What I am is a walking metaphor.
I hope it's darn clear what I was told is wrong with me.
And I hope it's also darn clear that I love that.
I love that about myself. I celebrated. I show it. I dance within it and have joy all around it.
You can do the same.
Hey there. So you may know my guest today, Jeffrey Marsh from their spiritual and inclusive messages
that have received over one billion views on social media.
Jeffrey is a viral TikTok and Instagram sensation.
The first openly non-binary public figure to be interviewed on national television.
And the first non-binary author to be offered a book deal with any of the big five publishers
landing at Penguin Renting House. And Jeffrey's best selling Buddhist self-esteem guide, How To Be You
is this innovative, category, non-conforming work that combines memoir and workbook and spiritual advice
really inviting anyone and everyone into the conversation through a lens of kindness and inclusivity.
And How To Be You It topped Oprah's gratitude meter.
It was named excellent book of the year by Ted Ed.
Jeffrey also has been a student and a teacher of Zen for over 20 years.
And this practice, it's really been central to both the lens on life and capacity to do the work they do
in the grounded, deeply present, open-hearted and joyful way.
So excited to share this best of conversation with you.
And a quick note before we dive in.
So at the end of every episode, I don't know if you've ever heard this,
but we actually recommend a similar episode.
So if you love this episode, at the end, we're going to share another one that we're pretty sure you're going to love to.
So be sure to listen for that. Okay, all into today's conversation.
I'm Jonathan Fields and this is Good Life Project.
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There's so many different fun places that I want to go with you.
I'm thinking almost like a bit of a three at play.
If you're cool with that, I'd love to take a step back in time,
explore some of your early life.
Then I thought it'd be interesting to dive into language and identity
because I think it's a really interesting conversation.
And then I'd also love to explore some of the bigger ideas and concepts
that you're regularly talking about that are from your book as well.
It's that good.
What if I was like, no, I'm out of here.
Yeah, those are all my favorite things.
Awesome.
I'm ready.
That sounds great.
So as we're having this conversation, actually, where are you right now?
Where are you these days?
In beautiful sunny Los Angeles.
Nice.
I was in New Yorker for many years myself.
Yeah.
Okay.
So now I'm curious.
Whenever somebody goes from New York to LA,
I'm always curious what the motivation is behind that.
Weather.
Ah, alright.
One word.
Well, that was partly it.
I mean, I actually didn't think that the weather would affect me as much as it has.
But it's 72 in sunny today.
And that doesn't hurt.
But it was mostly for career, for making TV and doing TV stuff.
Yeah.
That still is where so much of the industry is.
But you grew up not too far from New York.
Well, geographically not too far, but it is sort of like a different universe
in a lot of ways.
Your county PA.
For those who've never heard of that or have never been there.
I'd love if you could paint a little bit of a picture of what the area that you grew up in
was like, especially when you were a kid.
It was the woods.
It was a large farm, over 300 acres of a farm, which means I got to run around and play.
But I also didn't have much contact with others, with other people.
One of my main sources of social interaction was the church.
And the church that I happened to attend during high school with my parents was also the
clan meeting house.
So the clan would meet in the basement.
And we were not members.
But that was going on in the building.
So it was a very, very conservative part of Pennsylvania.
And a place, you know, I was growing up in a place where I wasn't even sure if there was
anyone else like me.
At all.
Tell me more of what you mean by like me.
Specifically, you know, in my head, as I said, I met non-binary.
But beautifully rainbow LGBTQ imaginatives.
There were a couple years where I really literally thought maybe I was born on another planet
and was sent somehow to Pennsylvania.
I don't know if you wanted to get this deep this quickly, but I have a bit of a reputation for doing that.
I was told basically in many ways when I was a kid that I was worthless.
So one of the narratives I had was, well, actually, I am very special.
And it took me many years to come to the realization that every single person is special.
That specialness is something that includes everybody.
When you get that message as a kid, which is a devastating message to get at any age.
But especially when you're really young, when you know, the likelihood of you having resources available
for you to understand how to process that in a way that isn't any way constructive,
that just doesn't exist in most kids, let alone most adults, right?
How does that land with you? How does that affect the way that you move through your life,
the way that you see yourself, the way that you relate to others at that moment in time?
I spent so many years deeply alone and feeling deeply lonely.
And the interesting thing and the reason I love so much what I do today
is that as a kid, I imagined a beautiful, loving family.
