Lenten Reflection

I am in the mood to talk about God today. Time is passing quickly until his return. I sometimes wonder at his continued interest in so disappointing a species as man. My own disappointment colors my perception I know. How is it we have so much and yet do so little with it? You speak of Haiti, but it can just as easily be Africa, or India, or Afghanistan. I think we are a crazed species, self destructive. Such a disparity of action we are capable of. We are our own polar opposites.
I watched NOVA last night and listened to the expert describe the effects of water fracturing on ice. A tiny trickle becomes a river, eventually causing huge pieces to break away from the glacier. Is that the same effect with us? What starts as a tiny disassociation from God becomes a river of divide, until our entire underlying soul structure caves in and breaks apart.
Today is Ash Wednesday, a significant day within my religion. It is a day to reflect on the sacrifices of God and our own relative insignificance. But today I can only see the significance of our selfish choices. It is not what the day is assigned for, but it is the path of my thoughts. If small acts can so change the world negatively, then could they not do the same positively? To do something of sacrifice is customary of lent. But I want to do actions that are positive on the world instead for lent. I know my course of action. It is between me and God.

A New Environment - One You Can Create.

Tina writes:

If you could, would you please share with us your thought of what an environment that favors autists would be?

Tina's question is a hard one because each autist is unique as to need. To give me what works for the visual learner is to give me nothing of use at all as example.

But attitude might make a huge difference of equal application to all. It is a huge deterrent to our even trying sometimes. Now I do what I do for me, but for many years my eforts at learning were Mom directed. To be other motivated is a horrible way to live. What was important to me was ignored as unimportant or unworthy. I am of limited interests, but many autists have intense passions that can be used to learn with. Reading, Math, English, Art, even Music can all be tailored to one's passions. Imagine to actually have learning matter as something of interest to you. Imagine to match things you liked or sing to speak about something you love. When little my favorite speech session involved using my string as a tug of war to bring out a sound. I like speech now because I practice phrases I've chosen as important to me. How many of your lessons are child interest directed, not neurotypical child,individual child? I know I offer only one example here, but trained learning is a huge part of most autists' lives. It has been largely my whole life for years. To develop motor coordination and skill in the pool is something I'll gladly work on everyday.

Dr. Reinson is now helping me further my independence in typing from Mom. I love her enthusiasm. She spent last session playing war with me with weighted cards, had me scan and stack, and use my pointer finger to detach pieces from a velcro board. The embedded skills I use to type. It is a fun way to develop the motor I need, and the anxiety over the actual typing is not there to interfere with the learning.

Kick me for suggesting any environment could actually be favorable to all autists. An environment rich in the cues we each need would be best. I am an auditory learner so sound is important to me. I am a smell distracted individual, so smell limited to relevant information is best for me. To smell my dinner or coffee brewing in the morning, that is relevant. The antiseptic wipes in the new speech room I would be well rid of. For me,to smell is to resort to an impulse response, one I can not tame all the time. What is your addiction of choice? It is a bit like that. How we respond is key to our ideal individual environmental needs.

The Future of Autism

Questions are running through my mind. Are we as autists truly brain damaged? Or, am I the beginnings of a new species of man, not unlike Cromagnum or Neanderthal. If 1 in 150 are being born with my autistic wiring, is it not a matter of evolution at work, whatever the underling causes or factors? Is autism a cancer on society or the next saving adaptation? As the world devolves, with ever increasing catastrophes, will autism have a place in it, or be one of the casualties of it? These are the thoughts that occupy my mind today.

I liken autism to an alien race, with benefits and disadvantages both. I see the deaf culture and think the disadvantage of it is in living in a speaking world. Like that it is a bit with autism. Will there come a time when environment will favor the autist? It is a selfish wish, but my tired brain hopes so.

Psych 101 and Then Some

I have started my Psychology class and I am so excited to think I will be able to learn more about how the brain and body interact. Perhaps there are accommodations I can try that I have not come across yet. To accommodate and adapt for my deficient systems, that is my goal. Today I learned how the antianxiety drug helps, its functioning neurologic. Keys and locks at synapsess is a a great visual of it. I love the book that way. It speaks in pictures, something an autist appreciates. When explaining something, a picture description moves the information straight to memory for me. It is an automatic filing that requires no further translation. Abstract words need an anchor to access them. How do you process love? Is it a sensation you feel that comes rushing back? Or a picture concrete of loved ones? My Mom says music sometimes pulls up memories. Like an old song can put her on the beach complete with the smell of suntan lotion and salt air. How about smell? Does smell retrieve any memories for you?

