UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: The following transcript may contain typographical errors or other mistakes due to inconsistencies in audio quality, background noise, or other factors. We cannot guarantee its precision or completeness. We encourage you to use this as a supplement to your own notes and recollection of the session.
Tami Simon: The Sounds True Podcast Network.
Guy Shahar: The number one thing I would say is to let go of our agenda as a parent and to just meet the child where they are.
Melinda Edwards: They don’t have those layers of protection in walls that, that most of us have, that separate us from other people.
Tami Simon: Welcome to Being Open Spirituality and the Neurodivergent Mind. A special insights at the Edge Series. I’m Tammy Simon. Over the past several years, I’ve become aware of how my own mind doesn’t seem to function in ways that are considered neurotypical or neuro conform. In fact, today more and more people are being labeled as being on the spectrum.
Tami Simon: It’s a label that certainly comes with challenges potentially. It also comes with gifts, capacities such as sensitivity, empathy, and out of the box thinking. And I wonder, is it possible that there’s a connection between being on the spectrum, having a wide or porous mind and having easier access to the spiritual, the transcendent dimension that.
Tami Simon: Which is boundless and undivided. Could Neurodivergence teach us about the spiritual journey and perhaps even accelerate our spiritual evolution? These questions and more are what we’re exploring in being open spirituality and the neurodivergent mind. Thanks for joining us.
Tami Simon: In this episode, I talk with two remarkable guests on neurodivergence and parenting and how their autistic children challenge them to grow in unexpected ways and why they’ve become advocates now for reframing how we look at autism. And now here’s my conversation with Guy Shahar. Welcome to this special series on Spirituality and the neurodivergent mind.
Tami Simon: My guest is Guy Shahar. Guy is an energetic healer and a heartfulness meditation practitioner. He wrote a book called Transforming Autism, how One Boy’s Life was Renewed, and he shares his journey with his son Daniel, who was diagnosed as a toddler, as severely autistic. And we’re gonna learn more about that journey of transforming autism.
Tami Simon: Guy has also created a TED Talk called. The beautiful reality of autism, and he co-founded a nonprofit on transforming autism as a way to empower families to build relationships with their autistic children. Then ready for this at the age of 46. This was in 2018. Guy Shahar himself was confirmed as being on the spectrum, and we’re gonna learn more about that and guy’s, personal insights into spirituality and the neurodivergent mind guy.
Tami Simon: Welcome.
Guy Shahar: Thank you very much, Tammy. Glad to be here.
Tami Simon: To begin and as a way to bring yourself forward with our audience. Can you share a bit going back in time to the birth of your son, Daniel, and the journey that your family has made together.
Guy Shahar: So Daniel was born in 2009. In his first year, uh, everything was fine.
Guy Shahar: You know, he was a little bit slow in his development, but, you know, there were no major issues. When he was coming up to about 1-year-old, between one and one and a half, he began to, uh, withdraw. He began to sort of, you know, disconnect from us. He went into his own little world and at the same time he got very stressed and he started to melt down very often with very, very small, you know, he was playing with a toy and it didn’t do what he wanted to do.
Guy Shahar: And this got more and more and more severe over time so that he was actually spending most of his time in really traumatic distress. Uh, and, and we’d lost all communication with him and all connection, and we weren’t getting any eye contact even from him. And of course that was a really distressing situation for us as parents.
Guy Shahar: We didn’t know what to do. We, we spent a lot of time researching and seeing what was out there. But most of what seemed to be out there seemed to be almost, you know, money grabbing exercises and, you know, uh, give us a lot of money and we’ll sort of send you this course, or you can come and come and train with us or whatever.
Guy Shahar: But there was one thing that we found that was, that resonated with both of us, with both me and my wife. And that was, um, a small clinic that we found in, in a, uh, a village in the north of Israel called the Mney Center. And they specialize in taking young children up to the age of two, uh, who are autistic and sort of.
Guy Shahar: Working with the child, but more importantly, and I’m sure we’ll be talking more about this during the conversation, working with the parents of the child and helping to teach the parents how to make a connection with the child, how to understand the child, how to respond to the child in a way that makes the child feel understood, makes the child feel that they’ve got a safe environment where it makes the child feel that they can express themselves.
Guy Shahar: And what they’ll get back is something that’s in resonance with what they’re putting out rather than something that’s so blatantly at odds with it, which is the experience of the vast majority of autistic children, if not all. And when we started to learn this and when we started to put it into practice, our entire quality of life and his entire quality of life completely transformed and we could see it transform when we were there, actually, even just during the three weeks that we spent at the center.
Guy Shahar: A small story that I always tell is that, uh, when we were going to Israel, when we were getting on the plane, it was terrible. You know, it was, Daniel had been really attached to his push chair, and to get into the plane, he had to get out of it and give it to the cabin staff. That caused an enormous meltdown, a really, uh, severe one on the plane.
Guy Shahar: We nearly got thrown off the plane, but he managed to cry himself to sleep. So we actually managed to get to Israel, and the first few days were really difficult. Going from place to place, making our way to, to the place that we were gonna end up in and coming back was a completely different story Coming back.
Guy Shahar: He sort of very gladly. See, I always tear up when I tell this story, so forgive me if that happens. But, um, he very gladly got out of his push chair with a big smile on his face, gave it to the cabin staff, then took me on one hand and my wife on the other hand, and we walked onto the plane together, smiling, happy, and we had a really pleasant flight back.
Guy Shahar: It’s a really small story, but it really shows the powerful difference that, uh, just learning to connect, learning the very basics of responding to your child and building a connection with your child can make when autistic children are so commonly misunderstood.
Tami Simon: If you were to summarize for parents, here’s the key.
Tami Simon: Let’s just go with the top three, top three things you learned about making this connection.
Guy Shahar: So I, it’s not easy. I mean, it’s, but it’s very rewarding because the skills that we do, that we learn when we do it are the skills that will make our lives better as well. But I would say number one is to let go of our own agenda.
Guy Shahar: You know, very often as parents, we are, um, we are feeling that we know what’s best for the child. We, and we feel responsible for bringing that about. So if the child behaves in a way that we don’t expect, or we don’t approve of, or we’re not trying to create, then we can, you know, we get driven. We get driven to try to sort of.
Guy Shahar: Encourage the child to do what we want them to do. The number one thing I would say is to let go of our agenda as a parent and to just meet the child where they are. Try to understand where they may be coming from, forget what we want from them, you know, meet them where they are, accept them, whoever they are.
Guy Shahar: That’s the number one thing. Number two, I think is related to play. Um, and that’s, and again, it’s about dropping our agenda, but it, but in the context of play, play is a, is a fantastic way to make a connection with the child, build a relationship, help the child to feel connected with, with their parent.
Guy Shahar: Again, though, we tend to have our preconceptions about what play is, and if the child is disconnecting from us, we can start to get anxious. And we can start to sort of start pushing for play. Uh, and that’s gonna make the child recoil. It’s gonna sort of cause a further, uh, disconnection. Actually. What we actually want to be doing is looking at the child and tuning into the child and just sort of maybe proposing play, but then just noticing their response.