It's sort of like, I don't think it was exactly like this, but it's imagining the family I had,
you know, where I was born on Mars, right?
I just imagined this loving group of people who accepted me exactly for who I am and how I am.
And I had enough agency as a kid to be able to imagine that.
And so when I became an adult and literally found that through social media, through community,
it had such a deeper resonance for who I was as a kid.
I had in a way trained myself to recognize who were the good-hearted people.
Does that make sense?
Yeah, I mean, it makes a lot of sense, you know, and it doesn't have to make sense to me,
even if it didn't, you know, this is your truth.
It sounds like one of the ways that you also felt okay was effectively to create your own world when you're a kid.
Your own experiences, I know you write about and you speak about and you talk about and you describe effectively creating your own world, your own theater, your own play acting in a barn,
where this becomes like your almost escape, like your place where you can be okay.
But it also sounds like it was something that existed only for you.
You kept secret for a long time.
Absolutely.
And one of the hallmarks of it was always keeping an ear out for the sound of my dad's boots on the gravel that was outside the barn.
You know, this constant split in my soul of being totally free and playing and twirling and dancing around and wearing dresses that I had bought or that had borrowed, you know, and kept in a trunk inside the barn.
I'm literally playing dress up long after you're supposed to not do so.
But also having part of my soul, part of my heart split off to make sure I wasn't going to get in trouble.
And I, it took years and years for me to give up that second part to stop worrying about whether I would get in trouble and to fully embody who I am.
This is why when I talk about inner child work, I talk about my inner child rescuing me.
A lot of people talk about parenting their inner child, which is lovely, but my inner child kept the innocence and the fun and the idea of joy that was really earned by that kid, you know, looking back.
And that was kept in place as, you know, my inner child to speak about it metaphorically, my inner child was a bookmark of that joy and thank goodness, you know, that I had something to come back to and to reconnect with.
Yeah.
It was an adult such a powerful way to look at that when you use the phrase get in trouble.
You didn't want to quote get in trouble when you heard the boots of your dad coming. What do you mean by that in your mind back then, what was getting in trouble to you?
It meant several things on a practical level.
There was no adult that I can remember in my life who didn't want me not to be me.
And every adult, people at church, schoolteachers, parents tried everything they could think of to get me not to be this beautifully LGBTQ.
And that included withholding affection that included violence that included social, you know, hints jokes at my expense, anything, anything at all.
And on an even deeper level than those sort of tactics, I think what getting in trouble meant to me as a kid was that I would be even more isolated that I would be rejected left out of the group left to fund for myself that kind of thing.
When you were that age growing up in that community, were there any other people that you could look to were there any other role models, was there anyone else where you could look and say, oh, there's someone I can relate to there's somebody who seems like they're similar to me and living life in a way that felt good.
Or was it something where you really had no access to other people like that.
For years and years, I felt deeply lonely and didn't really have access to people like that.
And then, you know, all of a sudden you're a teenager and you see a picture of David Bowie and you're like, what is that? What is that person doing over there?
What is that? That's what I'm doing. Where did that person come from?
You know, and I guess it's deep and poetic and beautiful at the same time that one of David's personas was someone from outer space, right?
This kind of feeling of you're the only one.
So David Bowie comes to mind. RuPaul was on TV.
There is an author named Kate Borenstein who wrote a book called Gender Outlaw and that book came out in 1996.
It's actually, it gets even better. It's called Gender Outlaw on men, women and the rest of us.
And that came out in 1996 and I was on my way going off to college and that book changed my life.
So a little bit later in those teenage years, I began to connect a lot of the dots and find a sense of community.
But it does sound like a lot of that community. It wasn't local. It was, it sounds like it was more, there were people in the media.
There were people out there where you saw, oh, okay, I can relate to them in a lot of different ways.
I can relate maybe to the community that they seem to be existing within, but that's not here. That's not sort of like my immediate experience.
If I have this right, your mom was also a Lutheran pastor at the time, right?
Correct.
Yep.
And you describe, I guess it was when you were 11, a moment in the car where you decide it's time.
It's time to tell my mom what I'm feeling.
I'm curious what was happening inside of you in the minutes, the seconds before you said those words where you said, you're like, mom, this is what's happening.
That made you feel like this is the moment like I have to do this now after really secreting it away for all of the time before that.
It felt like a pressure cooker. I mean, it was a jumbled mess, but the only way I could conceive of to be comfortable and to be happy was to inform the most important people in my world.
