Introduction

I've been thinking about the synergies between learning how to live well as an autistic person, and spiritual practice and experiences. The below is scattered across several threads of my life, along which run and entangle a journey towards acceptance. Whether you think of it as (radical) acceptance, submission (to the universe, experience), or equanimity, everyone's talking about the same thing. Accepting experience as it is, without fighting, without wanting it to be some other way.

Neurodivergence, nervous system regulation and unmasking

So many autistic people - probably especially those of us who are late-diagnosed and/or high-masking - live with chronically dysregulated nervous systems and hypervigilance. I spent years not even knowing what feeling safe and relaxed in my body felt like. Occasionally it'd happen, and it was so unfamiliar that it tended to freak me out. I knew there were a few things that might allow me to access it. Drugs in just the right quantities and ratios, long massages, sensory deprivation tanks, and intimate, vulnerable sex with familiar partners. But I didn't recognise how abnormal and damaged this relationship with relaxation was, or appreciate how hugely deleterious it was to my ability to be present for and enjoy life, until I started doing somatic work and thus coming out of it. It's hard to recognise the cave until you can poke your head outside.

And at its root, this is an issue with being unable to allow experience. With bracing against it, wanting to permit the "good" and reject the "bad". As such, there are very deep synergies with...

Spiritual practice

I'd had a meditation practice for years prior to diagnosis, and it was not unhelpful. But starting to work with somatic work made a huge, synergistic difference here too. It's very difficult for the mind to relax if the body is tense, whether in context of practice or everyday life.

While the relative comfort in day to day living is very noticeable and welcome, it's the synergies with spiritual practice that are really interesting. So much of practice is about cultivating equanimity.

That "everything is perfect" is sure to sound very callous if you're not familiar with the territory, but it's not. Ram Dass, amongst others, has a lot to say^[1] about simultaneous perception of both conventional, human reality and all its suffering, and ultimate reality, which is indeed perfect as it is. I agree with him that this simultaneous perception is the root of true, boundless compassion.

Because while from an ultimate perspective this is mechanistic, serene and elegant, from a human one it's tragic. Most of the people in the world do not have the advantage of appreciating this ultimate perspective. They're being crushed under the wheel of samsara, and they don't even know. It feels like watching mice in an experimental maze, ignorant of the mechanism that's leading them to receive food pellets as well as electric shocks.

And it has to be this way. The maze (samsara) must exist, and the mice (us!) must be experimented upon. The only way it could be otherwise, is if there were nothing at all. Light and dark can't exist without each other. They're totally interrelated. You cannot have rainbows without genocide - it's a metaphysical impossibility.

And this is where boundless compassion and Bodhicitta arise from. Seeing that we're all in this predicament together, as one, and that so many people suffer, so, so much, due to ignorance of the situation. They take their experience as a lab mouse literally.

Sex and submission

This will be brief, as I don't care to get into details on the subject.

A prior partner always wanted to peg me. It was something I was utterly closed off to, and we never explored it. I'd always considered myself to be exclusively dominant.

But my current partner is a switch. It turns out that I'm a switch too, and it's wonderful. I suspect that I'd never been able to recognise it before because the idea of vulnerability terrified me. It did not feel safe. I was not able to trust, or to relinquish control.

The psychology of sexual dominance can be deeply rooted in fear, and invovlve strong needs for control, predictability^[2]. It's the subs who know really what's up. Getting fucked in the ass is, in fact, a deeply spiritual act - allowing, and thus enjoying it requires an open root chakra. Or perhaps liberal use of poppers.

Ayahuasca, death and rebirth

I attended an ayahuasca retreat recently. And I tried to be as humble and respectful as I could, but apparently it was not sufficient. The meat of the first ceremony was about the medicine showing me its power, rendering me appropriately humble. Making me puke my guts up. Trying to resist is not a good idea - which I knew, but I've had an aversion to puking for years, exactly because of the vulnerability and lack of control it involves. And by the end of it, I was humbled. I was thinking about Ayahuasca as a harsh but loving pro domme.

In the final ceremony, I died. The medicine became more and more overwhelming. Anxiety started to build. Visions arrived. There hadn't been any in prior ceremonies. Just vague, ghost-y psychedelic visuals, of mandalas, geometry, some snakes and bugs. This was very different. Strong, pulsing Shipibo patterns, shifting, pressing in on me. I felt like my nervous system and brain couldn't handle what they were being shown, like they were being pushed past their limits and were going to burn out.

Then, the DMT nexus. It seemed like Aya was showing me where she lived. I felt as if I were in a zoo enclosure. There were a lot of entities there - again, represented as intense, morphing, Shipibo-ish patterns - and they were very interested in me. The pressure was almost unbearable now. My skull felt like it was cracking apart. When I managed to become aware of my breath, I realised it was shallow, irregular and tight. There was a feeling that my body could not possibly sustain this.

Shortly, I left the nexus and found myself back in the ceremony space. And utterly, crushingly drained. There was nothing I could do but think, weakly, "I guess this is it. This is how I die." And I was okay with that. I accepted it. The ultimate act of submission. I hope to never forget how that moment of total surrender felt. It was wonderful.

And then... rebirth. Boundless gratitude and compassion. Laughter and bliss.

Dying was rough, but I feel much better for it^[3].

Conclusion

It's highly pleasing to have drawn all of these threads of my life together in writing. This has been a journey of years, and will continue for years more. It's been incredibly beautiful and healing, and I would highly recommend it.

And, I understand Evangelion a bit better now. Totally worth it.