I have learned so much about who you are. I never knew you as Larry, so for me it has been just getting to know Denise better. And it has been fascinating - like a book you can't put down. I find I am so much more interested in the taste of the reed in the rabbit's mouth than the transgender thing................................
Thank you Purple but I suspect that a full answer to that is a subject better suited to a personal chat amongst dear friends than on a public forum but am going to speak to this a bit here.
I was going to leave out any more public postings on “spirituality” in my life mostly because I did not want to alienate people who might have very different views but also because I did not want this thread to devolve into some big debate on the subject where some people might just argue instead of my just finishing my introduction.
And I guess I did not want to open myself to a bunch of “evaluation” from people who, because they have found something different that makes them soar, feel they must argue that I must feel the same way.
What is so very sad about this world is how people have to fight or ridicule or even kill each other to try to make them have to believe their own “only way”.
So very much of my life has involved people telling me I had to believe what they believed or be doomed. And this would range from Catholicism to scientology (“believe this or be dammed”, “fear this or be dammed”, ”follow these rules or be dammed”, “we have the only way to salvation, all others are wrong”, etc., etc., etc.). To a lesser degree I even found that in witchcraft which also contained some very “preachy” things in which I did not believe “you have to embrace the ‘God’ AND ‘Goddess’, pray to them, find your masculine AND feminine side”. etc., etc.
And while all of these things contained pieces in which I believed, they also contained more things in which I did not believe than otherwise. Yet I was constantly being pressured to follow the rules of one or the other telling myself that there was something wrong with me if I did not. The guilt that was to come from this was for a while pretty much constant as I was day in and day out told how to think and how to act “or else”.
This along with my being wrong in my gender would torment me throughout my life. And worse yet, there has been so much cruelty, death and even wars because of some people trying to force their beliefs onto others. This could range from the arrogant scientologist smugly telling me what is wrong with me, as if they had any clue, to outright license in other “religions” to abuse or even kill because someone was a “non compliant” female or someone was a “non-believer”.
And I find that so very sad.
And it was only when I could escape all this preaching and attempts to control me and my views in my life and find quiet moments alone could I really find what made ME soar.
In this thread I have touched upon here and there things in which I myself believed and which made me soar. For example, I spoke of when I was a child how I would find solace alone in the woods or laying out in the fields with all those deliciously feminine horses my father “owned”. And I mentioned how I would feel one with nature at those times, feel like I could hear all life talking to me, and feel this amazing connection in a strong yet gentle and beautiful feminine power in me and around me.
And my “faery tales” that I told myself back when I was a child and when I was having those “moments” in the woods were that I was a faery, a gentle and loving female faery of the forest. I could see in my mind then a beautiful ethereal world living a life of love and play with my beautiful sisters and being highly connected to a deeply divine femininity where there was no god or goddess you must revere, just “Mother”. And I would think that sometimes we got lost and had to find our way home. And I was just a little lost now.
Such things were my “little girl dreams”, the dreams I would dream when I shut my eyes in the forest and saw all the beauty around me and felt part of that beautiful divine femininity that throughout my life, in my better moments, I would call “home”.
I suspect that for most people such “dreams of a little girl” would be considered cute and they would smile at the little girl playing with her imaginary faery friends. And they would laugh when she would excitedly tell tales of her faery sisters and this special, magical world of which we are all connected in one way or another. “Oh what a cute little girl”.
But here is the thing Purple - in all my years since those magical (for me) days in the woods as a child, I have never felt all that much differently. Never. And with respect to those dreams of a child, all I have gone back and forth on throughout my life is how much of it is metaphor and how much is fact, but never changing the dream.
Maybe it is true that a transgendered person in a way freezes in time as her body goes the wrong way or maybe it is not but regardless I have not aged one day in my views and feelings since I was a child. In amongst any suffering I would feel in not being able to be just me, I also had those “moments” where I really felt a deeply spiritual connection to what I have constantly referred to throughout my life as “my sisters” or “Mother” or “the Fae” or “home”.
I suspect that we all have those “moments” throughout our lives where we feel especially connected to something wonderful, however briefly. And I believe that this connection is unique for each of us, there is no one-size-fits-all connection to what we feel is good or wonderful or spiritual.
And so with alllllllllllllllll the above in mind, lol, I come back to what you mentioned about “the taste of the reed in the rabbits mouth”. And I know you took that thing from my posting #123 where I mentioned some examples of feelings I have had in my life that I could use in my best attempt to show what “femininity” and “divine femininity” meant to me.
Specifically what I said about that example in that posting was:
And in your best moments can you feel completely in tune with nature around you, can you feel what the wild rabbits feel? Can you taste the reed they are chewing and feel how they feel as they taste the sweet wetness inside, can you feel what the trees feel? Can you feel as one with motherhood everywhere, in animals in all forms of life? Can you feel that? I mean just at your very best times.
That was just one of those “moments”.
I was visiting some lovely people in Las Vegas years ago and one afternoon decided to take a drive in the desert while they all had to work. I turned on this stony side road and drove up to where there were suddenly many reeds and high plants, like a small forest. And it had a little pond in it and a small babbling brook running out of it.
