#72 - Eros and the Shepherdess: A Tale of Trans Emergence | Zhenevere Sophia Dao (MogaDao Institute)

“Someone who creates a practice tradition this vast is someone who can't survive in the world as it is.” Today on Life is a Festival, Zhenevere Sophia Dao returns to the show to share, for the first time, the story of her transgender emergence during sixteen months of silence in the Jemez Mountains. We discuss what Zhenevere calls the “Transgender Necessity” wherein transgender people ask society to wake up to the magnitude of their own desire. We talk about MogaDao as a collection of artful practices to sensitize the human organism and why sensitivity makes life valuable. We also discuss my own exploration of my feminine self, and Zhenevere explains why sexuality is not a puzzle to be solved. We finish the conversation with a recitation from Zhenevere’s Hamlette, a retelling of Shakespeare's most famous tragedy. MogaDao is a galaxy of Post-Daoist practices and philosophy created by Zhenevere and taught at the Mogadao Institute in Santa Fe New Mexico, my hometown and where I studied “The Erotic Basis of Being” in the summer of 2018. So come along as we follow the wild mountain shepherdess through an erotic dance with the invisible world. LINKS MogaDao Institute: https://www.mogadaoinstitute.com/ 20 Questions, Hamlette, and the Transgender Necessity | Zhen Dao | TEDxBerkeley: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uoTpMpM72-U&t=938s TIMESTAMP :13 - Sensitivity in speaking about transgender identity and how anger only comes when we insist upon misunderstanding :20 - Why “what would be a home run podcast?” isn’t a very interesting question :28 - The Shepherdess in the Jemez Mountains :37 - Eamon and erotic fiction :42 - Peak experiences might actually be looking for us :47 - The MogaDao artful practices of sensitizing the human organism :53 - Sensitivity makes life valuable and makes it impossible to be tempted by lesser satisfactions :59 - It’s where your mountain is, not where your desire is 1:06 - The Transgender Necessity 1:14 - Femininity is not a tool to administer to masculine mistakes 1:25 - Post-Daoist perspective of Yin and Yang 1:36 - Sexuality is not a puzzle of identity to be solved 1:44 - Does becoming Zhenevere mean arrival? 1:55 - Hamlette, Zhenevere’s reimagining of Shakespeare