And my mom was obviously included in that.
And at the time, all I could come up with was, I think I like boys, because I was the only reference point that I had, and I would end up coming out to her again at 16 and again at 18.
And it would be a rolling process on into adulthood.
When you use that language, and I guess as you just described that with the only language that you had at the time, you know, it's interesting. And I think this is an, you know, probably a good transition into just really exploring language and identity, which has become such an emerging part of the conversation, the public conversation, I think over the last really five years or so.
But before we get there, now I'm really fascinated by this book that you say hits in 1996, right? Because literally having, if not the word non binary, but the expression of that identity in the title or the subtitle itself in 96 is a profound act.
Because that is not part of in any meaningful way, the public conversation at that moment in time. I'm curious now also when you dive into that book, you know, now a number of decades ago, what's that experience of that's for the reminder.
What's that experience like for you, you know, because I'm wondering if that is at the moment where you start to say, OK, so I've been trying to figure out what is the language here for a long time, but not just the language, what is the sense of identification and who I am underneath it?
Yeah, and what was the role of that book in sort of like deepening you into that exploration?
Well, to put it simply the book saved my life, it was a process of starting to see myself less and less as a freak and looking back, you know, for a book to have so much power, it wasn't necessarily, oh, there are gender, enthusiastic people in the world, there are gender delightful people in the world, right?
Or whatever language you want to use, there is something beyond man and woman, right? As the subtitle says, but it's, it's not just that, it's not just technical vocabulary.
It's the idea that I didn't have to fit into what I was told, the only possibility to be a human being is.
So there's something technical like, yeah, this movement exists, but it's also something mind altering that there are people who literally think differently on this planet.
And I guess part of what was so transformative is I can go find those people.
The 90s is also a really interesting time for you to be grappling with this and sort of like figuring a lot of these things out because this is a moment in time where HIV, where AIDS is this absolutely terrifying, terrifying thing that seems like it is overtaking communities.
It's literally just was watching the new piece, Tick-Tick Boom on Jonathan Larson's life, the playwright behind Rent and being a long time New Yorker, I remember being in New York and being downtown and being in the East and West Village and like knowing all the people who are in the play and also having friends and seeing so much addiction, so much loss.
So this is got, you know, this is also the answer going on as your sort of like trying to figure out like who I am, where is my, but is there a place for me?
Was that a part of what was spinning around in your head during that whole sort of like 90s window as well?
Yeah, I mean, I can remember being on the farm as a very young kid in the early 80s and seeing the news talk about the gay plague and seeing raw cuts and die and all of this stuff that as a very young person when I was aware of who I am, that being associated with loneliness, being a pariah, rejection, death.
It can get heavy and at the same time, you know, I'm glad you brought up Jonathan Larson because throughout Rent especially is this lightness living for today is part of the message.
And I also got that, it's hard for me to go back and piece together, you know, pros and cons list of what, of growing up the way I did.
You know, you said, um, figuring it out and I get asked a lot in interviews, when did you know you were different sort of this stock question.
And I always give a very lovely slash sassy answer that I never felt different.
What I did come to realize is that other people had a problem with who I am, but that's not to me that's not the same as feeling like I'm not a human being like they are I'm not I don't have the same wants desires need to belong that sort of thing.
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I was scared that you'd be alone for the rest of your life. She said that her biggest motivating factor was fear. And at 11 I couldn't comprehend that. And you know, I kind of I kind of wished. I don't usually ever talk about this, but I I wish she could have told me that at 11 years old. It was nice to hear it at you know, 30 or whatever I was when we.
When we talked about that. But in a way, the programming had already been done. And that's really unfortunate.
Yeah, because I mean, then it's it doesn't land as there's quotes something wrong with you or quote like all the other ways that it could land as a young kid and even as a young adult.
It's more I'm concerned. I'm concerned about you being okay as a parent, which is a profoundly different message.
Yes, and I actually heard from both of my parents later in life, you know, after I had left home that they felt it was good parenting to get me not to be LGBTQ.
In the sense that they were saving me from some horrible lonely life disease, right in life. And it's hard to argue with that because that's what the culture was telling them.
Yeah. And at the end of the day, you know, it's interesting you asked the typical parent what they want for a kid and most of them were right love some variation of I want I want my kid to be happy.
But the deeper truth is before even before that, what you really want is for them to be safe.
You want for them to be okay. And sometimes, you know, that's how we map that is guided by the culture, the ethos, the philosophy that surrounds us.