Guy Shahar: If their attention goes in a different direction, we respect that. We look for clues. What sorts of things do spark their attention? And instead of jumping on that and trying to sort of make a game about it straight away, let it express itself. You know, maybe offer a slight sign of recognition of it and let them, uh, let them respond if they want to respond, and let it really be an iterative dance between parent and child to build that relationship.
Guy Shahar: And the third thing is really the big one, which is to be really willing to, to change ourselves and to be aware of what we are bringing to, uh, our relationship with our child. And, and by extension, any relationship. And by that I mean, I mean, I find personally that autistic children are really sensitive and really perceptive and can really tune in.
Guy Shahar: All children can. But I think a lot of autistic children are particularly, um, uh, strong at this, can really tune in, can really sort of understand the energy and the intention of the person that they’re playing with. So if we have anxiety about our child, if we, if we have some non-acceptance of certain aspects of our child, or if we feel driven to bring about a certain condition in our child or, or you know, if we have a particular agenda.
Guy Shahar: Then the child is going to sense that and the child is going to feel, hang on, I’m not in an open trusting relationship here. There’s somebody trying to impose an agenda on me if I feel stressed because I’m not coping with the situation, the child is gonna pick up on that stress and the child is going to know that it’s not a safe environment.
Guy Shahar: So this is the really hard part because it’s really broad. It’s about working on ourselves, making ourselves into people who are much calmer, much more accepting, and who have a lot more faith actually in, in the fact that whatever happens is going to be okay. And this, I guess, ties in with the spiritual aspect of what you are exploring,
Tami Simon: guy.
Tami Simon: You write that sensitivity is at the heart. Of autism. And I found this a very, very profound sentence. And I’d, I’d like to hear more about specifically what that means to you and what you discovered with Daniel and with yourself by naming the heart of autism as sensitivity.
Guy Shahar: Yeah. Yeah. So I mean, part of it is what we were just talking about in terms of them, uh, being able to empathize in a sense, in a way that, um, is more than non-autistic children.
Guy Shahar: But I think also you get this feeling of, you know, my son goes to an autistic school and the children in the school, you, you know, the, the instance of bullying in the school and the instance of aggressive behavior and domineering behavior is so much less. Than, than it is in a mainstream school. Um, and of course autism is a spectrum, just like humanity is a spectrum and, and you get a bit of everything.
Guy Shahar: But the, the prevalence of these negative traits is, is really, really much less. And what you see a lot more is idealism, uh, is you see a, um, just a real nonsense, you know, a sense that the, the world doesn’t make sense the way it’s constructed. And I think that’s, that’s part of the sense, you know, the fact that the world is not constructed in a way that’s conducive to calm and to happiness and to what might we might think of as spiritual values is something that autistic children, I feel, are very sensitive to and pick up on, and are more disturbed by than, than other people, especially other people as they grow up.
Guy Shahar: And so that’s another aspect of it as well.
Tami Simon: In your Ted Talk, your son was six years old at the time, and you were talking about the tremendous transformation that occurred in him in terms of his ability to connect with other people. How’s he doing now as a teenager?
Guy Shahar: He’s doing great. I mean, he’s doing great in the sense that, um, he’s such an affectionate, uh, child.
Guy Shahar: He’s so, um, he’s so loving, uh, he’s so accommodating. He’s so, he’s just such a pleasure to have around. I think he’s, he’s more guarded among people he doesn’t know, and that’s, again, going back to the sensitivity and the guardedness comes from even, even living a relatively sheltered life. The sensitivity comes from a guardedness because there’s been such an experience of harshness, of being let down and of treated, of being treated badly in the world.
Guy Shahar: So there is that guardedness in the wider world. But you know, when you get to know him, he’s, he’s a joy.
Tami Simon: This notion that people on the spectrum can help us find access and point to what we could call the spiritual dimension of experience, that dimension where we know our interconnectedness with all of life.
Tami Simon: Could you share with me some how Daniel has been a teacher for you in that regard?
Guy Shahar: I think be because I have such an active spiritual life myself, I, I was already very connected with that side of life anyway. But I mean, I, I guess what he’s done is reinforced that and he’s really sort of helped to legitimize it a lot because for him it’s so natural for him.
Guy Shahar: He’s so naturally drawn to, as we were talking about these, these very altruistic and idealistic values. But also to, you know, uh, for a child, I mean, he, he does the same meditation now that we do, and he, you can see that he really feels it and he’s really affected by it and his whole being and his whole vibration changes when he does this meditation and, and he just, he just tunes into it so much more easily than most people coming to it for the first time.
Tami Simon: Can you share the core, the essence of that heartfulness meditation practice right here with us? Can you take us into it, guy?
Guy Shahar: Yeah, it’s, it’s, um, it’s a meditation practice. It was rediscovered about a hundred years ago, and it’s based on, on an ancient practice actually, of yogic transmission. So it’s, it’s the transmission of divine energy, uh, during a meditation sitting.
Guy Shahar: And what we do is we, we, um, sort of have individual sittings with a trainer. So you have a trainer, and to begin with, they give you three sittings. And what happens during these three sittings is that the accumulation of impressions and, and sort of density and grossness that we’ve got through living in this world, through all of the experiences that we’ve had, this is cleaned to the extent that we are able to access this transmission by ourselves.
Guy Shahar: So we can then do the meditation every day. And we feel the essence of it within us. And, you know, we start with the thought of the source of light being in the heart. But very quickly, that thought actually becomes a feeling. It becomes an experience and it’s sort of centered in the heart. But in my experience, it’s not, it’s only partly a physical experience.
Guy Shahar: In fact, the smallest part of it is the physical experience. I can point to it, I can show the area that I feel it, but it’s not a physical thing. It’s a, it’s a, it’s a much broader thing than that. And we, we develop and then, you know, over time that develops, it deepens and it gives us a level of, I guess, a sense of protection.
Guy Shahar: A sense of wellbeing. It gives a, a sense of faith. It’s not like you, you hear a lot of people saying, oh, you need to have faith. And then, and then you will, you know, this will open doors for you. But this, it’s almost like heartfulness results in faith. I almost see faith as a condition that results from, you know, the practice of meditation, uh, and, and the experience of deeper states.
Tami Simon: So there’s a, a clearing such that this light quality, energetic light in the heart is contacted and then, uh, becomes something you can attune to again and again. And how does that relate then to the birth of what you’re calling Faith? How does that, in your experience,
Guy Shahar: in my experience, that relates to faith in the sense of what it produces in daily life and the experience of daily life?
Guy Shahar: So what I remember, you know, one, one thing I always remember is that, you know, before I started this, I was constantly. Feeling anxiety. I was constantly feeling heaviness, disappointment, whatever it was. A little thing came along and shocked me. And you know, I, you know, I, I almost could feel this sinking in my heart.
Guy Shahar: Now, those same things can come along, even greater things, and it actually doesn’t touch this, this feeling that’s evolved in my heart, and that’s become deeper and deeper in my heart over the years. It’s almost like this solidness is there, this sense of sturdiness that whatever happens, there’s a, there’s a level of strength, there’s a di dimension of strength there in the heart, which permeates everywhere.
Guy Shahar: And I call this faith because for me, faith isn’t a belief. It’s not just a, it’s not, it’s not a mental thing. Faith is a condition, it’s an experience. And for me, this faith is an experience of essentially this idea that everything’s okay. That everything, whatever happens, everything will be okay. It’s faith that whatever is is and it’s fine.
