A spiritual reframe on autism?
I have always had the sense that children presenting on the Autism spectrum have been sent in to show us a new way of being. That these are especially sensitive and spiritual beings, who have lived many lifetimes and do not fit into our current systems because they know that there is another way to live; one which speaks of greater ease and freedom.
It’s something which has been in my awareness for some time now. When I first began this holistic journey with yoga and Reiki, I stumbled across a book by Doreen Virtue on Indigo children. While a pseudoscientific New Age concept, there was something about this idea that resonated.
Indigo children are children believed to possess special psychic, spiritual and sensory gifts and have indigo-coloured auras. Some believe that these gifted children born during the 1970s are upgraded blueprints of humanity – reincarnated souls that came to earth to challenge old ideas and ways of being and play a role in bettering all of humanity.
Some argue that the term was coined against the increasing overmedication of children diagnosed with and experiencing ADHD, as a way to better explain their child’s behaviour, let alone autism traits.
It’s possible that some of you born in the 70s and early 80s recognise some of the traits of supposed ‘indigo’ children:
Hypersensitivity to people and places.
A need for justice and coherence in their life, on all levels of being.
Independence – a need to always feel free, at all costs!
Strong mediation skills, will often defends the weak.
Major discomfort in hierarchical relationships- requires a healthy and respectful hierarchy.
Easier to communicate with nature and animals rather than with human beings. Not a fan of social gatherings, more likely to be found with the dig in another room.
Need ‘retreat’ moments to recharge.
Hypersensitivity to electromagnetism and noise.
Tendency to flee reality to take refuge in virtual worlds: either in video games or by spending one’s time communicating with angelic and other ethereal beings.
Fight for various and varied causes, body, mind and soul!
Feeling of being born with a mission… this to be fully you.
Feeling of having a gift, something more, which sets them apart from their peers.
Difficulty maintaining a stable social life. Tendency to hermitage every now and then.
Need for travel, to discover the world, have adventures.
Difficulty finding one’s place in the world as it is today.
Pleasure and comfort in a job that suits them – probably working for themselves or creating a job specific to them.
Gifted with a strong sense of empathy, easily tuned to others.
Disrupts established systems, encourages change.
Feeling of marginality, of having incarnated on the wrong planet, or with the wrong parents.
Interest in spirituality, intuition and extrasensory abilities.
Tendency to ask existential questions and want to resolve them through a spiritual journey.
This has always fascinated me, because of course I can relate to this, as many of you probably can too. New age circles will talk of crystal and rainbow children having been born since then, the rainbow children arriving from indigo children, so that there is an increasing ancestral line of sensitivity and ability to perceive life differently to others, beyond the mundane.
The Yoga Sutras talks of how we are not all born equally, contrary to what some new age circles may proclaim. Yoga Sutra 1.19 Bhavapratyayo-videhaprakrtila-yanam, which basically means some people start their journey further along this path (of yoga) than others. Some are born with the ability to reach higher states of samadhi (enlightenment/pure consciousness) where all disruptions have ceased. Until that time, there will be samskaras – traces from past experience will still be there.
What this means is that some are born wiser and more sensitive than others because of past life experience and karma and thus we are not all the same. This doesn’t mean that there is anything wrong with us just because we don’t fit the norm, at least not from a spiritual perspective. It just means that we are in different stages of our evolutionary journey, some possess special gifts, some have additional insight that they have brought with them, and others are still finding their way, or unconscious, yet to ‘awaken’ to being anything beyond a body in the 3D reality that we call, umm, reality!
My eldest, Elijah, is diagnosed autistic with the youngest awaiting an assessment, and I do certainly believe that they possess a certain sensitivity and the eldest most definitely sees things differently – he recently commented, “mummy, do you know that we are the only specie on Planet Earth who have to pay to live here? Although other species pay with their lives when we hunt them”. That got me thinking! But this also in the real sense of ‘seeing’, he sees the auras and energy centres of people, as colours, for example and can no doubt see ethereal beings given the chance.
I was interested then to stumble across a spiritual nutrition website, which – like Louise Hay – offers spiritual explanations for the reason that we may experience various illnesses and/or conditions. This on the basis that we are spiritual beings as well as physical beings, that our thoughts, attitudes and emotions affect our health as much as the physical world.
It is understood - and certainly this has been my experience - that profound healing becomes possible when we address both the spiritual and the physical aspects of a condition.
However I don’t believe that there is anything to heal contrary to the suggestion that comes with autism spectrum ‘disorder’ (‘ASD’). In so much as ASD is not something to fix, but certainly having an autistic child has demanded that we make changes as a family and individually too, because of the permission they give us, to reveal more of our own soul and live differently – some of you may have read my recent blog posts about our journey with home schooling, for example.
Having written that, it is only since we have stopped trying to ‘normalise’ our boys that there has been a healing. So while the boys did not need ‘fixing’ because of ASD, they certainly needed healing as a result of their experience in the school system, for example, and certainly their healing helped our own, because it was a rather traumatic and stressful few years for all of us, which cost Ewan and I our relationship, albeit there were other factors which fed into that.
So I share this in the hope that it might resonate, and perhaps shift the perspective on neurodiversity and ASD, into something to be celebrated, a gift no less, an opportunity to find a new way to be on Planet Earth, not just for the individual but for the whole family.
And maybe from there we might find another way as a community and as a society, where we embrace our differences, but without making it an individualised crusade – the current focus on “I/me” emphasis promoted by social media and media generally is certainly not helping us to thrive collectively or indeed spiritually.
This is extracted from the Spiritual Nutrition page, http://www.ourspiritualnutrition.com/is05.htm
“Beyond the physical aspect of this complex disorder, there are many spiritual components to be considered. Family history and behavioural patterns must be examined, along with the spiritual learning requirements of the family unit and those of the affected individual. Spiritual success is measured by the degree to which love manifests.”
At the end of the day, when all is said and done, all that remains really, one would hope, is love. Anything which takes us away from love should be dropped, any false identification or opportunity for self-pity, self-indulgence and self-importance must drop away, because it is only then that we can step more fully into who we truly are, beyond labels and definitions, to get right to the heart. The heart of each of my children is very strong and I am eternally grateful for their sensitivity and love.