"I think few of us would be on Dharmawheel if we had neither the interest nor the stomach to contemplate the likes of makyo."
"While growing up, I drifted and otherwise steered away from a makyo of sorts that's best described as shamanic rather than autistic. {I've read and heard a lot of first-hand accounts of autism, but mine seems unique in involving mental states that can't be categorised as thoughts, emotions, or sensations; I'd imagine this has more to do with the schizophrenia on my mother's side than the extreme introversion on my father's.} "
Hmm. Explain what happened to you? I dont think its related to either schizophrenia or autism
Maybe it was less of a demon cave and more you being comfortable with your simultaneous immaterial existence?
"Your sidpa bardo analogy seems to fit better with the autism I've heard of and observed."
Thanks. I was wondering if everyone on this thought i was just plain off my base
"Either way, your 'yikes' made me laugh, but as I was saying on the Split-brain thread, altered states of consciousness are typically the proverbial pussy-cats (i.e. nothing to be scared of) whether you're an observer or a subject. This is true as long as either you've never known any different or you've deliberately accustomed yourself to them for whatever reason, particularly if you've apply the (dharma) teachings that say it's better to deal with the situation as it stands rather than messing around with its immediate causes. I wish you and your clients' patients the best of luck, of course, but I wonder how the simpler autistic cousins of the most complex known structure (the normal human brain) can be 'upgraded' to match it with the aid of chemical fluids alone "
I dont want to push the limits of that, or try to force anyone to be normal with 1500 pills (this is actually why i despise the psychiatric industry, aside from their Western insistence on ego).
"The opposite could equally be argued -that the enlightened are in fact super-normal- since they have removed the causes of any sense of individuated 'Self' separate from the world. When applied to persons, the label 'wierd' is typically associated with autism and schizophrenia, not with people who seem comfortable with themselves and their surroundings."
Depends.
Did your parents want to force you into a pushy western yuppie materialist mold?
Did you find it disgusting from day 1 because unlike other humans you werent born with the screaming howler monkey of ego in your head?
Did nihilism get forced upon you at age 7, making you depressed, moody and upset for most of your childhood until the point you were introduced to energies?
Did you try to resist all this and become the scapegoat in a nasty divorce, and THATS why you got labeled?
Have you ever had every metaphysical spark you threw off, or even your intelligence, be labeled as a symptom of the disorder?
Did you finally give in to your parents' ideology only to find that it pushed everyone away from you, because you were raised to believe other people were beneath you and generally in the way of your success?
And after that, did you encounter the Light and thereafter contract lifelong regret for betraying yourself and becoming a pushy yuppie just like your "me generation" parents?
Because thats what happened to me.... still wondering if im permanently screwed because of it, or by the things i did because of it. Ever make the mistake of attacking the biggest thing in the sidpa plane? I did that one before i knew anything about myself. Or that i was shooting missiles at Yama from the back of a really large asura. Which gets one hit by the biggest limiter ever developed as one gets sucked into the leyline system and imprinted with whatever you thought you were at the time. This is why one should never listen to the locals of the Grey.
(To try to fix -that- mistake, one must use the transference principle shortcut from the sidpa plane to the top and then with such knowledge of your highest umm... self... come barreling back down and effect the merit transfer from behind. I was reminded of what Neo did at the end of the last movie....)
In light of what i went through there over the past 30 years, have you ever questioned your diagnosis?
" Let's not forget that the word 'wierd' originally meant 'Destiny' (as in 'The Wyrd'), with all that word's implications of past karma / vipaka. Any path out of samsara, on the other hand, subverts -by definition- a being's 'destiny' to circle endlessly in it, paradoxically because the centrifugal force is removed by an acceptance of one's current condition."
But then you have the fun of other people attacking you and dragging you down because of your status. Humanity is like a bucket of crabs. Especially here.
" As I distil and compare my sense of "watcher-consciousness=me=completely different from/separate to/threatened by the rest of reality" with the "developing image" of an enlightened state in which all such things have gone the way of the dinosaurs, it's clear that that particular Pandora's Box (whether the consequent suffering is experienced by 'autistic' or 'normal' beings) is simply one of several unnecessary, over-elaborate strategies that arises in the mind as it tries to determine (or at least figure out) what it is. Being Buddhist won't save us from ourselves, but it might begin to save us from the need for 'self'."
Glad youre progressing.
"I'm in the UK. I can't comment on your culture-specific tangent later in your post, except to say that it would be interesting to compare the political culture of the contemporary US with that of the German Weimar Republic {Before you start, don't forget the 'other' side was allied first with Lenin and then with Stalin"
It goes for all Western societies, really. But America and its current ongoing 30 year case of "Weimar Republic" is especially bad. As i noted above, the culture i was brought up in was toxic and ignorant. My father inflicted his own horrid misunderstanding of emptiness on me very early on, and thus drove me away from studying any of this until i was pretty much forced to by my encounter with the field. Psychiatry in this nation is totally for profit and even takes bribes from pushy yuppie parents who want their child to shut up about his dreams and feelings and such.
Im just WAITING for fascism to hit the fan on this side of the pond so i can look whoever they send for me in the eye and quote Obi-Wan as i end up dying by flamethrower or caseless minigun...