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Your Feelings/Reactions Re Cross-Gender Reincarnation

SeaAndSky

SeaAndSky

Senior Registered
I have been reading many threads and accounts over the last week or so, and find that many folks here have detailed recollections of numerous lives, and that a surprising number of them not only involve cross-gender reincarnation, but often multiple cross-gender incarnations. I haven’t felt like I have enough background to comment yet on most of the very interesting findings and explorations accomplished by members of this board. Frankly, I am (just) beginning to have minimal flashes of memory about one prior possible incarnation, so I don’t feel like I have the credentials yet to offer insights gained through experience and long work in this area. I’d sooner read and learn from those who have been involved in it for a while, many seemingly because they couldn’t avoid past life memories any more than they could avoid breathing in and out.

Hence, I’m interested in getting your reactions on one particular aspect of this subject that is impacting me at the moment: cross-gender reincarnation. The purpose of this thread is not to do a rigorous scientific study on the matter, but to collect subjective memories, reactions, emotions, feelings, speculations, and what you think you’ve learned. (I.e., I’d rather keep this thread under past life memories and discussions of memories and feelings re same than see it moved over to one of the more objective/scientific topic areas, as I’m more interested in how individuals deal with these things on a personal level than anything else).

Why? Because I’m dealing with a possible cross-gender reincarnation issue myself. And since the only data I have is my current M life and the beginnings of the recollection of a prior F life, I am left asking myself: what is my ultimate gender? Do I have an ultimate gender? These are certainly questions I never had to ask before. However, I have seen numerous comments by folks (and experts) in this field who seem to think that we are innately and/or primarily one way or another despite cross-gender reincarnation (seemingly for learning purposes).

Not too long ago I would have found this an easy question to answer, and I would have simply put down “M” and left it at that. But, objectively looking at the only data I have (one M life and one F life), I have to wonder whether the opposite is true. After all, all I've got to go on is a 50/50 split. How would I know outside of my current subjective feelings on the subject? How do you folks feel about this topic and the issues it raises? How do those of you who have experienced cross-gender reincarnation believe it has affected your outlook? There are lots of questions here, I’ll throw the door open for whatever comments you think are pertinent based on your own past-life memories and current life.
 
BTW--I should probably clarify that I am not looking for anything salacious here (memories or otherwise). It is just that being male or female is such a fundamental part of identity that memories of being another gender are quite shocking to me and kind of rock me to my foundations. Consequently, I'm trying to understand how other people deal with their memories in this area and the issues that such memories raise.
 
I don't think the soul has a gender. Bodies have genders. Obviously that's important for making more bodies, eh?


From what I've read over the years it seems to be the norm to have about half and half male and female lives. Sometimes people swap back and forth a lot. Other times they tend to stick with the same gender for a group of lives. Some people tend to favour one gender over the other, having 80% female or male lives, but that could be that they just don't remember them all. It varies in short. It might be for 'learning purposes' or it might be pure chance.


There are quite a few threads about this topic. Here are a couple:


Gender


The gender debate

How do those of you who have experienced cross-gender reincarnation believe it has affected your outlook?
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As I was saying in another thread, personally having experienced many male lives and female ones, I think I have a good insight into what makes men tick. I have a lot of male friends and get along very well with men because I can slot into just being 'one of the boys' without losing my femininity at the same time. I'm just easy to relate to I suppose and I know what men like doing - hanging out having simple fun without too much talking or worrying about everyone else's emotions, etc. I was watching an action flick the other day with one of my buddies (as you do). We got talking about the benefits of different winches and things .... y'know.


Men and women alike come to me for advice about their relationships, because I can really get the male point of view on things and can guess more successfully what men are thinking and feeling than most women can. My advice to the ladies is usually 'stop bugging him. He'll come round if you just leave him in peace for a bit and let him work it out for himself'. :)


I also know that men feel things very deeply, even if they're usually very reluctant to talk about it. A lot of women seem to think men don't have any feelings, because they can appear so closed and stoic about things. But they're very wrong.
 
Hi Tanguerra,


Thank you for your response. BTW--I agree with your comments re men and how to get along with them. This may be an example of why cross-gender incarnations are necessary and valuable. Also, thanks for the links to prior threads (I am going to read through both).


On the issue itself, it is obvious that it has been subject to discussion in the past from a variety of directions. One problem we may face on a board like this is that those who post here are not necessarily typical of people in general (in terms of reincarnation), or even of people who remember a PL. According to Stevenson’s research only an average of 1 out of 10 incarnations by people with PL memories he studied crossed what was the normative birth gender for that person. He as well as others concluded that gender was innate and only crossed for pedagogical purposes. (Cayce also seems to have taken this position).


