sophia person anyway.

This is the biggest identity crisis I’ve had in my life. I had false assumptions about who I was for such a long time. Now I have no assumptions, and no real idea of what I am. I don’t have much of a mental image of myself. I don’t have much of a feel for my own energy.

I think… maybe…

I think that Sophia is the sort of girl who likes to laugh and dance. I think she’s absolutely in love with life and loves to express her playful exhuberance.

I think that Sophia is kind of a soft peaceful, earth-mother hippy girl with a leaning into lavish princess-like tendencies as far as style is concerned. I think she really loves to look good and to look in the mirror. I’m trying to let that feel okay. I don’t think there’s anything bad about it.

I think that Sophia is really, really, peace-loving. I think she hates any kind of conflict whatsoever. And I think she might have a hidden ability to console warring sides in a conflict, to bring people together, and to heal wounded souls. I think she’s full of shining energy, very creative and very caring, with a sense of calm purposefulness, but at the same time she’s very rooted and very still. I think she’s in love with Mother Earth, even though she never knew it until now. I think she could hug the Earth and feel herself sink into that energy like a sweet and profoundly nurturing death.

I think she also loves to fly. I think she’s one of the freest people I know. She’s beautiful in her freedom.

I think she also loves children and wants to be a playful joyful mother of a gaggle of kids in a polyamorous commune.

She’s creative and loves to write and do art and create businesses. She’s very intelligent and spiritually aware and powerful. She doesn’t worry about making men insecure with that. The guys who have a problem with that are the ones who need to be shaken up a bit. She’s rather feminist, actually.

Within her peaceful energy lies a revolutionariness that’s set to change the world. The peacefulness makes it even stronger as there’s nothing to prove and no-where to go; it’s almost inevitable in quality. She has ideas and expresses them. She inspires others to change, inspires others to love, and leads the way by changing herself and expressing pure and authentic love.

She combines strength and tenderness, love and power, self respect and a tender vulnerability that is her feminine core. She aspires to be there for everyone who needs her and not let anyone feel alone or rejected as she once felt.

I think Sophia is far more tender and soft than she ever admitted as a man. At the same time, I think she’s one of the strongest people I know, and one of the largest non-physical presences I know that’s incarnate.

This is who I think Sophia is now. I think I will learn much more about Sophia in the coming months and years. Actually, I think it will be when I really know who I am, that I’ll know I’m ready to take the first irreversible steps in my gender transition.

Being Beautiful Because I Want To Be

As a woman, I’ve suddenly found myself caring about my appearence. It’s not true that women do this just because they “have” to. As a part of my newly discovered gender, and perhaps also as a result of being able to look at myself comfortably in the mirror now due to reduced gender dysphoria, I find myself doing it very naturally.

I often find myself brushing my hair and doing my makeup even though I’m having a night alone in my house. It just feels good, in some way that’s almost indescribable for me, perhaps because I’m so un-used to it.

At the same time as I’ve discovered this impulse, as a woman I’ve also come under more pressure to be attractive from the outside. I suppose it’s normal to confuse these two things.

I have a very strong disdain for anyone telling me how I should look or whether I look good enough or not. I like beauty but I don’t care for fashion.

However, the way people see you can be a feedback for how you see yourself, if you filter it right. It’s like everyone who surrounds you is a walking mirror. So you want to make some special effort to look good before you go out.

I’m learning to filter new influences now, having to learn a new set of what I do and do not like. There’s a lot of messages directed towards women that I don’t know what to do with.

I know I don’t want to pick up the sort of insecurity women can get because of societal influences. I don’t want to fall for “you’re not beautiful enough” or “you need to buy more products or be more of a submissive masochist to be beautiful enough”. But, I do want to be beautiful, and I know that’s a pure desire in itself, and has nothing to do with external influences.

Not Caring About Passing As A Woman

I mentioned this before but I want to stop caring so much about people seeing me as a transsexual now.

I’m chilling out a bit and seeing people don’t make that much of a big deal of me as I’d like to think. I feel a bit safer.

I’m seeing that I, personally, can feel fine with the idea that people see me as a transsexual. I feel uncomfortable if I have anything about me that really doesn’t fit into a female persona, but that’s just my personal gender dysphoria, mostly, I think.

I’m realising that what matters to me is to feel like a woman, and insofar as I want to care about what people think about me, what matters is that they see me as a woman. They can also see me as a transsexual. That doesn’t matter; so long as they see me as a woman, first.

The more I’m comfortable with this the more I think other people are comfortable with this.

A friend of mine told me something interesting which she heard in theatre school.

Her teacher had told her, “people look at the places where you maintain your consciousness.”

So if you’re very conscious of one part of the body, people will look at that. If you’re very conscious about being transsexual, people will look at that.

Since hearing that I’ve been endeavouring to maintain my awareness in my sense of myself as female. It’s very easy to find that energy and rest in it. When I look in the mirror, I try to see and feel that energy rather than focusing on details like how maybe my face’s contours are a little masculine. When I’m really feeling my feminine essence, all those details fade into the background and become irrelevant.

It amused me to get interest from heterosexual men on OKCupid recently. I’ve also had slightly flirtatious interactions with men I’ve met in shops and so on. It seems to me a strong proof that I’m connected with my female essence that I can attract straight men like this. Some of my other relationships have transformed too, that is some people have become less attracted to me and some more, depending on their gender preferences (and my own attraction has generally changed to reciprocate that).

This is what feels best to me: to lose awareness of details and focus on, live in, that overall sense of female-ness. It feels very comfortable and very joyful. Now I need to let go of any remaining nervousness and really release myself into this experience, really enjoy it and be one with it.

Then maybe I’ll discover who is Sophia.

Related:

Sex Change

Observations On Transsexuality

Transsexual Facebook Updates

How To Get Girls (For People Who Don’t Want To Be Sexist)

I made some – I think – thoughtful facebook updates about my recent process in transsexuality. I thought I’d post them here for the interest of my readers, and for posterity’s sake, besides.

Feeling Like A Gorilla

Woke up feeling like a gorilla.

Shaved. Looked in the mirror. Felt like a gorilla.

Showered. Brushed my hair. Looked in the mirror. Felt like a gorilla.
Put on my makeup. Felt like a gorilla.

Whispered “my name is Sophia” several times in my female voice. Felt a bit like… a gorilla.

Put on a nice blouse and brushed my hair into a nice style.

Felt like Sophia. ♥

Fitting In As A Man

I love how much softer, gentler my attitude is now I don’t feel I have to overcompensate on masculinity to fit in as a man.

At War With Myself

As a man, many parts of myself were at war. As a woman, many of those parts are finding peace.

I notice particularly how, previously, I saw or felt dating as a kind of war. I even saw the illogic of that, and how it was harming me and sometimes others, and I made some improvements by becoming conscious of that but it didn’t disappear entirely.

