Unless a person is born into a very rich family, one has to find a niche in life and be gainfully employed at work one does well and enjoys. Otherwise, life is hellish and one can’t exist without drinks, smokes, drugs or some other palliative. The human problem reduces to finding where you fit well.

My best career fit was as a school teacher. Even as a boy I taught other boys to do certain things other boys couldn’t do well. But I wasn’t able to remain employed as a school teacher because I didn’t fit the stereotype of a male teacher. I wasn’t sports-oriented and I wasn’t an intimidating bully-type man. The unruly children weren’t afraid of me. So the Principal told me I wasn’t fit to teach. After two years of teaching in a private school and then a year and a half of teaching high school mathematics, I was out on my ass.

The Principal told me that I was “overqualified” to teach. I had a BA in mathematics and biology with high honors. I knew more than many other teachers knew about mathematics. But I knew almost nothing about people and society. And this was a Christian community, in which a teacher as role model was expected to be a “Believer”. And I just couldn’t swallow the whole myth about Jesus as the Son of God, hook, line, and sinker. I just didn’t fit in that community atmosphere.

In 1968 I was out on my ass, and my mother and my wife both were dependent on me as a wage-earner. Also, my wife was pregnant. In addition I was an autistic man. I’d always had communications deficits and thinking deficits. I’d grown up quite out of contact with people and out of touch with the “reality” emphasized by the society in which I’d been raised. My special joys were unusual. And my efforts to find a fit failed.

The passions of my youth were sensual more than athletic, social, or intellectual. I delighted in the sensations I felt in my body. So much of what I saw, heard, tasted, smelled and felt was pleasurable!

I grew up in a fine home with a beautiful garden and fine art objects. The city was beautiful also. And I was conscious of beautiful girls at a young age. This was noted with some enthusiasm and praise by my fourth grade teacher who was later disciplined by the school board for his philandering.

The main problem of my youth and adulthood was that I didn’t fit other people’s expectations. To be specific, from a distance I was handsome, but I didn’t look right and act right. I couldn’t interact properly in team sports, and I couldn’t interact in social activities. I couldn’t participate in the social dialogue using my mind and body. This is the common disability of all autistic youths.

The nature of my handicap was never explained to me by a doctor. No teacher, professor, or prospective employer was aware of my autism. The handicap caused many persons to resent me and think badly of me, because they had no understanding at all of autism. So my life was shrouded in an incomprehensible mystery. Socially, I was a damned person. This of course made it hard for me to impress in a job interview.

As I grew older, I became more aware of my oddness. The idea many people had was that I was smart, so I’d do all right. But I had occasional episodes of depression, and occasional episodes of hyperactivity when I felt much more competent than usual. But I wasn’t good at talking about how I felt inside. I always kept myself a secret.

My father never sent any money, and I almost never saw him. When I was twenty-two the financial problem became severe. My grandmother died and there was thirty nine dollars in savings. My mother had no income. Property taxes alone were five hundred dollars a year. Most all the fine art objects were sold off and I had to function as a man. The stress of poverty made further university studies impossible for me, and my autism prevented me from being able to be retained in any teaching position.

To continue living, my mind had to be turned more and more from what was so negative to what is so positive! My own personal situation was hopeless, and without prospect, but I didn’t see myself as other people saw me. I was autistic. And the positive asserted itself more and more, until in 1971, what is so positive flooded my mind with illumination. I became one of the “illuminated ones”, or “enlightened ones”. But I had no clear understanding of what it means to be “enlightened.” And “enlightenment” didn’t enable me to impress an employer any more than before. I was just rather suddenly, able to produce voluminously new art, new music, and new writings. And because I had no clear intellectual understanding of what was happening, this seemed miraculous.

Gradually, as more years passed, I felt obliged to focus more and more on a clear understanding of this “new mind” which had filled the darkness of my life with so much light. By 1985 I was reading diligently, and meeting many persons and working towards a clearer understanding of society and what’s really important to people. I faced my disability and obtained help in getting on SSI. For the first time in my life, at about age forty eight, I had a secure personal income! I was able to regain a measure of my youthful focus and acumen.

This morning at about five o’clock, it hit me like a steam roller as I lay in the darkness, that the essential problem for every individual is finding a fit in life. It’s just assumed that an intelligent young man will. But why are twelve years devoted to teaching a young man how to read a book and how to work with numbers, while the problem of his professional career is neglected?? And if a young man can’t obtain education which enables him to make a living, and feel fulfilled, what good is the education to him and to society?

As a young man my health wasn’t the best, and I couldn’t participate in active sports and in active social activities. There was not enough help from educators and from doctors, so eventually I had to get help from another Source of intelligence. This Source of intelligence, inspiration, wellness, competence, and healing changed my behavior and my perceptions and I frightened a lot of people. Eventually I learned to understand people better as I understood the Source better. So now I can function as a teacher and demonstrator of peace and understanding of this higher functioning, without having to remember a lot of old mythology, fairy tales, folk lore, or sophisticated psychobabble.

There’s apparently a physiological reaction which alters normal human perceptions so that many colored objects appear to glow with an inner light, as the mind of the person with altered perceptions is flooded with positive emotions and feelings of sublime competence This same physiological reaction is described by several published authors, including Gustav Theodor Fechner, Alan Watts, R.M. Bucke, Colin Wilson, and Rabindranath Tagore. In his book Cosmic Consciousness, R.M. Bucke advances the idea that this is the direct perception of God, as God is defined in many cultures.

This subject of inspiration frightens some people, so they won’t investigate it. Many people, roughly one percent of the human population, are schizophrenics or prone to schizophrenia. It appears that the direct perception of altered “schizophrenic” consciousness cures many chronic physical disorders. This would explain why such a debilitating mental condition has not been selected out of the human gene pool! Because for millions of years, when physical conditions became unbearable for non-psychotic people, the psychotic “God people” mustered enough physiological resiliency to survive. To actually understand and use this “missing sense” to full advantage, requires an understanding of the languages used in modern science.

Many of my articles go into this subject in more detail.

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