However, did Stevenson’s sample represent an "average" sample for statistical purposes? After all, being able to remember a PL is already out of the ordinary. So, I would conclude that the individuals he studied were probably already outside the “norm” statistically speaking. A group like the one on this board, constituted not only of people that remember a PL but often several, may be even farther outside the norm in terms of how often such incarnations take place.


Nonetheless, I can tell that there are two basic positions associated with this phenomenon: (1) gender is innate and exists even without a physical body; and (2) gender is not innate and does not exist outside of a physical body. I can also tell that there are two basic emotional responses that are, in general, associated with these positions: (a) discomfort with cross-gender incarnation (usually expressed by those who take position (1)); and (b) absence of discomfort with such incarnations (usually expressed by those who take position (2)).


I don’t have a firm position on either yet, but it is obvious to me after reading your posts and others—at the least—that multiple cross gender PLs seem to lead to a greater comfort with cross gender incarnations. Since I find myself somewhat uncomfortable with the idea, I probably fit into category (a) above. (I also tend to think that gender is innate, and so fit into category (1), above).


Logically, this leads to the conclusion that I probably have not had a large number of cross gender PLs. In fact, this may be my first. Hmmm. This leads to a still further thought: if this incarnation as a male is my first it may represent the exception rather than the rule in terms of my PLs and I am more "innately" F rather than M. All of this is just speculation, but it is definitely a bit "weird" from my standpoint.


Cordially, SeaAndSky
 
When I realized I'd been mostly male in my remembered PLs I wasn't very surprised. I've been casually saying things like, "Male or female, I'm still myself, " and "Feel free to treat me like a man if you like," to men who are worried about befriending me as a woman.


I've always been a bit tomboyish; I liked climbing trees ... but definitely enjoyed girly things like dressing up and dresses, too.


Aside from exclusively "falling in love" with men (even in male PL), gender hasn't really ever seemed like a big deal to me. In spite of the way I was brought up (women are keepers of the home, and shouldn't be in charge of men) I always felt quite certain I could do anything a man could do ... if it interested me.


Now that I associate with men as equals, I tend to make friends with them very easily. Often it's easier than with women, which would make sense given the small percentage of female lives I've remembered. And when I easily make friends with a woman, she will often say to me "Usually I only get along with men this well."


All the same, it's fine being a woman. I don't dislike it or feel like I'm in the wrong body. It has never occurred to me to dislike being female, even if I have struggled with the media mentality that I should look like a starved waif with plastic skin.


And there was no discomfort in realizing I'd been a man, either. It was just me in another form. I didn't feel like anything vital was different about me.


I can wear a suit or I can wear a dress in this life. I might walk differently because the shoes affect my stride, but I am still myself. I feel the same about past bodies. They are my "avatars" and my true identity knows itself beyond gender.
 
The memories of my immediate past life were that of a woman. I'm a man currently. At first this was a little surprising and even confusing. I can tell you that after examining those feelings and memories that I do have there is little difference between the genders. It seems I had the same fears and concerns in that life as I do in this one and the one before that one. The only differences were the situations I was in and the experiences unique to that gender. In the matters of the heart and soul I see no difference. As far as gender preference goes I think we should embrace the gender we are born with in this life. You really don't have much of a choice. You should fully explore the opportunities and experiences available to that gender. Like other posters I don't believe the soul, spirit, or whatever you choose to call it has a gender. I know it doesn't fit with the view of any religion out there, but I see reality as a big amusement park for the soul. This world may have been created as the ultimate entertainment game, or maybe a school, or garden for souls to grow, it could even be a test. Whatever it is I think this is where we come to experience something we're lacking on the other side. I also believe this is why most do not remember past lives, or the other place. If you're gamer ask yourself this question. What would be better than to be able to fully immerse yourself into the game? Thank of it as VR on steroids. You're born into, grow, and experience everything in that virtual reality. Your memories of the real world are blocked. How many of you would jump at the chance to play that sort of game? There is a theory out there that we're living in a computer simulation. Several scientists have tested this theory and many of the tests indicate we are. If this is true it holds many implications as to our true nature. Gender would just be one of these.
 
I'm not finding any feelings in this lifetime at all about gender in past lives. I was a man in my most immediate past life. Of the probably 5 or 6 past lives I've glimpsed prior to the most recent, I've been female in all but two. Having been a man in the last life, I don't feel that it threatens my femininity in the least. To me, it's just a simple 'fact of life' and I attach no special emotion to my soul being in a male body or a female body.


While I am very, very 'girlie' and feminine, AND am a very emotional person who feels deeply, I have always been told that I 'think like a man'. I'm not sure what that means, though. I'm straightforward, don't play games, don't pull punches and am a very logical, analytical person. Perhaps it's the time frame of my current life that would make some think that those characteristics are solely male-connected. I see no reason why that is true. Actually, I often find that I am far more straightforward, logical and analytical than most men I know.


