Dhillon Khosla, Author of Both Sides Now – One Man’s Journey through Womanhood Speaks with Maureen Geddes

MG:     It is such a pleasure to speak with you again, Dhillon.  We’ve chatted about your book before, and we have included an excerpt in this issue of GRIP Magazine.  I’d like to let our readers get to know you a bit.

            When I think of how people might react to your story, it occurs to me that gender identity is an area where people who have great understanding on other aspects of diversity - race, for example – fail to see the parallels with sexuality.

DK:      That’s why I believe so much that things that really change in this world have to be addressed spiritually or emotionally.  If people don’t figure out their wounds, no matter how politically advanced they are cerebrally, they are going to engage in some sort of bigotry.

MG:     Yes, I see that.  You can do it and not be aware of doing it.  And then it becomes          immensely difficult to face.

whether it’s what their parents did want or didn’t want, whether if someone mistreated them because of their gender, or if you were broken up with in the wrong way or stereotyped.

MG:     And that is exactly where we’re starting off this issue – well, actually our fears,   but often underneath fears are wounds.

DK:      You said something about the workplace.  I do discuss how the workplace was             good to me at some point in the book (Click here for excerpt from Both Sides          Now).  The other excerpt that I thought it might be good was the one where I had            just transitioned.  I confront that guy that’s really happy for me, and I feel           ashamed because I realize I always had sort of been competitive or mistreated him before.

MG:     Ah yes.

DK:      I transitioned because I realized that in a female body I had this envy and jealousy towards men.  I am profoundly ashamed in that moment as I realize all the wounds I’ve inflicted from my past life, in moments when I was cramped or unhappy.  I think about all the political work I did as a female, and how much was really about my own repressed rage.  It really shows both gender ‘sides’.  It’s sort of my ‘mea culpa’ passage.

MG:     I have been reading recently on shame, inspired from our GRIP Magazine/         Everyman Gathering in Ottawa in May.  I think getting at the underlying guilt and   shame and pain and fears in our lives is really a critical element in moving             forward.  We don’t often address shame. We’re not conscious of it, right? We don’t always know how to articulate what it is that makes us uncomfortable, we        just know that we’re uncomfortable.  You give a very good example of becoming          aware of shame, and working through it. (Click here for excerpt from Both Sides           Now).

            You’ve been doing a lot of television and radio interviews.  Are you comfortable            with the language used to describe your history?

DK:      I’ve found that when I do television interviews, or when I did the View, producers who are overwhelming in the mainstream understand when I say that I do not personally use the term transgender.  It didn’t used to be applied to people who had finished all their surgeries.  But it has now become an umbrella term for political groups, and it really isn’t proper.  It’s like calling a straight or gay person bi-sexual and saying you should agree with that label because it’s all inclusive.

            I’ve had a couple of transgendered conferences invite me to speak.  I say of course I’ll come - I come wherever I’m invited.  I just add that personally don’t use that label. I’m not alone - I’ve had people email me who don’t tell their story for this very reason.

MG:     Oh, isn’t that interesting?

DK:      Isn’t it? I’m going to a gender identity conference in February, I’m the keynote speaker, but the woman who put it together went through her own transition and she also doesn’t use that word. Traditionally people who have had all of their surgeries don’t.  It’s sort of like a hermaphrodite, once you’ve had your surgeries, you don’t call them a hermaphrodite anymore.  You just say a man born female. But there is this political Nazism that’s begun in the last 10 years where this term is now applied more broadly.  It used to be just for people who are between surgeries, or for people who don’t want to be either male or female, and now someone decided along the way that it is an umbrella term for all people who are outside the gender mainstream.

MG:     Correct me if I’m wrong here.  I think there is so little recognition of gender perspective beyond the so-called “mainstream” in the public discourse that this mislabeling is the kind of thing that happens.  Which is why having these kinds of conversation helps to raise awareness.

DK:      Yes.  And more so: if somebody says that this is my truth, why would you say to them “No, it’s not”?

MG:     Exactly!

DK:      It’s such blasphemy to that person’s spirit. That’s why I compare it to the bi-sexual thing.  It would be like me saying to Ellen Degeneres, “Oh look, you’ve been with men in your life, and you were in love with them when you were in high school.  Bi-sexual is really more of an umbrella term, it includes everybody.  Let’s just call you that, okay?”

