To transcend “strong,” “real,” “good” and even “man” is to become free. This ain’t about Caitlyn Jenner. It’s much bigger than that.
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When the first crack splits things open, the light begins pouring in.
Slowly at first.
Alchemy: it happens in stages. You don’t see it right away, as it starts on the inside. Mine started when I was a boy. It was 1976 when I first started thinking about what it meant to be a man. Muhammad Ali, Smokin’ Joe, Sugar Ray Leonard, and Bruce Jenner were my ideals. It didn’t hurt that all of them (except for Frasier, no offense, Joe) were prettier than the whole High School cheerleading team, but you had to wonder where a person gets the strength to draw out that kind of greatness from within. I wanted that. I decided I wanted to be a strong man, so I set about conditioning my body. I dove into boxing and sports, and pushed my body to its limits. I was fast and strong. Good enough for a teenager to feel like a “man”.
A few years later, another crack in my shell.
One finds that no matter how “strong” you are, there’s always something that can break you.
In my 20’s I broke open to the idea of becoming a real man. I watched men I considered “real” men, and began to remake myself in that image. Men like my father, like firemen who run into buildings to save people, or soldiers who risk their lives for our freedom. Real men work, keep their promises, make sacrifices for the greater good, do what’s “right”, and stand up for their principles. Real men stand up to bullies and create sanctuary for those that can’t protect themselves.
Somehow, the softer, more vulnerable I became, the more real I felt. So I let go of this silly idea of “real man” and settled on a new ideal: to become a good man.
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I like the idea of being a real man, but as I grew, trying to hold that concept in my hands felt like trying to pick up a slippery eel. I saw how the phrase “real man” is used as a mechanism of social pressure, more often to punish a man for disappointing someone for not living up to the ideal. Too often I fell short, and sometimes I over-reached. Somehow, the softer, more vulnerable I became, the more real I felt. So I let go of this silly idea of “real man” and settled on a new ideal: to become a good man. To be called a “good man” was the crown I wore in my 30’s.
But I wasn’t always so “good.” Eventually you realize that life is a series of breaking points, inviting more cracks in the shell of ideas, forms, and identifications.
By my 40’s, the whole thing cracked open again, and a lot poured out. Out of me poured the desire and intention to become a free man. To be in service to all that fosters freedom of expression, including the freedom to get beyond these definitions and the boxes words make. Free of the judgments and resentments and “shoulds” and “nots.”
♦◊♦
To transcend “strong,” “real,” “good,” and even “man” is to become free. You see, this ain’t about Caitlyn Jenner. It’s much bigger than that. It’s about what it means to be free in a world that is about anything but freedom.
These doors have already been knocked down by hundreds of thousands of “commoners” who’ve had to scrape, struggle, and suffer–often in isolation–as they seek to align with their deepest personal truths, all at the cost of family alienation, societal scorn, and loss of personal safety.
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I’ll be honest. I’m turned off by the over-saturation of media attention the whole Jenner-Kardashian clan has heaped upon our culture. To me, the whole family is a flash-flood warning.
I deliberately avoided the story when I first heard about the man I knew as Bruce Jenner was transitioning. I passed on the Barbara Walters interview.
Let’s face it. Caitlyn Jenner is not the first one to make this transition by any stretch. These doors have already been knocked down by hundreds of thousands of “commoners” who’ve had to scrape, struggle, and suffer–often in isolation–as they seek to align with their deepest personal truths, all at the cost of family alienation, societal scorn, and loss of personal safety. Sometimes they pay with their lives. And yet I hear people making fun of them, minimizing the courage it takes to stand up and declare, “This is who I am.”
It’s never easy on the ones that dare to give a voice to that impulse. We make sure of that. The fact is that the LGBT community suffers the highest proportion of people falling into addiction, depression, and suicide in the USA. Human beings: we are a tribal species. Not supposed to be alone. There is a well documented correlation between social isolation and all sorts of problems, including suicide. Family alienation and cultural shaming tend to do that to people.
As a culture we are fond of sayings like “to thine own self be true”, “the truth shall set you free”, “follow your bliss”, or if you are inclined towards Christianity, you might like the sayings of Jesus.
And, mostly, what did Jesus speak about?
Truth.
Reportedly, his most frequent statement was, I am. “I am one with (the Source),” he was fond of saying. Now that didn’t go over too well back in the day, and rumor has it he paid the price. What a radical, that guy Jesus.
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I Am.
This is the signature of a self-actualized life. To be able to stand up in the world and declare, “This is who I am. This is my truth.”
Instinctively, we know this is the path to freedom. Generally, we despise the mindless drones who march in order, follow directions, and sacrifice their own truths for someone else’s profit, or for the measly pocket change of family approval. Yet when the occasional heretic actually breaks loose, and declares themselves to be free, we call them names, shun them, and put them on a cross.
“Hero” to some. “Science project” to others.
The moment someone attempts to lift off, we bring them down. It takes a monumental act of intentional effort and courage to spread one’s wings and fly among the stars.
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Elizabeth Gilbert calls it “Tribal shame.”
We’re all familiar with it. We post up photos of soldiers sacrificing their lives and say, “This is what courage looks like”, as if to invalidate the profound courage it takes for one to step out of the box and declare “I’m gay,” or “I’m a woman in a man’s body”.
On the most intimate level, Tribal Shame sounds like all the messages family and community pound into your psyche about who you should be, what you should do, who you should marry, how you should raise your children, what you should believe, how you should vote, what name you should call God, what church you should go to, what news channel you should listen to, what school you should go to and what job you should do.
