Rita on autism

Autism

From DeMarco, Frank. Rita's World Vol 2: A View from the Non-Physical (Kindle Location 400). Rainbow Ridge Books. Kindle Edition

(Q) [Lynn's question: "The message makes sense when I apply it to myself, but I lose clarity when I try to apply it to my child, who I believe to be on the autism spectrum. I think I must be struggling to figure out the origins of those particular traits that are considered to be autism - are autistic tendencies physical, spiritual, or an intricate weaving of both?  I have been trying to think about my child's values - if autistic tendencies are strictly neurological, would those values be any different but for the neurological condition?  Are those values only expressed differently because of the neurological condition? These questions are not well thought-out, but if you could pass them along, I would appreciate it."]

(A)  This is the way to approach this material, or any material purporting to explain life.  How does it apply to me, to mycircumstances, to what I see around me in mylife?  Not - in other words - the abstract world reported by the news media or the entertainment media or the social media (including books, by the way, a sort of slow-motion social media), but the world Iexperience.  If the material cannot be grounded in this fashion, what good is it to you?  That isn't to say that every session will have instant application, but don't build castles in the air and think you're going to be able to live in them.

These questions of Lynn's have more than one part, and they have an underlying concern as well. Let's see how well we can deal with them.

The genesis of autism

(A)  First, the genesis of autism, put it that way.  There must be the genetic window.  That is, there must be the possibility of autism in the physical organism.  However, in the case of autism this possibility is so wide-spread as to be nearly pandemic.

(Q)  Can a possibility be pandemic?

(A)  What it means is that the window of physical genetic opportunity encompasses perhaps a third of humanity, maybe more.  But as the guys told us once in another context, a possibility is not a certainty.  A child will not pick up on the opportunity for a genetically transmitted condition unless he or she needs it.  The child's brothers or sisters the same, so that in a family of four one may have it and three may not, even though the genetic opportunity is the same.  These conditions, like any other precondition in a life, are chosen, not random.  But, of course, not chosen consciously by the soul, but by the underlying spirit.

Now, within the ranks of those for whom autism is a possibility, some will and some won't have it triggered by environmental factors, and in this they will serve as the canaries in the mine shaft, early warning systems of what is happening to the biological environment that might as yet be unnoticed otherwise.  It is the unnoticed consequences of extensive modification of your biological environment that are most likely to end the human experiment, not bombs or weapons.

But so much for the question of autism's genesis in a given individual.  In the most causal sense - that is, at the bottom of the chain of causation - it is not an accident of genetics, nor neglect or inadvertence in the child's nurturance, though it may easily seem to be either or both of these things.  At base, autism, like any focusing condition, is a matter of the spirit's choice for its utility to the soul.

(Q)  You say, "like any focusing condition."

(A)  Any restriction or limitation focuses life's energies, channeling life into a narrower passage.

(Q)  Creating a Venturi effect?  Narrower passage, hence correspondingly greater velocity?

(A)  Let's not push the physical analogy too far.  To a degree, how's that?  The point to grasp is that it isn't a catastrophe or even a misfortune, only a difficult path selected for a reason, or reasons.  The reasons one chooses autism include the effect on the others who will be around one's life.  It is a difficulty and an opportunity for them no less.

Autism and values

(A)  But let us pass to the second part of the question, the child's values.  I think it would be better expressed something like this: "Does autism limit, or redirect, or somehow affect, the child's experience in such a way as to interfere with his or her purpose in coming into life?"  If I have understood the underlying sense of the question, the answer is, clearly not, because the selection of autism was in itself one of the limiting definitions selected for the life.  That is, how can a definition warp a definition?

(Q)  I think you mean, given that the child's path included selection of autism, the path necessarily included any possible effects of autism. To speculate as to what the child's inner or outer life would have been had he or she not chosen to take on autism is counterfactual, and you might as well ask what would have been the effect if the child had been born to different parents, or at a different time.

(A)  That's right.  All is well, all is always well - but it isn't always obviouslywell.