Discussing spiritual experience

Someone wanted to discuss spiritual experiences. What value do they have?

It feels amazing and life-changing, and it can be. I was walking home from work on city streets I had walked hundreds of times, and suddenly that patch of grass on the street corner-

Only a patch of grass! Maybe three square yards!

had all my attention. It was vibrant. I did not understand, but think I do, now. The right hemisphere of the brain, with perception of all surroundings, had come into consciousness. My left brain perception, directed at a specific task, was not all I was conscious of. This can link to a feeling of oneness with the world, also seen as spiritual.

I noticed around then that reading spiritual texts, when they described learning I had not reached, appeared gobbledegook, but after I found the truth, I would read again with recognition. Now, with this understanding, I hope to be able to teach.

Of course left brain and right brain are working all the time, integrated in their way, but not always in consciousness. Now, for me, it is choice: walking on the beach I can slip into right brain consciousness at will, and have that sense of oneness- and separation, at the same time. What was overwhelming has become quotidian.

These experiences have no value unless they make us better people, more integrated, more fit to serve in loving community. The feeling of awe should lead us on, but without love it is nothing.

You don’t seem to understand that many Quakers abominate your views, like we abominate sexism and homophobia. You don’t have “concerns”- if you did you would do the reading and come to trans acceptance. You have ignorant hate. Some people are trans. That is all you need to know, really. You have no excuse. Having trans friends does not mean you are not transphobic, and if you substitute any other minority that may become clear to you, even though it is hard for people to admit their prejudice.

I would rather discuss spiritual experience than trans with you, but fear it will do no good. Meanwhile, my own spiritual experience continues, not discrete events but a healing process.

I use the word “trauma” with the precise meaning of the psychotherapists and counsellors I associate with. When preparing to transition, I expressed myself female at weekends and had to cram myself into the male mask on Monday morning for work. This was trauma. Then my speech therapist suggested I practice exercises throughout the day- on the stairs in the office, perhaps. So I soared, then crashed to earth, several times a day. It was horrific. I had insufficient emotional understanding, and a vicious inner critic which could not accept I might have difficulty with anything, and called me worthless, of no value but for what I can achieve.

I have listening partners. It is a spiritual practice: I listen, they listen, we hold each other in loving acceptance, we heal. With them I process this: my feminine self still feels vulnerable. I still run to the male mask, though it tortures me. My true self feels like threat to me, two decades after transition. In a group, I expressed this, deliberately seeking the acceptance of others to fortify my own. I asked, and I received. Immediately after, I wrote this affirmation:

I am.
I am here.
I am welcome.
I am safe: I need no more than ordinary vigilance.
I am Abigail.
I am glad.
My male presentation is not necessary, any more.
I can be myself, unashamed.

Then, walking home I chanted,

I am seen, valued, loved, respected
For myself, for myself, simply for myself
I am here, now, all I need to be
Need to be, need to be, All I need to be

Go on, have a spiritual experience: Metanoia, a radical move into love and truth, sometimes translated “repentance”. Is your heart so hard, your ears deaf? Be healed! Let go your fear and mistrust, and love your trans siblings!

Sarah Lucas

The show just ended at the Tate was fabulous. Outside, the t-shirts were going cheap. The art work, “Tits in space”, is reproduced over the walls of the anteroom. So, that was where to have the photo.

That would have been it; but the wee shop down the road towards Pimlico station had bananas. So I wanted a Sarah Lucas tribute.

People were quite happy to take my photo. S suggested I sit, demurely.

To me, I look stiff. I would wish to relax, interact with the camera. We got chatting, and went for tea in the Members’ room. She tells me she has met Sarah, who is lovely. We talked of activism.

Making trans conversion criminal

Scotland is consulting on criminalising conversion practices, which are illegal in Brazil, Ecuador, Germany, Spain, France, Belgium, Malta, Greece, Cyprus, Iceland, New Zealand and Canada. Why not the UK?

There is an 84 page document and a number of questions to consider. The proposals have some problems, and so I suggest how to improve the proposed law.

How should Quakers find out about trans?

As a trans person, I find the current discourse terrifying. In the news media including the BBC and Guardian you can read about “extreme gender ideology” and “extreme trans activism”, and how trans women are demanding access to women’s spaces where we should not be, or how we pose a threat, from which women and children should be protected.

You could seek out Quaker writers. Heather Brunskell-Evans, a Quaker, has written or edited several books. Norwich meeting has published an account of its investigations, including meetings with trans people. From these sources you would hear that the objections to trans activism and trans entry into women’s services are justified. Letters in The Friend have expressed similar objections.

Please do not look to these sources. That I and people like me are seen as dangerous or extreme frightens me, because it might prompt others to expel me or protect my imagined victims with well-meaning violence.