Guy Shahar: Um, and that’s what I mean by it evolving through the meditation.
Tami Simon: I wanna throw something out and you tell me if I am reflecting this accurately from engaging a bit with your transforming autism work. It felt to me that there was an implication that potentially we could be pointed in an evolutionary direction by the spiritual access that people on the spectrum can have, that they could be evolutionary.
Tami Simon: Guides or helping us move forward into a different way of being together. Do you think that’s a fair statement?
Guy Shahar: I do. I, um, I sort of tend deliberately not to talk too much about that because I, I’m aware that I talk to a lot of different audiences and I want to speak in a way that is as accessible as possible to, to anybody who may find me.
Guy Shahar: And, and, and, and that’s why I don’t go too deeply into this question of the, the inherent spiritual potential of, uh, autistic people. Because I don’t, to be honest, I don’t know. I can’t be a hundred percent sure I have, I have an inkling, I have an inkling that that’s there, that inkling is reinforced by my experience of having met and interacted with a number of autistic people.
Guy Shahar: But yes, I, I, I do. Do resonate. You give
Tami Simon: voice to the inkling and we’ll just leave it as an inkling. It doesn’t have to be any more than that.
Guy Shahar: The world needs to change. The world has to change. It will change. And in what direction will it change? We think of the people who are gonna lead us in those, in that direction.
Guy Shahar: You know, commonly it would be thought of, you know, people who’ve got experience of, you know, building businesses or leading countries or, but actually that’s not the direction that we need to evolve into. That’s the direction that we’re evolving from. We need to develop in the direction of inner values of, as you say, making this aspect of spirituality available to as many people as possible.
Guy Shahar: So the question is, who can best lead us there? And amongst the people who can best lead us there. I think there’s a lot of autistic people who very naturally connect with that and can guide us in the sense of not necessarily teaching, not necessarily making speeches or, or anything like that, but in the sense of being an example that we can watch and learn from.
Tami Simon: Tell us Guy a little bit about your own process of discovering that, uh, you were on the spectrum at age 46.
Guy Shahar: So all through my life I’ve had difficulty. Fitting in to society. I mean, just as I was saying about autistic people, children, I’ve also always, uh, found that the way that the world works doesn’t make sense to me.
Guy Shahar: And social conventions, the wor the things that are expected in terms of, you know, how people are supposed to connect and, and speak to each other, whether those things are true or not, has always not made sense to me. And when I started the charity, I met a lot of autistic people. I just ended up talking to a lot of specialists and experts, and it became really clear to me that I was actually on the spectrum because I had so much in common with those people.
Guy Shahar: And I, I actually remember saying to one of them once, confiding them, do you know what? I think I might be autistic? And he said to me, well, of course you are. Do you think I’m stupid? Of course. Um, of course you’re, I mean this as an autistic person. And, and he just took it for granted that I was autistic.
Guy Shahar: So, so the, the realization came to me very naturally through that I actually met one of the, um, somebody who’s a, you know, uh, a world renowned specialist in autism. He’s a British professor living in Australia. He came to the UK to do, uh, to, to visit, visit his family. I did an interview with him for the, for the charity.
Guy Shahar: For the website. For the charity. Uh, so I met him a couple of times there. And, you know, I just asked him the question, do you think I might be autistic from, from what you know of me? And before I’d even finish the question, he said, yes. It, it’s really obvious. I’ve had 40 years of experience of this. It’s very, uh, it’s very clear.
Guy Shahar: Uh, but he also said, you probably won’t get a diagnosis because you, uh, there are not many people who. Our specialists in diagnosing autism who have an understanding of what autism looks like in somebody who’s lived for 40 or 50 years without knowing that they’re autistic and have adapted to the world.
Guy Shahar: And yet, I even did go and visit a specialist at one point before I met this guy and the specialist, he almost laughed at me. He said, you can’t possibly be autistic because you looked at me directly in the eye and gave me a direct answer to the question. And this was a specialist who, whose job it is to diagnose people, adults with autism.
Guy Shahar: Autism or not with autism. And um, so I gave up on the diagnosis route because the specialism isn’t there to be able to really understand, you know, the process that autistic people go through in order to adapt to the world. But I’m satisfied for myself. You know, it’s very, very clear to me
Tami Simon: how does that.
Tami Simon: Recognition and your own inner confirmation of that, how has that shifted things for you? How has that, has it helped you?
Guy Shahar: When it first, when I first, um, uh, got it confirmed that I was autistic for a couple of years, when anybody asked me that question, I said, no. It made absolutely no difference because, you know, I’m still the same person.
Guy Shahar: I already knew really in myself that I was autistic. So all that’s happened is I’ve got a label now that I didn’t have before, and then I realized that wasn’t quite right. It had changed a lot for me because what had happened during my early life is that when things went wrong, when I didn’t fit in, when other people judged me, which happened a lot, I came to the conclusion that there was something wrong with me.
Guy Shahar: And so I was carrying this sense that I’m not enough, I’m not good enough, I’m not normal enough as if that’s something to aspire to, but I was carrying this baggage and. Knowing that I was autistic sort of freed me from that because it was easy then to say that, you know, there’s, it’s not that there’s anything wrong with me, it’s that I work differently.
Guy Shahar: So this is, you know, for the next couple of years I was giving that answer to that question, and then I realized that that wasn’t really a very satisfying answer either. It it’s actually true, but the reason it’s not satisfying is because why did I need a label in order to fully accept myself? Why could I not say that whatever I am, whatever the label, I’m fine, just as everybody else is fine.
Guy Shahar: So there is that little bit of embarrassment as well, that it took a label to get me to that point of self-acceptance when a label actually wasn’t necessary.
Tami Simon: One of the unexpected. Outcomes that I’m discovering in this series on spirituality and the neurodivergent mind is the depathologizing of the spectrum.
Tami Simon: And I think I, that’s a process. I’m in this de pathology process. And I imagine many of our listeners too, and I wonder if you can speak to that.
Guy Shahar: Yeah, I mean, um, in the TED Talk that I did in the charity that I set up, it, it’s, it’s a core. Aim to sort of change public perception of autism from a disability to, as I was saying, just a different way of, of being, a different way of thinking, a different, you know, slightly different wiring.
Guy Shahar: That’s all. It’s got a lot of overlaps with a lot of non-autistic people. You know, it’s, you know, it’s a spectrum just like humanity is a spectrum and it brings a lot of different things and all of those different things complement each other and build a richer world and bring, build more completeness.
Guy Shahar: And autism is, is, is a spectrum within that broader spectrum that also brings in that completeness. But it doesn’t always look like that. And I, I always think of some research, some brilliant research that was done by a lady called Catherine Crompton at Edinburgh University. And she got together a load of different people, some of them autistic, some of them non-autistic, and she divided those people into pairs.
Guy Shahar: Some of those pairs were, uh, two autistic people. Some of them were two non-autistic people, and some of them were one autistic and one non-autistic person. And what she found was really interesting because she, she had some objective criteria. She was watching interactions between them. They had certain tasks to do together and she had certain criteria that she was, uh, using to assess them, which was neutral of social norms around how well they were connecting, how well they were, uh, associating with each other.
