As a spiritual person not tied to an entrenched religious doctrine, I generally find Buddhist philosophy to be the truest and best explanation for the condition of life. Particularly, that all things in life and the universe follow cyclic paths in a repeating pattern: Birth - Life - Death - Renewal - Birth - Life . . . The Hindu/Buddhist principle of karma, that your motives, actions, and experiences in this life affect future lives and are affected by past lives, provides a compelling explanation for the existence of transgenderness.
Your karma is the energy of your spirit that transcends any one life and is carried into the next lives. What you experience in this life, within yourself and with others, changes your karmic energy as if it were a string threading through your lives past, present, and future. Each thought, motivation, action, interaction, and experience in your life pulls, bends, and twists your karmic string to change it's shape and direction and steer your spirit into the next life. Karma is often talked about as a judgmental energy where you earn "bad" karma or "good" karma, consciously judged by a god. I don't see it that way. Theoretical quantum physics understands that, while we talk about "matter" and "energy", everything in the universe is composed of varying states of pure energy that are interacting with and influencing each other, creating an illusion of matter. Karma is just a part of that complex soup of energy, but is what energizes our spirits into existence. Throughout our lives, we pull, bend, and twist our own and each other's karmic strings, steering our own spirits and the spirits of others. I don't see Karma as a conscious judgment, but rather as a simple cause and effect of interacting energies.
We are humans—we are animals that reproduce through sexual intercourse. And so most of us are born with a body suited to provide either a sperm, or an egg and womb. Our gender is a part of the mix steering our karmic string. It is probably one of the most significant parts, as it shapes and directs most of the interactions and experiences we have in our lives. With each life we have a random 50/50 coin toss chance of getting a male body or female body. Each life cycle energizes our souls in a masculine or feminine way, based on our experiences in that life in that body, and that energy gets carried into future lives.
Often, the 50/50 (Male/Female) randomness balances out in successive lives so people don't have a strong current of particularly feminine or masculine karmic energy in their spirit, and are content in the body they are born into in this life. But, if your past few lives happen (by random chance) to have been in a female body (like flipping a coin and it coming up heads 3 or 4 times in a row), then you have a strong current of femaleness in your soul that is carried into this life from the experiences of those past several lives. If you are then born into this life again with a female body, you will have a very strong female energy in a female body, but if you are then born into this life in a male body, you will have a strong female energy in a male body, causing transgenderness. The number of past lives that were successively female will determine the strength of the female current you have in this life, which is why there are so many shades of transness. The same is true for male karmic energy placed into a female body. Your karmic string is steering your spirit in one direction, while your body is forcing your life interactions in a different direction, creating a lot of tension in the string.
How you respond to that tension in your life is not something to be "judged" good or bad in your karma, and your choice between changing your gender or not doesn't (in and of itself) steer your karma in "good" or "bad" ways, but the tension caused by the opposing forces acting on your karmic string creates an adversity in your spirit that can lead to thoughts, motivations, and actions with "negative" karmic consequences. So choosing to transition your gender can be seen as a way to release the karmic tension before it can tear your spirit apart, or steer it off a cliff.
It can be said that choosing an ascetic meditative life can release that tension and steer your spirit back toward the middle path, making gender transition unnecessary, but without devoting to such a life, your gender (as expressed by you or as perceived by others) influences most of the interactions you have, and if your karmic tension caused by transness is creating motivations and actions that are steering your string in a negative way, then transitioning the way others experience your gender can also be a way to steer your karma back toward the middle path.
Your karma is the energy of your spirit that transcends any one life and is carried into the next lives. What you experience in this life, within yourself and with others, changes your karmic energy as if it were a string threading through your lives past, present, and future. Each thought, motivation, action, interaction, and experience in your life pulls, bends, and twists your karmic string to change it's shape and direction and steer your spirit into the next life. Karma is often talked about as a judgmental energy where you earn "bad" karma or "good" karma, consciously judged by a god. I don't see it that way. Theoretical quantum physics understands that, while we talk about "matter" and "energy", everything in the universe is composed of varying states of pure energy that are interacting with and influencing each other, creating an illusion of matter. Karma is just a part of that complex soup of energy, but is what energizes our spirits into existence. Throughout our lives, we pull, bend, and twist our own and each other's karmic strings, steering our own spirits and the spirits of others. I don't see Karma as a conscious judgment, but rather as a simple cause and effect of interacting energies.
We are humans—we are animals that reproduce through sexual intercourse. And so most of us are born with a body suited to provide either a sperm, or an egg and womb. Our gender is a part of the mix steering our karmic string. It is probably one of the most significant parts, as it shapes and directs most of the interactions and experiences we have in our lives. With each life we have a random 50/50 coin toss chance of getting a male body or female body. Each life cycle energizes our souls in a masculine or feminine way, based on our experiences in that life in that body, and that energy gets carried into future lives.
Often, the 50/50 (Male/Female) randomness balances out in successive lives so people don't have a strong current of particularly feminine or masculine karmic energy in their spirit, and are content in the body they are born into in this life. But, if your past few lives happen (by random chance) to have been in a female body (like flipping a coin and it coming up heads 3 or 4 times in a row), then you have a strong current of femaleness in your soul that is carried into this life from the experiences of those past several lives. If you are then born into this life again with a female body, you will have a very strong female energy in a female body, but if you are then born into this life in a male body, you will have a strong female energy in a male body, causing transgenderness. The number of past lives that were successively female will determine the strength of the female current you have in this life, which is why there are so many shades of transness. The same is true for male karmic energy placed into a female body. Your karmic string is steering your spirit in one direction, while your body is forcing your life interactions in a different direction, creating a lot of tension in the string.
How you respond to that tension in your life is not something to be "judged" good or bad in your karma, and your choice between changing your gender or not doesn't (in and of itself) steer your karma in "good" or "bad" ways, but the tension caused by the opposing forces acting on your karmic string creates an adversity in your spirit that can lead to thoughts, motivations, and actions with "negative" karmic consequences. So choosing to transition your gender can be seen as a way to release the karmic tension before it can tear your spirit apart, or steer it off a cliff.
It can be said that choosing an ascetic meditative life can release that tension and steer your spirit back toward the middle path, making gender transition unnecessary, but without devoting to such a life, your gender (as expressed by you or as perceived by others) influences most of the interactions you have, and if your karmic tension caused by transness is creating motivations and actions that are steering your string in a negative way, then transitioning the way others experience your gender can also be a way to steer your karma back toward the middle path.