            Politically what happens - and this is so interesting is some of us who go through these surgeries - we’re more in the mainstream in terms of how our personality is than even mainstream men and women.  We just sit there, so sometimes our memoirs get criticized by the press because they want a more deconstructed version of gender.  I wrote this little editorial where I said that when I lived in a female body, my traits like aggression were considered avant-garde and sexy and powerful.  Now, I describe them as a man, and all of a sudden I’m a stereotype and I’m being judged for that.  It makes me wonder: what is true freedom?  Is it living outside the mainstream or is it being true to your inner voice? Regardless of whether it’s in or out of the mainstream.  Do you know what I mean?

MG:     Absolutely. The analogy that shows up for me is the two pictures, and the question is – which one is freedom or peace?  One is a picture of a terrible thunderstorm and a bird sitting in a little hole in a rock on a cliff face.  The other one was of a beautiful calm lake and the ducks swimming peacefully on the lake.  The point of comparing the two is to note that true peace – or true freedom - is not staying peaceful within your soul when everything is perfect and calm.  Rather, it is staying centered when you’re in the middle of the thunderstorm. So true peace for me is not just being free and taking action when I have loving supportive wonderful friends and family and community agreeing with me.  It’s when I see the world vastly differently than anybody around me, and take action consistent with that vision or that voice anyway. 

DK:      Well I’m certainly in that challenge. I do a lot of decompression and realignment telling this story. And like I said again, it’s just some political groups that are just so entrenched in their agenda that they really squeeze out the individual more than the mainstream.

MG:     Yes, a lot of identity groups get into fighting against something.  I focus on really sitting back to look at anything that I get engaged in so I don’t fight against something, and I don’t try to actively resist it. I focus on what am I working for, and if I can feel solid in what I am working for and what I am creating - if there’s an alignment - then I’m not in the end producing more of what I’m trying to change.

DK:      Right, but if someone tried to put a label on you that wasn’t your identity; you would fight back on that, wouldn’t you?

MG:     I don’t know. That’s an interesting point. There’s a Buddhist story I read about a monk living happily in a community. A young woman living next door becomes pregnant, and she names him as the father of her child. He just says “Is that so?” When the baby is born, the grandparents thrust the baby at him and say “This baby is yours, you take it!” and he says “Is that so?” and takes care of the baby. About a year later the girl comes back and says he was not the father.  The grandparents come back shamefaced and see him taking care of their grandchild despite the way they treated him.  They want the baby back, and he says “Is that so?” and hands them the child.

DK:      I am very aware of these Buddhist stories, but there is a fundamental distinction if something is your true identity in terms of your core and you stand up for it because you don’t want to participate in a lie.  There’s a difference.

MG:     Say more…

DK:      For example, when a gay person let somebody call him straight all the time, I     would say “Wait a minute, this is not the truth.”

            That’s how I feel.  I can’t control who will call me transgendered and who won’t.  If I tried to manipulate that, I would never tell my story.  But if I’m invited into your house and you refuse to honor who I am, then I must say I will come into your house, but you must acknowledge my identity.  That’s more how I look at it; like I’m standing up for my spirit, for that kid in me and saying this is my truth.  If you don’t accept it, then don’t invite me. I don’t reject any invitations, even magazines like Transgendered Tapestry.  I’m even going under houses that use that label, but I’m saying this is my truth and I think that is a spiritual thing. There needs to be a balance there.

MG:     That’s true. It has to be acknowledged by at least your self, but it certainly helps            to have it acknowledged by others.

            Let’s come back to the theme of this issue: men’s and women’s fears. I think we            fear the challenge to gender identity that you represent.  There is a lot of       ownership attached to what makes someone male or female.

DK:      I would also be careful there with that.  I think that there are people, we’ve had this discussion, who are in the middle about sexuality and that person can very easily say ‘I’m letting go of gender’ because their gender is already suspended. Of course we’re all more than things like gender, but I also think that people who are ones (fully male/masculine) or tens (fully female/feminine) may be a least a little more comfortable saying I’m clearly one or the other and not so much not letting go of it, as that they just fit in that identity more strongly than someone who is a five. I might be more inclined to say ‘I want to let go of this’ if I never was that to begin with.