Now there’s a new peace in me I never had around dating. I can see people who I think might have dating potential, but I don’t have that pushy man-energy trying to get something to happen almost at all costs.

I guess it has something to do with how I can appreciate women so much more as female friends and enjoy that so much I don’t need to do anything else with them. Maybe it’s because they can now see me for what I am, a woman, and not expect me to be battling for their vagina, and open up, and let me share this peaceful girly energy with them. As for possible romantic relationships with men, that’s a whole new dimension I expect to explore in the not too distant future…

With romantic prospects, or, as I prefer to call them now, “people”, I know and this time actually FEEL that whatever happens, happens, and there isn’t actually any outcome that is better than any other. Everyone is as they are, and the connection develops as it is, as it will.

I am still not sure what did it, but I think my previous imbalance in dating was part of the whole complex of problems caused by trying to be a man when I wasn’t. This one massive knot just opened itself up and unravelled in one decisive cut.

Fairy Pirate Princess

Changed my twitter profile: “Indigo adult, transsexual, vegan, believer in unschooling, dreamer of a gift economy, polyamorous, boss free, fairy pirate princess.”

It’s nice how twitter forces you to think succinctly. I like this as a summary of what I’m about

Magic Sex Change

It’s comforting to consider that if I could change my body magically, with no hardship or responsibility about having it right forever (e.g. it could also be magically reversible), I would not think even a second about doing it. Seriously, I would say “Yes!!” absolutely immediately.

From this thought it seems pretty clear that most of my doubts related to changing are to do with a healthy respect for so much work and responsibility. I don’t think there can be any doubt I want to be a woman. I think I just freak out a little at all the implications of it.

Stupid Straight Men

Got my first stupid message from a straight man after changing to female on OKCupid. I should consider it an initiation into womanhood XD

Wedding Dress

I want to wear a wedding dress for no reason.

Related:

Sex Change

Observations On Transsexuality

This article is an addition to the previous article, where I explain my decision to change my sex. Here I’ll just make some observations which have been passing through my head about my current process in transsexuality.

Voice

It took me about two days of serious practise to achieve a female voice. I just resolved to attempt to speak femininely every time I opened my mouth, and through some fine tuning I got it. It basically involved just trying and trying and playing about with how I used my vocal apparatus, rather like learning to whistle.

I have to say I’m very grateful for getting it so fast. The voice is a big difference in people’s eyes between transsexual and wierd transvestite. Or perhaps the difference is in my own eyes. I find it hard to feel like Sophia if I hear a man’s voice coming out of my lips.

Unfortunately, a couple of days ago my female voice started to get hoarse and my throat started hurting, so I have temporarily reverted to just speaking in a male voice and am going to give it maybe a week for my vocal cords to heal. I think, though I haven’t found any very useful resources on this, that I just need to build up the strength in my vocal cords bit by bit and that I overtaxed them this time.

I’m rather bummed about this; dressing feminine but having a male voice I feel faintly ridiculous, like a gorilla in a dress except not THAT ridiculous. It’s also a bit of a slow in my momentum, since I started out with this intense energy and made huge leaps forward but now I’m having to take a couple of steps back. Of course, no-one said this was going to be that easy or fast; I should be thankful it has been as fast as this.

But……… I want to be a fairy pirate princess like nowww.

The Gender Binary

I’m the sort of person who, in theory, would like to believe that there is no such thing as gender and that it’s all a fabrication and that there is just a big combination of things which tend to get sorted into two different boxes but you can choose freely from if you like. I kind of still believe that. In a way. I most definitely believe in everyone’s freedom to do that and to defy gender and invent their own personal expression exactly as they see fit.

Several people brought up variations of this theme with me. I’d love to agree that there’s no such thing as gender. Except that something inside of me cries out that there definitely is, and I want to be the other one.

I’m not sure what to make of that, but I know reality trumps postulation any day. If I feel something, I feel it.

Sexuality

I’ve noticed an interesting development since I’ve started seeing myself as a woman. I was already bisexual, but I’ve started to find men a little more attractive, and women slightly less attractive or at least less urgently attractive (my sexuality feels a little less aggressive or pushy or needy, which is a rather nice change I think).

In this last week I’ve noticed a serious attraction to a total of three men, and all of them on greater levels I think than I’ve normally experienced before. It’s quite interesting, and quite exciting. It would be wonderful to be able to enjoy men as much as I enjoy women, especially seeing as that way I’ll have a much larger dating pool to choose from – heterosexual men – than if I was just having to focus on bi and lesbian women.

It’s even interesting for another reason – namely, that if I go through with the total change I will have experienced both being a man attracted to women and a woman attracted to men – and will be in an unbeatably priveliged position for commenting on the dynamics between men and women and trying to help us all understand each other better.

Though I’m sure the most interesting experiences are yet to come, I had a noteworthy moment today when I noticed I was attracted to a man who would be absolutely bad for me if I ever gave in and acted on my attraction. An annoying, sexist, rude asshole and absolutely *hot* although I don’t want to ever admit it to him. Ever.

If I turn into one of those women who are always complaining about their boyfriend, …kill me.

The 1%

As of this writing I’m 99% sure I’m a true blue transsexual. I feel good when I look and feel like a woman. I feel bad when I see myself as a man. At best I can more or less accept manhood; on the other hand I absolutely enjoy womanhood and feel far more comfortable with it.

The trouble is that this is 99% and not 100%. If it were 100% the path ahead would be a little easier to figure out. I’d just take the steps necessary. They’d probably have their hardships, but at least I wouldn’t have uncertainty to deal with.

So long as I have that 1% doing anything that could have a permanent effect is risky. And, a lot of the important things in this path have permanent effects. For one thing, hormones (which I expect to continue after starting) will make it impossible for me to have biological children. They might also make it impossible for me to have an erection: that particular effect depends on the individual. Some can have erections even after hormones, some can’t.

I think I wouldn’t mind too much as I am now. I enjoy passive sex and even am starting to get turned off using my penis for active sex. I know I’m not incapable of enjoying active sex though. And I have to admit that the sensations that a penis gives are wonderful even if psychologically I’m not so into them any more.

But if I stop being able to use my penis for penetrative sex, it wouldn’t be such a big step from there to get an operation and turn a non-functioning penis into a fully functioning vagina. I’d like to! But that is serious stuff.

Both of these things really assume that I don’t change what I want later in life. If I suddenly start really wanting a penis, I’m pretty much f****d.

This is why this little 1% is so annoying, so critical.

Serious Questioning

I don’t really have any doubts that right now, I would like to have a female body and would give up my penis and my fertility to do it.

I’m pretty sure I would have liked that at any point in my life, if I look back, at least misplaced macho-attitudes in some stages of my life aside.