To try and distinguish yourself from that, to stand apart from the family culture and individuate, is to risk ridicule and/or even worse, alienation.
To be ignored is to be shunned in the most profound sense.
To disregard someone’s brilliance is an act of violence upon their soul, this being the most common form of child abuse that not only goes unpunished, but is encouraged.
We all love to reference that famous quote from Nelson Mandela’s inaugural speech that actually comes from a Marianne Williamson poem: “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure . . . . ” But in practice the moment someone attempts to lift off, we bring them down. It takes a monumental act of intentional effort and courage to spread one’s wings and fly among the stars.
There is another force that lives within all living things, that merely wants to express the divine in the grandest way possible. Call it the soul. It’s a longing to express the voice of that which moves the universe. And there is no way that that can stay stuck inside the confines of a box of labels and definitions and expectations.
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In a literal sense, freedom is a birth-right.
We’re born free of definitions, tendencies, inclincations, or habits. Immediately society begins informing us with messages about who we should be. Parents do it all the time: “Oh, he’s just like his uncle, he’s gonna be a ladies man” when the kid’s only 6 days old. And the formless begins to shrink and squeeze itself into a little box that the tribe can feel comfortable with.
But there’s an impulse, another force that lives within all living things, that merely wants to express the divine in the grandest way possible.
Call it the soul.
It’s a longing to express the voice of that which moves the universe. And there is no way that that can stay stuck inside the confines of a box of labels and definitions and expectations. So in order for one to become free, to fulfill that mandate, a person must expand and break out of that box like a butterfly emerging from the chrysalis.
Once it begins to fly, the caterpillars of the world look up and say, “What a freak!,” “How sick that is,” “How dare you think you can fly! Who are you to think that you can do that? Why don’t you get your feet back on the ground and be practical about this now”.
Yes. Be practical. Stop looking for attention.
This world is over-populated by caterpillars who wouldn’t think to go slumming in a chrysalis, despite nature’s calling.
There are caterpillars who go by names like Huckabee, who illuminate the profound, ugly distinction between “Christ consciousness” and the dumbing down of everything the Master stood for.
There are people like that who’ve memorized every line in the King James Bible but conveniently forget that tiny little sentence about “give to Caesar what is Caesars and to God what is Gods.” Separation of Church and State, anyone? How about “The measure you give will be the measure you give back.” (Luke 6:38)
Of course all these caterpillars are running around quoting the bible and/or the Mandela speech, posting memes on Facebook like:
“Your playing small
Does not serve the world.
There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking
So that other people won’t feel insecure around you.”
That is what we are here for. Not to be a man, or a woman, or a Muslim or Christian or a Jew or an American. Not to be straight or gay or transgendered. But to express all that on the way towards being something more, towards realizing and actualizing one’s true essence.
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So many love to administer sweet tasting arsenic like, “hate the sin but love the sinner,” and implicitly condemn fellow people from the pulpits of heir own shrunken minds. They imagine themselves superior, saying, “well I don’t really understand him, but I will pray for him.”
Like caterpillars sitting on the ground praying for the butterfly who is fluttering joyfully in the sky. Far better would be to turn the prayers upon himself. Pray to have the courage to squeeze through that chrysalis and grow wings. Dare to leap from the ground and light up the sky with exuberance. The joy of living fully, the joy of expressing one’s soul authentically in this world. The joy of being true to oneself. The joy of getting out of the box of labels definitions and expectations and judgements. This is the joy of becoming one with the Source who knows no bounds, who is infinitive, who is one un- ending, unyielding flow of loving expression in the world.
And that is what we are here for. Not to be a man, or a woman, or a Muslim or Christian or a Jew or an American. Not to be straight or gay or transgendered. But to express all that on the way towards being something more, towards realizing and actualizing one’s true essence. To become a vehicle for the liberation of the soul. That’s what we are here on this planet for.
This is not about Bruce Jenner or Caitlyn or what your opinions about that are.
The gift of Caitlyn Jenner is the crack she has imposed upon our world, and the light that’s flowing in. It is the dialogue that she’s provoked within our culture about what it means to become a FREE human being. Free to choose how one wishes to express the voice of Source in this glorious world.
I’m interested in supporting all people in the quest to actualize their fundamental truth. To be able to live fully, in joyful liberation, to express authentic lives free of the constraints and restrictions of the culture around them.
To be a free huMAN being.
Photo: Vanity Fair/Twitter
Painting: The Author
BTW. One thing that has occurred is that i have learned that i want to be a good human first and a secondary descriptor of being a good human man afterwards. Gender for the most part is socially constructed in the majority of cases. I think at the core yoy can say maybe i feel like a man or a woman but even then i really can’t say for sure if that is a tesult of observation of others or truly comes from from within but i suspect the natural affinity for one or the other is there. I’ve always… Read more »
I have had this philosophy for a very long time now greg. What you’ve written is the Truth which is so not recognized by the world at large. I believe we are in fact pieces of god expressing in human form experiences for god to have. The Good and Bad. Our life here really is nothing but a string of experience and when one asks what the purpose of life is my answer is just that. Experiences that YOU choose to have. Nothing more and if those experiences come from love then you just hit the trifecta. I do live… Read more »
Well said, Caitlin Grace! The great poet saint Hafiz put it this way: “You are the sun in drag…you are an elephant with amnesia, trying to live in an ant hole. “
Beautifully written.
As the saying goes “It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are” and there will always be those who knew you before who try to pull you back into what is familiar to them – not recognizing your new improved, authentic self.which speaks volumes about them and says nothing about you.