When people are scared of a threat, they seek to communicate that fear to others, so that the group can take action. Group cohesion increases when a group faces a threat from outside, an out-group. That out-group can be dehumanised. But Quakers usually try to see that of God in every one. If there is a narrative of a threat from a dangerous out-group, as there is with people crossing the English Channel in small boats, Quakers should be careful before affirming that the threat is real.

The sense of threat can be expressed persuasively. There were accounts of women being silenced, who merely wanted to discuss their rights. That might engender sympathy for potential victims. Even so, Quakers might consider the humanity of the alleged wrongdoers. We “Bear witness to the humanity of all people, including those who break society’s conventions or its laws”. And, while some trans people used nonviolent action attempting to silence such groups, I publicised as well as I could their misrepresentations, arguing people should not listen to them because they were untruthful.

Some Friends are convinced that trans activism and trans people are a threat. I ask you to bear witness to my humanity.

Finding out the truth is difficult. The issue I know most about is the law. Endless details might be relevant. I could tell you of the different positions the EHRC has taken. Perhaps their change in position is because of recent decisions in the Court of Session, but I argue it is because of political capture by the Conservative government. Quakers commit to telling the truth as best we see it- through a glass, darkly.

But anyone claiming there is “extreme trans activism” must engage with the EHRC Code of Practice on goods and services from 2011. It says any trans woman presenting female is entitled to use women’s services, and cis women’s objections to trans women is not a good reason to exclude her. This means that all the campaigning against formal, legal gender recognition since 2017 has been based on a toxic misunderstanding.

Anyone claiming there is “extreme gender ideology” must engage with all the people who had puberty blockers in childhood since 1990 and are now living private, contented lives transitioned. A few people detransition. Most don’t. Puberty blockers improve the mental health of trans children.

When finding out about trans, please don’t just ask a trans person. We might not have the energy or knowledge to answer. We might be misinterpreted. I am a woman. I feel no need to persuade anyone who questions that, so some conclude I do not believe I am female, but I do. I have had conversations about trans, and worked out the other, rather than seeking information, is seeking absolution for their discourteous behaviour to other trans people, or to have their transphobic views validated. So I am wary. We are not a political party and our views differ: just because a few token trans women agree about trans exclusion, does not mean trans exclusion is right.

Instead, read what we write, as you would read refugee stories rather than Reform UK about small boats. I recommend Shon Faye, The Transgender Issue, on the politics and Travis Alabanza, None of the Above, on what it feels like from inside. Or consider our art: I love Abigail Thorn’s youtube channel, Philosophy Tube, and Yasmin Finney’s performance in Doctor Who.

I am writing calmly and courteously, but I am terrified: I am also deeply frustrated, and swimming in a cold lake of sadness. There is this hideous feeling of unreality when I read that “men who claim to be women”- a phrase erasing us- are a danger. I ask your compassion.

Waterworld

I have never seen the lakes this high (Thursday 4 January)

Hope for the new year

The world is burning. How might I make things better, in 2024?

There is a by-election coming up near me. I will go and canvass support on the doorsteps. I will talk to people, and when there is an opening I will seek to persuade them. If there is a general election- the latest it could be is a year from now- I will do the same. I will canvass and leaflet for the local elections. In my area the main challenger to Tory rule is the Labour party, so I support Labour to get Tories out. Tories do not see how government services can be a good thing. When there is effective government, people in society act together for the common good, providing justice, transport, education and health, getting residents to pay a reasonable proportion of what they gain from living in a civilised society towards its maintenance. Instead Tories seek votes through hate, of asylum seekers and trans people. Labour is more likely to use power for good not ill.

Anti-trans campaigners get more and more socially conservative. Labour has retired from the fight. This means their politicians are no longer pressed, endlessly, to define “woman”, but also that Tories are getting more extreme. They attack trans more and more, hoping to bait Labour into opposing, so that the national conversation led by the right wing press and anti-trans campaigners at the BBC can go back to that question.

A better question is, “What is a trans woman?” She is an ordinary human being with a particular idiosyncrasy. What’s all the fuss about? Why can’t we just live our lives in peace? Who benefits from our total exclusion from women’s services? Such questions might mean people were triggered less.

Hungary has banned gender recognition and “content portraying” sex reassignment or homosexuality to children. It is always possible to drift rightwards, until perhaps it is criminal for me to use a woman’s name or wear women’s clothes.

One of the germs of this post was the editorial in the Observer, and Rod Liddle’s column, on the guidance for schools on trans children. Liddle is the Times’ hard-right pub bore ranter, yet the language, such as the word “toxic”, is similar, and the attack on social transition the same. Yet social transition benefits trans children.

The next week a letter from the Clinical Advisory Network on Sex and Gender in the Observer attacked the schools guidance as insufficiently robust, for not enforcing a total ban. Ooh, that group sounds official and important. It’s not the same as Thoughtful Therapists or the Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine, but it’s the same tactic, of a few people giving themselves a portentous name. Oligarchs are keen to fund such groups, the anti-trans keen to publicise them.