In my most immediate past life as a man, I recall being in love with a woman, so at this point, I don't think there were any female characteristics in that personality.


Bottom line, I feel that the soul is not tied to a gender, unless it chooses to incarnate as one gender or another, for life lessons.
 
Doesn't bother me at all. Currently female, last life was male, one before that was female and one before that male. I find that remembering male past lives can help me understand my husband better.
 
I remember several female past lives, I'm male now, but it definitely gives you an advantage in understanding what makes the opposite sex tick. At the moment I'm sadly witnessing a couple of close friends whose marriage is falling apart at the seams and I'm stuck in the middle. The wife had an affair and her husband is doing his utmost to win back her affection, but the harder he tries, the further away he seems to be pushing her, even though she is willing to try and make their marriage work. It's interesting for me because from a male perspective, I can understand his motives and what he's trying to do, and I can feel his frustration that everything he does receives a negative reaction. Yet from a female perspective, I can see what he's doing wrong, and I try to use that knowledge to advise him when I talk to him 'man to man', but he just doesn't get it. When I talk to his wife, she admires my ability to see things from a woman's perspective and wishes that her husband could share my point of view .... clearly the ratio of male/female past lives vary a lot among us all.
 
The only life I remember was as a woman, though I've long felt I had to have been a man in at least one previous life. I know it's wrong to classify certain interests and behavior as "boy" vs. "girl," since we're people and not characteristics erroneously based on biological sex. However, I was never very stereotypically girly, hated things like frilly dresses, never had a Barbie, liked "boy" toys and activities, always preferred male to female company, and did so-called "tomboy" things like playing in dirt, loving spiders and worms, and climbing over fences instead of taking the easier way through. I'm also most attracted to gender-atypical men, since as Darryl Bem has theorized, the exotic becomes erotic.


My great-grandpap Ben used to tell my mother I was built like a football player (as a young child, anyway) and that I had a boy's body wasted on a girl. Maybe he saw something other people didn't.
 
ChrisR said:
I remember several female past lives, I'm male now, but it definitely gives you an advantage in understanding what makes the opposite sex tick. At the moment I'm sadly witnessing a couple of close friends whose marriage is falling apart at the seams and I'm stuck in the middle. The wife had an affair and her husband is doing his utmost to win back her affection, but the harder he tries, the further away he seems to be pushing her, even though she is willing to try and make their marriage work. It's interesting for me because from a male perspective, I can understand his motives and what he's trying to do, and I can feel his frustration that everything he does receives a negative reaction. Yet from a female perspective, I can see what he's doing wrong, and I try to use that knowledge to advise him when I talk to him 'man to man', but he just doesn't get it. When I talk to his wife, she admires my ability to see things from a woman's perspective and wishes that her husband could share my point of view .... clearly the ratio of male/female past lives vary a lot among us all.
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I was in a similar situation once. They were both very good friends of mine. I could see what both of them were doing wrong right from the beginning of the marriage to the end. I to tried talking to both of them separately as a friend trying to help them see it from the other perspective without being to obvious about it. When they got together she was somewhat shallow. She loved him for the way that he looked and not who he was. She figured she could change that, improve him, make him a better person. Him, wanting her love because he never had anyone who loved him played along even though he liked who he was for the most part. He tried to be the man she wanted. He did this for years before the resentment built up to where he couldn't stand it anymore. He bucked and tried to rediscover himself. Suddenly she didn't know the man she was married to and wouldn't accept him. It was a real mess. I would talk to him guy to guy trying to get him to get his head on straight as some of the things he was doing were just plain wrong. He was acting out a lot, acting erratic. I also tried talking to her using my ability to see things from a woman's point of view. She was really impressed by my insight on the feminine mind. A little to impressed. Being in the female mindset I didn't even see it coming. Before I knew it she was half naked pressing herself against me professing her love stating she wished she had married me instead. I salvaged that without doing anything inappropriate, and we remained good friends. I should have seen in coming. Any guy would have. She was emotionally vulnerable and an easy target. It taught me a lesson about keeping both mindsets on. That and don't get involved in domestics even when it's friends. Another lesson learned.
 
I have problem with being a women in almost all my past


lives and now male. I have mind like a woman.


Women have always been comfortable with me.


I got mistaken for woman on message boards


including this one. Oh, well.
 
Yes in the beginning it's a bit "shocking" or surprising, to experience yourself as a different gender in a past life, but that is just in the beginning, after a while, this is just the way it is... and one knows more from that other perspective, which makes one fuller as a person.


I do not think soul has gender, and my body, and even my mind (which can function a bit differently according to gender), is also not "me", so I experience it as me being the "driver" and changing cars... Which makes the gender thing more and more transparent and less confining, as I see more common things between the genders and less differences. Most trouble between men and women seems to come from mis-communication. I think it would be a great thing if more people knew they are changing genders in different lives, there would be more tolerance...
 
