The frustrating part of established spiritual traditions, even those which don’t quite fit the bill of “organized religion”, is that the prevailing approach to them is to adapt ourselves to their philosophies rather than choose to adapt the ideas themselves.  I think organized religion is largely to blame for this, as it introduces the attitude that spiritual truths are absolute truths and that belief and adherence are necessary to the spiritual experience.

But none of that really makes sense in a world where our understanding of the universe is constantly in flux.  Spiritual teachings grow out of the prevailing cosmologies and understandings of reality which existed at the time the teachings emerged.  As the years pass, yes, we tend to make small adjustments in an evolutionary way, letting practices go and adapting things to the changes brought on by time.  But often the core beliefs and teachings go unchanged by choice.

Even when they stop making sense.

This leaves us in a position of adhering to beliefs and philosophies and imagery which depicts everything according to an established gender binary which we know doesn’t properly exist.  If everything in creation is described in sexual metaphor that emphasizes not only the physical binary of male and female but piles on the associated traits given to the genders by various cultures, what do we do with the part of existence which defies both the binary definition of gender and the social understanding of what gender means?

How would our spiritual traditions look if we expanded their description of gender and rethought how we speak of femininity and masculinity?