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This talk reveals my very personal experience of Autism as a recently diagnosed 66-year-old.

Gratitude to Guy Shahar for this beautiful perspective on Autism.  Thank You !
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8Nb2FDmQo4

 Might I be on the spectrum?...  A good place to start...  Dr. Kim Sage -  late diagnosed adult Autism...
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=quyTa_nTpls

 Ready for a bit of fun... Respect to "That Autistic Guy"... The episode that made me belly laugh until we got to 10 traits in... and suddenly went to "Uh oh".....   Yup, that was my moment...
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iynYweIsI1I

I consider myself fortunate to experience this diagnosis late in life, when retirement offers me the time to research and to reflect on why my life was so difficult… I get the time, absent from having to conform to the demands of the Allistic world, to find freedom by embracing the perspectives that make my entire life make sense. I get to embrace the beautiful world of Autism that extends far beyond the stereotypes and narrow experience of neurotypical reality.

I was a typical, undiagnosed Autistic person who employed hyper-vigilance and a number of mental coping “programs” to fit in to a world that seemed rigid, vague, linguistically violent and cruel.   My response was a lifetime of study the philosophy of language and spiritual practice to make sense of and to attempt to evolve in a world whose scenery never seemed to change.

Until I fully embraced being Autistic.  I disabled my mental, coping programs, becoming instantly overwhelmed sensorily and empathetically, and I found a way to dial down the sensory information to experience  my native, autistic brain and it’s connection to the field.

This talk may make some curious about Neurodiversity in themselves, a family member or friend.  

Please exercise caution, my experience should not be considered a diagnosis tool or a substitute for your own research.  This podcast site does not offer resources for next steps, especially in the early stages of identifying one’s patterns of behavior and experience.  

For those new to this, a good place to start is Dr. Kim Sage.  In the link below you will find her talking about the roughly 15% of the general population who are Highly Sensitive (HSP), the unknown number suffering from Trauma, or the 1-2% who are diagnosed on the Autistic Spectrum.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gd9V61tXacY&t=630s

Please be respectful in not calling yourself or others out as HSP, Autistic, ADHD or any other form of neurodiversity without taking time for research and reflection.  Please give everyone the experience of personal discovery and identity for themselves.

In this podcast I use terms defined and explored in my supporting podcasts.  If you find yourself interested in a deeper dive, have a listen, starting with the A/A series.

That being said… Here is how I see things…  my recommendations for Allistic and Autistic connection…

For Allistic People (those without Autism)

If I were your Autistic friend, I would respectfully, carefully and patiently let you know just how loud you are beyond the words you speak.  

Even before words are spoken, I sense you are already in a public persona with a story running of a defined self..  a story of who you are and how the world “is”.  You are in an emotional body that you do not seem to be aware is broadcasting. You start talking, abruptly,  already in thinking mode, often attempting to enroll me in a dualist experience of reality in which yo

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For Autistic People

Please be aware that my experience is not intended to speak for all Autists, I am seeking first to crack the code of the double empathy problem from my own limited experience, so I declare myself open to your views of what I am missing.

If you are like me, you will probably not be “hanging out” in thinking, in a public persona with a tight story running of a defined self in the moment that someone speaks to you.  You will likely be in the experience of flow state, centered (or even lost) in the experience of the moment.

This is why I, and maybe you, are startled and unprepared to respond to the abrupt, and often impatient, language and emotional patterns of “small talk” that Allistic people believe is a friendly invitation to communicate.  

How are we to remain authentic when we are required to go to the extraordinary effort of twisting ourselves into a shape to “fit in”.  This is coping and masking, an adaptive strategy that carries a high cost in energy, as well as other costs.

Here is where it gets difficult, we can take a stand around our authentic experience with friends and in social settings

I believe it falls to us to free ourselves from any self-judgement that the thinking, self-based way of being of Allistic people is better than the flow state of consciousness and experience of Autistic people.  This is for me the heart of Autism as a difference, and not a disorder.  

I do not believe that playing a game of refining and defining our self in the thinking world of Allistic people is our nature as Autists… I would submit that our flow state, sustained in the sense of a transpersonal self, the self of the whole is our nature.

How can we get a cleaner and deeper connection to our true selves, through the network that is the field of the whole?

I would start with recognizing and accepting what is so with you.  Be the awareness present in this moment, not the movie that always seems to be turned up way too loudly.

Connect to your body, and your emotions, especially the maelstrom of emotional dysregulation in those overwhelming moments.  Be ok with your overwhelm, your emotional and energetic body.  

