As a spiritual philosopher and teacher, I often find myself contemplating the issues of the world. Searching for answers to those crucial questions that plague mankind and the human species as a collective. Most of the time I keep my insight and perspective to myself, because I value my own ability to think freely. And so I honor the free will of others by simply answering these questions for myself. My only expectation to answering these questions is to simply to find peace within my own thoughts, because there is peace in understanding. There is peace in having answers to questions. But I am beginning to think that more perspectives are needed in the pool of collective and shared perspective. In other words, maybe I should be sharing. After all, how can we break away from old patterns of thought without new ones to follow?
Recently I was considering the issue of transgender athletes. There are states and athletic associations that are banning the participation of transgender athletes from competition due to the perceived and possibly justified belief that in some cases transgender athletes would have an unfair advantage within competition due to biological differences. This scientific reasoning is valid. A biological male who identifies as female would, in most cases, have a physical performance advantage over a biological female who identifies as a female due to hormonal differences of biological nature and origin. But the emergence of transgender individuals has expanded the collective awareness in understanding our existence through more that just biological markers. (Or at least it should be doing this for us.) Consciousness is multidimensional. We are multidimensional. So why do we continue to persist in classification systems based on the singular dimension of biology? And in a world that is moving toward equality and acceptance for all individuals, why can’t we find a solution to this issue that fits our collective evolution? The answer is simple: fear, stubbornness, and laziness.
We fear change. We fear what is different. Because what is different is unknown, and what is unknown threatens our power. What is unknown is essentially nothing, because we know nothing about it. So anyone who feels powerless in the face of nothing, never really had power to begin with. This is the disease of fear. Like a baby cries when it’s mother leaves the room, humankind cries when faced with issues that challenge our established bias of the world. The only difference in this analogy is that this emotional immaturity in adults leads to anger, violence, suppression, and separation.
The hypocrisy in all of this is that most of the time we hold children more accountable than our grown selves when it comes to inclusion and fairness in games. When children are playing schoolyard games, being supervised by teachers and adults, if the children were to intentionally exclude a child from the game, the adult would step in and require that the children either let everyone play or change the game. Then again, maybe it’s not hypocrisy at all. Maybe this is another sign of our intellectual and emotional immaturity which drives adults to step in to suggest fairness, in an attempt to skirt the responsibility of dealing with the emotions associated with recognizing the issues at hand. Within the group of children playing, as well as within the consciousness of the adult. From this perspective we can see the outer world mirroring the inner world. Or as it’s been written before, “As above, so below. As within, so without”... We know this to be true.
So where is the light that will lead us from the darkness? The light that will show us the way forward to escape our turmoil of confusion. To bring peace to our minds and hearts. It is the only light that ever existed. Hidden in plain sight within a teaching that is well over 2000 years old. That teaching...is LOVE.
Now it would be superficial of me to leave the conversation here. This would be like giving you only the formula of a math equation without telling you how to use it. It would leave you saying, “How is love the answer for transgender athletes?” But notice that I didn’t say love is the answer. Love is the light that will help each of us find the answers.
Through love, the answer for transgender athletes becomes a simple one. If the people of a society are evolving, then the society must evolve as well. And if a society evolves, then so must it’s sports. Here is where we must give up our stubbornness and laziness. We must evolve our games so that they are inclusive to all wanting to participate and fair to all the participants. This is “what “it’s all about”. Our experience now is about the evolution of who we are. The evolution of our consciousness as individuals and as a collective. Love helps us find the path of grace during our evolution.
Now you might think that creating and evolving sports sounds like an impossible task, but truthfully it has already been done thousands of times. Video game creators are constantly creating singular gaming arenas that include complex rules and characters with differing skills and attributes. And it is through those models that we would find answers.
Most sports these days can be won through pure brute strength and endurance. Many of these games can be dominated by a singular individual based on one attribute. These antiquated games allowed us to explore the meaning of power and strength. Which was appropriate during that time of our conscious evolution. But like I said before, we are experiencing an evolution in consciousness, and so the sports of old will no longer be able to serve us into the future.
Sports must evolve to must match and honor our conscious evolution, if they are to be valuable. Because our experiences now are bringing awareness to how each of us individually fits and harmonizes with the whole, our sports must do the same. New sports must allow for the experience of recognizing individuality while simultaneously recognizing how each individual can support others through that individuality. Team sports of yesterday and today fail at this teaching, because like I said, there are demonstrating individuals who dominate team sports simply because the only valuable skill required in most of today’s popular sports is power and strength. But humans have so many other skills. So many other attributes of value. If the rules of these games were to change to eliminate the disproportionate advantage that power and strength has on success within competition, and allow for more display of other skills such as precision, accuracy, and strategy; then the playing field would become open to more participants. Class systems and a team structure could be created to allow for team dynamics that support the harmony of vastly differing attributes that work toward a common goal.
The arenas of sports could also be changed to allow for this evolution, and could even be seen as a symbolic representation of our own multidimensional nature, by holding them in virtual playing fields. Virtual reality technologies have advanced significantly in the last few years and could be a valuable tool in creating fair and inclusive sports.
Some sports would would have the ability to evolve and continue. Golf might be one example of a sport that could evolve to meet our conscious evolution. If golf were to become a team sport, where each member of the team performs a specific task in a collaborative effort toward success, the sport would survive. The class system could be based on the club system. Drivers, chippers, putters, etc... The courses could be changed to allow for equal need and opportunity of display for all participants. This would ultimately make the courses more difficult and more interesting through new creative hazards and obstacles that would need to be overcome.
So hopefully you can begin to see that the answer to the question of how transgender athletes can be welcomed within competition is not so difficult to find. If we would only step back and look at the situation through the lens of love, we would be set free from our intellectual and creative ineptitude.
These are only suggestions. The goal and focus for any changes would be to allow for the sport to become all-inclusive and eliminate the biological-based gender advantages that exist within today’s competition.
We must love our transgender companions in such a way that seeks to help them create and co-create the world of peace and harmony that we all deserve. Lift them up rather than suppress them through judgement. When we judge the identity of others, we miss the beauty of infinite potential and value that is held within each individual expression of consciousness.
Now go forth. Open the eyes of your heart to see with love. It is love that will awaken the path to harmony within us all.