Alex Blumberg
Describe your thoughts on your morning walk in this state.

Man
It's very quiet at 5:30, 6:00, 6:30 in the morning. And yeah, and I would see a brick in a wall, and I would think, a brick in a wall. I would see a pigeon and think, pigeon. It's the most literal possible understanding of the world.

Alex Blumberg
So in this time, when you're without testosterone, you're walking down the street. You're just ticking things off, just making these very simple observations.

Man
Like a grocery list.

Alex Blumberg
Yeah, like a grocery list exactly. You also have a thought that comes to you all the time, right?

Man
Yes.

Alex Blumberg
Talk about that.

Man
Which is a very strange-sounding thing, which is, "That is beautiful." Everything I saw, I thought, "That is beautiful," which is odd-sounding, I know, because that sounds like the judgment of a person with passion. But it was the exact opposite. It was thought, and sometimes even said, with complete dispassion, with objectivity.

And you see, I was looking at absolutely everything, the most mundane sight in the world, a weed in the sidewalk, and thinking, "Oh, that's beautiful." The surgery scars on people's knees, the bolts in the hubcaps of cars, all of it, it just seemed to have purpose. And it was like, "Oh, that's beautiful."

Alex Blumberg
It's so staggering that that is the core thought that you were left with. If you see things factually, you could have just as easily settled on monstrous or disgusting. And so it's just interesting to me that the adjective your brain, and what was left of your personality, chose to ascribe to everything is "beautiful." Why do you think that is?

Man
When I think about that question, the issue of God comes into the equation for me. In a way, being without testosterone brought me closer to God, but not in the afternoon talk show sense of being, I don't know, more humane, but actually thinking like God. And of course, I don't mean thinking as God, but I meant thinking like God in an aping, superficial kind of way. He sees things as they really are. He sees you as you really are.

And I had this omniscient sense when I was without testosterone that I was seeing through the skin of things, that I was seeing things as they really were, and that the objective conclusion, not the judgmental one, but the objective conclusion was, they are beautiful. Everything is beautiful, from the bugs to the cracks in the sidewalk to the faces of other people. And it was automatic. Perhaps to see things objectively is to see them, all of them, as beautiful.

But you have to understand that the thought was expressed in the most flat-line, boring way possible. "Oh yeah, that's beautiful. It's beautiful."

You would think that this would be a terrible thing, a terrible state to be in, and for most people, it is. But it was weirdly pleasant. And there is a certain appeal, an impossible appeal, to that Rip van Winkle existence of being without testosterone.

You just have to remember that it doesn't matter if you have nothing, if you want nothing. Very tricky to get inside that mindset. In some ways, it's difficult for me to even remember it now. But it had its allure.

Alex Blumberg
Well, I can understand that. Because desire often feels like a burden. It often feels like if I just didn't want that thing, not having it wouldn't be so painful.

Man
There you go. All that wanting.

I've been worrying a little about that. I mean look at Ramana Maharshi. He couldn't have had lots of testo. Does meditation affect ones hormones?

Middle Way

Meditate for Mental

 Excercise for Physical,

 if possible.

P.S.  Frank Zane meditated....

Griffin Hansbury: (...) so that I have the testosterone of two high-testosterone men in my body at once.
(...)
The most overwhelming feeling is the incredible increase in libido and change in the way that I perceived women and the way I thought about sex.
(...)
Well, I felt like a monster a lot of the time. And it made me understand men. It made me understand adolescent boys a lot. Suddenly, hair is sprouting, and I'm turning into this beast. And I would really berate myself for it.
(...)
And before, it was cool. When I would do a poetry reading, I would get up, and I would read these poems about women on the street. And I was a butch dyke, and that was very cutting-edge, and that was very sexy and raw. And now I'm just a jerk.
(...)
I began to notice, once I started to pass as a man, that single men, walking alone down the street, will veer away from their path to walk towards me, get in my space, and then veer back. And it's very much like a little aggressive move. I've had men, just angry guys walking down the street, just body check me. So I really feel like I have to sort of puff myself up, so that people will keep their distance a little bit. But if I'm off guard, and I'm walking around, and I'm enjoying the scenery, it's pretty much guaranteed that somebody will shove me.

re: Pål (2/13/15 3:41 PM as a reply to Andreas.)

"Does meditation affect ones hormones?"

Depending on the type of meditation:

The piti (rapture) and possibly sukha (bliss/contentment) as 'jhanic factors' might qualify.

Kundalini very likely.

The seven chakras in the body are associated with the seven major glandular (hormonal) organs in some traditional asian medical systems. (Some systems, e.g. Theosophy, postulate additional chakras extending both upwards and downwards outside the physical organism.)

Yes but how? I don't want to look like Ramana haha

True. But he did hatha yoga, right?