And so it's like the intention is actually not a bad intention, but the way that we think is the appropriate way to go about it ends up causing harm that we don't even realize is being caused in real time and sometimes not until many years later.
A lot of parents come to me to ask how they can support their LGBTQ kids, which is a wonderful thing to I love always getting those messages.
And I have a bit of a shocking answer to that one. And it's as a parent, you need to love yourself.
You need to accept all of the things that you find unacceptable about yourself and then demo what that integration is like for a young person.
And I never, never wished that I had a perfect set of parents.
But a more consciously loving set, and I mean loving themselves to have seen that when I was a kid, I think would have been something quite magical for me.
Yeah, it's so powerful, right? Because at the end of the day, it really doesn't matter what you say as a parent, it matters. The behavior that you model is what sends the most powerful message.
And you can't walk around all day saying, this, this, this, and this, and then do the exact opposite and move through the world in a different way.
Kids, you should love yourself.
Right.
It's like, yeah, then go do a sort of self-destructive thing this year, self as a parent.
Right. Exactly. You don't have a leg to stand on.
Yes. So when you move that into the world and you start to be able to actually say yes to your own community, say yes to your own sense of identity, say yes to your own language.
You described earlier when you, like that 11 year old moment where you tell your mom, I think I like boys.
That was the only language that you really had at that moment in time. But that's really, it's changed. It's evolved and it's expanded.
And that language in the early days was really sexual orientation focused. But the language now, not just you, but sort of like that, that there's been this really powerful evolution of language.
And I don't want to say evolution of identity because we've always been what we've always been in. And there, there have always been people of all identities and all sexual orientations forever.
But now it seems like there's been this evolution and granularity in language that allows people to really figure out like what is the language that allows me to express myself differently.
I'm curious how you, how you have sort of explored the world of finding the language that felt like you.
Oh goodness. I mean, it was just a bunch of, it was, it was a playground. It was a hodgepodge of trying different things.
Yeah, I cycled through lots of different stuff. And I was on Vine. And I was famous and doing videos on Vine. And the kids on Vine said, what are your pronouns? Are you non-binary?
This was like 2013. And I was like, what are these kids talking about? And so I went to the source. Everyone at the time would go to tumblr.com.
And I looked up, you know, what are these kids talking about? And I started reading personal experiences of people who were non-binary.
And the light bulb went off. I felt so comfortable and at home and at peace with that. And because of the kids, as I like to say, I became one of the first public figures.
I was the first person to talk about it on national TV, being non-binary and talking about sort of this modern era of the pronouns and how to treat people like us with the most respect.
I talked to me about the relationship between use of appropriate pronouns and respect. Because I think it's one of the things that people will sometimes struggle with. They'll think, oh, well, you know, quote, why does it matter so much what pronoun I use?
But it's really not a language thing. It's bigger than that.
Yeah, it's sort of statement. It's kind of like a little bit of a lingering question.
Okay, good. That my favorite, my favorite guy. I, to me, it's about a human soul. So a label is not the totality of a human experience.
But it is a place for someone to land, to feel seen, to feel understood, to feel respected, to feel loved, to feel accepted, to feel the thing that I was craving the most when I was nine years old on the farm.
They mean it occurs to me also language is it's a way to communicate what's going on is a way to communicate your inner life, your inner experience, your inner sense of identity of who you are.
And when you don't have that language or when it doesn't quite fit, it's almost like, and tell me if this is completely offer if it resonates with you, it's almost like you're 80% seen, you're 60% seen, but you're never quite fully seen or expressed because the language is never quite accurate.
Does that in any way resonate? Yeah. And until circa 2013 on Tumblr, I didn't have that level of comfort ability.
It's kind of hard to explain if someone has been comfortable in their label their entire lives. And I think this, this, this is one of my favorite references.
I mean, I think that's the kind of thing that I think is really important to me. And I think that's the kind of thing that I think is really important to me.
And I think that's the kind of thing that I think is really important to me.
The concept of having language that truly sees a person is that level of comfort ability. It's a level of goodness, it's a level of human relaxation that is hard to describe if you've never been through it.
It's not just respect, it's about, I mean, it's a yes and it's respect and ease to a certain extent. Yes, that's the perfect way to say it.
Respect and ease, which as you're saying it, it seems a little ironic to me because people usually have a little time where they are not at ease trying to learn the new pronouns.
So it's a little bit of like bumps in the road until everybody is at ease, but that does eventually happen and it's beautiful.
