Melody, it is my experience, that Aspies can enter states of concentration which are remarkably similar to meditation. It is in short, the ability to sit still and focus on something.

BUT, The Aspie mind, tends to alternate between concentrating like mad and proliferating like mad.

The NT mind, tends to be a bit more balanced, it constantly proliferates, never entering a state of concentration, but nor never getting completely deadlocked.

I found I could use my minds natural ability to concentrate, to discern something of the nature of the proliferation and break it down.

A lot of it is simple finding BALANCE.

I found the best way to bring balance to my mind, was to think less, and feel more. To let emotion in rather than keeping it out. I used my discernment to understand the relationship between thinking and feeling, and I made adjustments to let the feeling through.

I HAVE gone through some crazy emotional roller-coasters as a result ;-). But they were always much more fun than scary. They were roller coasters which looked scary, but once you're on them, they're fun ;-).

Emotion is one of those things, which has power over you when you try to stop it having power over you. It's called numbness.
If you simply let the emotion do whatever it wants, then it kind of charges in, runs around, then calms down. There's no need to control emotion in order to have emotional stability.

You simply neither try to control emotion, nor let yourself be controlled by emotion.

For example, being controlled by emotion, would be getting so angry you hurt someone else. Or so sad, that you hurt yourself.

A useful thing to do, is to "let go of emotion" when you're far away from other people. Monasteries or other hermitages are good. Wilderness is good. Sometimes I would just go walking, and let all the emotion which wanted to happen, happen... anger, sadness, etc etc... sometimes you have to scream before the anger will let you be, but you want to scream where no-one can hear you. Sometimes you have to dance, you should dance where no-one can see you ;-).

So I found that 4-hour walks in the wilderness, with the GOAL of getting emotional, were very healing, inspiring and provided insight into my mind...
Once I even walked along a completely deserted beach, at 6am (hours before sunrise), in the middle of winter, the coldest night of the year... it was completely dark except for the stars, I was completely alone... it was exceedingly cold... and I walked, until the sun rose, that was my destination, the sun rise... the light.
It was amazing, a truly amazing experience. I don't think I've ever felt so completely alone, yet so completely in tune with the world and myself...

I am NT and the fish tank is the one thing I can comlpetely loose time watching.It can even side track me from the tv a few feet away from it. Maybe because it is so peace full, maybe because I am "picies" I don't know but I can forget about all my worries and just watch.

the random wills of happy calm fish who swim in a fish tank are hypnotic to watch for me.
they dart off in directions which are hard to predict.
so i switch the prediction part of my mind off and just watch.

There's actually a word for that in Buddhism.

It's called "Chicken Meditation", because if meditation was simply sitting still for ages, then all chickens would be fully enlightened ;-).

One of the things I realized quickly about Buddhism, is I was doing so many things almost right, I'd put in an awful lot of right-effort honing my concentration and equanimity. Yet, it was all chicken-meditation, sitting peacefully, but not gaining the powerful insights into my own mind which such honing makes possible.
A lot of it is just knowing what direction to point the mind. If you let the mind be, it'll watch fish or whatever instead of looking inside and understanding itself :P.

i googled it together with the word "buddhism" and found no match.



i said i swtich off trying to predict what they (the fish) will do next.

you presume that means i am sitting idly with nothing going through my head.
if i subtract "my prediction of how the fish will swim" from my sensorium, then i am not left with nothing else in my brain.

as far as i can see, your conclusions are always inherently derogatory in response to others ideas.




you equate my very simple sentence about watching fish with the level of mental development of a chicken.

i may be at the level of a chicken compared to you spiritually.

i never saw a chicken that was aware it was a chicken, and was dissatisfied with being a chicken.
a happy chicken is as happy as a happy human.



you seem precariously contradictory on occasions.
you said before that my mind "proliferates" and can never be still and see "the light".

now you are telling me my mind is too still, and that i should not just "blank out" (as you presume i do with no evidence that my mind is empty).

what ever i say you disagree with in a calm and unflustered way.

it is calm and unflustered because that is what buddhists "should" be. and that "wink" punctuation at the end of your sentences adds to my perception that you think you know it all.
it seems smug.
i think if i had a professional linguist (do they exist?) rewrite one of your long posts using alternative words, but the result being exactly the same in meaning to your post, and i posted it, you would disagree with it in the same default manner.