MG:     I hear you. So raising our consciousness of how much we create these identities in the first place is a starting point.  And then we can embrace, or let go, or accept, rather than resist different gender identities.

DK:      I want to be very careful with gender because I constantly see people taking their truth and exponentially putting it in the world. And I think some don’t feel imprisoned by this stereotype because there is so much of it in them already, naturally.  For them, it’s not a struggle when they say ‘I’m a man and I do this’ because it actually is so much who they are already.  It’s hard to articulate, because obviously spiritually we’re more than gender.  That’s a personality and biological trait.  Sometimes I see people talking about getting beyond gender and being genderless, and they tend to be the people that have the traits of both - not ones or tens. I want to be careful about that bias.  I see it all the time.

MG:     You have a point.  It is certainly very common in work places where I go.  There is sometimes a majority, but always a significant minority at least of people that say “Why are we having a gender conversation?  We’ve got no issues here! What is that even?”  It doesn’t make any sense at all to some people to introduce a conversation about something that is a problem somebody else has.  Unless we’ve got a harassment case in front of us or there’s some clear business problem such as reaching a target market, why would we even talk about it? Of course they’re comfortable - they haven’t seen the issues.

DK:      Well yes, but this is what is so difficult.  In the feminist community for years there’s been this battle between the feminists that say ‘Yes, men and women are biologically different and we need to just respect our differences’.  Then there are the feminists that say ‘There are no differences.  They’re all constructed and society is to be genderless.’ And that’s the bias of biology that the ones and tens are having – and it’s only one view. I think we need a world that can accommodate both, because otherwise we’re never going to have peace. If the people who are the intellectuals are saying everybody’s gender is constructed, let’s deconstruct it, they are basically pushing out the people who are true nature-based people.  When you look at kids who are very girly-girl or very masculine and that’s just their core identity, that is so biologically infused and they can feel oppressed by the ‘genderless’ approach.  I don’t want see a new Gestapo happening where one pendulum takes over.  We need to focus on looking inward and knowing what a stereotype is, what is true, what is not, what were we as children, and filtering that out.  But I am very, very reticent around gender models and things that deconstruct or take away because they basically push out the Italian Guido and the very feminine girly-girl, who both have the right to exist as well.

MG:     As long as it allows everyone to have their truth, that is a good point.  Is there    anything in particular, Dhillon, you would speak to around fears? Men’s and          woman’s fears is our theme in this issue.

DK:      Fears in terms of their own identity?

MG:     Well, by my read of your book, just given your personal history, I would expect you would be more conscious than most about the impact of identity and how it changes.

DK:      For me I think the core issue is: how settled is somebody in their skin? And again, that’s why I use the continuum effect. In their identity, it’s the human condition, and this is sort of a spiritual definition of narcissism, is that if you’re weak or shaky in your identity, where it hasn’t been mirrored enough for you, then you have to surround yourself with mirrors of yourself. To be around people who think and operate just like you. 

            I think that a secure person who really knows who they are regardless of politics or where they are in the continuum, if they are comfortable with where they are, they automatically have the opportunity to embrace everybody. It’s sort of like why you’ll see the construction guy who doesn’t have a wick of feminism in him, who is more accepting of gays then the liberal who is perhaps just a little bit insecure of his own gender or sexuality.

            If you are really secure in who you are, even if you are not, if you have some ignorance, and if there is somebody you confront that you have a heart connection with, you’ll immediately come out of your own ignorance.  But if you’re not really settled in where you are and who you are, then nothing is going to budge you because there is going to be something that’s going to push your buttons. Or envy or jealousy, like in that passage I described.  All of my own feminism before I transitioned was fueled by a competitive envy or contempt towards men. A desire to somehow stick it to them.  And because of what was going on, the little kid in me, even with women I would use feminism, not consciously, but to sort of get intimacy with them.  I would think that I was so screwed by God, this is my one consolation prize, is that I’m going to use feminism to get women to be closer to me and say “I understand you better than the average guy”.  I have this advantage and it was this sort of compensation envy at work.  I was going to find a way to have an edge over men, because I had lost what I had needed.

MG:     Wow that’s powerful isn’t it?

DK:      My desire, subconsciously, was to drive a wedge between men and women so I could steal the women away. I didn’t of course know this was all going on; it was all coming out in this distorted circle.

