i autistic 我自闭

Letting go does not always require more effort. Sometimes a change of perspective is what makes another response possible.

Being told to let go does not tell us how. We may already know that resentment, anxiety or disappointment is exhausting. Trying to force ourselves to stop can become another struggle. For me, some of the deepest changes happened when something became apparent and I no longer experienced the situation from the same position. I had not won an argument against myself. Something that had seemed unavoidable no longer held me in the same way.

You do not need spiritual experiences to explore this. The accounts below explain what helped me; the accompanying questions offer ways to investigate an ordinary difficulty. These works do not all teach the same thing, and you do not need to use every approach. Begin with the one that makes your situation clearer. A useful change may be a feeling losing its hold, or finding another response while the feeling remains.

When the concern is cruelty towards people, other animals or Planet Earth, Living with Conscience and Darkness examines how moral concern, practical capacity and the costs of involvement affect one another. The enquiry is not whether cruelty should become acceptable, but what we can release without abandoning what deserves protection.

Begin with what you are holding on to

Before examining a belief, check what needs attention. If you are overloaded, exhausted or still being harmed, reduce the immediate burden and seek suitable support first. Sensory overload calls for reduced demands, manageable surroundings and recovery time, not a demand to think more positively.

When reflection is manageable, choose one situation. Separate what happened, what matters to you, and what now seems necessary before you can continue.

Someone may have broken a promise. Reliability may matter deeply to you. But “They must acknowledge this before I can enjoy anything again” is an additional condition. It is worth examining separately from the broken promise and your need for reliability.

Likewise, retaining a lesson is different from continually punishing yourself. Wanting justice is different from requiring an argument to continue inside your head. A routine may meet an essential need; the question is whether only one particular arrangement can meet it.

What am I trying to protect by holding on, and is there another way to protect it?

The answer may be safety, responsibility, belonging or a sense of who you are. Letting go need not mean abandoning these. It may mean finding a less costly way to care for them.

See the situation within a larger Life

At ground level on Planet Earth, the human drama can fill our entire view. Zoom out through countries, planets, stars and galaxies. Where is the seemingly huge problem that seemed to define our existence? Yet at ground level, someone is still hurting, a promise still matters and something still needs doing. I want to retain both perspectives: this matters here, but this is not everything. That is what being in this World, but not of this World, means to me.

Before enlisting in the Army, I read the entire Conversations with God series. Its author’s frustration with the deal Life had given him was familiar. I came to understand us as spiritual beings having a physical experience, rather than physical beings trying to obtain a spiritual one. Trusting a benevolent Higher Power, I left for camp feeling protected and confident. The camp had not become familiar. The future had not become predictable. What changed was the larger reality within which I experienced them.

I also took from these books an understanding of Light and Darkness, Good and Evil, as contrasts within human experience. Difficulty and consequence could become part of choosing who to become, rather than evidence that Life had gone wrong. This does not make every suffering necessary or deserved. Preventing suffering can itself express who we choose to be.

Without sharing this spiritual understanding, you can still ask: What quality do I want my next action to express? Walsch’s expression, “the grandest version of the greatest vision” of ourselves, gave this question a direction. Make it concrete. Fairness might mean describing the problem accurately. Self-respect might mean declining an unsuitable arrangement. Responsibility might mean repairing a mistake rather than defending an image of yourself as someone who never makes one. You do not have to explain why Life contains this difficulty before deciding how to participate in it.

Return to the present

When regret absorbs us, we can live mentally in a past we cannot change. When worry absorbs us, we can treat an imagined future as though it were already happening. Remembering and planning still have their place. But whatever we learn, repair, prepare or choose must happen in the present. Past harm can have present consequences; living now includes attending to them.

Before I developed self-consciousness, I experienced only the present. There was no “me” carrying a resented past or anticipating a feared future. I tried to express that timelessness in The Original Land of Light, and the contrast of entering a time-bound existence in A Stranger in a Strange Land. My development now is, in a sense, a return to that origin with accumulated wisdom and expanded capacity.

A practical question is: Is there something to do now, something to schedule, or nothing further to decide at present?