SeaAndSky said:
...Logically, this leads to the conclusion that I probably have not had a large number of cross gender PLs. In fact, this may be my first. Hmmm. This leads to a still further thought: if this incarnation as a male is my first it may represent the exception rather than the rule in terms of my PLs and I am more "innately" F rather than M. All of this is just speculation, but it is definitely a bit "weird" from my standpoint.
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Yes. A lot of people find it a bit 'weird' at first. Our gender is such a huge part of our identity and our place in society in this culture is ruled by it, it seems hard to imagine just blithely swapping back and forth. As I said earlier, some people seem to have a preference for being male or female, but the norm, certainly on this forum, is to have a roughly even split. I seem to recall we did a poll on this a while back. From what I can figure out I seem to have a group of three or four lives or so as one gender, then I swap again. But, that's not necessarily very precise. A lot of the older female lives may have been less eventful, therefore less memorable, than the male ones.


However, it's highly unlikely statistically, that this is your only male life. In theory, people have hundreds or even thousands of past lives, so to have only one in as a male or female is not likely just based on the odds.
 
The responses received so far have been very interesting. As may be recalled, I noted two different positions I had seen in regard to this issue: (1) gender is innate and exists even without a physical body; and (2) gender is not innate and does not exist outside of a physical body. Likewise, I noted two basic emotional responses that are, in general, associated with these positions: (a) discomfort with cross-gender incarnation (usually expressed by those who take position (1)); and (b) absence of discomfort with such incarnations (usually expressed by those who take position (2)).


So far, the responses received have almost all been from people that have recalled numerous lives on both sides of the gender divide, and can overwhelmingly be classified as falling in the categories denoted above as: (2) and (b)--i.e., gender is not innate to the "soul" and they are equally comfortable as male or female. This makes me wonder whether the folks falling in (1) and/or (a)--and feel like gender is innate and are not equally comfortable as male and female--are not choosing to respond, or simply exist in far fewer numbers on a board like this. So far, the only folks expressing, at the least, reservations on the matter seem to be myself and shadowsofmypast (though I may be misunderstanding what shadowsofmypast is saying on this).


Having read a smattering of research results related to cross-sexual as well as cross-cultural/religious incarnations, it seems that an overall goal of "cross-over" incarnations is to eliminate (or at least leads to the elimination of) identification with particular subcategories--i.e., leads one to no longer identify with (or solely as) a particular sex, race, culture, or etc. but to identify more simply as a "soul" and see the rest as merely transient factors. Perhaps, however, it is not to eliminate the ability to identify more particularly, but to increase empathy for "the other"--either way it is an interesting phenomenon.
 
I was tormented by this topic for most of my life,


then something was said that cleared it all up for me,


tell me is it does the same for you (I want to know for everyone reading this )


there are many reasons to incarnate, (to learn lessons, service to others, etc...)


it was for "reasons of contrast" that got me


the example goes something like this,


lets say you are a white entity in a white room with white walls,


you have no real idea of who you are,


if you choose to incarnate in a green room with green walls,


then you see that you are a white entity in a green background and you know who you are,


I think the gender issue is about the same,


some change all the time and are fine with it,


but others are clearly one gender and have incarnated the other direction to really show themselves what they are not.


until you try it, how do you really know what you are ?


that idea relaxed me more than I can express,


I hope it helps someone else just as much
 
Hi Spacecase0,


I like your post and would have replied sooner--but holiday rush has me locked up. I'll try to get back in more detail in a few days.


Blessings,


SeaAndSky
 
I don't have any significant PL memories of being a male in some past lives, but even though I was a girly girl growing up in this life- there's definitely a masculine side that I have in this life.
 
For me it was a healing experience to remember my female previous life (even if it was tragic) because I have always been quite uncomfortable being male. Suddenly everything made sense.


When i was little, people mostly thought i was a girl because of the way I looked and acted. I also preferred playing with girls. It was a shock to me when I started preschool and got bullied for being so girly, and I think my depression that started that time and lasted until mid life was mainly because I forced myself to act in a way that was unnatural to me, because I tried to somehow fit in the male role. I was also always asking these questions like "why do I have to be like this?" "Why can't I be normal?


I found out that in my previous life I died as a child about 10 years old. Before I got sick (or whatever disease I had got worse) I was a girl who enjoyed being a girly girl. I think this explains why I have always felt like I'm too feminine for my physical gender. I think it's because deep inside I have wanted to continue that unfinished girlhood. I guess if I had lived a full life, the gender change wouldn't have been a problem.


It doesn't bother me so much anymore because I understand why I am the way I am.
 
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