MG:     That’s a powerful insight into where some dysfunctional behaviors can come      from.

DK:      I think that’s where you see the real insidious wedge between men and women. It’s in the men that really don’t like women at their base core, and the women that really don’t like men at their base core. Those are the people that fuel the wedge. There’s a bitter energy in that, and the rest of the people are operating out of ignorance or not understanding the other gender because they think differently, but there’s not a real animosity in them.

MG:     When you talk about some men and some women who really don’t like each other ‘at their base core’, I wonder if there is something that the other gender has that they either perceive that they could have, or that they want and they don’t perceive themselves as being able to have in this culture or society context. For example, if it’s not okay for them to express some so-called masculine or feminine skills or traits, or to participate in the same way as someone of the other gender does.

DK:      I think that’s one issue of course. I think that’s one factor.  There’s also repressed sexuality factors.  Some men who are misogynists are really gay and they really just don’t like women, but they’re not being true to that so they have this distaste that’s being played out in this relationship, and vise versa. I think that there are then wounds.  Women, for instance, have fathers who wanted boys.  They could potentially have a rage at men because they weren’t appreciated as women. Boys, who have mothers who mistreated them in some way, or who didn’t like them or shamed them, are now misogynists.  They see that mother in every woman that they’re with or around, and they feel cowed or they feel dominated or something.

Political correctness and the popularity of male-bashing  

DK:      There are just so many wounds people have, that we all play out. I’ve played mine out, and it makes it so hard for people to appreciate the other sex or where they’re coming from when they haven’t. In the last 20 years in America, especially, women have finally owned their rage and have really made some huge changes.  But it’s gone to such an extreme now, which happens when something has been repressed for so long.  When the rage comes out it’s not pretty.

            But now we’re at a point where men aren’t allowed to say anything. The thing that stuns me - and this is why I say politically things are different than spiritually - is shown in a commercial we have in America. I don’t know if you have it up there.  It’s for yogurt.  Two women are sitting around after a wedding discussing how good the yogurt is.  They’re sitting around saying “this is such good yogurt”, “ya”, “this is like not getting stuck with an usher shorter than you good yogurt”, “did you see that guy” and they laugh. There are a lot of commercials that pick on shorter men or something about men where women are really putting them down as stupid idiots. Warren Farrell talks about this all the time.

MG:     It’s the norm, quite frankly, on television in North America. You far more often see men who are portrayed as incompetent or inept in key roles and it’s portrayed as humor in television.

DK:      And it’s dangerous because is creating a covert rage right now in men.

MG:     Absolutely!

DK:      Back to that yogurt commercial, if I just had a cerebral conversation intellectually with a feminist they’d say ‘Oh well, it’s poking fun at men, they’re still in power, it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t do the same damage, it doesn’t have a history behind it, blah, blah, blah - men laugh it off.’

MG:     But it’s not true.

DK:      But if you look at it spiritually, imagine if in that commercial there were two men after a wedding, saying ‘This beer is so good it’s like not getting stuck with a bridesmaid who fat’, and ‘Did you see that woman?’.  Spiritually it would be identical because there are just as many men who have wounds around being short, who have been turned down for dates or for raises or promotions, as there are women who have wounds around being happy. And so spiritually to exploit that wound is just the same thing.

MG:     So many fears, and so much to address about self acceptance.  It reminds me of a book I just received called Life, Money and Illusions by a new Canadian author, Mike Nickerson. He speaks to what the world would be like without so much advertising - if we didn’t crave or weren’t taught to want and be everything that we’re not. If we weren’t exposed thousands of times a day to images that tell us we’re not good enough the way we are.

DK:      Absolutely. It’s all exploited, everything is exploited in advertising.  What amazes me is when car commercials use people’s desire for a soul connection, and they make it about the car (laughing). It’s brilliant!

MG:     It is.

DK:      They’re basically taking our empty holes and trying to fill them.

MG:     Yes, that’s one of the pieces we’re hoping through this magazine work and through these conversations to address:  to create a community of people who can connect without turning away to objects, or to addiction, to heal wounds.  We want to actually heal the wounds, rather than just stave off the pain.