Write down a lesson, a repair or a time to revisit an unresolved issue. Then name the actual activity you are returning to. “Have dinner” gives attention a destination; “stop thinking about it” does not. You need not visualise timelessness or empty your mind. On Rainbow Human, I express this as “The only time is now / The only place is here”. Reflection should serve the Life we are living, not indefinitely replace it.

See more than another person’s part in your suffering

Before I recognised myself as an individual, bullies were like stinky rubbish: unpleasant and best avoided, rather than people I hated. When that individuality emerged in secondary school, I began resenting them. There was now someone who had been wronged.

Later, I had a vision that I knew could be completely fictitious. I saw one bully being beaten by his drunken father, taking his anger out on other children, and eventually spending much of his adult Life in prison, looking through a cell window at the moon.

I immediately forgave him because it was no longer possible to hate him. I experienced his suffering rather than only his part in mine. The vision established nothing about his actual history, and forgiveness did not make him safe to trust.

The ordinary question is: Am I seeing this person only through their role in what happened to me?

You do not need to invent a sympathetic history for them. “I do not know their whole Life” is enough to leave something open. Understanding more, if reliable information becomes available, need not change your boundary. Nor must compassion appear before you can stop retaliating or resume something worthwhile. Those are available directions to consider, not rewards reserved for people who have forgiven.

Is my identity caught in the drama?

I read the Heart Sutra in Chinese but never properly understood it. In 2003, while waiting at an army camp for my superiors to finish their work, I read an English translation for the first time. I wept. There was simply nothing to forgive. That was a recognition, not a conclusion I argued myself into. Repeating those words would not reproduce it. What changed was the perspective from which forgiveness seemed necessary.

One way I would connect this with ordinary experience is to ask: How has my identity become caught up in this drama, and what basis is there for that identification?

Perhaps I have become “the person who was rejected”, “the one who must prove everyone wrong”, or “the good person who must never disappoint anyone”. The dispute then seems to decide not merely what happened, but who I am.

Try completing this sentence: “Because this happened, it means I am ______.” Then examine the connection. Does an unsuccessful attempt establish a permanent failure? Does someone’s refusal to understand me determine whether there is anything worth understanding? What gives their judgement that authority?

Go further: what am I calling “me” here? A memory, a judgement, a role, other people’s opinions? What basis is there for treating that as a complete and fixed identity? When I am occupied with something else, does this role still describe everything I am?

There may be a real history and real consequences. The enquiry concerns the additional identification: whether I must keep being this particular character, defending this particular account of myself, for the rest of my Life. I need not replace it with a grander identity such as “the spiritually advanced person who forgives everyone”. That too could become something to defend. A smaller opening may be enough: I can address what happened without asking its outcome to establish who I am.

Practise, but also question the task

In the Platform Sutra, Shen Xiu’s verse compares cultivation to keeping a mirror free of dust. Hui Neng’s reply questions the very mirror and stand to which dust might cling. The narrative distinguishes their understanding, while still describing Shen Xiu’s verse as beneficial for cultivation. I read the two as part one and part two: both have something to offer. One points towards practice; the other questions what we thought required endless purification.

I recognised myself in the sudden path. Understanding could arrive in a flash rather than through an orderly sequence of explanations. Yet wisdom still had to mature through life experience.

For an ordinary difficulty, ask two questions: What skill would help me handle this? Am I working towards an unnecessary requirement?

Suppose the task seems to be becoming incapable of anger. Practice might help you pause before sending a message. Questioning the task might reveal that anger does not have to disappear for the message to be accurate and restrained. You can practise a useful response while reconsidering the demand to become a person who never struggles. Gradual change is worthwhile in its own right, not merely preparation for a more impressive experience.

Question the either-or framing

A koan, a Zen teaching story or question, could look like the doublethink of George Orwell’s 1984 to my black-and-white autistic thinking. How could apparently contradictory statements both be valid?

But exploring another perspective is not the same as accepting contradictory claims as true. Sometimes the contradiction lies in an assumption I have added. “If I stop replaying this, I am saying it was acceptable.” Is that connection necessary? I can recognise that something happened, judge it unacceptable and decide what to do next.