If you can see or feel a bit of what I am pointing to, you will be aware that I am recommending practices to add to your routines to remind ourselves of our true nature and to clean up the instrument of our physical, emotional and energetic bodies to experience the simple truth of being awareness itself in a field of the whole of creation.

So the first practice I would recommend is to value your flow state equally to the “self-ing” experience of your Allistic friends.  Make it ok to meet in the middle, negotiating the terms of the conversation to let you both be authentically expressed.

One of the second practices I recommend is attention training, meditation, and/or mindfulness.  This can be experienced in any one or several of many forms.   Each are a practice of letting go the mental forms to be in Flow State in your experience of reality.  TM offers a rich depth of practice. There are many resources available on YouTube and in your community.  Look for simple forms of practice.. and practice.

As you start to identify more and more not as the body and not as the mind, the mind will reveal itself as “not being you” over time.  The programs that we run in this mind to defend ourselves (sentinels) or cope (as I did) these programs start to be revealed in relief to the increasing mental quiet.  These programs are always running.  

This was my answer to the riddle I have experienced in decades of practice… How was it that I was gaining more and more access to my subtle body frequencies in my spiritual practice, only to find that the scenery never changed.  The scenery was my projections from the programs

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For Allistic People – To understand Autistic people and to understand oneself… One who knows only England, nows not England.

For Autistic People – To understand the beauty, freedom and open spiritual path of what you already are… outside the harsh and narrow confines of our allistic culture.

Briefly, this series will explore the depths of an autistic experience of reality.

How Autistic people suffer because they have no choice but to care.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8Nb2FDmQo4

Guy Shahar – The beautiful reality of Autism

How the transactional style of language excludes autistic people.

How the preoccupation for small talk and establishing one’s social status in our allistic culture bewilders many Autistic people.  

How small talk is disorienting for Autistic people who seek a “flow state” of engagement.  If we can’t flow with you, we will flow without you.  Concepts of monotropism, and the possibility of rapid spiritual development (See the Autism and Spirituality Series).

The downsides of high empathy in a disordered reality.

The beauty, peace and accelerated development possible when Autistic people can drop the masking, coping and sensory overwhelm using subtle body tools.

For subtle body tools see the BM ’24 series, episodes 6, 7, and 8.

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An introduction to monotropism 

There are many social patterns that appear to be held by non-Autistic people as “the” way to communicate and be social together.  These are important social patterns that we can be blind to… I am exploring them in detail in this podcast series.  

A few of these patterns include a transactional style of conversation in which there is a sing-song kind of verbal “dance” in which superficial questions are asked and answered in a rapid fire exchange with strong emotive tones and inflection.  To not rapid fire the “right” kinds of responses in the appropriate sing-song way will get you excluded from further conversation. 

Another pattern is a strong desire to find one’s “social status”.  This is done by way of small talk, finding common ground of shared interests such as sports teams, or sharing interests in the latest movies or cultural trends and events.  

This core drive to find one’s place in the “pack”, is the ongoing refinement by the conscious and subconscious of our story of our self, the fit of that self into the social fabric and world.  These narratives of “who I am and what is happening in the world” shape how many Allistic people interpret “reality”.

In brief, Allistic people are “pack” oriented in that considerable amounts of time and attention are invested in one’s social status. 

Autists, by and large, do not understand the enormous time and energy spent by Allistic people to develop a narrative of their social status and place in the world.  Autists often find small talk to be pointless and taxing, and in particular resent being judged as “not social” when we can’t mimic the allistic “superficiality” correctly.

The way I and many autistic people engage with the world is not via our “social status” asnd narrative.  We align our time and attention to our interests, bringing our emotions and sensory focus to “dive deeply” into the experience of a conversation or task.  Engaging our full attention into the depths of a connection or issue produces a flow state.  Flow draws in our attention like a black hole and in our single point of focus our self, mind chatter, and extraneous sensory data fall away into an ecstatic state in the moment.

For those Autists overwhelmed by sensory stimuli, this flow state might be accessed by nothing more than rolling a toy car backwards and forwards on the floor. 

 This is well described in these videos.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUFDAevkd3E

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLdpXM4lT_M

Being yanked out of a flow state is jarring, for an allistic concert pianist, or to an autistic person in flow.  This triggers me to be emotionally dysregulated, disoriented and resentful at the sensory assault and the person whose demands are the source of my disorder.

For Allistic people who have an Autist in their life… Here is a recap of the common ways you may be our primary source of pain, suffering, or worse… These are from the Autistic Advocate (the first link above).

Ways Allistic people can blindly torture the Autists in their life.