Autists' memories are tied to the senses in same way. Most autists are visual filers. But it may depend for some on what sense was most functional at the time. My earliest memories are all tied to scent. My most recent to picture movies. I create them in my mind with silent screen word captions as an easy cross reference.To hear a word is to see it. Conversations are reading exercises in my mind.

To act is another process. It requires transfering the written word to oral sound in my head or an outside oral sound at outset. I can't move to follow still picture instructions. Still Pictures do not translate to movement in my sensory system. To recall vs. perform are two very different functions for me. For me, moving pictures is key to movement. For another just pictures may be enough to move.

The point is this, to know the sensory filing preference of an autist is to be able to help them. Cuing is everything. It is the equivalent of speaking a common language. We as autists can not always learn to speak your language, but you can learn to speak ours.

My Name is Michael

I want to talk about my name today. My name is Michael. It means "who is like God". I doubt my parents knew this when they named me. For them it was a way to honor my great grandfather. But the name is of significance to me as reminder of my source as divine. Yours too.
How one views things affects God's response. Where love is at source, a love response is always given. This does not equate to a yes answer to one's prayer. It is only the kind of response, as supportive, that can always be counted on. I cry alone, or in the comfort of others. I rejoice alone, or in the company of others.I find internal strength I did not know I possessed. A stranger offers the correct response in the moment. These are all God's answer to loving prayer. It works best if offered as an altrusitic feat, not said for self, but out of love for another. Love is the fuel of prayer. It is the necessary ointment that anoints the connection. Without it, transmission is faulty. To pray out of love relates the prayer to our source. It is love as conduit. To pray for a stranger then would not work unless the prayer is offered for love of God. Then it is the highest form of prayer. Not for their purpose, but for God's will lived out in a loving manner. I am a prayer machine. I am a prayer answered. Praying for others loved and out of love of God is the first step to having your prayers answered. We are each God's answer to prayers for another. Listen to your heart and hear his call for answer. Miracles are within each of us.

New Year's Resolution

My goals for the new year seem a good way to start. Number one is don't eat inedible substances, a rule I already violated when I tasted the Christmas tree this morning. Have you ever thought something smelled so delicious that you just had to taste it? Well, that was me with the tree. And it failed to live up to expection, not to mention getting Mom and Dad miffed at me. Why do I, an intelligent being, do such things? Because instinct trumps thought process in order of application. Some times instinct can be a good thing. I know a bad person just by their touch. But for me, instinct turned impulse is a bad thing more of the time. To bolt across a parking lot because the restaurant sign speaks to my too empty stomach, to have smell direct action ill-advised, to have anxiety override your reason: these are the impulses that destroy my functioning as normal-looking and place me in dangerous situations. It blocks my development of selfmanagement skill and my independent functioning. It is a life of telling myself to stop and think, and think again. I am an idiot savant subject to uncontrollable impulses. I need to train myself to yield. It is my primary goal for this year.

Your Communication as a Lesson

You are all doing well I hope. I have been busy learning about neurotypical communication. You are a complicated species whose motivations I am just beginning to understand, so driven are you in all your actions by emotion. It is foreign to my hierarchy of need. For me need is food and shelter and questions resolved and affection too. But I do not feel the need to commune my emotions as you do. Your communication is largely emotion based. The joy I find in communing in just being is the same joy you seem to get in communing in emotion with one another. I asked my classmates to explain but they did not. I do not feel it, the emotion, as you do. Love I know and anger too, but the subtleties elude me. I do not appreciate the difference in emotional tone as being anything decisive. The content is so often hidden in the intensity of what I feel. It is like an angry sea that sinks what should be a floating boat; the purpose of the boat, lost to the waves. I am seeking answers now to things I don't mutually experience. How do you describe a sunset to a blind man. I am as the blind man. That is my task of learning.