Guy Shahar: And the really interesting thing was that when you had the two non-autistic people together, they were connecting really well. When you had the two autistic people together, they were also connecting really well, equally well on some measures, more well, uh, than the, uh, non-autistic people. Where you had the problem is when you had the, uh, autistic and the non-autistic pair, simply because they had different ways of, of connecting, of communicating.
Guy Shahar: Now, there’s two things to say about that. One thing is, in the level of society, it doesn’t look like that because you’ve got the, you don’t have 50 50, you have like 1% and 99%. So it always looks like the autistic person is the problem. That’s where the pathology angle comes from. There’s nothing pathological about autism, but it looks like that because we perceive that minority means pathology.
Guy Shahar: And the other thing to think about it is that you have two people who have differences. Differences are opportunities to learn. You might have some initial, uh, difficulty making that connection, but uh, if you persist with that communication and that connection with an open mind and an open heart, and a real willingness to accept and understand and learn, both the autistic and the non-autistic partner can learn enormous amounts from each other, and each of them can become very much enriched individuals as a result.
Guy Shahar: Pathologizing autism makes no sense whatsoever, and it’s throwing away an opportunity to improve society. Just a
Tami Simon: couple more questions, guy. In your own experience, when you get overwhelmed, even with the heartfulness meditation practice that you have, providing this inner sturdiness, when the sensitivity is so intense in various situations and you start feeling, I don’t know what exactly you start feeling, I’d be curious to know when you start feeling this potentially overwhelm of inputs happening, what do you do to, uh, regain your own composure?
Guy Shahar: Time alone. I need time alone. And it’s, and it’s really hard because, you know, I mean, I’ve talked about all of this strengthening and it, and it really is there. Um, and it’s there to a, to a enormously greater extent than it used to be there in my life. But I’m still very, very easily knocked off balance, I mean, a lot less easily than I used to be.
Guy Shahar: And by are far fewer things. But there are certain things, you know, there are certain remaining triggers that are still there. Um, what do I feel? I feel a sort of eruption of anxiety and an urge, an unhealthy urge to make everything right. You know, I, I never lose my intention to arrive at a state of peace and rebalance and connection.
Guy Shahar: I never lose that, but I feel an urge, which may be overwhelming to other people if I try to involve them in it, to, uh, to rectify the situation, to make things better, to make things better quickly. And the difficult part is to realize that I need time away before that happens. Uh, before that can be effective because otherwise I’m communicating with all of my anxiety and frustration and whatever my deeper intentions are, they’re not gonna come out and they’re not gonna be received by the other person.
Guy Shahar: I need to go away and, and it can take a long time for me as well. Uh, I can sometimes be off balance for days and, you know, and it’s, it’s actually quite hard to sort of manage to lead a busy life with a lot of activities in it, knowing that you’re gonna be constantly knocked off balance and constantly, um, under par.
Guy Shahar: And, and not performing to the best of your ability, uh, and yet to still go on and to yet to still, to still sort of do the best that you can. It’s really difficult because, and each time it happens, it’s like, but I had such plans for today. I was gonna make so much progress. And so to let go of that urge, that strong overwhelming urge to make things right, it’s actually quite a hard thing to do because there’s so much riding on it.
Guy Shahar: But that’s what I do need to do and I need to go and I need to take time alone and I need to accept that I’m not gonna get much fulfillment from that time alone. It’s just going to be recovery time.
Tami Simon: And I wanna make sure before we close that you have a chance to highlight and underscore some of the spiritual gifts.
Tami Simon: If you will, from your own experience of being on the spectrum, interacting with your son Daniel, the people that you’ve met, these gifts, that can come clearly into our awareness right here.
Guy Shahar: I think just being so different from the mainstream, it’s already, you know, that’s the start of the process. You know, it’s, it doesn’t feel like a gift at the beginning, but it is actually a gift because we are no longer looking to the outside world and expecting to get our strength from other people and our affirmation and our sense of self-worth from other people.
Guy Shahar: How other people react to us. You know, we do that for a while. We get devastated by it. We realize it’s not gonna work and we need to find somewhere else. Where do you go when the traditional means of your, of getting self-esteem are not there anymore? You can only go inwards and you can only start that inner journey of finding something else that will give you the source of that strength.
Guy Shahar: And I guess that’s the gift of being on the spectrum and uh, the gift of being a parent of an autistic child is that they reinforce that because they’re bringing the same energy and they’re reinforcing that and you are getting, you are guiding them as well. At the same time. It’s a very much symbiotic thing and it’s so mutually satisfying.
Guy Shahar: So I dunno if that’s what you meant, but that, that’s what comes to mind about that.
Tami Simon: Anything else guy you wanna share here before we close?
Guy Shahar: That’s all. I would love, I would love to, uh, invite people to check out my charity. It’s called Transforming Autism. You go transforming autism.org. Thank you so much.
Tami Simon: Guy Shahar, thank you. Thank you for your beautiful heart and for being part of this series on spirituality and the neurodivergent mind. Thank you.
Guy Shahar: Thank you so much, Tammy.
Tami Simon: Next I talk with Dr. Melinda Edwards.
Tami Simon: My guest is Dr. Melinda Edwards. Melinda is a psychiatrist, a writer, and a mother who provides psychiatric care to underserved adults. She completed her residency in psychiatry at Stanford Medical Center and has studied integrative medicine with Dr. Andrew Weil, her daughter Saatchi. Now a teenager is on the autism spectrum.
Tami Simon: Melinda writes for Autism Parenting Magazine and she’s the author of a new book. It’s called Psyche and Spirit, how a psychiatrist Found Divinity Through Her Lifelong Search For Truth and Her Daughter’s Autism. Melinda, welcome
Melinda Edwards: Tammy. Thank you so much for having me
Tami Simon: right here at the beginning. I want to credit you for planting the seed in me to host the series on spirituality and the neurodivergent mind.
Tami Simon: You wrote me a letter last fall and in the letter you said many people who are neurodivergent are wired for awakening, and you encouraged me. That sounds true, should educate people about this and also be an advocate for people who are on the spectrum and be an advocate about their gifts and the interconnected world from which they experience life.
Tami Simon: And you know, it got my attention, of course, I get a lot of letters, a lot of emails that I don’t pay that much attention to. But there was something about your sincerity and also the topic itself, which I’m quite interested in. So I wanted to start here with this notion that people on the spectrum are wired for awakening.
Tami Simon: And here your view, you ready for this as. A psychiatrist, we’re gonna get to your perspective as a spiritual journeyer yourself and as the mother of someone born on the spectrum. Mm-hmm. But let’s start as a psychiatrist. Mm-hmm. How you see that our neurological wiring?
Melinda Edwards: Yes. Well, to be honest with you, I almost shy away from the word the term neurodiversity.
Melinda Edwards: I would substitute porous or porousness porous people because the word neurodiversity speaks to one aspect of this, which is the neurological. But there is so much more to being open and wired for awakening than just our biology or our neurologic wiring. Um, and so as a psychiatrist, um, in my experience with my patients who are autistic.
Melinda Edwards: What I sense and see in them is that they are exquisitely sensitive, exquisitely porous, and that in itself is what makes it so difficult for them to, to navigate this world that’s operating at a much harsher level than they are. That’s much more closed down, that, um, you know, if you will, is vibrating at a lower frequency than they are.