Do not allow Autists time for transition from one point of focus to another.

Speak too quickly or load up your speaking with coercion, frustration or other highly emotive content.

Not allowing Autists to have the necessary processing time, i.e. being in a hurry.

Using rewards, punishments, or exercise of claimed authority by not explaining why our attention is being called or demanded.

Requesting or demanding our attention in a highly sensory dysregulating environment, such as when chewing gum, in a loud or chaotic location, or where multiple calls for our attention are being made co

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An introduction to the double empathy problem.

Please pause this talk here…. Listen to this YouTube talk,  and come back when complete.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-a2O3bjLrsc&t=768s

For Allistic people, imagine you are visiting Paris, France where your excessive smiling and demand for eye contact is poorly received and considered rude.  Imagine your attempts to speak French are met with blank stares and disdain.  Imagine your loud voice calling the attention of your waiter causes stares and disapproval and a few cruel laughs  by restaurant patrons… and result in you largely being ignored by the restaurant staff.

Now picture your attempts to complain to the maître de.  He refuses to accept your criticism  and tells you that you are the cause of the entire problem.  You storm out of the restaurant calling the Parisians lacking in any human interest, empathy or social grace.  Of course, the Parisian diners would by and large judge YOU as the one lacking in human interest, empathy or social grace.

This is the double empathy problem. It occurs at the collision of two cultures.

Only its worse than that…

Imagine if pretty much everyone in your home town treated you like you were in the Parisian restaurant.  Imagine if the community has made it clear to you that you were the problem.  No one will actually tell you why you are being judged as having violated unspoken social “rules”..  You are simply told that you have no human interest in them, and that you lack empathy or social grace.

Autistic people don’t need to imagine.  This is our home town experience today.  We are told that we do not show interest, empathy or have social grace.  We are also told that there is a reason we are so dysfunctional… we have a disorder.

This is not true… we simply communicate differently, and we are getting tired of  being blamed, pathologized, traumatized and excluded due to the lack of awareness, empathy and tolerance among Allistics.     

Having come to understand the difference between external and internal validation, and after getting clear on my internal standards, I am no longer a captive to feeling alienated at the double empathy problem.

I have compassion for the tunnel vision commonly held by Allistics that they are a certain way.  This ‘fixed” sense of self, the effort to hold this self together publically and privately with all the coping and defensiveness when challenged looks to me to nothing more than a trauma response to defend this “self” from “not-knowing”.  

My encouragement to Autistic people is to not judge yourself by this narrow, Allistic  pattern of self, reality, communication, and relationships.  We Autistics have the gift to be in flow with the “not-knowing” experience of life in a wonderfully revealed unfolding of the whole of creation.

Imagine a world in which Autistic people and other marginalized groups in society were actually valued for their differences, and allowed to participate in different types of conversations together with Allistic people.  What worlds of possibilities could we open up for each other.

Can you imagine this… I can.

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On flow state… The ground of being for Autistic people

Please take the time to look at the two YouTube videos linked in the podcast notes… press pause and return when ready.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=znwUCNrjpD4&t=23s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYUhJ9N699c

For Allistic people, imagine if you can a single-minded drive and passion to follow one’s curiosity, interests and purpose deeply into flow state.  This is a magic space beyond our sense of self, limitations, and sensory overwhelm, where immediacy of the moment… and a quiet voice unerringly guides us from moment to moment.  Can you see or feel the sense of completeness in the flow state of your autistic friends when they are in such a place?

This is the flow state that is our Autistic “ground of being”.  It is a state of altered consciousness.

The Allistic “ground of being” is not flow consciousness, although flow is accessible to all.  The “ground of being” for Allistic people appears to this Autistic observer to be conversation.

Conversations with your most intimate friends can be magical when it exists in a kind of language dance.  This language dance is centered on the point of view of a self, and its place with others, in community and in the world.  

This is a verbal, interpersonal state of exchange in which we creatively articulate our perspectives to feel heard, appreciated, and understood.  This space of exchange is where the self that we each imagine we are is revealed in the immediacy of the moment… in which magic happens and our sense of who we are is refreshed.  We could call it being heard or being loved… the effect is a self-narrative of that self’s place in the world that is purified and renewed… a kind of sacred space of reinvigoration.

For my Autistic friends.  

I know many Autists can easily connect to the experience of reaching a flow state, where time runs differently, where there is a unity in our field of experience.  My own sense is of being in the experience of being held, guided, empowered and in some quiet way, being set free.