DK:      Thinking on that note, there’s one thing that I’ve learned from my own experience, and it may be useful.  I see it a lot, and I was guilty of this as well.  People do political work when they should first be doing personal work. There was someone, I think it was Stephen Covey, who has sort of the seven stages of life.

MG:     Yes.

DK:      And he talks about in your 20’s and 30’s figuring out who you are.  Your contribution to the world doesn’t come typically until your 40’s.  It’s designed that way so that you can first figure out who you are.  That’s what I’ve learned. More importantly, people who do political work before they are fully at peace within themselves can do more harm than good with the issue.  That’s what creates tension among the groups. Because what they do politically is fueled by their own agenda, in terms of what personally hasn’t been healed yet.

MG:     Having said that, do you have the same fire within you to take action politically that you did when you were in the body of a woman and you had this intense desire to be a man?  You said then you were jealous and competitive with men and were therefore taking political action, related to feminism. Do you have the same desire now to take political action?

DK:      Yes, and I calculated very clearly it’s sort of the difference between reactive anger, and righteous anger.

MG:     Tell me more.

DK:      Before, what fueled me might be reactive anger. Reactive anger is when your anger is not about this present moment, but about a prior moment.  For example, you’re in an argument with someone and you start to have this big reaction, but it’s not about what’s happening in the moment.  It’s about a wound that’s been triggered.

MG:     And how do you define righteous anger?

DK:      Righteous anger is when you see what’s going on and there’s something that is in this moment.  The best example I can think of - although there is Buddhist text and Hindu text about it too - is in the New Testament where Jesus walks into temple and corrupt merchants are selling merchandise in the middle of the temple.  He kicks over all of the tables and says “Not in my Father’s house!”  There’s that clear black ruthless sort of thing that’s not a reactive anger.  It’s just a very clear red energy that rises in your spirit.  You say this is not how it will be, this is wrong.

            That’s how I feel now in terms of any activity that I do politically, it’s from that justice part of me that drew me into law. I see an injustice and my heart is filled with anger, but it’s about that moment, like if someone mistreats someone because of gender. If someone hurts someone because of their sexual orientation. If someone doesn’t allow someone to marry if they are gay, it breaks my heart and it brings the warrior out in me. And it’s very clean; it’s very, very clean. One is a cramped rage, and the other is a clean one.

MG:     So this feels like a clean rage.

DK:      Yes!

MG:     Can you share with our readers where you’re raging now?

DK:      I don’t know if you want to use rage because that’s such a loaded word. But righteousness is something that arises in you, when either your spirit or someone else’s is being violated. Because when a spirit is being violated, your and my spirit of course is really the same thing ultimately.

MG:     Absolutely!

DK:      When a spirit is violated, God gets angry in a sense because of a universal divine energy gets stirred, it’s a blasphemy. So if someone is harmed that I love, or if I am harmed in my being, in a way it’s like giving God the finger. That’s not what we're meant to be doing here.

MG:     Can you share, Dhillon, with our readers, about the upcoming gender identity conference? Where could our readers find out more, perhaps read an excerpt from your book (also in this issue)?  From there, perhaps we can go to where you are today and what is he doing.

DK:      I have actually a couple of signings they may want to attend instead, because the conference I believe they’d have to pay for the two days to be part of it.

MG:     Well, we can certainly have people be aware that this kind of conference is happening.  I’m not aware of one in Canada and I would like to raise awareness for our global readers who are in countries where there is no such thing as a gender identity conference! (laughing)

DK:      I’m doing a few book signings, and I’m also doing a legal conference here - the Labor and Employment Bar Association is having a conference here (in California) in October, and I’m going to present at their bias section.  I’m also doing a speech at the University if Florida.

MG:     Oh excellent! So you’re finding some mainstream organizations starting to ask questions and express interest. That’s great.  What lessons do you offer them?

DK:      The greatest thing I’ve learned from all these surgeries is to be patient. I have a long vision, a long term vision and I think to try to rush too many things at once, it’s unnecessary.  Each can have their due.

            People who are older in the gay community tend to have a much more political and polarized view because they fought so hard. And that’s why I understand, and that’s why I say that sometimes before you can let go of your identity it has to be acknowledged.  I understand that, but to me the next level is to integrate and move beyond. That’s always been my zeal - otherwise we get stuck in one slice.

