June Blog - Pink is the New Blue

June Blog - Pink is the New Blue -
Going Beyond Gender





I recently saw an article in the Independent that says there is a big boom in mothers choosing pink for baby boys, which reflects the growing freedom from gender stereotypes. So here’s a few thoughts on keeping it pretty in the gender garden, with no offence intended to anyone of any persuasion.


In any attempt to discuss gender, there is a propensity to get immediately entangled in a web of contradictions, stereotypes, assumptions, preconceptions etc etc ad infinitum. I am not here to pretend that I am free from any of this, but to celebrate that the web is coming apart at the seams and that in this incredibly creative transition period, anything can and probably will happen.

This chaotic chorus is highly creative - for liberation from oppressive sexual identities for people of all races, cultures, creeds and bodily parts is truly an exciting prospect and is not actually that novel. Throughout time there have always been special spaces and rituals available where the sexual norms have been suspended. From the Pantomime Dame, the Bearded Lady and Asexual Angels, theatre and ritual has allowed gender to be seen for the performance that it is - just another set of costumes to try on in the life drama.

I was recently reading about rituals in Ancient Greece where in daily life strict codes surrounded women and men’s behaviour. There were however huge regular rituals where these codes were completely suspended and subverted. Whores became priestesses, men got to wear dresses, normally subservient women were entitled to punish male gatecrashers, and maybe even sacrifice them. It happened on high days and holy days, preceding big events and often at times of social stress, full moons and so on.

In the movement to go beyond patriarchy, which has characterised people of all sexual identities in roles which serve no-one, there are many songs to be heard. There are wails of the wounded as they emerge from places of repression and abuse, croons of confusion from those who previously found security in gender roles, victory cries of liberation and bizarre bleats to electro-beats as breastmilk gets made into icecream. Amongst the voices, I hear heterosexual men talking about how they don’t know what their role is anymore, I hear women feeling empowered and also disorientated by trying to ‘Do it like a dude’ as Jessie J advocates, I hear my gay, lesbian and bisexual friends’ exasperation with mainstream gender ideologies and I don’t hear enough from transgendered people in any form of media to know how they are feeling.

The LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transexual) scene has much more fully explored, deconstructed and played with gender identities than mainstream, hetero-normative society which generally seems still to be either inebriated or ritualized to allow the boundaries to shift. Drunken pre-nuptials are one social rite-of-passage where cross dressing and nudity are allowed - which is very far in intent but not so far in performative terms from a man wearing a dress administering communion wine representing the blood of a semi-naked man. All rituals sacred and profane seem to call for a loosening of everyday modes of behaviour in order to enter into an altered or transcendent state.

To transcend - (from trans - beyond and scandere - to climb) - means to go beyond. The great Buddhist Heart Sutra Mantra - Gatay, Gatay, Parasamgatay - means ‘Gone, gone, gone beyond’ - and could be received as an invitation to go beyond our normal perspectives and look at the world from the eyes of enlightened ones - the Bodhisattvas who through meditation perfected tantric union of their masculine, feminine and non-gendered aspects. When we connect with our observing/knowing self, we can take off our rose/ blue/ purple tinted glasses and look beyond the forms not just of gender but of all preconceived identities. We can become aware of ourselves as sparks of essence passing through a number of roles and and relationships- mother, sister, brother, father, lover, carer, friend, spouse, partner, worker - as we travel at light speed through the life journey, whilst a million trillion stars glitter in the night sky. Life is so vast and infinite that to be restricted is a game we seem to choose to play in order to learn how to both manage and go beyond it.

Malidoma Soma of the Dagara Tribe of Burkina Faso, Africa has described their understanding that gender is energetic and a person can vibrate femaleness or maleness, regardless of anatomy. Those who are gay or lesbian are seen as the Gatekeepers of the tribe who conduct a yearly symposium to determine the destiny of the village and as such are accorded great respect. He calls for the end to violence towards gatekeepers of wisdom across the world in all their various forms and the lifting of the veil or web of confusion.