Melinda Edwards: So that’s the place I work with them at. Um, not all of them are aware of this sort of deeper dimension of autism, but when I bring it into the room. They are, they always express such gratitude and relief. It’s like, I can see their shoulders drop, you know, because they, they recognize, um, the truth in what’s being spoken or, or just felt or sensed in the room about, about them.
Tami Simon: Well, I wanna follow up a bit about this notion of porousness and why you like focusing on that versus neurodivergence. Because I noticed when I talk to people about neurodivergence, they’re like, aren’t we all sort of neurodivergent in different ways? And is this category really useful at this point in time?
Tami Simon: So I’m curious why you are moving away from it and what you mean by being porous, what that really means. I have a feeling for it, but I wanna understand what you mean by it.
Melinda Edwards: Okay. So just to, you know, talk about neurodivergence for a moment. Includes autism, A DHD, highly sensitive people, dyslexia and other sort of different wirings, right?
Melinda Edwards: That’s sort of the traditional maybe definition of, of neurodiversity. Um, the porousness, the word porousness or porous to me, encompasses so much more. It encompasses the energetic, um, vibration or, um, the spirit of people who are, and the physical and the emotional, all of it. Uh, and I don’t know if it’s time to move into my experience with my daughter yet in, in my experience with her when she was born, there was just, she brought with her this, again, it’s hard to find words, but.
Melinda Edwards: Openness, porousness love with a capital L Love, and everybody could sense it that came into our home. She was also exquisitely sensitive on every level. Every time I took her to the grocery store, anywhere out in public, she would scream out in pain. And I didn’t know what was going on at the time. But you know, the lights, the sounds, the all the people absorbing so much more than most of us are.
Melinda Edwards: So this porousness,
Melinda Edwards: and when she was diagnosed, that awareness of her openness, her exquisite sensitivity. Moved more into the background because I, I bought fully into the medical paradigm of this being a disease or an illness or a disorder or something to be fixed. Um, so fear sort of ruled the roost for a while with, and I dove into all the therapies.
Melinda Edwards: I don’t regret any of it because I was actually helping her learn how to navigate this harsh world. Um, but it took time before the clouds would part again, periodically. And I’d get these, oh my God, she is so deeply connected. This and, and, you know, I’ve been on a spiritual journey all my life. Well, she was the embodiment of what I had been longing for and seeking all of my life.
Tami Simon: It’s interesting. The word porousness is something that I can really feel into, and when I feel into it, the sense I have is that information is coming in from every direction. From below from the side. Mm-hmm. It’s like coming in full body. Yeah. And when I focus more on a neurological phenomenon, or even this, you know, notion of being wired in a certain way, it’s more like I go into my brain and nervous system Yes.
Tami Simon: Versus this expanded dissolved field. So I, I wonder how you sense that in your emphasis on this word.
Melinda Edwards: The same. Tammy, and I hadn’t even thought about it that way, but I actually love words and language because words carry energy and they take us to different places. So some words are more mental, um, like neurodiversity.
Melinda Edwards: Makes us sort of think about it. Some are more experiential, which is my tendency. I go into this experiential, like porous. We feel it, we sense it. Our mind may not even be able to compute what it is. It’s hard to talk about what porous means, but we sense it. So that’s, that’s why I, you know, I love using the word porous.
Melinda Edwards: I would love to share something right here too, because what you said about neurodiversity, well, aren’t we all neurodiverse in some way? And I wanna share a personal story that just happened a few weeks ago for me, um, that I think demonstrates a couple of things, um, that I have found to be so true. One is that everything that comes up in us is a potential doorway back home to what we all really are, which is love, which is porousness, which is, I mean, the, the awakening path in my experience is.
Melinda Edwards: A journey of becoming more porous and open. So what happened? Um, as, as we meet the aspects of ourselves that we haven’t been able to meet before or been able to open to, okay. So what happened a couple of weeks ago for me is I was creating a website, um, for this conference, this Neurodiversity Science and Spirituality conference.
Melinda Edwards: And I took great care to create it in a way that would not be overwhelming for anyone who is sensitive. Um, you know, neutral colors, the font, you know, slowing us down, the photos, you know, sepia and just everything very, um, geared towards not overstimulating. So. This, ultimately the website was criticized by a good friend of mine multiple times, um, as not being professional, not looking, um, like a conference website.
Melinda Edwards: And I felt very defensive. Um, and I’ve been around the block enough to know that, you know, when something like that comes up in me defensiveness that, okay, this is my opportunity here. So thank goodness, um, I, this time I took the opportunity and I sat with it, um, the defensiveness and the anger. Um, and that quickly dissolved into grief and, you know, grief, feeling sort of bulldozed over.
Melinda Edwards: Um, but then realizing that I was bulldozing myself over in my life so many times, and even more deeper grief, realizing that I often deferred. My sensitivity to people who had labels like autism or you know, HSP or people who had something to hang their sensitivity hat onto. And I just wept and wept, realizing that I had created this website because of my sensitivity too.
Melinda Edwards: And so I called my friend Sarah, um, and you know, I have some friends that I can just lay it all out to and let it just move through in whatever way it comes through. And I wept and I said, you know, just because I don’t have a label doesn’t mean that I’m not sensitive. Just because I don’t have a diagnosis doesn’t mean I’m not exquisitely sensitive, and my sensitivity has a right to be here too.
Melinda Edwards: So I moved through all this, just letting whatever came, you know, and I was left with, after this process moved through this sense of profound strength in my legs, in my feet, just standing in my sensitivity and bringing it into the world. And I realized that the importance of not just me bringing it into the world, but all of us, whether you have a label or not, the importance of bringing our exquisite sensitivity into the world.
Melinda Edwards: In whatever way, you know, it’s gonna look different for everybody. It doesn’t necessarily mean going out there and advocating, I need all these accommodations. I’m sensitive, blah, blah. It might mean that, but just more importantly, bringing the energy of it. Do not bypass it. This is sensitivity, openness, and porousness is the trajectory of human evolution.
Melinda Edwards: And so w we really need to bring these aspects forward into the world. So I wanted to share that because it was such a profound realization for me.
Tami Simon: One of the things you’ve written about is how we all long to be seen. Mm-hmm. And I think that’s true. It’s really powerful when someone sees us in our deep authenticity.
Tami Simon: I wonder in your practice, what kind of. Posture. What kind of attitude, how, how is it that you’ve developed this capacity to see people? How do you see?
Melinda Edwards: I can only meet in other people what I have met in myself, and that may sound very trite, but it is absolutely true. So I, I am sure that I have blind spots and, you know, when I’m reactive to someone, whether it’s someone in my personal life or to a patient, I know that that’s my place that I haven’t met yet.
Melinda Edwards: So we can meet others as deeply as we can meet ourselves. And whether they’re patients or not, it, it’s really irrelevant relevant.
Tami Simon: You’ve recently recorded a TED Talk. Autism is a gift. And I thought to myself, wow, people are gonna roll their eyes at that title when they see that autism is a gift. And you know, here you write for Autism Parent Magazine, and I can imagine a lot of parents are going to have questions about a TED Talk with that title.