Yeah, I mean, it's interesting. So I'm 56 and you know, I came up in a world where you know, the teaching was, you know, like there are these two things and names were signed based on that.
And those two different states, you know, like male female were assigned to a being at birth generally. And then you reference them throughout life that way.
And it is interesting to me because we live in a very different world, which is an amazing thing right now, not that, again, not that people are different, but that there's an openness to actually acknowledging that there's more than this binary state.
And that there's new language that really helps people step into and express like whatever wherever they are in the spectrum in gender.
And like you said, and yet at the same time, I still stumble on a regular basis. And I think a lot of folks listening to this have that same experience of stumbling and the fear is always I always want to lead with dignity.
So sometimes I will default to just not saying anything rather than saying the wrong thing. And I often I feel like there's that fear in so many people is that you don't want to do harm.
And that misgendering it can really do harm. And I wonder if there's sort of like we're in the I feel like we're in this moment right now where people are trying to figure out like what is the what is the way to step into the conversation.
And all sides where dignity and doing no harm are at the center of it all. And I feel like we're all stumbling in a really big way through that conversation in real time together.
And thank goodness.
Thank goodness.
Because if we were unstumbling and if we were comfortable when people were not being respected or included, then I think it's probably a good thing to be uncomfortable.
And I said it so beautifully that this is a process with an end goal that is noble, that is beautiful, that is human connection.
And it's such a delight to speak to you because so many people want to get bogged down in the rules and don't realize the spiritual aspects.
Not that a person has to have a spirituality, but when I say spiritual aspects like a like human dignity and respect, right.
The danger has been as non binary folks, we've gone from people thinking we're absolute weirdos not wanting anything to do with us to now people being afraid to say the wrong thing around us.
And in both instances, we are left off alone with nobody to hang around with, right. People are afraid of us because we're weird or people are afraid of us because they're going to say the wrong thing.
And one encouragement I would give is we have encountered this many, you know, if you're talking to an out non binary person, we've encountered this many, many, many times.
And yes, it is not pleasant to be misgendered, it's not pleasant when people forget, but you should be included in that common human dignity and respect as well.
Meaning I as a human being don't want you to spend three days feeling bad because you said he, that doesn't seem very productive to me.
And at the same time, right, as you just described, what's the alternative is if you just, if you're so fearful of making, of saying the wrong thing, of making a mistake that the behavior that you choose to adopt is just to opt out of the conversation entirely.
You're doing harm by basically engendering isolation by creating separate worlds by almost implying like there's, I'm so uncomfortable with being wrong that I'm just going to like opt you out of my experience of life of community, which inadvertently is just an entirely different way of doing harm.
Yes, and it's a repeat of what we might call the old days when people just purposefully cut us out of society and the conversation altogether.
Right. It's like the net effect is the same in the tension may be different, but the net effect is is the same thing.
Yeah, and I always like to remind allies that you will go through. It's just it's just is going to happen and being able to do that and recover in as graceful a way as possible is part of being a warrior for equality on this earth.
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The other interesting evolution of language is I think gender has been really cool to watch how the conversation has shift around it and the other part of it is sexual orientation.
There are a lot of new phrases. There are a lot of new identifications and I feel like there's kind of some fun being had with language along the way too.
I think it's gender fun even sort of like part of the comments so there's so many variations now that you know I think you're talking about and granted there's more than just male female and non-binary on the gender side also there's a full spectrum of identifications and now we're seeing that sexual orientation also.
And I feel like a lot of times people also still conflate sexual orientation and identification with gender and make assumptions that if you're this in one of those categories then you must be this in the other.
And yet there is like a beautiful a malgum of mix and match like whatever tapestry you want to put together that feels fully expresses you it seems like there's this availability to pick and choose the language that continues to evolve in a really beautiful way from the outside looking in again talking to you as you like a straight cisgen middle of guy.
Does it does it feel like that from your lens from your experience yeah are you talking specifically about the kids on tiktok that that but also just like in common conversation these days just like I feel like there's been an expansion like it started sure in certain areas but now even you know it's interesting right because even the word queer I think is really interesting because that word I'm seeing used in so many.
Different context now sometimes without even reference to sexuality and I think it's just fascinating to see how people are playing with this language and just adopting it to me whatever it is that they feel somehow just resonates with them yeah and it goes to show you how woefully in adequate.
