Who Do You Think You Are? (Part Two)

Ann K Gryczan

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Welcome to part two of a Dangerous Topic: gender identity. (Here’s Part One.) Looking at the gender identity issue really does feel dangerous! Why is that?

Because it is about us. Collective consciousness, or the world at large, will always be our mirror, and it will especially show us what we have suppressed and pretend does not exist. (And therein lies the danger.)

We can always look at the collective scene to see what we’re hiding from ourselves – and when some aspect seems especially loud or unsubtle, that is when it is emerging out of the basement of our collective consciousness and into the light of day.

The transgender issue seems pretty loud right now, so let’s listen and maybe we can find a deeper truth about ourselves.  

​The Issue

Transgender people seem to feel that the person they are is not reflected in the body they have, and more, that the sex of the body is not the sex they feel or believe themselves to be. There is great anguish in this discordant mismatch between the form they are supposed to be and the essence they are.

But isn’t this exactly how we all feel? If we take away the particular content and leave just the shell, isn’t this the very same anguish, for the very same reason, that runs through all humanity and always has?

Aren’t we all identified by our form – body, age, sex, race, culture, and even emotions – and addressed accordingly? And don’t we all know at some level that this is not who we really are at all?

Deep inside we may sense an ancient soul memory of “being-ness,” that we can almost touch but not quite. At some level we know that we have lost our connection with the only thing that matters: our source and Self. We don’t know the name of this loss, much less how to heal it. And that is the universal anguish held deep inside, almost forgotten, but not quite.

Is this universal pain coming to the surface of our collective awareness? 

The Current Solution

For the transgender community, changing the form seems often to be the chosen solution. That is our solution too. It seems like we are constantly enhancing the form to get more out of it: better faces and bodies, bigger accomplishments and titles, more money and possessions. We seek refuge in the form as if we can climb up into it and become that. But it doesn’t seem to be working – the discord and pain only seem to be getting worse.

We Always Get the Right Body

This might seem controversial, but let’s start with the idea that we always get the right body. We always get the right body, just as we always get the right family – even though it can often seem we could have done better with different circumstances or better parents.

There is perfection in showing up in the form we do. We can’t know the perfection at first, but by mastering the form we become our potential – and we never really know what that is until we become it.

For example, the terrible parents can ultimately teach us that we are love, that we can forgive and our encounter with them can lead us to a fundamental truth: we are always sustained by life, we are free, unharmed and whole. This never feels possible during the process of learning it, but that is the potential.

One thing the transgender issue can teach us is that we are the essence of life itself and not bodies at all. This might not be obvious at first either, so let’s keep looking at it.

What If It Feels Like You Got the Wrong Body?

If being in the body you have is unbearably painful, what can you do?

The best way to approach form – a body, family, circumstance – is to assume there is something in it for you. Assume the form is showing you how to find something you have always been seeking. Assume that all of life loves you in its flowing wholeness sort of way.

Start with that assumption and then look at whatever form seems to be a problem. Let’s say it is the body. What is the matter?

Maybe the body doesn’t match you, it doesn’t reflect who you are. You can’t see or recognize yourself in this body, and neither can anyone else. This cannot be my body, you might say. It is not who I am. I do not fit in here; I am not that and I have never been that.

Or maybe you don’t feel safe in the body you have and you have never felt safe, or you don’t feel included, loved or special. You don’t know who you are or what you’re doing, what is expected of you or how to provide it, and not knowing makes you feel disconnected from everything, lost in a void, hopeless and alone.

The Form is Not the Problem; the Problem is the Problem

When we feel great anguish it is natural to think if only the situation were different we could be released from the pain. But there is another way to look at it; the form is mirroring our condition back to us, it is forcing us to bring our attention to something buried deep within that needs the light of our awareness.

Therefore, if we can consider the form as part of our unfolding evolution and a gift of love from life, then we can see that the form is not causing the problem, it is just making the problem obvious.

How to Solve a Problem

When form is a problem it always requires something of us and it is intractable until we comply. So the best way to solve a problem is to first, see what it requires.

• If the form is an egg and we are a tiny almost-chick, the form requires us to develop our strength and persistence and become a chicken.
  
  

• If the form is lack, such as financial hardship, the form requires us to let go of what we think we need and face our fear about survival; it requires us to be creative, resourceful and productive and let go of limiting beliefs, of being entitled, for example. Like the egg, the form stops being an obstacle once we master it.
  
  
• If the form is a body that does not match who we are inside it, then it requires us to ask who that is. Who am I? Asking this question will challenge the ego’s assumptions and our alignment with them. It will lead us back through the path we took to forget who we were. Trapped in the body, all our choices have been cut off except the one that leads to Self. And now, if we take the only true option, we realize that coming home was all we ever longed to do.

We Are All Collective Consciousness

The transgender issue is a great gift because it brings into the open the deepest, most painful problem we face as human beings: we don’t know who we are and we have lost connection with our source.

It is true that we are not the body we came in; we are not bodies at all, not male or female, black or white, culture or caste. It is natural to think that if we are not a particular body, we must therefore, be a different body. But that is just exchanging one painful illusion for another even more painful.

So we honor those in the experience of being trapped in the wrong body, knowing it is a version of our pain too and that they represent all of us. We are respectful and call them what they wish to be called, empathize and help them if we can, love them.

But we must not align with the illusion that form is essence, not glorify it, not change the world around for it, and especially, we must not sacrifice our children to it.

Who Are You?

Who are we? And how do we even know that we are? We can ask this when we stop thinking we are bodies. The questions lead into the awareness of our own existence. And that awareness – silent, still and ever-present – is the doorway back to who we are. It is the source of everything we are seeking and the solution to all our problems.
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We are all in the process of emerging into a greater awareness. We’re already doing this, so let’s make it conscious. Let’s see each other by looking past the form to the light of life inside – and realize that we are recognized too. All of life knows us because life is awake; we are the ones sleeping. Let’s wake up! Let’s all come home.