Tami Simon: Mm-hmm. So I wonder how you view that and, and see that, I mean, yes, our reactions are, are work to do inside ourselves, but people are going to react like, really I’m dealing with X, y, z, overwhelms and meltdowns. And you’re saying to me, autism is a gift. Yes.
Melinda Edwards: Come on. Acknowledging the tremendous challenges, um, that autistic people face that, um, poorest people face in this world because it is.
Melinda Edwards: Functioning the world is in general at a much harsher level than many of us are. So it’s extremely difficult to navigate this world with that, with those sensitivities. And you know, in the medical field, what we call symptoms. And for parents, boy, you know, they say our souls choose our um. Journeys before we come in.
Melinda Edwards: And recently a friend of mine said, yeah, you know, they say that there’s a group of elder souls that, you know, meet with the soul that’s getting ready to come in. And the soul that’s getting ready to come in always wants to bring on all the karma that I have, you know, real enthusiastic. I wanna do it all in this lifetime.
Melinda Edwards: And the elders sort of temper that and, you know, say, Hey, now you know, it’s too much. Let’s just take it easy. And so what I said to my friend is, I must have been a really good bargainer, uh, when I was that soul, because, you know, being a parent of someone on the spectrum is very challenging. Our kids are so exquisitely sensitive and have many, many needs.
Melinda Edwards: Um, so I really want to acknowledge that before I dive into the gift of autism. So the gift of autism, um, I didn’t know you, you even knew about the TEDx talk, Tammy. Um, it is. Being in the presence of someone who is so exquisitely open and porous. Here’s how that translates in my life with my daughter and with other people I know who are on the spectrum, their exquisite sensitivity actually creates a field of energy, and I am impacted by that.
Melinda Edwards: Just like when you walk in a room and someone’s angry. We are all impacted by that. We can feel that when we are with someone who is open, exquisitely sensitive. It impacts our energy, our our being as well. So that’s one gift, a tremendous gift of autism. The other, another gift is that from my perspective, they are breaking the path.
Melinda Edwards: For human beings to open more and more to this porousness, to this non-separation, to this exquisite sensitivity that we all really are at our core. We, you know, we develop these, um. Defenses and walls as we develop our individual sense of ame. But, but those aren’t who we really are. They’re just defenses.
Tami Simon: I’m gonna ask you a strange question at this point. Okay. Here, which is, you know, I, I, I’m gonna speak personally just for a moment. I have a natural openness and I have, and it’s been part of my draw to meditation and dissolving in space, particularly using the exhale in meditation to dissolve, dissolve, dissolve.
Tami Simon: And what I noticed, both in my own experience and when I taught people meditation practices that increased their porousness, is that there was a need to have a boundary. As well as to be completely open to everything. Mm-hmm. That boundary, you could call it like an egg around us, is a protective field that is actually really important and helps us feel strong and keeps certain energetics out while we’re well boundaried ourselves.
Tami Simon: So I’m curious what you think about like, you know, ’cause we can put such a high value on Yes. Openness and porousness, but maybe we need both in some way. Yeah. And I’m curious what you think about that.
Melinda Edwards: Yeah. It’s a bit of a paradox, isn’t it? For me personally, I’ve always. Not felt super comfortable with creating boundaries.
Melinda Edwards: That’s just me. I honor when people do that. Like, but the way it’s been experienced here is that it used to be a lot more painful for me to be in this world. Over time. It seemed like discernment or wisdom sort of developed in terms of when do I sort of put this back in the other person’s lap and not, you know, take it on sort of the compassion part.
Melinda Edwards: Like when do I, um, when is my taking this on, enabling them? Um, so sort of more like boundaries in the moment, I guess I would say. And I have some natural boundaries that are in my life. For instance, with my patients. We don’t do phone calls or emails, it’s just when I see them. Right. So, and other things recently, this is another maybe not a boundary, but.
Melinda Edwards: Uh, an honoring of my sensitivity. Recently, I finally, um, decided to do Whole Foods delivery ’cause I get very overwhelmed when I walk into the grocery store, uh, with all the stimulation in there. So those might be considered some boundaries. But the other piece of this, of sort of protecting our sensitive selves is that in my experience too, and I’d love to hear if it’s different for you, but the more I am able to meet the contractions within myself and allow those to unwind, the less there, the less sticky points there are in me for.
Melinda Edwards: So it’s almost like things flow through more unimpeded, if that makes sense. As opposed to when I was younger, I would be really overwhelmed with, um. With my patient suffering suffer, and now I certainly experience it, but there’s a strength there that you referred to the strength. And I would say yes, whatever we need to do to, to support ourselves in, in being in this world and the trajectory that I see is the world is and will become more and more sensitive.
Melinda Edwards: So keep bringing that sensitivity in, even as we support ourselves and compassion, um, so that we can get through our day and not, you know, fall apart because we’re absorbing so much more.
Tami Simon: I, I think where I’m going with this is we’re celebrating. Sensitivity and porousness, and yet it is a whole lot to work with and needs to have these complimentary capacities or skills.
Tami Simon: And I’m curious how you see that in your parenting and how you see it with the neurodivergent patients you work with. What’s needed, what capacities are needed so that we can navigate this openness effectively.
Melinda Edwards: Mm-hmm. Well, um, typically what I kind of say about tools is I’m not normally the tool person.
Melinda Edwards: Um, there are tons of tools out there, and I do teach my daughter tools. The therapists teach her tools. Um, but what has been neglected all this time in terms of the medical disease paradigm is. The gift, this other aspect that, that the, you know, the medical paradigm is, is limited. Um, yes, let’s support all of us in learning how to move through this world.
Melinda Edwards: And I think, you know, what you said about creating boundaries when you need them, doing things everyday, things in your life that keep you from being overwhelmed, sensing into, okay, when have I learned all I can from this situation, whether it’s a relationship or job or anything. And when is it time to move on?
Melinda Edwards: Because I think those of us who are sensitive and and on a spiritual trajectory tend to sort of overdo the responsibility part. Like, okay, I’m gonna dive into this. So taking care of ourselves and listening deeply and minimizing the types of things that are overwhelming to us.
Tami Simon: In your new TEDx talk, you describe how we can experience the world at a physical level, a psychological level, and then at this interconnected level.
Tami Simon: I thought this was very interesting and I’m curious how you came up with this three-part way of experiencing the world and then if we can land a bit in this interconnected way of experiencing the world.
Melinda Edwards: Okay. It’s actually, you know, my experience of the world and what I should share is that the journey of the TEDx talk was quite something.
Melinda Edwards: Um, we are required to have coaching and there was a lot of pushback on, on my topic, um, and. Then the telepathy tapes came out and my coaches were like, oh, this is a thing. Um, so they were more open, but I had to really be, take great care with the languaging because this was for the general public, not for spiritual seekers, right?
Melinda Edwards: So, um, so the languaging was not spiritual languaging and the word interconnectedness, um, instead of like consciousness or love with a capital L or truth with a capital T just sort of came forward and that seemed acceptable. Um, but in, in my experience, there are these three aspects of existence or ways that we can experience the world lenses.
Melinda Edwards: The first is a physical, that’s anything we sense, um, with through the five senses. Touch, taste, see, hear or smell. The next is the psychological. And it doesn’t just mean psychology or therapy or issues or trauma. It’s thought, emotion. Um. Trauma resides in the realm of the psychological. And the third is interconnectedness.