Language is to describe human lives let alone behavior but you know you're the way you encounter things and how you feel and all of that stuff language is just not adequate and you highlight the invitation.
I don't know if you meant to do this and I don't want to put words in your mouth but you know someone like me isn't invitation to folks who have never never thought twice about the labels they use you know for example you use the word says meaning cisgender the opposite of transgender and even to use the word opposite like what am I talking about you know but it for someone who never even encountered the word says because.
The word says because they just thought of themselves as man from start to finish and that's been their whole experience the invitation for me to someone like you and again correct me if I'm wrong is your box doesn't have to be so small and proscribed either.
That man don't have to spend an inordinate amount of time trying to be the man must man you know whatever the version of that is.
That the comfort and play and gender queer nature of human existence as a non binary person can be you know you come to this playground you come to this this field over here and hopefully find some some peace and expansion yourself.
I like the invitation.
Yeah and it's never just I never so a teenager will you know comment on one of my videos and say is it okay if I'm a non binary lesbian and I say of course right it's kind of like what you were saying before it's like we're making this up as we go along and I'm perfectly fine with that.
And if there's a word or set of words that you love that help you to feel seen and understood even if that's man or woman or something you know a label that's that you've used and has been common your whole life.
You know even if that's the case for you hopefully you still find comfort in the idea that you don't have to have a standard you don't have to meet a standard of who you are with sexuality or gender.
Yeah I mean I think that's it's such a powerful invitation for everyone you know and I think it's I love the reframe and I love you and you're like reflecting that back to me because I offered like this certain idea to you.
On winningly kind of like opting out of the same exploration and so you reflecting it back to me is like.
You can't have no right right no I got it it's all good you know it's like we're all in this dance together you know and like don't ever assume that you're on the sidelines trying to figure out like what quote they are trying to figure out.
You just excited me so much because allies will ask me how do I respect non binary people and I've started asking well what are your ideas.
What do you come into what do you come into the table with because you're in this movement too right of liberation if that's what we're doing you're you belong here too.
You helped me just now right here in this podcast recording identify why I'm uncomfortable with this kind of expert model of I'm supposed to tell people what's up you know it's I don't like that feeling at all.
I get that I want to shift gears a little bit also maybe it's not a shift gears there's just another point of curiosity for me.
You at some point you probably pick this up because I use the phrase do you know harm earlier there's a Buddhist side of you I'm curious what brings you to that a bit further into life.
Well as a young person about oh gosh trying to do the math in my head over 20 years ago I was so intensely devoted to self hatred and self judgment when I say I did extra credit I worked on it on weekends I did everything that you could do as a young person in my 20s to hate myself almost out of existence.
And so things got so desperate that I needed to move away to a monastery for a while a Buddhist monastery and have a chance to look at what exactly we are doing here and what we may be trying to do and why honestly why self hate and other hate is such a huge issue and I have a you know I wrote about this in in how to be you.
But I happened to study with the person that that first used the term self hate in a spiritual context and she was it was brilliant to study with her and take a deep look at why and how more importantly how that happens.
Why Buddhism I mean there are I'm lucky because there's so many places that you you could have chosen to step into so many different past so many different ideologies philosophies and I'm always curious why that especially given the context of like you know you you grew up in a particular tradition of like a faith based tradition I can understand why there would be a lot of friction there when you're sort of saying I'm in a really dark place like self hate.
So I'm just like self hate is effectively become my religion and I need to choose somewhere else to step into to figure this out there are so many different choices you could have made I'm curious why that particular choice was made it chose me.
And I had become my religion yes thank you for that thank you for the gift of that beautiful phrase it had become my religion and addiction my family my everything my world.
And then I went into a spiritual bookstore in Philadelphia and across the bookstore was a book handwritten this this weird like artsy handwritten on the cover of the book it said there is nothing wrong with you.
And it was written by the guide at the at the monastery that I would eventually go to and train within.
Of course I saw the cover of that book there is nothing wrong with you and my brain started going oh yeah right I know this is wrong with me and this is wrong it started like you know do you want the alphabetical
list or order of importance of what's wrong with you right and as my brain is doing that my feet are like walk walk walk walk walk over that book cracked it open and and through whatever miracle was able to take in that
message for at least a glimpse you know just a moment in time enough to set me on that that path do you know who guan Yin is.
Guan Yin as in the goddess the bodhisattva yeah yeah this Buddhist figure right statues of guan Yin have had boobs mustaches sometimes both together sometimes like this angelic being that has no gender.