The legal position gets worse: the decisions of Lady Haldane make trans exclusion easier. The ranting of the anti-trans is getting steadily worse. In 2021, they usually said they had nothing against genuine trans people- for example, Abigail Shrier. They are less likely to bother saying that, now. In The Times, I read that “men who say they are women” are a threat to women in women’s refuges. The haters demand to impose an understanding of reality in which trans is meaningless. The political position gets worse. I would not be surprised by a Conversion Therapy Bill outlawing social transition for children as conversion of gay children. It would not pass the Lords- it is no more serious lawmaking than the Rwanda Bill- but it would enable the Tories to say they want action against the Trans Threat. They want any distraction from the real problems of the country, like high rents and low wages.

Why say how awful things are, in a post on hope? I have just come across the Stockdale Paradox. I can’t find where I read about it now, but it is a fruitful search term. James Stockdale saw optimists, believing things will get better, succumb to despair when they didn’t.

“You have to have faith that you will prevail in the end, regardless of the difficulties, and at the same time, must confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.”

Because of who Stockdale was, and the idea of hope as “I will prevail”, a lot of the search results are from a right wing, individualist perspective, and involve ideal Manliness. On the Left, I will say, We will prevail. After a wonderful time at Tate Modern I was playing the piano at St Pancras. When I finished, a woman applauded. She had noticed my trans flag pendant, which she found a delight. Despite all the hate, I have hope, in our people, in our spirit, in our allies. It will be another bad year. We will do what we can.

Time travel

“Time travel is brilliant!” said the woman. We shared our experiences. It needs well-held, and facilitated, and needs the subject to be present in the experience and open to it.

The traveller has had an emotional reaction which appears disproportionate to a current situation. With the facilitator, they find a memory which fits the emotion. It may be of them as a small child, in a situation which they could not cope with and were not helped with. They were overwhelmed.

The overwhelm created a traumatic memory. The situation provoking it becomes something to fear. The fear produces the stuck reaction.

Together, we imagine going back to that small child, and offering sympathy and support. They do not have to cope with this alone. There are warm, loving, supportive adults, the traveller and the facilitator, to hold and support them. They offer a hug. The child has a free choice. Sarah Peyton describes the technique.

I have facilitated this once. I spoke as moved by intuition, in fear and trembling, and when it worked and my friend was grateful I was pleased. I think of it now with great pleasure. My slight variation, which I have not read elsewhere, was in the hug to imagine herself as the child, being hugged by the strong, capable adult.

Richard Schwartz, founder of Internal Family Systems, practises something like this. He asks if the child has any idea how old the adult is. I returned to a child self too young to understand age in years, so told her I was old enough to go out of the house, get food, bring it home and prepare it: I was capable of giving the child the care she needs.

With a friend holding space for me, I go back to that incident when I was eight. This has been an important memory for me. I have done a lot of work on it. For this child, in denial, being masculine was terribly important. The memory symbolises my childhood feeling that I was isolated, and had to take care of myself. I would approach the world intellectually. My feelings had no value.

I have seen this technique done, and always with a happy ending. Here, I am handling ways of being which have been fundamental to my response to the world. Seeking control. Favouring intellect and rationality over feeling, though I have come to see that is an illusion and come to value, appreciate and understand my feelings over years. Isolating, though I have never completely isolated and have been coming out more and more this year.

So, my child self, symbolising my commitment so long ago to self-sufficiency, control, and intellect over feelings, knowing how that has felt safe in chaos over years, is not going to be lured into a hug quite yet. We travelled back in time to meet him, and he is suspicious. I decided that rather than end the practice there, I would sit with it. Essentially, the child, wanting control, finding safety in intellect, isolating because everyone lets me down, time travelled forwards to now.

Hello, Stephen. This is my life now.

The child is still suspicious. I hope she can see how beautiful she is.

After 48 hours, I have done my processing.
It was the right decision at the time.
My situation was very difficult.
My situation has changed.

The child is ready for a hug.

December roses! I took this picture in the park this week.

Merry Christmas

and a Tory-free New Year.

I love the almost naturalistic paintings of Mary and child

and the ones in Heaven with angels and saints

and the symbolic ones. These are the Flowers of the Passion.

“Gender questioning” children: draft guidance for schools

Some people are trans. Some children are trans. Trans children have been prescribed puberty blockers since the 1980s. As with adults, trans children are people who want to be, want to be treated as, or believe they are, of the other sex to that assigned at birth. This is a way people have been in all cultures for all recorded history. The draft guidance for schools in England on “gender questioning children” and related consultation denies that, and makes it as hard as the Tory government can manage for a trans child to be safe and respected at school.

The Public Sector Equality Duty

The public sector equality duty gives some protection to trans people, as well as other protected characteristics. That the government should revise its guidance is suspicious.