July 16, 2011

A Trans-Religious Experience
By Jennifer Gann

1. Religious Background
My beloved mother raised me and my baby sister as non-denominational Christians. As a kid, I attended Sunday school at Calvary Chapel in both Riverside and Costa Mesa, California. I fondly remember Bible stories and children's songs, and even had a crush on a couple of teachers!

However, as a transgender person of Scots-Irish, German, and Cherokee ancestry, I've always found the Judeo-Christian misogyny and patriarchy to be a completely foreign concept.

In the 1990s, while fighting my criminal case and picking up new ones for prisoner resistance actions at Folsom and Pelican Bay, I became interested in the pre-Christian, Indo-European cultures, mythology, and philosophies. I delved into Odinism, history, the Amazons, the Greeks, the Druids, Nietzshe, and the Aryan religion of ancient India. On July 21, 1998, nearly thirteen years ago, I enrolled in the Siddha Yoga Home Study Course, which is offered free of charge to prisoners by the SYDA Foundation Prison Project. At the same time, I was studying Hare Krishna literature from the ISKCON Prison Ministry.

As a transgender woman, I have always believed in the sacred feminine and the divine mother principle, which was the basis of ritual goddess, worship, and matriarchy in ancient civilizations—such as the Amazons or the gender-variant Galli priestesses of the Roman Empire.

II. The Siddha Yoga Path
The Siddha Yoga course is over 15 years long. It explains in simple everyday language the basic concepts of Kashmir Shaivism and Vedanta, which is the Hindu belief that the all pervasive and formless Shiva (God) manifests as the Universe. The course helps students to begin and sustain a disciplined practice of meditation.

A couple of years into the course, I was sent a book by Swami Kripananda: The Guru's Sandals. I was blown away! I was determined right then and there to seek shaktipat initiation as a full-time Siddha Yoga student, and to become a devotee and disciple of Gurumayi Chidvilasananda.

[Colored photo of Swami Chidvilasananda.]
Swami Chidvilasananda, affectionately known as Gurumayi to her devotees, is the current Siddha guru. She received the authority of Siddha Yoga linage after taking vows of monkhood in 1982 from Baba Muktananda before he passed away in Ganeshpuri, Maharastra, India.

When I wrote to Swami Kripananda seeking shaktipat initiation, I received a personal reply from India that Gurumayi herself imparted on me the mantra: Om Namah Shivaya!

The Hindu scriptures revere the guru's feet, which are said to embody Shiva and Shakti, divine consciousness and energy. Powerful vibrations of Shakti flow from the guru's feet, which are a mystical source of grace and illumination. Thus, The Guru's Sandals are objects of the highest veneration and worship.

"The merging of Shiva and Shakti is the energy of bliss from which the entire universe comes into being, a reality beyond the Supreme and the non-supreme. It is called the Goddess, the essence, and the glorious heart. This is the Creation, the supreme Lord."
—Tantrakola 3.68 cd-69

Siddha Yoga is a goddess-centered spiritual path, and Gurumayi is seen as Mahadevi incarnate—the very embodiment of Goddess Chiti Shakti. Therefore, I strive to perform my sadhana and to integrate Her teachings into my daily life. I constantly meditate on the guru and the various forms of the goddess, repeating the mantra, and studying the scriptures and books.

In India, transfolk are referred to as "hijra", and recognized as a third gender. Ardhanarishwari (half-woman goddess) is one of the principle forms of Shiva and Shakti, merged into one androgynous deity. Thus, the concept of gender-variance and transsexuals are integral to Indian culture and spirituality.

III. Conclusion
Bo Lozoff of the Prison Ashram Project has written in "Just Another Spiritual Book" (Human Kindness Foundation, 1990, page 13) that:
"The most revolutionary political act, the most revolutionary social act, and the most revolutionary moral personal act is simply learning how to sit still and shut up. We call that meditation."

The Hindu saint, Sri Aurobindo, was a revolutionary imprisoned in the early 1990s for actions against British Rule in India.

As Bo Lozoff also states in "Deep and Simple: A Spiritual Path For Modern Times" (Human Kindness Foundation, 1999, page 45): "But as agents of the Divine, as characters in the never-ending "Play of God", we are heroes and heroines grappling with good and evil... the classic universal forces which naturally oppose each other in each of us, and in the Universe as a whole."

As an Amazon transgender woman, a Maoist, and revolutionary feminist, I find that Siddha Yoga appeals to me as one of the oldest surviving indigenous goddess-centered religions in the world. Additionally, the fact that it's headed by an Indian woman bears a close resemblance to the matriarchy of the Amazons, who were devoted to the goddess Artemis and to their queen.

Therefore, I bow to the lotus feet of Shri Gurumayi Chidvilasananda. Sadgurunath Maharaj ki Jay! Om Shantih.