So… okay, where is the doubt again?

I suppose it’s this: gender fluidity. Of all of the possible doubts that I ran through in my head, even listed, it’s the biggest one.

Gender fluidity is when your gender identity can change over time.

I think the mere existence of this possibility makes permanent gender change a slight risk for anyone. But then, it isn’t THAT common for a cisgender (normally gendered) person to just suddenly decide to go trans, and I think in those cases it’s almost always a case that they’re discovering desires they hid or repressed or just didn’t acknowledge (which I think is my case) and not because they had an internal gender shift. So, I’m thinking it shouldn’t be THAT common for a transgender individual to suddenly change back.

Or so I think. Certainly, I don’t think there’s ever been a time in my life where I wouldn’t have secretly have wanted to be a woman, but the fact that I refused to acknowledge that most of the time makes it hard to tell who I was from my memories.

I *have* had times when I felt more male than other times, though I notice that they tended to be when I was in the vicinity of male friends and I think wanted to fit in. I think I’m very able to be flexible and change my vibe, though I don’t think that I was quite expressing myself as I wanted to.

The fact that I never really felt comfortable around male friends I think says something.  I always felt ever so slightly nervous trying to fill the role as the male they saw me as, whereas I feel a sense of comfort among women now that I’ve never felt before as a man among men. I also feel more comfortable among men when they percieve me as a woman, as I don’t feel I have to engage in their particular way of relating.

Well, at some points I’ve overanalysed things and I came to decide just to push ahead and feel my way through. Though I can still see the value in questioning, at times I still think that experience may provide better answers than thought. Karla, one of my greatest emotional supporters in this change, told me on Facebook, “you GLOW as your innerself for fucks sake”.

I liked that As more and more experiences like that build up, where I and other people just see that I am happier and more beautiful as this new person I’ve decided to be, I suspect more mental/analytical doubts will become less and less relevant. I can keep up hormone-free transsexuality for as long as I need to while I’m in this stage, and then I when I’m ready I can take the next step.

Observations On Transsexuality

I’m not finished ruminating on all this I suspect… well in one way or another my change has been practically the exclusive topic of my conversations for a couple of weeks now, so it shouldn’t be a surprise that I’m writing about it on my blog too.

I know I promised a post on MDMA. I haven’t forgotten.

Related:

Sex Change

Using A Lucid Dream For Personal Exploration

How To Get Girls (For People Who Don’t Want To Be Sexist)

Male Intimacy

Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/crazycatchthecat/3676763773

I was going over with my girlfriend Maria José the process I used to resolve my curiosity as to how to get girls.

(NOTE: I wrote this a few months ago and realised I hadn’t published it on my front page, only in a hidden area to show it to some friends before forgetting about it. It’s an ironic moment because I’m currently in the process of becoming a girl, but I thought this post needed its moment of limelight. Plus! Sexy pics!)

I started out with that question several years ago, when I was about 15. I later found out that the question was wrong, and that I had to find a different question in order to find a fulfilling answer. To anyone who felt annoyed at the implications of the title, yes, the new question was something that would feel less objectifying to women. But I won’t spoil it quite yet.

As I said, I was talking to Maria José, one of my girlfriends (I have several; see polyamory). In this conversation I broke down the problem and the solution to the type of thinking behind “how can I get girls”. I explained my search within the seduction community to find the answer, and how I found it after leaving the seduction community.

The First Question

“How to get girls” is the first question.

The problem with the question is that it contains unexamined assumptions. If you plow ahead and try to “get girls” without examining these assumptions, conflict and unhappiness are sure to result.

The first, obvious assumption is that girls need to be “got”.

They don’t.

To “get” a woman obviously implies possession.

Come on, we don’t need that.

Digging deeper, I think there’s the suggestion that sexual satisfaction needs to be “got”.

It doesn’t either. It’s not something you “get” (take) from another. This is a deep-rooted psychological issue that causes no end of harm in our society. Sex is shared, not taken.

The implication behind either of these “gets” is that your desires must be taken, rather than mutually fulfilled. This involves conflict rather than cooperation. It involves some form of pushing against the desires of another person, rather than finding a joyful mutual fulfilment of desires. There’s also the implication somewhere there that there is a lack that needs to be fulfilled. Really, there isn’t any actual lack of sexual or romantic fulfillment in the world – not really. You just need to align yourself with it rather than blocking its presence in your life.

The Second Question

Which brings us to the second question, the question we should be asking.

“What are my true desires in the sexual and romantic arenas and how can I align myself in such a way with life that they are fulfilled rather than frustrated?”

It involves questioning the true meaning behind the frustration we’re feeling. It requires not taking the original question so seriously, but looking what’s behind it. We’re looking for a fulfilment, sure; but not a fulfilment of the original desire, which is unfulfilable in truth. More than fulfilment, we’re looking for a resolution.

Frustration with the original question can bring us to the questioning of it. But we can never come to the second question as an attempt to answer the first. We can only come to the second question by giving up on the first, realising we should give up on the first. However, this is good; in fact, if we look closely, we might see that we came to the first question because deep down, some part of us was really looking for the answer to the second.

The First Answer

So what is the answer to the second question? There are two answers, tackling it on different levels.

The first answer is simple.

You can align yourself in such a way as to fulfil your romantic or sexual desires simply by meeting more potential romantic or sexual partners.

There’s nothing you need to do to be worthy of romance or sex other than meeting someone who happens to have compatible desires with yours. Once you’ve met that person and spent a little time together, satisfaction of your mutual desires basically just happens.

Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/akudrin/5009056056/

Vested Interests

Yes, it does. Yes, this is radical. It hurts the seduction community, which has based its entire existence off the idea that romantic or sexual satisfaction requires some sort of guerilla warfare tactics.

Dating coaches make millions (yes, sometimes millions) by selling their products to people on the premise that without their products, sexuality just wouldn’t happen. They need sexuality to be hard, otherwise they would make no money.

Entire belief systems owe their existence to this flaw in people’s thinking. The entire forum community centred around seduction needs it. Apart from people with financial interests fuelling the market, there are people who need it to continue just because they don’t know what they would believe if it didn’t.

So that all ends with the understanding that if only you meet the sort of person who has compatible desires with you, you can fulfil them with exactly zero effort.

Finding Sexual And Romantic Partners

This includes no-strings-attached sex. There are plenty of women who want to have no-strings-attached sex and who don’t want to play games to get it. It’s true that most people (including women) are brainwashed into thinking that women shouldn’t “give it up easily”, which means you might need a certain amount of intelligence in finding more enlightened women. But if you’re smart enough to not think that women should be shamed for “giving it up easily” (oh God… you are smart enough, right?) it shouldn’t be hard to find women who are just as smart.