Melinda Edwards: And I’ll talk about that a little bit more in a minute. But you know, as you can kind of sense, as we move from the physical into the psychological, the realm of thought and emotion and into this interconnectedness, this porousness, this openness, we’re moving into increasingly subtle, um, ways of experiencing the world.
Melinda Edwards: So the interconnectedness is, in my experience, what we all are at our core. And whereas individual human beings points of consciousness where we’re all journeying back to, and most of us, particularly Tammy, the people we’re speaking to who are drawn to you, have had. Experiences of that, you know, maybe when they’re meditating or, or just in life experiencing this oneness, this connection with everything and everyone.
Tami Simon: And your working thesis, if I understand it correctly, is that people on the spectrum have this natural, interconnected knowing or coming from that space, you say l with the love, with the capital L, and that we are mistaking, misinterpreting their symptoms as other kinds of acting out or behaviors we need to cure versus feeling into and respecting this interconnected space.
Tami Simon: Tell me how you got there.
Melinda Edwards: Okay. Um, primarily through my daughter. Um, but you’re, you’re right that in fact, autism is often described as a lack of connection. But with my daughter, my experience, you know, I threw her into all these therapies. I was involved in all the therapies, trying to help her be more normal.
Melinda Edwards: Um, and it pains me to actually say that, but, um, at the time there, it was from fear. Fear that she wouldn’t be able to be independent. Um, when she’s older, I’m a single mom who would take care of her. Um, fear that she wouldn’t be able to love and be loved, because that’s really what in my heart and mind, that’s what being a human being is all about.
Melinda Edwards: So I threw her into these therapies and, you know, I would watch the therapist and learn from them, learn tools how to, how to help her navigate the world, but also how to help her be more normal. Um. I started to see that, that her symptoms were often a reflection of a deep connection, that she wasn’t disconnected.
Melinda Edwards: It sort of brought me back to my original sensing of her when she was born. That got kind of overruled by my fear after her diagnosis. So I’ll, I’ll give some examples, um, of how her symptoms were. Paradoxically, it looked like she was disconnected, but it was a sign of, uh, uh, of deeper connection. So one common symptom in autism is lack of eye contact and.
Melinda Edwards: Saachi hardly ever looks at anybody. And so when she was younger, I worked for years with her therapist trying to get her to look at people thinking she’ll never get a job, she’ll never have friends if she doesn’t get look at people. And then two of my close friends who are autistic, shared with me separately and using the same words they said, the reason I don’t look people in the eye is because it’s like staring into their soul.
Melinda Edwards: And I got it. I mean, it gives me goosebumps right now. I got it. That they don’t have those layers of protection in walls that, that most of us have that separate us from other people. So that’s one example. Another is, um, my daughter. S just never understood pronouns. She does now some, but you know, he, you, she, me, I, I worked for years trying to get her to understand pronouns and her therapist did too.
Melinda Edwards: And one day a friend of mine came over and Sachi said something to her like, you know, you show you your room or something like that. You show you your room. And, and I just sighed. I was exhausted from all this work trying to help Saachi be more normal, you know? And I said, she’s saying, I’ll show you my room.
Melinda Edwards: We’re working on pronouns. It’s just a long process. And I side and my friend puts her hands on my shoulder and she looks me in the eye and she said, Mindy, of course she doesn’t understand pronouns to her. There isn’t a you or a me. There’s no separation. This friend is deeply intuitive. And it was just this.
Melinda Edwards: Aha moment, the rug getting pulled out from under me. Like where, oh my goodness, I’ve had this all wrong. Um, and then another classic symptom is meltdowns. Um, you know, people on the spectrum are exquisitely sensitive to sensory input, and it can be physical input like lights and sounds and tastes and touch or energy or other people’s emotions.
Melinda Edwards: Um, and, and it can overwhelm them, their whole system. And so sometimes that does result in a meltdown, just like, you know, screaming or yelling or crying or, um, we, you know, whenever Saachi and I go out in public, I feel like we create chaos in our wake. Not just from meltdowns, but she just never behaves in a socially accepted, you know, normal way, which now I have come to really love and appreciate.
Tami Simon: I’m curious to know a little bit more about you. Were you, did you have any interest in neurodivergence and spirituality before Saatchi was born?
Melinda Edwards: Oh, yes. Um, from the time I was young, I experienced this deep longing for truth with a capital T truth, and that is all I cared about Now, coming also from deep trauma.
Melinda Edwards: Um, my parents were medical missionaries and um, deeply conservative Christians and I was terrified growing up the whole time I was growing up that I was going to hell. And it, I kept a secret ’cause I thought there was something terribly wrong with me, you know, that Jesus wouldn’t come into my heart every time I prayed.
Melinda Edwards: So, so all of that, somehow the energy of the terror fueled. The longing, you know, a little bit later on. Um, and so I went through therapy to deal with some of the past wounding and the symptoms I was having at the time, anorexia. Um, and then reached sort of a, a dead end with therapy where I realized there’s gotta be more than this.
Melinda Edwards: You know, this is just, I’m just moving the furniture around. I could do this the rest of my life. Nothing wrong with therapy, right? Hey, that’s part of my field. But, um, but there was something deeper that I was sensing that was missing. And so through, you know, a series of synchronicities, um, ROMs came into my life and, and just this longing for truth got activated and it propelled my whole life, even as I was doing intense things like going through medical school and all that.
Melinda Edwards: Um, it, it was just. It was all that mattered to me. It was that intense, a burning, longing for truth. And then one day, um, over a period of time I came into this place of complete emptiness, um, where everything disappeared and I saw the reality of this world. Um, and nothing was real, nothing. There just wasn’t, there was no more desire, no fear at that point, nothing to move through this individual as a human.
Melinda Edwards: No reason to just, it, it just, I saw through the whole thing and it was devastating. And it was, um, just profound emptiness. And with that, all seeking died, dissolved. And over time, this was a very gradual process for me. It’s, it was like life sort of. It was like, I, I was dead and the whole world was dead, but life kind of trickled back in little by little.
Melinda Edwards: And this, now I experience it more as a dance, you know, like this, the joy of being this individual point of consciousness, the miracle of it. Not to say there’s not stuff, you know, stuff comes up. And so not to minimize the, the challenges of being human, but um. So that’s my, my sort of spiritual journey in a nutshell.
Tami Simon: That’s the spiritual side of the question. The question also that I’m curious about was, did you have an interest in neurodivergence and understanding people on the spectrum and the relationship to spirituality or not until Saachi was diagnosed?
Melinda Edwards: Not until Saachi was diagnosed. Now I’ve always loved unique, quirky people and that’s why I went into psychiatry.
Melinda Edwards: I’ve just loved people that are, don’t fit under the normal curve. Um, there’s something about that, that’s so precious to me, but specifically autism and neurodivergence not until was born.
Tami Simon: And do you, uh, think of yourself as being on the spectrum or not?
Melinda Edwards: You know, I don’t meet criteria for autism, but I, if we have to call it neurodivergence, I, I am.
Melinda Edwards: Um, I’m exquisitely sensitive. Um, get overwhelmed easily. Um, but, but here’s the thing. You know, when I came that Aha I came to a few weeks ago about, hey, I’m sensitive to, I can navigate the world pretty well. Um, I happened to be adept at that, but that doesn’t make me less sensitive. So you don’t have to be non-functional or dysfunctional or in the world to be exquisitely sensitive.
