I have been reading Charlotte 'Joko' Beck's wonderful book on American Soto Zen.    I have long believed that what keeps people enslaved to the capitalist system is their endless desire for amusements and diversions; toys in other words.   Because you have been trained since your earliest days by your family and society to define yourself by your possessions you crave the largely useless or extravagant things our society produces.  Convinced that the latest toy will be unlike all the others the one that makes them permanently happy.   It is these beliefs that perpetuate your misery and  and this keeps to chained to that boring and stressful job with the demanding boss and the three hour commute.
Beck in her book writes that the some of the people who come to the Zen centre are people who have realised that a new big screen television or a Mercedes will not make them happy but perhaps Zen will.    This turns Zen into an ideology and ideologies tend to be rigid and dogmatic.*   In other words what these people are doing is seeking for another 'higher' toy with which to assuage their unhappiness.     This got me thinking that TS & TG might be a sort of toy and plaything of the ego.   However, I am not so sure that this is true because I (and you as well) experienced it years and years before we became jaded with life and consumerism.     

I bring this up because I hope to write in the future about Spirit and the Divine and I want to just introduce the terms 'ego' and 'spirit' gently for now, and get you thinking ever so slightly about spirit.   

* Highly controversially this might explain why some members of our community hold such rigid opinions regarding TS & TG.   They are operating from the ego level.   The ego loves rigidity, hierarchy, discipline(of others mainly) and dogma because it is constantly consumed with fear.   The book A Course in Miracles says that your ego is an illusion and doesn't actually exist you just think that it does.  As you have turned your back upon the Divine by embracing science, mathematics and deifiying Reason above all else you only listen to your ego which is your sense of separateness from the world.    ACM says that you cannot serve two masters, you have listened exclusively to the ego's never ending demands and the ego has given you nothing but pain, fear and distress in return.   Go on listening to the ego and it will give you more of the same until the last second of your life, see what a friend you have in the ego?!    Listen out for the still quiet voice of the Divine and place yourself under Divine protection.  God or the Tao, creator and maintainer of the universe can look after you and your every genuine need.    Place your complete trust in the Divine and see your life turn completely around, no more will you be subject to fear and worry.   When you give yourself to the Divine you realise that nothing real can be lost and this is a huge comfort.   
You can hear the Divine by making time for silence and meditation in your life and by listening and following your intuition.

India is arguably the most spiritually diverse place on the whole planet. Every system under the sun has a sizable presence there.

The most sizable religion, Hinduism, has great similarities too the ideals presented in ACIM. Which is recycled New Ageism packaged as a branch of Christianity.

However spiritual the people of the sub- continent are, it hasn't solved the problem of abject poverty for the masses.

I'll take capitalism and (true) Chirstianity over the life lived by the average, supposedly spiritually- superior, east Asian anyway.

I would say ego is the need to transition. Spirit is the true self, soul, within a physical body. Thank God for all that science, finance, etc of a first world- modern democracy.

QuoteAre TS & TG expression of the Ego or the Spirit?

To me the expression of gender is a manifestation of a persons perception of who IAM is. You are what you know. It is a knowingness, an awareness. It just is. I believe this comes from deep within the consciousness. It is beyond ego, in my opinion. So that would make it spirit or soul, if you believed in those things, or your higher self.

If that happens to occur with the wrong body... then you have TS.

Quote from: Happy Girl! on October 27, 2011, 06:25:21 PM
I have been reading Charlotte 'Joko' Beck's wonderful book on American Soto Zen.    I have long believed that what keeps people enslaved to the capitalist system is their endless desire for amusements and diversions; toys in other words.   Because you have been trained since your earliest days by your family and society to define yourself by your possessions you crave the largely useless or extravagant things our society produces.  Convinced that the latest toy will be unlike all the others the one that makes them permanently happy.   It is these beliefs that perpetuate your misery and  and this keeps to chained to that boring and stressful job with the demanding boss and the three hour commute.
Beck in her book writes that the some of the people who come to the Zen centre are people who have realised that a new big screen television or a Mercedes will not make them happy but perhaps Zen will.    This turns Zen into an ideology and ideologies tend to be rigid and dogmatic.*   In other words what these people are doing is seeking for another 'higher' toy with which to assuage their unhappiness.     This got me thinking that TS & TG might be a sort of toy and plaything of the ego.   However, I am not so sure that this is true because I (and you as well) experienced it years and years before we became jaded with life and consumerism.     

I bring this up because I hope to write in the future about Spirit and the Divine and I want to just introduce the terms 'ego' and 'spirit' gently for now, and get you thinking ever so slightly about spirit.   

* Highly controversially this might explain why some members of our community hold such rigid opinions regarding TS & TG.   They are operating from the ego level.   The ego loves rigidity, hierarchy, discipline(of others mainly) and dogma because it is constantly consumed with fear.   The book A Course in Miracles says that your ego is an illusion and doesn't actually exist you just think that it does.  As you have turned your back upon the Divine by embracing science, mathematics and deifiying Reason above all else you only listen to your ego which is your sense of separateness from the world.    ACM says that you cannot serve two masters, you have listened exclusively to the ego's never ending demands and the ego has given you nothing but pain, fear and distress in return.   Go on listening to the ego and it will give you more of the same until the last second of your life, see what a friend you have in the ego?!    Listen out for the still quiet voice of the Divine and place yourself under Divine protection.  God or the Tao, creator and maintainer of the universe can look after you and your every genuine need.    Place your complete trust in the Divine and see your life turn completely around, no more will you be subject to fear and worry.   When you give yourself to the Divine you realise that nothing real can be lost and this is a huge comfort.   
You can hear the Divine by making time for silence and meditation in your life and by listening and following your intuition.

Don't remember much about Freud but wasn't it the Super-Ego that makes the Ego react in that repressive fear fuelled way? The ego surely merely reacts to the controlling impulses received from the super ego.

Interesting tie-in with Capitalism, personally I don't think it's the toys that enslave people to the system but rather fear of the unknown. Difference and deviance represent a threat that is used by the system existant at that time to enact control and repression. That of course can go all the way from the burning of 'witches' to the Holocaust and on to the present day so called War on Terror. Fear is a powerful means of control and one that has been used down the centuries in the most evil of ways.