Finding partners who are compatible with fulfilling your desires is as easy as going to where you would expect to find them. This usually means going to places you enjoy going to, because most people want romantic partners who have things in common with them. It’s unintuitive, but you may just need to do what you would do anyway – just with a little more effort in getting out of the house and being social with it. To make just a random example, if you enjoy writing, you could either just limit yourself to writing at home or go to some sort of writing interest group and share your work with others. Just an example.

I personally make sure to go to all the polyamory related events in my city, because I know that my main requirement for a romantic/sexual partner is that they be into non monogamous relationships. This also conveniently filters them for being open minded and interesting people. Apart from that, I use online dating services like OKCupid which are a wonder for connecting compatible people.

The Second Answer

Now for the second answer, which is a bit more involved.

The second answer is that you need to clear away all the blocks which make this very simple reality complicated.

Yes, sex and romantic relationships ARE simple. You just do them. If you don’t have one, you just need to find someone who is compatible and they will happen naturally. That’s all there is to it.

It’s us who make them complicated. In both men and women, there is a pile of cultural conditioning which blocks us from ever being happy in relationships, unless we find that conditioning and challenge it.

We’ve gone over some of it.

Men often think that women have to be “gotten” rather than simply, um, met. They think there’s a lack of sexual or romantic satisfaction and that it needs to be secured, possibly owned. They think they have to fight a war to get their satisfaction.

OK. Now let’s go deeper.

In our society we are trained to have an unsolvable problem in our psyche. This problem keeps us constantly moving, constantly fighting a war with one another.

The Basic Error

This war can be summed up in the sometimes stated, sometimes hidden – sometimes conscious, sometimes subconscious – belief that:

Men always want sex

Women never want sex.

I believe that this dynamic was set up in pre-feminist society when women were forced into situations where they basically had to depend on men for survival. It may have even had its roots in the dark origins of history when men fought to own and use women as sexual slaves.

In this state of dependency women needed a bargaining chip in their favour, so they used sex.

Over the years, perhaps helped along by the Abrahamic religions’ sexual perversities*, a myth was created that women didn’t want sex. Men therefore had to bargain with the women to “take” sex for themselves. This gave women a certain sort of power, even if it meant totally ignoring their *own* impulses.

*Perversity: ideas such as, “extramarital sex is a sin” “having more than one partner is wrong” “masturbation is bad” “chastity is admirable” “sex is only for procreation” … etc etc

Note that historical speculation is always going to be unreliable and subjective. Take this only as a narrative to attempt to explain my point of view, as an attempt to paint a picture of the most general state of affairs between the sexes.

So women are taught not to want sex. They are taught to be coy, to demand commitment, and to avoid having sex outside of a committed relationship in order to avoid being shamed as a “slut”.

Men, conversely, are taught that they *always* want sex. Sex, to them, is victory over women’s attempt to withold it. I suppose they resent the manipulative actions of unenlightened womenkind. Or they see women’s challenge as an opportunity to build their ego. After all, whenever there is a wall, someone wants to climb it. Whenever there is a lock, someone wants to open it.

I don’t know exactly why men are taught that they *must* take sex from women at all costs. Perhaps it is as simple as the fact that sex in unenlightened society seems to be withheld, and they see the only option for fulfilling their desires as being fighting for it. In any case, men generally end up believing that sex is something they urgently need and must take at another’s expense.

The Nice Guy And The Jerk

Hence, we have a sad duality appearing in men, one which is talked about at length in the seduction community.

On the one hand, we have the archetypical Jerk, a guy who decides that he’s going to fulfil his sexual desires even if it hurts women. Because he sets out with the erroneous belief that sexual satisfaction means hurting women, he inevitably does hurt them.

On the other hand, we have the archetypical Nice Guy. This term in the seduction community means something like “nice, unassertive, and frustrated.” The Nice Guy also believes that sexual satisfaction means hurting women, but for whatever reason he decides that it’s not worth it for him. He has almost no sexual satisfaction.

It’s often said in the seduction community that there’s a third option, someone who isn’t a bad guy but who also gets laid. This is a push in the right direction, but usually they miss the actual problem entirely when they attempt to define the third option and end up advocating for a slightly more sophisticated form of the Jerk archetype.

The Real Third Option

The real third option is to realise that sexual satisfaction is co-created and not taken from anyone.

It’s to forgive – to deeply, spiritually forgive – the actions of unenlightened womenkind. To let go of your anger and frustration towards their witholding of sex. When you do that, there will be nothing tying you still to unenlightened womankind, and you can seek out enlightened womenkind – the relative minority of women who don’t attempt to withold sex or play any games with men, but who just want to co-create sexual satisfaction with mutually compatible partners.

It’s to realise that enlightened womenkind exists, which removes any motivation for dealing on this level with unenlightened womenkind. It’s also to realise that even if enlightened womenkind didn’t exist, lashing out at unenlightened womenkind wouldn’t help anything.

Because sex that is given against one’s will, or as an exchange, is not real sex. It’s a fraction of the joy which real sex can be. And hurting another is never desireable. Not just because there’s invariably a backlash. Because we’re all part of the same One life; because hurting another is hurting the being we are all part of.

But the wonderful thing is we don’t need to face that worst case scenario in real life. Sexual satisfaction is abundant and free, so long as we find the right people to co-create it with, and there are many of those people out there.

Being Sexually Enlightened

Yes, it’s not just as simple as finding the right people. We also have to *be* the right people. As men, we have to be the enlightened compliment to the enlightened womenkind we’re seeking. Where we are looking for a woman who doesn’t think having sex with men is shameful, we have to be men who don’t feel or communicate that women having sex with men is shameful. Where we are looking for a woman who is uninhibited, we have to be uninhibited. Where we are looking for a woman who doesn’t play games, we must be men who don’t play games.

At long last, I think we’ll find that there is no difference between women and men. The war of the sexes was created through social conditioning. When we are enlightened and move that out of the way, there is only – people. Sexual and romantic satisfaction becomes a case of people looking for compatible people to share experiences with.

The wonderful thing is that for practically any desire, there is someone who wants to share that with you. If you’re a man and want to be with women, you’ll find women who’ll want to be with men. But if you’re gay you’ll find guys who’ll satisfy your desires. If you’re a woman there are men or women out there who will satisfy your desires.

If you like giving pain, there are those out there who like receiving pain. If you like cooking for someone, there are those out there who like to be cooked for. If you are a straight man who likes wearing dresses, there are women who find that hot. If you like no-strings-attached sex, yes, there are people out there who want that and who can satisfy your desire. You just have to find them.

Easy Sexual And Romantic Fulfilment

So that’s the message of this article. Good news! Frustration is not the sad inevitable condition of mankind. All desires can be fulfilled – effortlessly. You must simply find or develop a way of being where you don’t block that natural, effortless fulfilment. Then all you need to do is to find compatible partners. If you’re having any difficulty with this process, I’ll virtually guarantee that you are having problems on the first step and not the second.