Melinda Edwards: That was the, the aha for me. It looks all different ways, and ultimately, of course, this porousness is what we all are at our core.
Tami Simon: When you get overwhelmed, how do you navigate that in, in a way that doesn’t create harm for yourself or other people?
Melinda Edwards: Well, um. Those of us who are parents of individuals on the spectrum, we don’t have the luxury of time to relax, time to um, sort of regroup, but, you know, taking deep breaths.
Melinda Edwards: Um, and when I can get a babysitter so I can take some time to myself, either just to lay on my bed or to meditate, um, or to make some phone calls, some nourishing phone calls, I do that whenever I can.
Tami Simon: Now, you talked some about your spiritual journey leading up to Sasha’s diagnosis. I’m curious because, you know, you could fill in a sentence like this blank as a spiritual path and you know, work can be a spiritual path, exercise can be a spiritual path, anything, but I imagine that.
Tami Simon: Parenting. Parenting an autistic child is an extremely intense spiritual path. And I’m wondering if you can say from your personal experience, the biggest learnings you’ve had, how it’s pushed your own growth. Well, it is, uh, an
Melinda Edwards: intense path. Um, I feel like many of us parents and just being a parent is an intense path too.
Melinda Edwards: But you know, we sort of chose the accelerated soul’s curriculum I mentioned before, just being in Saatchi’s presence, her exquisite sensitivity. Um, I can sense that. So it mirrors back to me. She mirrors back to me that part in myself. She also is exquisitely sensitive emotionally. So if I’m in the, the least bit harsh with her, the least bit, just tone of voice, even if I say something, you know nicely.
Melinda Edwards: Um, but there’s an energy behind it, there’s a tension behind it. She senses it and she reacts. So she alerts me to the places in me that are still harsh. Not that we don’t need to be firm sometimes as parents, absolutely, but you can feel when it’s coming from a place of reactivity. She is exquisitely sensitive to that and aware of that.
Melinda Edwards: Um, my reactivity to her is my own journey. Just like, like you said, life, everything is a doorway and. I get lots of opportunities and those of us who are parents get tons of opportunities to be with our own reactions.
Tami Simon: I’m curious, when you find yourself being reactive, you mentioned you can, you know, go shut a door, be alone.
Tami Simon: What’s the inner journey, if you will, the psychological journey that you make when you feel reactive?
Melinda Edwards: Um, so I, in my spiritual practice I did a lot of Vipassana meditation. So what I’ve discovered is for me, and I think probably for most of us, is that emotions are, um, born out of physical sensations. And so, you know, when they’re born then it’s when, then our mind labels it as anger, frustration.
Melinda Edwards: But to me, going to the source is being present with it in the body. So the heat in the heart or the, you know, even if it’s just the, the tightness in the jaws, or just putting my attention on my body is, um, the most common technique that I use, I mess up all the time. I mean, I have hollered at Saatchi and, um, you know, we, she has cried and we both cry afterwards and work our way through it and talk about it.
Melinda Edwards: And I, you know, tell her I’m so sorry. So I don’t wanna sit here and say I’m always, oh, using these tools and, um, no, you know, I’m extremely human and I, I mess it up. Or maybe it’s not messing it up, you know, it’s coming to the other side with my daughter.
Tami Simon: You’ve created an organization, a nonprofit called Living Darshan.
Tami Simon: And can you talk a little bit about what its goals and purpose are and explain the word darshan to people who are unfamiliar with it?
Melinda Edwards: Okay. So Darshan, um, is recognizing the divine in another being, um, that that’s what that word means. And so Living Darin is a nonprofit that’s really dedicated to deepening the understanding of autism in the world, bringing forward these deeper aspects, recognizing the divinity in autistic people, and in so doing, recognizing our own divinity because they’re reflecting back to us what we are at our core.
Melinda Edwards: So with Living Daron, we um, have sort of our education and outreach branch, um, which is just. Helping share this deeper understanding and, and supporting people in experiencing this, that it’s not just about autism, it’s about all of us. And the other aspect of it is that we plan to build a residential and retreat center.
Melinda Edwards: Um, the residential part will be a long-term residence for, for adults on the spectrum. Um, and the retreat part will be people from the community, from all different parts of the world can come and either stay on site or participate in day programs, um, in order to be able to deepen their own awakening and be sort of in this energy field of openness and porousness in the process.
Tami Simon: One of your, I guess I’ll go so far as to call it claims, is that people on the spectrum are evolutionaries, that they are pushing forward our collective evolution. And I can imagine there being some level of disbelief in people when they hear that. And I wonder if you could say more about your conviction around this.
Melinda Edwards: I guess the disclaimer would be is the people that I know who are on the spectrum, I don’t know everybody on the spectrum. And, and so, you know, just starting with that, it’s my sense, it’s, it’s a deep knowing. Um, and I guess aligning it with my own individual trajectory of my spiritual journey, becoming more and more porous and recognizing these beings as extremely porous.
Melinda Edwards: My sense is they are breaking the path for us. Energetically. Um, and just by coming into this world now, some people feel like they have come into this world specifically, um, for that purpose. And, and many autistic individuals have actually voiced that, that they are here to deepen the consciousness of human beings.
Tami Simon: I wanna end on this note, Melinda, where you take us into the experience of interconnectedness and love, if you will, meaning I think a lot of us touch it, but to actually spend time and inhabit that way of experiencing life. Maybe you could take us into it and describe it for us from the inside.
Melinda Edwards: So it is, um, something that’s really difficult to put into words, but maybe the, the people who are listening would recognize it, um, from when maybe they’ve been meditating or, or, um, maybe looked at a magnificent work of art or been surfing or, you know, we’ve all experienced these moments of oneness spontaneously.
Melinda Edwards: Um, when it’s,
Melinda Edwards: when it’s here over a long period of time and not just a moment, there’s, it’s not a, a mental idea that we’re all connected. It’s an experience of not being separate. Yes, there’s this sort of loose individual me. But there’s also this other being who is me. It’s so hard to put into words. There were in the past when I was, um, even less sort of differentiated.
Melinda Edwards: I would find myself not being able to differentiate between me and another person. But now, you know, we need some kind of differentiation as, as an individual me. But it’s this experience of whatever arises in front of this individual person is not separate. It’s, it’s part of the whole, whatever arises inside of me is not separate.
Melinda Edwards: And with that comes, you know, the, the, the qualities of our higher self of love, whatever we wanna call it. Um. Bloom or our experience from that place, like compassion or, or joy. Um, the mystery, the awe, those are qualities that I, I should say, emanate from this place of interconnectedness.
Tami Simon: I’ve been speaking with Dr.
Tami Simon: Melinda Edwards. She’s written a new book. It’s called Psyche and Spirit, how a psychiatrist Found Divinity Through Her Lifelong Search for Truth and Her Daughter’s Autism. Thank you so much, uh, for your good work, your advocacy, and for, uh, standing tall in what you know from your experience. Thank you so much, Dr.
Tami Simon: Melinda Edwards.
Melinda Edwards: Thank you, Tammy. It’s been a joy.
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