Finding the Purpose of My Autism

I believe that we come to the earth plane to learn, that I have lived many lives here and there are other lives ahead of me depending on what I achieve in this life. There was a time when I was very close to not finishing this life. I had a great respect for authority and institutions. It’s not till I began questioning the authority I gave to others outside of myself that I started to become a happier person.

I had several ‘oh my God’, eureka type moments. Although at the time they were experienced as very sad events. So I couldn’t trust my parents to always do the right thing, then that realisation spread to included, teachers, the police, politicians till I eventually came to God and religion. For a while I was an atheist. I’m still not sure on the god question. I haven’t had any conversations with God myself.

I’ve read lots of books that say we are all a part of God. In a literal sense Jesus was God, but maybe he wasn’t claiming that as something exclusively him. We could all say we are God. Which fits the, we are all one argument. The only actual evidence I have found relates to our continued existence beyond death, and the ability we have to communicate with those who passed over. I’ve never heard about anyone who has passed over claiming to have met God.

I went off the point there a bit. After I had the Eureka moments I still had to work at it. I still had to keep checking my thoughts to check I was slipping back into old habits.

The next big shift came when I began to read books by physics and mediums about the other side. I think I was probably only an atheist for a couple of years. I don’t have a word for myself now. I tell people I’m spiritual rather than religious, although I do love to read about Jesus. I think he was amazing. It’s what people did with his teachings after that was crazy. I don’t think Jesus would have approved of the idea of a pope. Jesus encouraged us all to look inside and change ourselves.

Since my reawakened spirituality, I have made a slow, steady path to a greater peace of mind and increased sanity through meditation and learning to control my mind. The average person has thousands of thoughts a day. Have you ever tried to control these? My thoughts were usually about the same things, they were repetitive and not very happy thoughts; most of them about my childhood. I was very unhappy growing up, and even when I’d left home I was still controlled by these memories. They would repeat over and over in my mind through out the day. I read lots of books on meditating and eventually managed to control these thoughts and learnt to let go.

Most people are controlled by their thoughts; this is the wrong way round, we should control our minds, rather than the other way round.

Knowing I am autistic has been my most recent and life changing Eureka moment. I’m thirty-four now, and only just beginning to feel easy about who I am. I wonder sometimes, if that is it, if all my searching and emotional tribulations are over and I can now start to do something useful in the world. My main aim at the moment is to find a way to support myself. I’ve been told I’m a good communicator (which seems a bit off, for an autistic person). And I love writing – hence the blog, which is great to have, because it makes me write everyday.

Doing these meditation practices has also put me in a good position to examine my autism. This task involves watching my mind to see how it works and then comparing it to how I think other people’s minds work. The biggest boon so far (for knowing I’m autistic) has been being able to accept myself even when I can’t do things I think I should be able to do, and also accepting other people as they are. I used to get so cross with people – the biggest issue being honesty. Why do people lie? Why do they drop hints and make innuendos instead of just saying what they mean? Some people do it more than others. My sister is very much like this.

I’ve realised that NT people value this ability a bit like I value intelligence. Not all NT people have the same social ability. Some of them are better at it than others. Everybody likes to have something they are good at. My sister is smart, but didn’t enjoy school and struggled with it. Although she has different problems to me she finds it easier to understand my problem than the others do and I have a better awareness of hers. She doesn’t have a long list of qualifications, but she is very good at this, dropping hints thing.

I think we all have lessons in life, and its easier to spot other peoples lessons. I’m still not really sure why I’m autistic. I look at the lessons I’ve learnt and I think, surely I could have learnt them faster if I’d been NT? My sister might be able to give me an idea of this, but how often do we sit down and have such honest discussions? I sometimes imagine what my sister would be like if she didn’t have her problems; probably a bit annoying. The sort of clever person who enjoys being clever.

I’m the opposite way round, academically I can perform well; socially I’m rubbish. I sometimes think, that in some previous life, I was too proud of my social skills or that I had a poor opinion of people who didn’t have much social grace. And so here I am, to accept myself and others who don’t have these skills. I suppose the quickest and easiest route for all us to enlightenment would be to conquer our egos and never get vain about anything. Why is the ego so bad for us? Because by making us feel better than someone else it separates us from them, you can’t experience oneness and vanity at the same time.