Examine your desire and challenge it. Challenge its sense of reality. Find out if your desire is for something which you have to struggle to take from someone, and if it is, resolve that falsehood. Find a way of being where you don’t see things as a struggle. As soon as you stop seeing things as a struggle, there will be none – just joyful cocreation of pleasure and satisfaction.

Hope you’ve enjoyed this article.

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Love Is Natural

Me in one of my first attempts to do my hair nicely.

A few days ago I decided to officially change my sex.

The move consisted in a big announcement on Facebook and and shift to wearing only woman’s clothes from now on, as well as other details.

I’ve changed my name to Sophia and began referring to myself with the female suffix in Spanish. I’ve learnt to speak in a pretty convincing female voice. I’ve also started shaving twice a day and covering up my “shadow” with a lot of foundation, wearing lipstick and mascara, and carrying a handbag.

Basically, I’m doing all I can to feel and appear female. Most likely, I’ll soon begin hormone therapy.

Making The Decision To Change My Sex

Obviously, this wasn’t a frivolous decision. In some way or another, I’ve been developing this side of me and questioning myself for two and a half years. It was a hard decision to make, in fact it shook me to the core.

Why would I do such a thing? Simply put, I’m a transgender individual. My condition is that I feel a strong sense of discord between, on the one hand, the body and role I was born into, and on the other hand, who I actually feel myself to be.

It’s a myth that transgender people change their sex in order to improve their chances with the gender they are attracted to. As a woman, I’m bisexual but strongly leaning towards lesbian, so at least in appearence my potential dating pool would have gone down. (In reality for a long time I had been mostly attracted to bisexual women, which I suppose was because I knew they could be attracted to both the inner and the outer me).

It’s also not true that I want to change because I have some issue with men in general. I definitely used to, especially with my father, but I got over him quite a while ago — he’s just a person, how big a deal can any one guy be? — and since I’ve made this change I started respecting and liking men more. I think my residual dislike of men was basically resentment for having to *be* one.

And finally, neither is it the case that I’m doing this because I find women’s clothes or having a woman’s body sexually appealing. It’s not like I won’t be able to turn myself on by playing with myself in the mirror, but that would be an incredibly frivolous reason for such a hard path to take.

And it is hard. I’m only just starting to realise how hard.

The Difficulties In Changing My Sex

I found it easier, to start with, to view this as a sort of experiment, even though I now know it’s much more than that. Thinking that way let me start with the changes and see how I felt without feeling like I was trying to do the whole process at once. I was also unsure about whether I really was transgender, but the more I’ve tried living as a transsexual the more right it felt for me, and the more my doubts have disappeared. As I write this, my remaining doubt mainly consists of curiosity as to how my questions about myself are going to be answered, and not so much about me as a transsexual in itself.

Starting out I guess I naïvely assumed that this was going to be like any other change, for example going vegan or becoming polyamorous. It turned out to be on a way different level to those things, especially now that I look to the future and the process I’m going to be going through. In these few days, too, I’ve had some serious emotional shake-ups, to the point where I feel I don’t know who I am anymore.

Let me clarify that I think this is all a very good thing. Indeed, it’s not all hard; at times I’ve had a lot of fun discovering this new side of me, and I absolutely love the results in emotional wellbeing and positive self-image I’m already getting. In general I view this all as a sort of adventure and feel no resistance to walking this path; I’m doing it enthusiastically. I suppose it helps that changing my sex won’t have been the biggest thing I’ve done. It’s bigger than going vegan, but not as big as conquering a 10-year long disease that I was told could never be cured.

I wasn’t aware of quite how big it was going to be though, or not aware of how big it was going to be personally, as in the beginning I still viewed it as a sort of experiment.

This First Week Of Changing My Sex

I had officially decided to start on this when I got back from the UK about three weeks ago. I started wearing some feminine attire to warm people up to what was coming, so to speak, and made preparations. On Tuesday I felt the time was right to make an announcement on Facebook, which marked about the point where I stopped wearing any male clothes at all and started working very hard to do everything that would help me pass as a girl.

On Thursday, I didn’t really realise how much all this had affected me, and kept trying to do life as normal, but found I couldn’t. I was basically in a daze. I kept pushing myself to do something productive or even eat, but kept falling back into a stupor. I locked myself out of the house by accident and missed one of my English classes by simply forgetting.

That night, I went to my friend Tiago’s house to get my spare key. Me and Tiago have been friends since I began questioning myself and he knew all about this side of me.

“This is basically a dream come true for you, right?”

“Well, it’s a lot of emotions, all mixed together. But yes, it’s good.”

I was practically feeling a different, intense emotion about this every few minutes. Here are a few of my updates on Facebook, which give you an idea of the thoughts and feelings that were passing through me:

“I feel like I’ve completed a bank heist or something. Gender rug successfully pulled out from everyone’s feet XD”

“I occasionally have a thought along the lines of, “What the *heck* am I doing??” …But it’s a good feeling.”

“You know, it’s hard sometimes to stop thinking of femininity as a “guilty pleasure”.

“It’s so liberating not to have to pretend to be masculine any more!!”

“Went clothes shopping yesterday with a female friend I met over Couchsurfing. Had a lot of fun and felt EXTREMELY girly. My words: “It’s wierd how not-wierd this feels”"

In short, I was experiencing – am still experiencing – the breakdown of an old identity. In all my life, despite all the feelings I had about my gender, I never once thought of myself as transsexual. I presented myself as masculine to stop people making fun of me and pushed the idea of being a woman away as a forbidden pleasure I would never, ever have. And then suddenly – WHOOSH! The floodgates opened. Practically from one day to the next I realise that all this pain, all this discord can and will be solved.

And at the same time, my entire idea of myself which based itself on the one principle that I couldn’t have what I wanted, was forced to die. All the structures, all the things I associated with myself to fit in in society and avoid the pain of facing myself as a transwoman, fell down. Crashed down. If I had realised quite how intense this process was going to be I would have cancelled all my classes for the week and stayed at home.

My old identity just died and I was faced with the question, “Who is Sophia?”

I still don’t know the answer to that, but I know who I’m not. I’m not that guy who hated his name and hated looking in the mirror. I’m not that guy who feigned a false masculinity that felt rough and discordant. I’m not any of the images I used to associate with myself.

Questioning Myself

It took me a long time to come to terms with myself as trans, largely I think because I didn’t fit the standard story about transpeople. The commonest story you seem to hear is that a person knows from childhood that they’re in the wrong body and say things like, “Mum, I’m actually a girl!”. They search for answers and eventually realise that there are others like them and they can be treated, whereupon they start transitioning.

