 I had a question about gender fluidity so in the recent years there's been an explosion of young people undergoing hormone treatment surgery, gender reassignment and it's also something which is supported by the medical profession, it's supported in the fact that they can actually get this done. See I wanted to know why this has happened, why this famous big shift in gender fluidity, why something that is now a day is something so should we say popular? You know the existence of transgender people is not something new, it's been there since time immemorial. In fact in the Indian subcontinent and in large parts of Asia you have the Hijras or the Kinars and they have different names but they've always been part of society, they've had that place in society, they've been acknowledged, it hasn't been something which is denied and of course in that whole field of the quote unquote transgender you had various kinds of experience, you had those who were born with forms of both genitalia or you had those who actually went through certain crude surgeries in ancient times of course not as skilled as today, you had also those that then where surgery wasn't possible, dressing really completely like the other sex so you had all these various forms of transgender experience and it was accepted, it wasn't yearned for or something by the general populace but it was an accepted thing. What has happened in recent times and that we see mainly in in the West is that it's become a sort of a fashion to go in for a gender reassignment at a very early age but what is being seen a lot is in young teenage women who are applying for these sex change processes which starts of course with you know administering of hormones, testosterone most of the time but also proceeds then into more and more intense surgeries and things like that before they've even actually crossed or lived out their puberty and it seems to be I would almost go so far as to say a fashion because it's quite unusual that the numbers have exploded that much in the last few years and it's also quite interesting that this has been spoken about all over the world, it's a lot in the press, this whole transgender experience or existence is being given a sort of a disproportionate importance. Yes transgenders have to get their place in society and they have to fight for it and it makes a lot of sense especially in the West because of the impact of a very harsh religion over many many centuries and what it did to people who didn't feel that they belonged to either sex or felt that they belonged to the other sex and so on or felt gender fluid sometimes this sometimes that but what is definitely very very strange is the sudden extreme rise in young women wanting these changes encouraged by the medical fraternity and other other groups to undertake these these very dangerous procedures dangerous in the sense that they often cannot really be reversed fully there is an impact on the body which can't be reversed and many then later want to reverse the process and realize that it isn't so easy and often doesn't really succeed so we're talking about pretty extreme stuff and also that that laws are being you know brought into into play which allow teenagers to to make these choices even before they reach the age of 18 I mean 13 year olds and 14 year olds and I think that is very dangerous and the reason why this is happening is that it's a social pressure you know teenage girls amongst each other the need also to to to be different all the sort of stuff that you expect from teenagers but that you don't give into unless of course it's a very very very clear case and that is very very rare so so what is underlying all of this is also a society which has forgotten to teach its children surrender not just in in the west but also in in in you know in the cities of the east which are as as western as any western city is I mean whether it's Bombay or it's Tokyo or it's Hong Kong or any of these cities you see more and more that the very idea of bowing down even even just to to the elders or to the teachers is something considered absolutely unacceptable which a generation ago would have been a normal thing to do so the idea of even forget about you know an internal surrender I'm talking about even just in the in the physical like bowing down touching your parents feet touching your you know elders all of those those external physical actions of surrender have been have been removed so that in the cities so that in the cities you don't see that anymore and when the externals are not even there where are the where is that internal posture of surrender going to to ever have a chance apart from which it is it is the ego which is fed everywhere you look you know the the whole world of consuming and consumerism is actually supporting that to an extent where it's it's not anymore something we can look away from and we need to to address that and of course from the point of view of spirituality it is addressed and on an individual level it's not a top-down process where you institute edicts and impose them and so on like religions do a spiritual path or a spiritual system will will will look at the individual and and ask the individual to experience and and allow surrender to grow in the system the bending down to the soul not listening to the ego trying to differentiate between the ego lie and the truth impulse to turn away from the ego lie and to go with the truth impulse what is the truth saying in this moment what is the truth saying in this moment what is it saying what is the truth impulsing the system to do when children are taught this already when they're very young what happens is that they that they connect more they remain connected actually they remain connected with the truth and they don't lose that connect which they have from birth and when they remain connected they also remain more centered when they remain more centered they're also more able to handle the the ups and downs of of puberty and the challenges so when they don't give in to the whims and fancies of the moment they're able to sort of quietly deal with the challenges of puberty many of these children that have these experiences and are unsure about you know what gender they actually adhere to also come from families where they are they are not challenged by siblings for example or single parent families families where they're not exposed enough to the solidity of the presence of both genders they're not exposed to larger families with uncles and aunts and cousins and it's it's increasingly just they themselves in a in a single unit family without brothers and sisters very much focused also on feeding the demands which are created by the society around them so if we want to bring more quiet into such a teenager's life it is to of course point them more to the source within to a truth impulse from childhood on and certainly it is very dangerous when a society starts to give young 13 and 14 year olds the right to simply walk into a hospital and demand test or on treatments before they are really able to understand themselves to an even minimal extent it is important to wait give it some time let it settle if it is really something that needs to be undertaken it can also be undertaken later on at the age of 18 or 19 a lot of the times what happens is that when nothing is undertaken then they settle into one gender or the other one gender or the other or they find out that they are lesbians or that they're gay or something like that but this kind of rush to the hospital and test test are on treatments and removal of breasts are violent actions with very little knowledge of either self or of what challenges life holds and what joys life holds and what adventures life holds something is very wrong if we are giving in so easily to these transgender experience fads of teenagers 13 and 14 year olds that it's all right to wait a little bit give them some time and not to encourage them to do this and to encourage young children already from the age of one and two and three and four to tune in words to feel the divine within that God is not something sitting outside somewhere but that God is something which is within is the divine within that you can tune into that you can feel that you can that you can be in surrender to and flow with even if the child doesn't really understand it it's still a beginning it's a feeling of divinity and living as a divine being and not as a sinner that has to that has to refer to something outside oneself in order to feel connected to life itself you know spread the joy by liking by commenting by sharing by subscribing by clicking the bell icon