And a lot of the stories depending on you know which country you're following that particular deity through in the history of Buddhism will take many forms many genders to help someone reach nirvana or become more enlightened.
So there is this tradition already built into Buddhism that transcends I don't need to tell you transcends the identity but also helped me to become much more comfortable in this gender transcendent space.
No that makes a lot of sense that that was actually one of my curiosities because there is and it's not only in Buddhism I feel like it exists more in various eastern traditions than western based traditions.
There is much more comfort with the idea of dissociation with any particular gender identity almost shape shifting and you know it's it's just a part of the storytelling the mythology the ideology around it in a much more natural way.
And I also feel like it's it's also that way in the art and the culture of a lot more eastern traditions as well and it's sort of like western said we need to lock this down and you know so I'm always fascinated by that divergence you know in how people.
Storytelling about themselves in the world and how the traditions have evolved sometimes over thousands of years around that yeah you know another prime example is indigenous cultures in North America to.
But yeah like how you said western culture what was the phrase you used we need to lock this down I think it is a in large part you know I didn't know I don't know how philosophical about gender you want to get but.
It does have to do with power struggles and hierarchies and I didn't get to say this earlier but the first suggestion of using a gender neutral pronoun came from women from feminists in Miss magazine.
So there is this concept in 1971 so there is this concept of undermining the power structures and hierarchies by using more inclusive language that comes long before this language we're using now about non binary identity.
And to me it's all of a piece we're going for true equity for folks.
And then step into social media and then start to really storytell and share ideas and share who you are in a very bold public way you also really start to develop a lot of your own ideas and share them that leads to this fantastic book how to be you.
Which is almost like I feel it's almost like your your ten commandments but I don't want to call them commandments because that would assume that they would always be static and I feel like even that is sort of like not the intention behind it like this is a dynamic set of thoughts.
And let's have a conversation about them so many fantastic thoughts around perfectionism and cultivating deep trust of yourself and really a devotion to self knowledge self awareness self inquiry among the topics that you explore which I thought was fascinating was the relationship between punishment and control talk to me about this.
Yes, you know I realized through my own how would you say it through my own self hate journey that if I was always the worst person in the room I was able to have some sense of control some sense of normalcy some sense if it was always my fault that at least I knew whose fault it was.
And I don't know where it came from bravery gumption desperation to be able to step out of even the idea of whose fault is it.
And the undermining of a sense of control or sense of even consistency that you give up with that.
From one Buddhist to another how do we know ourselves well we're the people who are terrible right the where the people are always striving to be better and self improve and you know well if you have no self that's not a problem right.
You talk about the myths of control also as part of that conversation this idea that control is actually even a thing that it's that it's possible to be in control that it's possible to be in control all of the time that there's a should involved that you actually should be in control all of the time that there's something wrong with you that if you're not or if you can't constantly being control that.
You should do something to have more of it and that other people have this magical state which is a should an aspirational state and you don't so much of this is built around this notion that we are we exist in a world that is I'm going to go back to that phrase locked down a ball.
And it's like the more that you assume that everything is within your control it's almost like you are inviting suffering in chair life you know because the reality of the world is it's not and yet and yet this is our default approach to everything in life and I wonder how often wonder why that is like why do we why do we seem to arrive into adulthood with this wiring which is so slanted towards suffer.
My teacher at the monastery used to flat out say it's not what it's how it's not the circumstances of growing up non binary or not or on a farm or not it's how we build a life how we are taught to treat ourselves and I have never encountered.
Encountered someone who is not given the message in one way or another there is something wrong with you.
I mean they don't call it intergenerational for nothing right so happened our parents happen to their parents happen to happen to happen to happen to happen to happen.
And I admire people like you and a lot of my spiritual heroes who say well the box stops here then I might not have been given those skills but I sure I'm going to go find them somehow by hooker by crook to end this cycle somehow.
I think it's one of the most noble things of human being can do and by the way I haven't yet opted myself out of that cycle i'm still struggling with all the same stuff as much as I read as much as I know all the things but I'm like human and right there with everybody else listen like we're like.
Still a lot of life that I want to like say I can map this I can figure it out I can there's a there to control that I have over it and for the most part for me in the context of my life it's it's over the the nature of the relationships with people that I can't imagine moving through this season on the planet without you know.