I didn’t… know. Not exactly. I think that I always would have preferred being a woman if you had asked me, but wasn’t too vocal about it… I don’t know why. I hated looking myself in the mirror and disliked my own name, encouraging people to use a gender-neutral nickname. But I didn’t associate those issues with the pleasure I might have taken with playing a videogame as a female character, or the fact that I liked the show Ranma 1/2 a little bit too much.

*[For the uninitiated, Ranma 1/2 is an anime show in which the protagonist changes into a woman whenever he gets splashed with cold water.]

Maybe my gender dysphoria mixed with the general sense of self-loathing I had at the time, for other reasons. Maybe it just seemed normal that looking in the mirror felt wrong because of that. Maybe I just didn’t feel like I could express my feelings, or that they would be taken seriously.

My personal thought is that I might not have noticed my transgenderism until now because of my personal way of dealing with the dysphoria.

Looking in the mirror used to be a sort of shock. The feeling would be along the lines of, “Huh? What is that?” — But the thing is I wouldn’t think that it was wrong that I was a man, more that it was wrong there was something there at all. I think I coped with my gender dysphoria and possibly the other issues I had by disassociating myself totally from  my body and imagining myself as nothingness, a bodyless spirit.

I could think and even move this meat puppet around, but only in a disconnected way, and not in any way feeling I *was* that meat puppet.

So I think I managed to avoid most of my gender dysphoria and, incidentally, even realising I was trans by just avoiding having any sense of myself at all.

I paid for that though now, because as soon as I let myself accept myself as a transperson the floogates opened and every emotion I ever repressed came out at once. To speak of its intensity, it was like a great wall of different emotions hitting me with the force of a train.

Still Questioning

The case is that even now I still question myself a little but I ask myself that, if I wasn’t trans, how is it that now that I see myself as a woman it’s the only time I can look in the mirror and feel like I *am* what I see? Quite apart from seeing myself as beautiful and wonderful, which I do, now. But actually being identified with my body… that’s such a big thing, and such an impressive change. It feels like I’ve finally come down to Earth.

One of the things I said when talking to my wonderful girlfriend María José was a so very heartfelt, “Finally“.

I still question myself even now, and wonder about going back, but when I think of that I ask myself what is it that would going back to? A fake, masculine sense of self that doesn’t even fool me anymore. A name I hate. An appearence I hate – you know I never used to like dressing up nicely? But now I spend at least an hour on my appearence every day and I love it, it doesn’t feel like a chore at all, and I understand so deeply now, like I never understood before, that I’m doing it for myself and not for others. Going clothes shopping and choosing from girly stuff to make me look great is an absolute joy, so much fun and so engaging. I don’t see how I could go back to the only criteria for my clothes being, “does it still smell okay?”

The Beginning

It’s funny. Now, I’m finding I’m not just a girl. I’m a girly girl. I love laces, flowers, bows and the colour pink. I love shopping and chatting in an inconsequential way with female friends. I giggle, squeal and clap my hands when I’m excited. I get excited over dresses. It’s so much fun and such a continuing surprise to get to know this new side of me. I have no idea where I’ll be in a year, or who I’ll be.

I’m so thankful for the support I got for this change. The facebook announcement got 50 likes and 92 comments (so far). Every single one of those comments was positive, many of them overwhelmingly so. One of them said that she was fascinated at how wonderful the response had been and what wonderful people I surround myself with, and I have to agree. I’m so blessed to have such a supportive and loving social circle.

I couldn’t have possibly have done this without the help of my girlfriend, who showed absolutely unconditional support from the beginning and enjoys my new self exactly as it is. Emotionally this has been very very intense and she has been there for me through all of it. So thankyou, thankyou so much, my love, and thankyou so much to everyone who reached out.

At this stage in my path I’m processing all these emotions and finishing off the work of questioning myself to the point of absolute certainty about what I’m going to do. I think in all probability I’ll start hormonal treatment in a few months. Wish me luck

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Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/28misguidedsouls/6203825072

I was talking with María José the other day. Somehow the conversation ran into two examples where attempts to save the world by minimising harm went too far.

Fruitarianism

First is fruitarianism.

For me fruitarianism is the ideal, as I feel empathy for plants as well as animals and I don’t want to hurt plants either. As it is, though, I’m just vegan, which I think is improvement enough to be starting with.

Fruitarianism means eating just fruit, though it is often expanded to anything that doesn’t involve hurting the plant itself, so fruit, seeds, nuts, and grains. Like veganism, it’s a diet based around an ethical stance.

When I pick, say, a lettuce, myself, I notice the great value and majesty this living thing has and how much life force and will to live that flows through it. It has a great beauty and I feel it as a part of myself.

Pulling up a lettuce, then, is an uncomfortable act. I can repress my empathy, which tends to be what I do, but then it feels like I’m running away from the truth. It’s the veganism dilemma on a deeper level of sensitivity.

I still eat lettuces, though, and anything that doesn’t come from or comprise an animal, because I don’t really have to face that issue every day; I just buy my lettuces ready cut from the supermarket. Even if I had to, I suppose I’d eventually try and “man up” and not feel for the plants I uproot. It wouldn’t feel too good, but that’s what I’d have to do, at least for a while.

My ideal is to have my own fruit forest and live entirely off the fruit I can pick there, in harmony and love with the plants that sustain my life. It *is* a dream of mine.

However, I know that that’s not what’s happening now.

To eat only fruit, nuts, seeds, and grains that were still industrially sourced doesn’t make sense to me. Industry doesn’t think about the wellbeing of animals, so I can hardly expect it to look out for the welfare of plants. Even if I could buy just organic food, I doubt that would be quite enough. *Technically* the food wouldn’t, well, *need* involve the killing or hurting of plants, but in reality it inevitably would do so.

The sensible reaction here is to not make too big a deal of it. Sure, things are far from ideal. But then again, there are lots of cool things I can do on Earth that might make up for my inadvertant negative impact.

Extinctionism

Somehow the conversation went from fruitarianism to extinctionism.

If you thought fruitarians went a long way to avoid doing harm to the planet, think again.

Extinctionists believe that the best way to reduce harm to the planet is to basically attempt to extinguish the human race.

I haven’t read too much into this so I don’t know exactly what means these guys propose, but I think it’s along the lines of strict population controls leading to total human extinction. Uh, good luck to them.

Think about it for a while. There is some logic to it. It’s practically inevitable to cause harm, and probably quite a damn lot of it, just by being part of human society.

We collectively tear up the landscape, destroy forests and entire biospheres, bring thousands upon thousands of species to extinction, empty the oceans of fish, bring up, torture, and kill billions of animals every year, fill the air with poison, alter the Earth’s climate, and on top of it all we don’t seem to have much fun ourselves while we’re doing it. We actually make each other miserable which brings into question the point of the whole exercise in the first place.