The confusion still reigns, as people attempt to both define and transcend what gender means.
The inherited beliefs and imagery of patriarchy still have a strong hold at an unconscious level and manifest as the male-dominated leadership of many societies. Patriarchal religions are still getting their knickers in a twist about gay weddings and female bishops, yet can be viewed with compassion as they go through a process of change and face up to the abuse that arises when sexuality is separated from spirituality. Even in spiritual circles where it is common to advocate the union of the inner masculine and feminine in each person, the characteristics ascribed to those elements are still dualistic - with the feminine being equated with the Earth/ Moon and dark, inward, soft, emotional, yin states whilst the masculine is seen as the Sun/Sky, the light of illumination, detachment and yang states of expansion. This overlooks for example the fierceness of the feminine that we see in a lionness protecting her cubs or the mature masculine of the wise hermit. All gender concepts, are ultimately just that, concepts, many of which we are growing out of. The introduction of Paternity Leave in the UK last year reflects the movement to go beyond the model of the absent or distant father. The recent SlutMarch challenged society to go beyond the unconscious belief expressed by a Canadian policeman that a woman who is raped is to be blamed for being a slut. There is much healing still to be done as the web untangles.

My own feeling is that I, like all other things in the universe, contain both masculine and feminine energies and a whole lot more besides. I am aware that my inner man and woman have been programmed by cultural conditionings which require upgrading. I attended a high achieving girls school where we all read women’s mags and compared our weights, grades and waist sizes compulsively. Whilst the observer in me knows this to be illusory, I still find myself having difficulty loving what I see in the mirror, along with too many other women and an increasing amount of men, who may also now feel the pressure of having to look pretty in pink. I celebrate the example that transgendered peoples set - that we can all be creative with gender and remember our innate ability to both honour and transcend our anatomy and identities. Singing takes me beyond and allows me to experience and remember the common core sonic chord, within which we each can each celebrate our own unique frequency, pitch, colour, orientation, flavour and expression.

Do come and keep it pink with me and sing your unique song:

* Sing Your Heart Out - uplifting singing - Thursdays June 23rd & 30th - 2-3.30pm, Antenna Studios
* New Moon Kirtan - at Evolve, July 1st, 7.30-9PM, Evolve Wellness Centre, 10 Kendrick Mews, SW7 3HG
* Garden of Roses - The Heart of the Rose - with Narayani, Lucy Crisfield & Alexander Honeymann - July 12th, 7.30-10.30pm, Inspiral Lounge
Full Details on the Events Page of my website - www.therosewindow.org

May Blog - Love is the Root of Everything

May Blog - Love is the Root of Everything

I was reminded recently that there is a funky bassline playing along underneath even the most twisted and seemingly off-key tunes in life, that love is the root of everything. This insight emerged whilst reflecting on the nature of relationship and seeing that beneath all the behaviour patterns that are played out, love is always there, still singing quietly in the background. Listening for that deeper sound, beneath all the hubble, bubble, toil and trouble requires a concentrated effort, but it is there nonetheless.

With the Royal Wedding closely followed by the death of Bin Laden, once again the bejewelled West looks in the mirror of the Middle East and murders its own reflection. A beautiful celebration of love followed by a morbid fascination with a murder. Seemingly polarised, as love and hate, yet not really so different. Two influential households, each with their own ancestral patterns, stories and ghosts, there is really only a short distance of sand and water between them. It’s only the costumes and camera angles that make them seem worlds apart. It might have been Bin Laden’s daughter kissing the Prince, or Dodi marrying Diana whilst the Bushes and Bin Ladens clinked cocktail glasses, had the dice rolled another way. The relationships that form the basis of the eschelons of power are not so different to those you and I might form, and are subject to the same twists and turns. The world looks on through the distorted media mirror as these relationships play out, sometimes with horrific consequences - when two leaders have a spat, everyone gets to know about it.

When we return to our basic human parity, we find that the lines of difference dissolve and the love is there underneath humming away. So if love is the root why does the route there get so congested?

