Thursday, August 28, 2008

I had a chance to do some poking around online on the subject of Asperger’s syndrome. It gets more and more interesting. I’m becoming convinced that I have it based on the descriptions I’ve read. I also took an online test that said it was very likely I have it.

I don’t believe it’s a disorder though and I resent the medicalizing of personality. To not conform with the norm is, I believe, a very good thing. One website pondered what the world would look like if all of the Aspies (that’s what they’re called) through the ages never existed. So many of our great inventors and visionary thinkers are suspected of having had Asperger’s syndrome. Another website suggested that if the world were populated by Aspies there would probably be no war. It’s all such fascinating stuff. Aspies aren’t oriented to the group. Without group identification there’s little room for conflict.

I’m beginning to think this is an evolutionary adaptation, preparing us for a new age--a new, post-consumer, post-ego, internal locus of control, adult age. It seems to be an extension of the individuation process. We went from unconscious and tribal to conscious, egoic, isolated dots. Maybe supraconsciousness involves the final severing of our tribal identities, which as egoic beings we still carry with us. Much of the conflict in our world comes from our vestigial tribal needs-- to belong to a group, to fear the “Other”, “us” being better than “them”, there being safety in following the herd and conforming.

To still be identifying with the group is the true dysfunction. To me it seems like we’re evolving to be little gods. When we were unconscious and fully tribal, we were fused with the Divine but unaware. Then we separated from the Divine and could see it personified “out there”. Now we’re coming full circle. We individuate, separate from the group, and eventually become enlightened enough so we can see we’re not separate at all. We return to a sense of oneness, but it is so different from the tribal concept of oneness. I can be the individual, the dot, and I can also be the collective. The tribal stuff now seems like a clumsy and misguided stage but of course it was necessary. It was our infancy and the glimmer of memory we carry from those times does contain TRUTH. But it is only in our enlightenment that we can fully grasp that truth.

To not identify with the group of course does not mean that we’re antisocial. I care deeply, probably too deeply, for humanity and I also care deeply for individuals. But from where I’m at with my semi-supraconscious vision I have what appears to others to be too much detachment and aloofness. It looks as if I’m cold and uncaring, when the truth is I have an extremely high degree of caring. It’s just not bogged down by the egoic need to belong.

I’m struck by the foreshadowing in my dream last month about my eye and ear problems. A big aspect of Asperger’s syndrome is problems with sensory processing. I figured out yesterday that my difficulties with night driving are probably a result of the syndrome. I have a tendency to hallucinate when driving at night and I think it’s because my mind has a hard time processing what I’m seeing. It can’t figure out what a dark shadow by the side of the road is so it starts filling in details. I end up seeing it as a black bear that’s about the lumber out into my path. I see Pennsylvania hills when I drive on flat I-76 at night. I see the road curving one way until I get right on top of that spot and then I can see it curves the other way.

My mystical, visionary side probably also results from the syndrome. My mind is so visual, and fluidly makes visual associations. Like Temple Grandin with animals, I have a fluid visual way of seeing reality that totally bypasses logical, rational thought. This is an incredible gift!

In her book she kept mentioning how autistics have trouble with accessing or using their frontal lobes. I suspect the frontal lobes are tied to our egoic phase of evolution, our separating phase. The fact that there’s a problem accessing the frontal lobes is not necessarily a problem in my eyes. Maybe they’ve been just a crutch, something we temporarily needed. Maybe as supraconscious beings who live much more fluidly they won’t be so vital.

There’s so much food for thought here. I’m so excited by all of this!

Oh-- back to the dream--it’s funny that I was so bothered when the doctor implied my problems were psychological. I find it appalling that there are people who believe those with Asperger’s syndrome need to be cured. Severe autism that is being unnaturally induced by whatever, be it vaccines, chemical exposure, radiation--who knows--that warrants a search for a cure (or more likely a means of prevention). But try to cure Aspies! That would be unconscionable.

Well, I have a lot more research and thinking to do on this.

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