Reflections: My spiritual path seemed to be jump-started a little over two years ago after I came out of a short-lived but devastating depression. The depression was catalyzed by a delusional mental formation: I have a right to health care and the current system is unfair.

 

What I know more deeply now is that my spiritual path spans my entire life, regardless of how consciously connected I feel. I also know that the concepts of "rights" and "fairness" are recent fabrications of human consciousness. That does not mean I think they are insignificant or unimportant, but that they are constructs that shape the behavior of some people.

 

New levels of honesty open now. The wave of spiritual seeking that started over two years ago and has ebbed and flowed since involved the following aspects of what many teachers have dubbed spiritual materialism:

- chasing after Eastern religions because they were exotic and exciting and different than the Christianity I was taught but felt excluded from as a queer person

- assuming that because I experienced what felt like a profound opening at the time, I rightfully could claim that I was Hindu or Buddhist or Gnostic, even though I understood very little about those traditions (still mostly true)

- assuming that I was more spiritually evolved than all but the most advanced practitioners

 

I was also extremely self righteous internally. When I first started this blog, I was working on a website called Cultural Crusaders (yikes!) to shout to the world via the internet that transgender people are victimized and fundamentalist Christians are BAD. I put hundreds of hours into it. I was angry at those who I labeled developmentally inferior who insisted that transgender people are less than human or deranged and their false beliefs that fueled their discrimination against the GLBTQ segment of the population (in the public sphere, in health care, in the workplace, in housing, etc.) I also felt empowered by a fabricated alliance with the Hindu deity Ram as the compassionate warrior who works to resolve injustice.

 

Now I'm simply Colin. I am a transguy who has a vision of working as a psychotherapist and ally with queer people who suffer because I have been through the wringer in that regard and have found a certain degree of happiness and sanity after all. I am a person who has had many experiences that have opened my eyes more widely and clearly than I thought possible, yet I know that my vision is still clouded. I am a being who struggles and cries and laughs and connects with others through heart energy as much as possible. I have habit energy that continues to drive my (re)actions and thoughts, and sometimes I fall into them as though they are a familiar blanket that will save me from the cruel world, even if only temporarily. I have moments of transcendence that I may simply watch rise and fall as I bask in the simplicity of it all or that I chase away by remembering all the perceived suffering that is present most of the time in my head and the world. Sometimes I still feel like a victim and that so much of this life is unfair and unjust.

 

And sometimes I remember: This is life. This is what it is to be human at this time and place and within this set of circumstances. The only absolute fairness or justness that exists is that we all share a common humanity, we all were born and we all will die. I am grateful that I get to experience this life, even with the suffering that it naturally entails.


Update:

Rant: What frustrates me is when we label any of the aforementioned behavior as pathological. It is all simply a part of the spiral of unfolding. We are sick and we are well, depending on the perspective, like an electron is a particle and a wave.

I've read blog posts by those who purport to have transcended "spiritual materialism" who then proceed to rant about people who are still expressing that tendency, as if the particular target of their current derision is somehow grandly delusional all on his or her or their own (yes, I see the irony). A more accurate picture is that waves of humanity are are being expressed as part of an unfolding process.