“I was not looking for the divine, she came looking for me! I have only known her, so it’s a bit like my wondering if I would prefer to have had wings rather than feet. I have only known feet. Yet it feels natural that it was the feminine Divine that came barreling toward me. That said, half the beings who guide me today are ‘male,’ though their ‘masculinity’ bears little resemblance to what we understand by that term. Language fails one at every turn.
“Gender profoundly shapes our social experience. This means that men, women, boys, girls, intersexed, and transpersons each carry particular burdens. And all of this intersects with other social axes like class, caste, culture, race, et cetera to shape the nature of our struggles and thus our spiritual journeys. Men enjoy innumerable advantages relative to women. Yet masculinity turns out to be even more oppressive as a mode of existence than femininity. Understanding the social basis of gender helps seekers to fully engage the ground of experience and not merely dismiss it as 'conditioning,' a strategy that leaves undone so much of the work that is essential to spiritual liberation. The trick is in learning how to simultaneously understand, honor, and take distance from that which we have assumed has made us who we are. We are all this and so much more.”