One thing that seems to create an enormous amount of noisy traffic is the need to be right. In order to be right, something has to be wrong, and this creates the need for scapegoats, terrorists and villains. Cultures, societies, religions, individuals all create complicated codes about what is deemed correct. When we live within a certain National Grid of conditioning, it immediately filters our vision and wires up our vibration to a matrix of cultural messages about what is right or wrong. Some of these may be helpful and some inhibiting. It is only by returning to our own inner navigation systems that we can work out which is which and begin to function authentically. When we unplug ourselves from our constructs, we are more able to perceive others for who and what they really are.

I’ve been reflecting on how relationship patterns can (d)evolve into repetitive stuck grooves and how it takes much courage and conviction it takes to start singing a different song. Yet with a simple shift of stance, a nerve jangling tune can dance into something quite delightful. It is of course the unconscious grooves that are so often running the rhythm of our life-tunes, but if we take a moment to get down and get groovy in the basement of our being, things get shifted and what was dragging along inexorably suddenly gets going into a roof raising, toe tapping tune.

There are numerous ancestral hand-me-downs that each of us inherit, which mean that we can be walking around wearing a ghost’s wardrobe, singing a song that was written long ago. Reclaiming our ancestry, no matter how tangled, can help us make sense of the patterns at work in our lives. In my family there are stories of frustrated artists and mental illness. For me, part of healing my heritage has been preserving my connection to my creativity, regardless of whether I am deemed ‘successful’ by the outside world or not. Singing has saved me, many a time, from going mad and I now work with people who find that reclaiming their voice brings them sustenance on many levels, including those with mental health issues.

When we lovingly release ourselves and those in our lives - lovers, parents, friends - from our stories, we are more able to see each other clearly and move towards new models of relating. When we realise that our patterns are not actually true reflections of who we really are, just a set of roles and costumes we have identified ourselves with, we are liberated to sing new songs and write new stories in the life theatre.

It can be a major breakthrough to realise that those who are our greatest challenge in life are often those that do us the greatest service. They come in to shake and awaken us, to prompt us to find out who we really are. They are the karmic work out buddies who get us toned up in the life gym. Looked at as such, everyone in your life can be viewed as a messenger of love.

At the centre of every oppressor, abuser or villain is a broken, vulnerable child lost in their own maze of ancestral stories. There is a core innocence (inner sense) within everyone, no matter no matter how much baggage obscures it. I am sure that Bin Laden didn’t say at age five ‘When I grow up I want to be a terrorist.’ But maybe like many boys he got told to be strong, manly, not to cry and to defend his faith and honour at all costs. What his message and challenge to the world is, will be the subject of much debate. Personally I see him as the projection of the male leaders of the western world, a friend turned foe who became useful as a place to dump their own dark masculine and justify their own terrifying actions.

When we reclaim our own inner sense, we are able to take the stuck records, the soundtracks of our ancestry and start creating new soundscapes. We can look back down the line at the ancestors who are often saying, ‘Sorry, we did the best with what we had at the time’, and make a blessing of a curse. We can take our own mental obsessions and transform them into liberating mantras.

Even more simply, we can use the sound of our heart, AAH, (or whatever sound your heart wants to make) to liberate the flow of our own love current. We can take anyone with whom we experience challenge and imagine them as a small frightened child, place them in the centre of our heart and sing AAAH until they are lullabyed to sleep. For truly they are each our own reflections, whether they are a bride/groom at the beginning of a new life or an outlawed leader. There is room for the whole world in our hearts, for the heart is the meeting of the branches and the roots of all expressions of love and our love is vaster than anything we can ever imagine.

Wishing you the smooth route to your love roots!
Katie Rosexxxxx

Do join me at the following celebrations of love this May at:
* Garden of Roses - Layers of Love - May 17th, 7.30-10pm, Inspiral Lounge
* Sing Your Heart Out - uplifting singing - Thursdays 2-3.30pm, Antenna Studios
* Full Moon Kirtan - Compassionate Chanting at The Yogi Tree, May 22nd, 5-7pm
* Mind Body Spirit Festival - Sound Meditation - May 29th, 4pm.
Full Details on the Events Page of my website - http://www.therosewindow.org/page10.htm