Our first DDD caseworker down in Arizona once told me that children with Autism are angels. And I don’t mean sweet, as in “precious little angels.” I mean crystal colored robes, feathery white wings, and bright, golden colored halos - the ones who embody the purest, most perfect of spirits, the ones who escorted Satan to Hell, the ones who will forever be highest and most valuable servants of God himself. You know. Angels.
This woman was the single mother of two children with Autism of her own, and she was convinced that the reason for her son’s constant attempts to jump out the second story window of her house was that he thought he could fly. She was also convinced that this was the reason for his daily escapes to run naked down the middle of the street, the reason for his need to sleep under a weighted blanket at night due to his fear of floating away unintentionally, and the reason for his trying to convince his teacher at school to allow him to build a human sized catapult for his fifth grade science project.
“He a angel, my perfect, beautiful boy,” she said, “He remember what it is to fly. He know he no belong in dis world.”
This woman was originally from Puerto Rico and spoke with such a thick accent that I couldn’t understand what she was saying at all if we were on the phone, but I could understand about half of what she was saying if she was directly in front of my face. And, one afternoon, she went on and on about these angels and about how they're unable to conform, physically and/or psychologically, to the dysfunction on our planet – the toxins, the weird shit that we do to our food, social dysfunction of any kind, etc.
“Dey sensitive to our selfish ways, it make dem sick. Dey here to show us what we doing wrong,” she said.
She used one of her other clients as an example (without breaking anonymity of course, but she worked in a city of five million people so you can only imagine the kinds of things that she saw on a daily basis). She told me that the dad had gone out drinking and hadn’t been home in days, that the mom was home but crazy with not knowing what to do, and that their house was filthy beyond anything that she had ever seen before. And she had just found their Autistic child in his/her bedroom actually scratching his/her own skin off right before coming over to my house.
“De child act out de energy in dat home,” she said, actually tearing up.
Then she looked over at my son Cale. He was standing in front of the open kitchen pantry taking one piece of cereal out of the box, spinning around one time, then eating the cereal piece, taking another piece of cereal out of the box, spinning around one time, then eating the cereal piece, etc. I couldn’t help rolling my eyes at what Cale was doing, but she said, “Dat what Autism child should look like.”
“Well, he self harms sometimes too,” I informed her.
“Dey all self harm sometimes,” she responded, “An dey all tantruming. Dey pure being in a impure world. But you doing good job. Dis very good home for Autism child. It beautiful here. I love.”
I looked around my house – at the dirty dishes on the table we were sitting at, at the piles of unfolded laundry on a floor that hadn’t been swept in days, and at the filthy little fly that had gotten into the house early that morning and was buzzing happily around her head while she smiled at my sunny yellow walls and the paintings I made back when I used to paint. I remember that moment quite clearly actually, because it was the first time it ever occurred to me how much plain, old-fashioned perception (what I chose to focus my attention on) can affect my experience of life with Autism.
She told me about a book she once read, and told me that I should read it too. I can’t remember the name of it though because it had only been written in Spanish. But this book is apparently all about these angels and about their current purpose here on our planet - if I understood her correctly that is. This was about three years ago, and I never did actually try to get the book. In fact, until recently, I had forgotten about all of this.
To be perfectly honest with you, I remember leaving that conversation feeling rather sorry for her. At the time, I found it sad that this was the kind of thing she had to tell herself in order to get through the trauma of living, and working, with Autism. You see, I don’t even have open my mouth in order to be condescending. It just takes place naturally right inside of my own head. I mean, who the hell did I think I was anyway, feeling sorry for her for believing in angels? She was one of happiest people I’d ever met, in spite of living with a son who kept trying to jump out second story windows, and in spite of the things that she saw while working as a state caseworker. And I’ve come to find out that she is far from the only person to believe in such things.
My healer introduced me to the concepts of “indigo children” and “crystal children” about whom other books have been written. They are, if I understand it correctly, advanced spiritual beings born on earth to change the energy frequency of the planet, which apparently took a nearly irreversible negative turn sometime during world war two. These beings change the energy frequency of the planet simply by being here, they don’t actually have to do anything in particular in order for it to work. Their personal energy is apparently so pure, so Godly, that it attracts like energy to the planet even while they’re scratching their own skin off, or eating cereal and spinning in circles.
Why are they called indigo and crystal children, and how would one know about their energy frequencies? It has something to do with the colors of their auras (dark blue, which is the color of healing, and crystal, golden, or clear, which is the color of Christ energy, if you’re a Christian, or consciousness itself, if you’re not). I don’t understand it any better than that, I’m afraid.