            I also learned about privilege.  For myself, my biggest obstacle when going through this transition (besides my own feminism and wondering why I couldn’t get beyond the body without being in it) was the fear that I was really losing the privileges that really mattered to me.  Career wise, I never had anything I couldn’t do.  There was never a job that was denied to me.  In San Francisco, in the Bay area, that was never an issue.  But still emotionally and culturally I had all these privileges, in terms of dating woman and the innate trust they had in me.  As a woman, I could be aggressive, I could be sexually forward and it was never ever taken as threatening, ever.  Now, there are so many things I have to be careful about and boundaries to be aware of.  I think as a man you have to really build trust piece by piece and as a woman you have a presumption of trust.

MG:     That is so powerful!

DK:      I have such an alpha-aggressive personality, that it was easier for me in a woman’s body.  Also, coming from the Bay area, very aggressive women are considered sexy.  If you are feminine-looking, men like you too. I really had no repercussions from being an aggressive female in any direction.

MG:     Wow!

DK:      But then, no guy hates a pretty aggressive woman. It’s some weird bias that men have. But because I was trying to be balanced, at one point I wanted to say that men were less accepting of me but it wasn’t true, and I had to be honest. And now there are so many situations where I’m seen as the Guido and it’s so interesting. I had a friend of mine, too, who said when he transitioned he felt like he had this big gulf between him and women now.  This wall exists and it’s not just fear.  It took me a while to figure this out, but I find that women are more self conscious around men than around women.

MG:     I think that can be true.

DK:      I don’t mean just careful, I mean even more judgmental towards themselves or something. It seems to me that many women had that silent or distant father, so they project judgment onto men.

MG:     Yes.

DK:      Because in a work situation, it took me a long time to figure it out, but I found that women were more self critical or hesitant than men when they were describing something they were thinking about when they were talking to me as a female.  When they saw me as a man and I first noticed the difference, I thought this is so strange, because I don’t think of them any differently. I mean, I’m the same person. I was having a conversation with a colleague and all of a sudden I’m getting an energy that they are hesitant or they might not look smart enough or something. And I didn’t get that as strong before.

MG:     I think you’ve got some insights there that are very…

DK:      It makes me sad because I don’t want them to have to question; I just wanted to have a conversation with the person.

MG:     It makes me sad for my sons and for boys and for men, it is very sad when people can’t just be. I feel the empathy both ways. And that is an interesting piece in this conversation.  As a woman, you are taught to be more to be concerned more about the feelings of others before you look in your own mirror and get clear on your own feelings.

DK:      The other thing I always find so funny, that in our society that homosexuality is the unnatural form, given the battles and the miscommunication of the genders.  I think it’s so much easier, other than the socially appropriate issue, for men and men who are together and for women and women who are together because there isn’t all that baggage around gender.

MG:     Absolutely.

DK:      When I was with women, as a female, we could have a very traditional type of male/female dynamic but there was nothing that was politically offensive about it.

MG:     Right.

DK:      Because there was no history or baggage around how it was perceived by them and there was a freedom to just be your energy.

MG:     And now you have to consciously have to co-create that. (laughing)

DK:      Or overcome it! I just find it funny that we call that unnatural when there are so many things that are so difficult for heterosexual communication.

MG:     There are so many absurd ironies in the way our little world functions, isn’t there! (laughing)

DK:      It’s interesting because I did a television interview yesterday, and the interviewer was African-American, she does art and literature, she very conversational, she’s very good.  The guy she interviewed before me was also African-American, and a best selling author.  He wrote a book on an interesting history of well-educated families who had some African-American lineage.   One man left two million dollars behind to his family.  All of these people who were his relatives had been living as white, because they are very fair.  When one of them came out as black to get the inheritance, his wife left him, his apartment complex booted him out, and he was fired from his job.

MG:     Oh my!

DK:      Basically his point was about speaking your truth.  None of these relatives came to the reunion for this guy, who was incredibly well educated, because they didn’t want to out their skin color. But there’s another question: does a label matter? Because by default, they had taken his life but yet there is something about that dignity of saying this is my truth.

MG:     Yes.

DK:      That was the theme of the show but again it raised that point in my mind …sometimes the Buddhist notion can toy with us because on one level if I fight for my identity then I fight for yours.  Then I can say I see you.  And as soon as you say to a soul, ‘I see you’, it relaxes and it can move on.