Likewise, I can care about someone and decline their request. I can acknowledge a mistake without accepting every accusation. I can have made the best decision available then and choose differently with what I know now. What are the two things I have assumed cannot coexist? Write them separately and examine why one supposedly excludes the other. This is an everyday way to investigate an either-or framing, not a requirement to solve koans or abandon logic.

Notice before explaining

I first encountered Anthroposophy at a workshop in Macau in 2006. Its exercises often brought spiritual experiences and visions. During IPMT training in Penang in 2018, I became stuck in an exercise involving plants. Instead of describing my perceptions, I narrated scientific facts. The teacher abruptly interrupted me; insight broke through in a flash.

I noticed how much I had been filtering through explanation rather than allowing experience to unfold. It felt like quantum tunnelling: suddenly I was on the other side of a barrier I had not reasoned my way through. For me, this opened into what I had sought as the core essence of Anthroposophy: an understanding of being human that words alone could not contain. The exercises expressed something of that essence without being the essence itself.

Perhaps we can try something smaller: What am I noticing, and what explanation am I adding? Describe a familiar object before explaining it. Then try the distinction with a manageable situation: “The message contains these words” and “I think those words mean they dislike me”. Scientific knowledge and interpretation remain useful. The exercise is to notice when an explanation has replaced attention to the particular thing before you. Finding one overlooked detail is a sufficient result; neither a vision nor an abrupt intervention from a teacher is required.

Accept what is fixed; investigate what can change

In 2002, while my Army unit was promoting Personal Mastery, I encountered the Serenity Prayer through Stephen Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. The prayer distinguishes accepting what cannot be changed from acting where change is possible. Covey’s Circle of Influence directs attention towards matters on which we can act.

For a practical enquiry, I would use three categories: What is already fixed? What can I influence? What do I not yet know? The third matters. “I cannot change this alone, today, using this approach” is not the same as “Nothing can ever change”. Assistance, negotiation or a different arrangement may open possibilities. Equally, the ability to influence an outcome does not guarantee control over it.

Reading Lee Kuan Yew’s From Third World to First in 2004 helped make this concrete. “What would I do if I were Singapore in the 1970s?” became my question. Develop capabilities, make friends rather than unnecessary enemies, and seek mutual benefit. This became my Small but Mighty philosophy. Applying that on a smaller scale: name one resource already available, one person or service that might help, and one feasible improvement. The starting conditions need not be ideal before something worthwhile can be built.

Find your part without taking responsibility for everything

The Platform Sutra also left me asking: What is the function of my Life? What is my function in this situation? Not merely which action can be labelled correct, but what would complete the puzzle here. Later, the Vedic concept of Rta (cosmic order), gave me another way to understand participation in a larger whole.

The everyday question is: What is mine to contribute here, and what belongs to someone else?

My part may be explaining an access need clearly. Another person’s part may be respecting it or honestly saying what they can offer. I cannot complete both sides of that relationship by trying harder alone. Participation need not mean compliance. Depending on the situation, a fitting response could be helping, negotiating, resting, declining or leaving. You do not have to discover a predetermined cosmic assignment before recognising a useful contribution and its limits.

Examine a thought without making disbelief compulsory

Around 2016, Byron Katie’s The Work gave me four questions for examining a stressful belief: whether it is true, whether I can be certain, what believing it does to me, and who I would be without it. Her observation that arguing with reality loses 100% of the time helped me recognise the futility of requiring an event that had already happened not to have happened.

Her turnarounds also invite examination of our own participation. I may not have caused the whole problem, but recognising my contribution may reveal something I can change. For this article, I would use a written enquiry and allow “yes” and “I do not know” as genuine answers. Do not manufacture an opposite belief or assign yourself blame to complete the exercise.

First identify the kind of claim you are examining. “They changed the agreement” describes an event. “They intended to humiliate me” proposes a motive. “They should have honoured it” expresses a standard. “I cannot do anything worthwhile until they apologise” makes further living conditional on their response. These require different questions. Evidence may confirm the event without establishing the motive. A reasonable standard need not be abandoned because someone failed to meet it. The condition attached to your next action may still be open to examination.

Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) offers ways to examine connections between thoughts, feelings and behaviour. It also includes practical skills, problem-solving and behavioural change, rather than only arguing with thoughts. A written thought record can help separate the situation, your response, the evidence and a more accurate interpretation. With “I failed before, so I will fail again”, ask what actually failed and what could be different. Then test a manageable change instead of requiring certainty about the whole future.

NICE recommends concrete language, written or visual information and explicit structure when adapting cognitive and behavioural interventions for autistic adults. In these exercises, use the format that helps you think, take breaks and ask someone trusted to help clarify the question. You need not visualise an alternative self or find a perfect word for every feeling.

Act without waiting for the feeling to disappear

Sometimes we understand another perspective but still feel hurt or anxious. There is a useful connection here with Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT): changing our relationship with thoughts and feelings so that we can act on what matters, rather than making their disappearance a prerequisite.

For example, try changing “I am a failure” to “I am having the thought that I am a failure”. This is not a magic phrase. It is an invitation to notice the thought as something occurring, rather than automatically use it as the instruction for what happens next.

Then ask: With this thought or feeling still present, what manageable action would serve what matters to me? That action might be making a repair, asking for help or resting. It need not be enduring an unsuitable situation or appearing calm for someone else’s benefit.

An intellectual explanation that leaves everything unchanged may be unhelpful. But a useful action while the feeling remains is a real change. We need not dismiss it because it lacked the suddenness of a spiritual recognition.

Put the connections to work

Suppose a friend changes an agreed meeting place at the last minute to somewhere too noisy for you. You leave, but keep replaying what happened.

Attend to the immediate need. Find a manageable environment and allow recovery. The noise was not a mistaken belief. Reflect later, when doing so is possible.

Separate the event from the identity. The venue changed and you could not manage it. “I am someone whose needs never matter” is a further conclusion. A history of similar experiences may explain why it feels convincing without making it a complete definition of you.

Identify what you want to protect. Perhaps it is consideration and reliable arrangements. You can explain the impact and request that future changes be checked with you. Whether your friend forgot, misunderstood or disregarded your needs may require a conversation rather than another internal replay.

Choose your contribution and boundary. A possible message is: “I could not manage the noise at the new venue. Please check with me before changing our meeting place. When a venue is unsuitable, I will need us to meet elsewhere or rearrange.” Their response provides information for deciding how to arrange future meetings.

Release one unnecessary condition. An apology may matter, but must the rest of your evening remain unavailable until it arrives? You could send the message, or save a draft to review tomorrow, then return to a familiar activity. You can remain angry and still make this choice.

When the thought returns, check whether there is new information or an unfinished action. You need not restart the entire enquiry merely because the feeling returned. If reflection only creates more loops, pause it. Making the next action smaller or getting help may be more useful than finding another explanation. Difficulty starting, stopping or switching activities can occur despite an intention to act; being stuck is not proof that you are unwilling to let go.

The result need not be peace. It may be a clearer boundary, a protected need, a completed repair or some renewed participation in Life. None requires pretending the original problem was acceptable.

Let go without losing yourself

For me, our fullest freedom is when individuality stands at the intersection of the forces pulling at us. Sensations, intellect, emotions and the attractions of both the material and spiritual worlds can all be present. We need not deny them or surrender ourselves to any one of them.

By our innate, natural core individuality, I do not mean a fixed character we must defend in every disagreement. I mean the source of our own participation, rather than an identity dictated entirely by the situation or by someone else’s judgement.

I can recognise hatred, forgiveness, apathy and other possible responses without assuming that the strongest pull is the only possibility. This intersection is not a compulsory halfway point. Nor does considering a response make it equally wise or immediately available.

Then I ask: What will I become through the choice I make? What will it do to others, and what consequences will I have to live with? Freedom does not require complete control over everything that arises within me. It can begin with another workable response, supported where necessary.

Words and religious symbolism can help, but they can also become distractions. I do not need to perform the appearance of wisdom. The more we develop and mature, the more ordinary we become. I do not mean less autistic or less individual. Like improvised drama, we become more receptive to reality and more able to participate without being imprisoned by a particular role.

Sometimes we let go by working through something. Sometimes we see differently and there is no longer anything to hold in the same way. We keep what Life has taught us and return to the only moment in which we can live it.

Worked Examples