Here is perhaps a tough question for my fellow Autists;  Can you imagine accessing (needing) the kind of experience we get in flow state, but finding it in self-narrative, conversational exchange with others?  I am not talking about the flow state of verbally revealing our passions in a kind of monologue or data dump (which I admit feels great).  I am pointing to an interactive exercise in which you have a self, she has a self, he has a self, we all have a self, and we compare notes on self-ing.

One reason I have a problem with this self-narrative, conversational exchange is that I seek not to have a fully formed self, it gets in the way of reaching my flow state.  So instead I and many Autists seek to connect in these moments with narratives about our experiences, which easily looks like being self-centered and feels like we are not doing the verbal, conversational dance correctly.  This is one angle of the double empathy problem.

Can we all begin to see the disconnect?  Refreshing and refining one’s sense of self in conversational exchange can be a kind of confusing and exhausting experience for others.  Experiencing and sharing one’s flow state with others can be considered rude and pointless.

No wonder one of us has to be labelled as disordered.

So what do we do, move to Autlandia?  Not necessarily…

Allistic people can learn to not be demanding to rip us out of flow the moment they have a conversation they need us to participate in.  

Here, the use of language is critical, see my podcast on Being in language together – Peacefully.  This is an exploration of the misuse of

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A/A Series… Advocacy (Dual) versus Flow State (Non-Dual) Conversation…

 My recent podcasts on Flow State and the Double Empathy Problem seems to have awakened some curiosity in my Allistic friends about our very different views of “having a conversation”.

Specifically, there is an interest in an Autistic perspective on conversations that are easy to connect to, and conversations that I find alienating.  

The first, key observation I would make is the problem of Allistic people encoding conversation with advocacy.  Websters dictionary defines advocacy as: the act or process of supporting a cause or proposal. 

This advocacy shows up for me as conversations encoded with assumptions and coercive content designed to push or illicit a desired response.  It appears to me as the weaponization of language. 

 What makes this so problematic is that this advocacy is shrouded in lack of precision or context.

An example, something is said like, “Don’t you think it would be great to go for a hike?”

As an Autist, I must likely withdraw my attention from the flow state I am experiencing to become someone who is listening.  

What I hear, in my literal and logical brain, is that some collection of people, possibly only myself and the person suggesting a hike, could at some future date and time go for a day hike (I am guessing it is not backpacking) and that the obligation of responding to this vague speaking has been put upon me.  

I might ask myself if the question is figurative, “Is hiking good?”, or is what was said a proposal for action. At this moment, I have the choice to ask a series of clarifying questions, but I am not sure yet who or what I am in this “conversation” so I let that go.

My default would be to say No (until I am clearer on what has been proposed).

If I am given enough time to evaluate the option of actually going hiking at a near term point of time, I might ask “What are you proposing?”, but in practice my thoughts are often interrupted by the next remarks from my “conversational partner” usually involving a changing context, such as “Don’t you want to go hiking?”.

I will tend to listen to this as advocating that I should want to go hiking, but in spite of my love of hiking, I am resistant to being coerced.  

At this point, I can easily begin to resent the claim of authority that what matters in this moment is hiking and that I am being interrogated by my “conversational partner”.

I am emotionally dysregulated, not in touch with myself or the other person...

 Verbal brawls can be problematic and painful.

For both parties.

Clearly, the alternative could be, “Would you like to go on a day hike with me sometime next month?”, at which point I could think, and ask clarifying questions.  Given enough time, I might even be able to remain in flow in my non-dual experience… 

What do I mean Non-Dual?

As an Autist, I seek to be in flow state.  What this means to me is to not identify with or have a form of self, but instead identify with the unfolding of the whole of creation.  Sure, this experience is in a body, so there are concerns for time, food, shelter, being with others, but there does not have to be a fixed or even a form of self… in a way a self in this context is like clothing… we wear it but it is not our nature.

I view this in contrast with Dualism, in which I have a self that is not you, this self is filled with properties, I am this way and not that.  In this world it is obvious to me that “It would be great to go for a hike”, and it would be easy to think that others should agree with my perspective.

The second, key distinction I would make around conversational disconnects between Allistic and Autistic people is rhythm and music.

Too often, what passes for convers

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This podcast sets the stage for a transformational experience as a previously undiagnosed, autistic adult drops the mask and dives into the overwhelm of Burning Man... only to discover the practical tech to release autism's hidden strengths.

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This is the chronological beginning of the BRC 2024 story, the stage is set and right out of the gate I am challenged almost beyond my capacity to tolerate.

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This episode includes the arrival to Burning Man on Thursday, before BRC opens on the Sunday. It is a tale of alienation and overwhelm.