Yes – I think the way we can do the least harm, as individuals, is suicide. We drop dead, we stop supporting innumerable terrible things that happen just because of our participation in society.

I’m actually kind of serious. I really do see the logic in extinctionism. In fact, I think I’d be an extinctionist myself if there was just one difference in the way I saw the world: that is, if I had no hope for the human race.

If the human race is just going to continue like this, participation in it just guarantees a perpetuation of terrible harm. I’d swear off having children and probably attempt to minimise my impact as much as possible, perhaps by going to live in a commune. I’d tell everyone not too have children either and pray for the human race to just give up.

Not that there’s much chance of that happening. But still.

The difference though is that I *do* have hope for the human race. I think that it is evolving towards a state of being where it just won’t do those things any more. I also think that I can participate in that evolution.

You can minimise harm by only eating fruit which you grow yourself in a commune and by attempting to minimise the number of human beings that come into the world through you and through your influence. You can even commit suicide. These are all very valid ways of minimising harm. What they miss is that through your participation in humanity’s evolution, you can help bring about a much larger change, a much more important one, one that could potentially make all the suffering and all the destruction worth it.

Minimising Harm

Minimising harm has a limit; maximising good is unlimited.

For me efforts that focus too much on minimising harm reek of a need to control, a sort of perfectionism that seeks a state of absolute spotlessness, blamelessness, innocence. At its heart, this sort of focus originates from a feeling of not *being* okay, not *being* blameless, in the first place.

That feeling can be questioned. I think we can realise we are okay, we always were, and we don’t need to minimise harm OR maximise good to be okay.

Even a lot of vegans come from this place of non-self-acceptance. They think they wouldn’t be okay if they ate meat. They think others aren’t okay if they ate meat. It leads to a lot of struggle, even if I think their actions do result in a lot of good.

We can draw a line as to how far we’re willing to go in minimising harm. Each person’s line will be different, and of course it can be redrawn in different places as we evolve as people. I think it’s great that we each move towards minimising harm as much as we can in our lives, though I think whenever it becomes so much effort that we start sabotaging our purpose beyond that, we should draw the line.

You see, even if we make a relatively small contribution to the world’s evolution in this lifetime, that contribution will add to others and grow as time goes on. If you inspire 10 people to be compassionate in your life, those 10 people could inspire 1000, and they could inspire a million. If the difference between minimising harm and maximising good looks small in a single lifetime, over the long term it becomes much clearer.

Because — our higher purpose is what makes living here really worth it. The chance of making the world something incredible, something bigger than all of this that we’re going through now. This is the big picture, this is what’s worth putting our effort into. Scrap perfectionism, go for results. On a grand scale. Doesn’t that feel more expansive?

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One of the Cambridge universities. Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mdpettitt/3096751008/

I had an amazing trip to the UK this Easter week.

I’d decided to go to the UK already last year, though I also had an extra push given to me when a romantic friend / sometime lover of mine, went to live there a few months back.

I stayed with her in Cambridge, which was very nice. Asides from seeing her, I managed to cram my schedule full of meetings with old friends, most of them who I’d last seen 8 years before.

It was amazing how they’d almost all seemed to have changed for the better. They’d become very interesting people and I now vibed with several of them a lot more than I had vibed with them when I first knew them.

I suppose this is also a product of having opened up socially since then, and learning to appreciate people more. Either way (pretty sure it was a bit of both things), this change was nice to see.

It was cool to see my birthplace, Cambridge, looking practically the same as when I’d left it, and yet different. Being such a different person as I was before, it felt in a way like an entirely different town. At the same time every little corner of it brought up some memory or another. It was like having a town in my memory superimposed over a town I had never been to. If that makes any sense.

Cambridge is such a sleepy town. It’s basically one massive University campus. I think Barcelona has changed more in the 3 years I’ve been there than Cambridge has changed in these 8. I went to the café I’d used to go to, and the lady behind the bar was still saying “What would you like?” with the exact same accent and intonation as before. Like being in a time warp.

But seeing as I’d changed, there were new things to experience that I would have overlooked 8 years ago. I went to Cambridge’s only vegetarian restaurant, the Rainbow Café, which I have to say produces nothing less than culinary art. I tried their “Shephardess Pie”, which I described as what Picasso would have made if he’d tried to do Shephard’s Pie. Seeing as this was, in fact, nothing like actual Shephard’s Pie, I was inspired to make a real (veggie) version in my host’s house, partly to show to her Spanish sensibility this relic of English cuisine — which was very fun.

After Cambridge, I hopped between three other towns, and had an amazing experience in one of them with a friend who introduced me to the drug MDMA. That deserves, and will get, an entire post.

I managed to meet two people in the course of the trip who I’d only previously known over the internet – which was wonderful. I also had a random date from OKCupid, which was very cool, too.

Of the towns I visited, Leicester was forgettable, very big and urban, but worth it for the incredible experiences I had there. (What’s so special about a town anyway? It’s the people that make the experience). London was big and stressful and I basically took shelter in a friend’s house and had some amazing chats about life. And then Brighton was absolutely beautiful; I’d love to visit again and spend some more time there. Such an alternative city. It can’t be bigger than Cambridge but it’s got lots of veggie restaurants, tarot professionals, LGBT scenes and other interesting alternative stuff. I’d love to live there, especially as an accepting place to try out switching genders, though I’m not sure whether it’ll really seem worth it to move.

I went to an overpriced (but good) veggie restaurant there and had two tarot readings, both accurate. One of them auguried positive things in my near future, which really vibed for me (not just because I’d like to believe it). I think it was particuarly pointing to material gains in this case. So, we will see how that unfolds.

The other tarot reader kept insisting I needed to write, so you have her to thank for this post.

I was looking forward to finishing the trip by the end of the week, as I was absolutely exhausted. Yet, when I got to Barcelona, everything looked so — familiar! Suddenly being in a fixed house feels like a prison. I enjoyed so much the feeling of — flying, of having no fixed place to hold me down. In just a day of realising that, I think my priorities have changed a lot. I’m very motivated now to get money to travel, and particularly to make that location-independent if possible. Life has suddenly become quite a lot more exciting.

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Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/88657298@N00/6893017874

I was talking with my friend Diana the yesterday. We were talking about how Earth is Hell and how some people are happy in it anyway, without having to be ignorant of what’s going on. How to not be cynical, in other words. Google*.

I said to her,

“I’m not entirely sure about this because I’m still feeling my way through it, but I believe that perhaps, the answer is to totally give ourselves to doing what we can do to make things better; I mean really putting our whole life into this mission. That way we can still perceive the wrongs, but still be happy, because we have nothing to complain about anymore.”

I’ve written this before, I think, but I liked how I put it then, so I thought it deserved its own post.