And yet like the truth is always impermanence and you know everything is sort of like in perpetual flux you follow up in your book with like one of the other big ideas really kind of follows nicely with that which is to get used to not knowing you know which is that there is a certain freedom like not only is there like the rules but there's just there's a freedom in actually not having control in not knowing all the answers in just surrender to the fact that.
Oh yeah like stuff's just going to happen and i'm going to get asked something in a big meeting and have no idea what the answer is and the notion that there's freedom to that is a little counterintuitive but if you kind of just like sit with it's like well what if there was did you say i'm going to get asked something in a big meeting and not which is really funny because like I don't I don't have a big.
I don't have big meetings on set of like i'm postures. How many zooms are you on. Yeah like i'll be in my certain tie and all this and obvious.
I think that would be fun to do a zoom like that with you as long as it was you know a game a play um yeah no that's that's that's so first of all it's true you can't control anything but second of all once you give up on trying to that's what you get.
Freedom happiness is joy jokes.
I get a lot of hate as you implied earlier you know i am on social media and i am an LGBTQ person on social media and you know i used to not be able to really.
Yeah i'm not not chockingly but you know it used to be very difficult the kind of psychic weight of everybody really telling you the most awful things that that you've ever heard in your life on social media and.
One thing that really helped me.
Is the realization that i do not want to control other people's reactions.
I couldn't but also.
I don't want to.
I don't want to I don't want to be playing that particular game.
It was really profound just a few moments ago you reminded me that as a little kid i had to use my smarts in order to survive so the very one of the very first things we talked about being in the barn having an ear out for my dad's boots on the gravel i had to be highly intelligent and sus out how i could do a quick change or you know run the to the other entrance of the barn and make it out you know.
I had to use let alone.
Sussing out my parents moods and being intelligent enough to navigate around all of that and not get in trouble like we talked about.
But then you grow up and that intelligence that i used to survive.
Has nothing to say about love has nothing to say about being vulnerable with a partner has nothing to say about death loss.
The intelligence i needed to survive is really not.
It's not that stressful in so many areas that we call human lives.
Yeah and at the same time right the almost always bundled with that intelligence is a devotion often unwittingly but out of survival to hyper vigilance.
Psychic weight of sustained hyper vigilance year after year after year becomes brutalizing and at some point if on the one hand.
If you're perpetually in environments and communities where you feel like it must be there for me to literally physically survive.
It's something that maybe you know like you you say this is a part of the equation of the life that i'm choosing to live but.
If you could figure out a way to being communities and conversations and in an emotional psychological and cognitive space where you didn't feel like you needed to carry that burden maybe not completely let it go but not at that level like.
What would become available to you from a bandwidth standpoint for love for connection for devotion for whatever it may be when you're not carrying that.
The volume of that load anymore.
It's such a good question.
I was shocked one gajillion percent shocked when I learned that there are people in the world who are not part of communities and constantly trying to prove to that community that they're valuable.
They're just you know are part of a community and don't even think about it.
It's like wait a minute i want that.
So yeah it's a really really good important question yeah.
It starts to bring bring it full circle also.
One of the last things that you talk about in your book and I've heard you talk about elsewhere is this notion of.
Being passive in your own happiness is deadly of not sitting back and waiting for things to happen of really being active in the exploration of how you want.
Your life to show up and I think that's such a powerful invitation for anybody and almost everything that we're talking about it probably everything that we're talking about like a lot of the context has been.
In your life has been in the context of gender has been the context of sexuality but.
The truth is just like you just described everybody has existed at some point in the community or wanted to be accepted by a group or a person or a community where they felt like they had to in some way hide or be someone else or carry.
A different identity and give up you know a certain amount of their agency in the quest to just.
Live a good life to be happy so your invitation you know in all the world that you do I think it's so interesting that every literally everything that you say every idea that you have is relevant in every person's life in every context.
Oh good.
That is my global proclamation after.
Well that's funny I thought you were going to I don't know if you know the LGBTQ phrase to read someone you know like open the book open them like a book and read them.
And I really thought you I think you did pretty well you read me what I am as a walking metaphor.
I hope it's darn clear what I was told is wrong with me.
And I hope it's also darn clear that I love that I love that about myself I celebrated I show it I dance within it and have joy all around it.
You can do the same.
That feels like a good place for us to come full circle as well so hanging out in this container good life project.
If I offer up the phrase to live a good life what comes up to talk well and often and kindly to yourself.
Thank you.
You'll find a link to Tristan's episode in the show notes.
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Until next time on Jonathan Fields signing off for good life project.
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