At the entrance was a small wooded “boardwalk” and some signs that this was a public park and it told of several animals you might see if you walked on the paths through the plants (many higher than your head) and/or along the brook. So I took a walk in this lovely place with that babbling brook and I was the only person there.
As I walked, maybe every 5 seconds I would scare out a wild rabbit or a roadrunner who would run away from me. They were all afraid of me, as I think they would have been afraid of any human.
But then I had one of those “moments” that I think we all have and everything changed. The animals stopped running away and I just felt this radiance and suddenly I felt like I could feel what the animals felt. And I felt really, really good. One of the rabbits that had stopped running chewed off a bit of a reed and turned and just looked at me while chewing it. And it was like the rabbit and I were so completely connected and I actually got this sweet taste in my mouth as the rabbit “shared with me” how wonderful the sweet liquid inside the reed tasted. And none of the animals there were at all afraid of me anymore. I went over to the reeds and broke off a piece and opened it up to feel very wet, almost sticky and sweet tasting fibers within it.
That’s it really. I do so very much believe that there is this truly wonderful connection not only between us and amongst us but also between and amongst all other life. And that was the sort of thing I would think about decades before that as a little girl in the woods when I also had those “moments” with the animals and with nature. And in that respect I have never aged.
In my heart of hearts I believe that the above is true for all of us, just maybe it manifests itself differently for each of us. That’s just my opinion.
I think many of us share these “connections” even amongst each other such as you and IPT feeling connected with me that night and my feeling the same about you two.
And there are lots of examples of this that we can share over a bottle of wine on my balcony as shown in posting #76 of this thread if you do come here in August. And who knows, maybe we will share one of those “moments”
. 
When I first started posting on the EX Sea Org site that Mick started, I shared a little poem I wrote about an experience of “death” during a solo auditing session when I lived in East Grinstead in the UK. I had one of those “moments” that, again, I think we all have on one way or another. To me it was like going back to what I always liked to call “the Fae”, losing memories of the life I was just living, only to come back quickly, see the room I was in and have to remember everything like what I was, where I was, where I worked, how to breathe, etc.
It felt like I was not “supposed” to die yet.
I’m sure lots of people will have their own takes on this ranging from I am delusional, to it was just the mind playing tricks on me to anything else that is comfortable for them to deal with based on their “religious” or “scientific” understandings of life. I’ve even had one therapist conclude that it was my experimenting with LSD in college (something I would not recommend to anyone) that got me so connected to a “higher spirituality” as a way to explain things like the above and other such “moments” in my life. (That neglected of course that I have had those “moments” as a child well before any drug history).
The only reason I am even talking about this is just to try to respond to you and just to continue to tell of my life in an unguarded fashion, not to try to argue how “right” or “wrong” I was about my feelings.
And this was my little poem of that experience in the UK called “Leaving the Body and Coming Back – A Poem”, that I shared with my fellow EX Sea Org as part of all of us sharing:
http://www.witchvox.com/vn/vn_detail/dt_po.html?a=usnh&id=10723
And while this poem was written after I left scientology and just started writing poems as I was sorting out my life, I was to write it in a fashion that would communicate with scientologists (just like I wrote “A Witch’s Heart” about spirituality in a fashion to communicate with my witchy friends, as per posting #258 of this thread).
And what great insight or “path” do I offer to you or anyone else here? Nothing and none whatsoever. I only offer my friendship, that’s all I got. And as part of it I am sharing my life and views on life as above.
Of all the little poems I wrote while decompressing from my scientology days and just before I was to start speaking out, there is one poem that meant the most to me. I wrote it in part to belatedly celebrate the birth of my daughter and it was called “Birth of A Faery” telling of the death of an old witch and her rebirth in the Fae (her going home). And in the speaking parts of that poem I spoke through the mother Faery as she proclaimed her great joy at the birth of her child. And that was the type of beautiful joy I felt at the birth of my daughter.
What I never shared with anyone though, is that poem was just as much about my thinking of my eventual death. Think of the balcony on my deck with the potted herbs as per posting #76 of this thread as showing that “garden” in the poem and the empty chairs there are for you many of my sisters from this thread. You are the Faeries from that poem and that “garden” of herbs on my balcony is for you and my hoping that some of you might come and visit and join me in friendship out there.
When I wrote the poem I was alone and wishing I had any such friends with whom I could be myself. In you I have found them.
I mention all that to try to set the stage for the very beginning of that poem when I talk about the old witch hobbling slowly past the garden built for Faeries. And while I never plan to try to explain one of my poems again, I wanted to share the above as that poem was in part written thinking of the likes of all of you here and how much your friendship would mean or has meant to me. After all that garden was for you
Anyway here is a link to that favorite poem of mine, the one that would include that reference to my dearest friends such as you here:
http://www.witchvox.com/vn/vn_detail/dt_po.html?a=usnh&id=10830
And there you have it. Phew, LOL.
[FONT=&]OK, no more detours for me, I am next going to share some actual experiences on my physical transition, most good and some not, in a final effort to introduce myself and in doing so to perhaps help raise awareness on issues involving transgendered people.[/FONT]
I simply cannot understand anything unless it can be put into words (or numbers, etc). I cannot, for example, understand the love of a parent for their child. Not even a bit. :confused2: And fashion is a complete mystery.