*SEO joke

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Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/11304375@N07/2044855541

No-one can do nothing for very long. In every moment, our creative energy is moving through us, urging us to do something. If we spend too long doing nothing, we kind of “turn off”. Except that’s not what we’re made to do, so it’s an unpleasant feeling. It feels like something is dreadfully wrong. That’s called depression. Go deep enough into this and you stop wanting to even live.

Toxic Can Be Better Than Nothing

It’s way better to do something meaningful than meaningless, and something pleasant than unpleasant. It’s better to do something that helps you learn than something that doesn’t, something that builds a better future for you or others than something that doesn’t, and something that earns you money than something that occupies a lot of your time without leaving you a way of paying the bills.

That said, anything, anything, can be enough to keep us away from depression or suicide. Anything at all that gives us an outlet for our energy. Depression just happens if we stall in that.

I’m not saying you should never do nothing though. Sometimes these low periods are necessary. Sometimes they are avoidable but still better than keeping doing things that are really bad for us, for our bodies or for our souls.

It’s better to be lonely for short periods while you’re transitioning your social life, than to stay in toxic situations. However, being totally alone for very long periods would drive anyone but an autistic person to suicide. A toxic relationship could keep you alive, like rotten bread.

In the same way, it’s better to do nothing for short periods while you’re transitioning your use of your energy, than to remain in a toxic situation as to your use of energy. However, being totally inactive for very long periods would drive practically anyone to suicide. A toxic situation like a bad job could keep you alive, like rotten bread or a bad relationship.

That doesn’t make a bad job, a bad relationship, or rotten bread good things, though. None of them have a place in the life of a conscious person, someone who attempts to live deliberately. At best, they exist as emergency fare, to keep us alive while we fight to get ourselves to a better place. If our reasonable expectation is to never have anything better, it’s better to commit suicide.

The Manipulation Of Our Creative Energy

We’re trained in schools to use our creative energy in a certain way. We are manipulated in various ways to use it all in work or school, and if there is no useful outlet for that energy, it’s given a useless outlet; so long as it involves your control by an outside force, it’s all good.

Things like television, football, and fashion use up the rest of that energy. While people would rebel if they were given much longer hours (they need to be acclimised to it slowly, like lobsters in a cooking pot) they can be persuaded to use their energy in useless occupations in their free time.

The word “free” time in itself points to their slavery. I don’t have a job – I’m always free! I just earn money when I feel like it and do other things when I feel like it. Jesus, this stuff is hidden in plain sight. People deny they are slaves yet readily accept that they have no “free time”!

School and conformist culture teaches you to get a job and not learn to put your energy into things that would make you free – financially or otherwise. It teaches you to use your free time, your non-slave-time, on things that won’t threaten that situation. You can watch football, watch movies, play games, whatever you like, so long as you don’t one day decide to tell your boss that s/he is paying you a miserable fraction of your fair share.

You can see this softness in the eyes of slaves. They have their interests, they might be cool, maybe hipsters or fashionable or ambitious, but they don’t have any fight left in them to shake off having a boss. They have their principles, until their boss tells them to act against them. They have their desires in life, until their boss tells them what’s in store for them. Soft. No fight in them at all.

And I like softness in some cases. I’m a feminine guy, I like to be soft and gentle when it’s appropriate, and I would sure *like* not to have to fight the status quo. But that softness in those people’s eyes… it’s grating. It’s hypocrisy. They’re saying everything’s okay when actually they really mean that they’re too weak to say something’s wrong.

Using Your Creative Energy

Recognise your need to do something with your creative energy in life, and observe how it has been funnelled into outlets which preserve the status quo. Remove your creative energy from those outlets. Sometimes you’ll need to create a vacuum in your life, and possibly risk short term depression or aimlessness while doing so. Sometimes you’ll be able to simply displace the bad thing directly with a good thing. Whatever you do, don’t keep your creative energy in a bad thing unless it’s the only way you could stay alive.

Normally, you’ll need to be brave and tear off the band-aid. It’s usually NOT the case that you need to remain in a toxic energy use situation to stay alive. Usually that’s just your fear talking. So don’t listen to it.

Usually, when you make the plunge new things come way faster than you expected them to, especially if you’re no longer clinging to the old. Try it. It’s so worth it; life is not worth living if we’re only living off moldy bread.

I did it and survived. So can you.

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A lot of indigo adults and children I’ve met – to a greater or lesser degree I’d say 50% of them – have a big resistence to being labelled “indigo”. I take twisted pleasure in saying, “Yes, and that’s why I’m even more sure you are indigo.”

Indigos by their nature dislike labels. They see through them; they know that people are more than just their label. They dislike how society is built around labels and rigid categories. They rebel against that.

They also dislike the way accepting a label can often form a mental cage. If you identify with something you often stop being able to do things that would go against your identification.

But indigo is more than just a label, because it’s for people who are in some way “special”. Both indigos and non-indigos can dislike this.

I have a t-shirt which says “indigo” on it. I wear it because it starts interesting conversations and I also have the hope of meeting new indigo friends that way. One time someone got angry at me and said “A real indigo wouldn’t flaunt his specialness!” A good answer would have been, “And how do you know what a real indigo would or wouldn’t do?”, but in the event I just made a sharp turn and went somewhere else to avoid this guy’s negativity.

People don’t like saying someone is more special than others because it triggers their insecurities. They either don’t want to feel inferior, or they want to avoid making people feel inferior.

That’s a problem because not everyone has the same capabilities. It’s fine that you want to avoid a feeling of inferiority, but if you start pretending everyone is the same just to do that, you’ve turned your back on reality.

The real solution is to heal the inferiority complex. If you dislike being called special because you don’t want to make people feel inferior, learn to not feel like people are inferior. Learn to be able to recognise your gifts and still recognise that everyone else has the same One Life in their eyes when they look back at you.

If you don’t like calling other people special, learn to see the same One Life as your own in the eyes of even your greatest idol. Learn to see that our individual breath of life is all part of the same flow and connects us, body to body, soul to soul. Then, even the greatest person, the person you’ve held in the greatest esteem, is part of you.

I resisted being called “indigo” for a long time, but it did fit, it did explain a lot, and my desire to accept the Truth drew me to healing my inferiority complex. Now, while I admit I have more ways to go, I don’t worry that being indigo is going to seperate me from others. What’s more, I’ve finally come to accept and embrace the full extent of my power. I know I have a LOT of gifts, a lot of ability, and above all a force of will, an intensity of being, which is staggering. I know most people don’t have that.

That’s not a problem; it’s just the truth, a truth which I needed to accept.

To deny this truth would be to deny my power. Therefore, to accept this truth is an opportunity to take the reins of my power; take it away from cycles of self-destruction; apply it to what I came here to do. And that’s precious.

This article is dedicated to Rosine Caplot, who hates me for insisting she’s indigo.

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