Seek wisdom where she may be found

From wrong to wrong the exasperated spirit moves

unless turned inside out and upside down

where cowardice is generosity

new evidence of wrong is proof of worth

and what produces good is seen as 

good

This is my second transition. Just as I moved from male to female, now I move from rationalist to feeling/ intuitive, and just as I saw narrow bands of acceptable behaviour as “male” or “female” where really they are much wider and overlapping, so I saw such narrow bands of acceptable behaviour generally.

I realised that what I had seen as cowardly could be generous, and that felt immediately liberating, and then I felt anger and despair that I could so harshly judge myself. If I am to withdraw from the world, I need to work this all out, rather than wasting time with TV Tropes or Facebook. And so I had got another thing to resent and deprecate and alter in my conduct- because I judge everything I do- seeing my own impulses as Wrong.

I watched The Secret of Crickley Hall, a dramatisation of a novel by James Herbert OBE. I was keen on him in my teens, but grew out of the supernatural horror with no characterisation. It passes the time, and I cannot be at the spiritual growth all the time. A woman goes to sleep in the swing park, her son wanders off and drowns in the canal. A simple tale of monstrous evil from sixty years before, and ghosts with the power to hurt the living, unfolds. But the wife blames herself for going to sleep, though as one bad man says she could blame her husband- had he supported her more she would not have been so tired. And the husband blames himself for not being there, though it was his wife who went to sleep. Their judgment of self and care for the other, refusing to judge, keeps them together through the loss of their child- his body is not found until a year later.

I am capable, sometimes, of blithely excusing everything, so things are Not My Fault- but on the whole I judge myself. And I see this too can produce good results. Hmp. James Herbert. Who would have thought it.

No. Going back to that, “blithely excusing everything” is not what it feels like from inside, I was just saying it. I notice that sometimes I hear criticism and do not take it on board- that’s Wrong, how dare he say that?- but others have observed to me that I can be very hard on myself.