it means that you believe that i (and other people who you categorize as "not on the right track") are inevitably wrong, and you do not look for things you agree with in our opinions, but for faults for you to correct.




when i watch fish i see fish and not an introspective image of myself.

i am not so self reflective that i must look at myself during everything i do.

i was once bailed up by a bald fellow hanging around outside a train station while i was waiting for a bus.

he had books and pamphlets and various paraphernalia pertinent to his "crusade"

he asked me what i thought about consciousness, and i decided to talk to him.

most people will sometimes subconsciously nod in agreement when they are listing to another person talking.

but right from my first word, he started to subconsciously and slowly shake his head.

my first words were "well i think consciousness is..." and he was already shaking his head.

i could tell he was not listening.
i could tell he felt that he had found the way, and all the commuters were poor lost sheep.

you may ask a sheep what it thinks, but you do not expect a valid answer, so you do not listen for one.

he interrupted me before i got to my point, and started imposing his ideas on me.
i started to disagree, and i could see there was a suppressed anger in him. (sighing, rubbing the back of his neck etc)

like he was wasting his time on a stupid person.

then the bus pulled up and i got on.



edit: corrected "stated" to "started"

I don't think that BaldBlake is trying to be presumptious, XB-70. However, I can understand why, if he is a recent member, he may read excessively into what you write.

Goodness knows I've made that mistake myself on occasion.

But I think that the pair of you could open your minds a little to what the other is saying. From what I can gather so far- whether it is at the risk of excessive analysis or not- neither of you seem willing to do so.

I'm an old member. I used to post as unending. That name isn't appropriate anymore. An old saying proved true: "This too shall pass", all things come to an end ;-).

XB70 suffers/enjoys a condition summed up well as:
"An excess of reason is itself a form of madness"

I've BEEN there, for so many years. Not opening my mind back up to it .

Part of my recovery was basically creating a mental door, with a sign saying "DON'T GO THERE" and putting all the excess reasoning (especially nihilistic), behind that door. Every time I noticed myself thinking that way, I remembered "Don't go there!" and stopped thinking so much.

I don't think I can even think that way anymore, deliberately doing so counts as self-mortification.

XB-70 is still very interesting though, since he reasons even more extremely than I used to.

i thought you were in your mid 20's


madness is the result of a deficit of reasoning, not an excess of it.

i am not able to make sense of that sentence.


did you need to recover?


yes i know that when my mother died, she was buried.
after 2 weeks i thought "what does my mother look like now" and i got the "do not go there" repulsion.


but i only get the "don't go there" feeling when my mind is wandering along a sinister track.

i want to go everywhere my mind can take me except to the places where "horror" exists.

i do not percieve much "horror" (except examples like when i imagine my mother after 2 weeks in the grounnd and things like that)





think what way? you may feel that you would never follow my track of beliefs, but you do not know what they are.




and that is why i never got trapped in a self exploration disaster.


someone said to me that people read my posts with a "little voice" in their head.

that "voice" they read it in may account for much of my problems with people thinking i am being negative.

so i will disappoint you all and post a link to a sample of my voice as i say something i may otherwise type on this forum.

if you read just the words (that i say in the sound file if i wrote them on this site), you may hear an "attitude" with your little "reading voice" that is your own in origin.

but this is how i mentally "inflect" how i think the words i think.
(the sound file is spontaneous, therefore less than polished and fluent).

i do not talk well.
so here is my voice:
http://iamxb70.com/
when i preview this post, there is a gap in my audio file sentence near the beginning on the first play.
the second playing (if you choose to) is correct and complete.

it is recorded on a very cheap microphone (about $12 it cost (it is not good and it amplified "tinnyness". i sound breathless because the mic amplifies my breathing disproportionately, and also because i was playing with my lpossums just before i decided to record it)
)

That was very interesting. I think you are right, often I think e-mails get misinterpreted at work etc because you can't hear the inflection in ones voice. I for one pick up on meanings a lot through inflection. It is the old "It's not so much WHAT you say as HOW you say it".

You have much more inflection in your voice than I would have imagined. I guess it is because Max has such a monotone that the little voice in my head often reads these posts with his way of speaking in my mind. Interesting.

Love, love, love the accent. Wish I had one. Well, I guess to you guys I do............

Linda

Not at all the voice that I imagined either. And I also love the accent--you could read to me all day.