MG:     Yes, and then it can be free to be.

DK:      I think that’s why I have my own weird spiritual dreams, and the connections I’ve had, and that’s why I have such a hook with the story of Jesus, and his quotes and the words that come to me.  Obviously he’s been so edited - the agnostic texts are great because he’s very Buddhist.  I’m in the leaves, I’m in the trees and he describes the seven stages of the soul, but that’s in the Gospel of Mary and that was cut out. But I think there is much of that in him, that energy, that male energy where he says ‘this is not right’ or ‘you hypocrite’. How dare you judge the prostitute when she is more honest than you?

            I see that same parallel to injustice and truth that is going on now.  Around 2000 years ago what he was really pointing out, I feel that same energy I know he had - that hypocrisy that he couldn’t tolerate. He didn’t judge anybody for being who they are.  But what he did judge and found unforgivable was people who put down others when they were more honest than they were.

MG:     Yes.

DK:      There is such a blasphemy in that I think, these wealthy people claiming the Lord is their own and sinning in darkness when they condemn the leper or the prostitute or whoever. 

MG:     And what one might call that righteous voice, perhaps in some cases hypocritical - it is gaining more press time in the States, if I’m not mistaken?

DK:      Yes absolutely. That’s why I say it’s biblical.  There’s a project that I’ve been sort of working on because since I was a kid I’ve had an inexplicable connection (to Jesus) which never made any sense because my father is a Hindu, although he studies all religions.  There is something of my father in my spirit.  I keep having dreams and conversations and I started writing them down a year ago and they are in his language.  They are about that same hypocrisy and what’s going on now. It’s the same conversation Jesus had 2000 years ago. There is no coincidence that in this century there is an absolute parallel to what was happening before.  It is the same thing: the Vatican is so incredibly rich right now, they are paying out a billion dollars to kids who have been molested by their priest over and over and over, while they condemn those who are gay and want to get married who have never touched a child or have done anything comparable.

MG:     And truthfully, and this is where the real power of your message comes out, you can say it and label it and say it because you’ve lived it.  You’ve lived hypocrisy when you lived a life that is not who you are. Right?

DK:      Yes but also on the gay marriage front I feel his commandments come into play. Where he said ‘love others as though they were you, I leave you only with this commandment - all the others hang on it’. I think he was saying if you can really put your heart into somebody else’s body, and I recognize that it is your heart, you will do everything else naturally. I think of that with gay marriage because ten years ago, I couldn’t have married any woman that I loved, but now I can.

MG:     Yes.

DK:      Right? I’ve been that other heart. And that teaches me really, that profound contrast breaks my heart.

MG:     It will be delightful to watch that form of love grow for you, now that you’ve created the capacity to bring it into your life.

DK:      Yes. It’s important, and I think that someone needs to tie that fence together. Don’t you think it’s no coincidence that as gay marriage as an issue is gaining ground, we are seeing the incredible molestation scandals?  Because one is the corollary of repression, right? And the other is people who are standing in the light and want to be counted.

MG:     Yes. I recall reading in your book and talking to you briefly about this before.  In some ways I was my mother’s best friend growing up, and that had its challenges.  There’s a real evolution in parents today, at least some of them, who are fully adults in themselves and don’t need to use their children for that.

DK:      All the generations of women who grudgingly stayed home, who shouldn’t have stayed home or didn’t want to, who basically had all of their resentments and used their children to meet their symbiotic needs.

MG:     It happened.  And it can be so unhealthy and dysfunctional.

DK:      That’s the necessary outpouring of having equality because then either gender can stay home or not stay home, whatever is good for your soul is good for your child.

MG:     Fabulous. I hear in your voice your connection to your soul.  And I hear that you have some sense of truly where you can contribute that brings you joy. Creating love in which ever way, through relationships, or through what you put out into the universe - that is so immensely powerful.

DK:      I think that I am learning that we have different ways of how we use our energy.  I realize that I am not one of those people who can do one-on-one or grass-roots politics all the time. I need to hole up for a month, work out something and recharge my batteries, and then I can bring it out to the world on a large scale and share it. And then go back in.

MG:     Thank you, Dhillon.  I have really enjoyed speaking with you again.

DK:      Thank you.