Another idea is that these children are being born because the human race is evolving. I do find it interesting that one out of 88 children is being born with Autism today (and don’t even start on me about better diagnostic tools - my non-verbal five and a half year old couldn’t sit through even one of these diagnostic tools, so they weren’t able to use any of them on him at all).
Apparently, there’s some evidence that children today are being born with strands of DNA activated that have never been activated in humans before, although I’m not aware of any hard scientific proof of this. And I don’t know what I think of any of this stuff to be honest with you, nor do I have any opinions for or against any of it. I simply like to gather information for the pure, glorious pleasure of information gathering. I find it rather fascinating that these kinds of ideas are out there at all. Anyway, this DNA thing is where the genius thing that my healer keeps harassing me with, comes into play.
If I understand it correctly, indigo children are children with high-functioning Autism (although, the literature actually states that indigo children tend to be diagnosed primarily with ADHD in general). There’s no concrete definition of an indigo child, but I've probably found about a hundred lists of common characteristics, the most prevalent being that they're unable to conform to dysfunction – namely shallow social graces, or authority for authority’s sake.
The one physical characteristic is that they tend to have large, striking eyes. They’re advanced beings (either angels or from the future or from other planets or dimensions, try not to roll your eyes), so they’re smarter (spiritually) than we are and they know it. They’re in tune with what’s important to them, and tend to ignore what's not. They can see right through anything that isn't real, and can spot a drop of dishonesty like a dog senses fear. They tend to be rather spirited, and sometimes mean, but they have an innate innocence that really can’t be explained. They’re here to heal the world and other people with their presence, and to plow the way for the crystal children.
Crystal children are the ones being diagnosed with Autism. Apparently, they don’t learn to talk right away (or at all) because they don’t need to. This is because they read minds (try not to roll your eyes, I know it’s hard, I’ve been trying not to roll mine about this for some time now).
To transmit information in this way is faster and more accurate than talking is, because it includes not only words but also every emotion and physical sensation involved in the communication. Apparently, it takes crystal children awhile to figure out that other people don’t necessarily read minds like they do, especially when parents are responsive to communication attempts that aren’t verbal. If you think back to what it’s like having a baby, parents know what the baby needs even though the baby can’t yet say it. Well, apparently, this is why crystal children tend to think they’re parents can read minds too. It’s because they sort of can. It is believed that all humans will eventually be communicating exclusively in this way.
An annoyingly eery example – My daughter, Isabel, touched a spot on our healer’s forehead and asked, “How did you get this bump on your head?”
I looked, and didn’t see a bump. But my healer touched the spot on her forehead and said, “Ohhh, that’s right. I do have a bump right there.”
I tried not to roll my eyes.
Then my healer said to Isabel, “Here, I’ll show you how I got it. Close your eyes.”
They both closed their eyes, so I went ahead and let mine roll right on into the back of my head.
Isabel kept her eyes closed for a few seconds (remember, Isabel’s “sensory issues” include activities that involve balance and movement), and then she opened them again just before my healer opened hers. Then the healer opened her eyes and asked Isabel, “Did you see it?”
Isabel said, “Yeah, I saw you surfing.”
And my healer said, “That’s right, I was surfing. Then I crashed right into the beach and hit my head.”
Isabel had opened her eyes before she saw the healer crash, thank God. And I found myself thinking, “Don’t show her images of you surfing and crashing! Do you want to scare her to death?”
But isn’t it kind of funny that my first thought wasn’t, “She SAW you surfing? How in the hell did she SEE you surfing?”
I probably have about a dozen examples like this about my kids. I have no doubt that Isabel and Cale read minds to some extent, and Isabel in particular knows things all the time before they actually happen. But I also think that we all do, or can, to some extent, so I’m still not convinced that this is something inherently special.
I’m sure I’m not doing the concepts of indigo and crystal children justice here. There’s a lot more information on all of this if you’re interested in looking it up. I should warn you though that there are plenty of rationalists vomiting their Nietzsche backgrounds onto all of these lovely ideas too – sentences like, “The parents of “Indigo and Crystal children” are just new age hippies who want to view their childrens’ disabilities as something special instead of something bad.”
And my response to that is, so what?
I go back and forth actually. When my heart is suppressed and my mind is solid and very much in control, I tend want to tell the new age hippies to take their “no proof” ideas and stuff them into their bongs. But when my mind is sad and hurt and defeated, my heart takes over and finds it incredibly comforting that, “There’s something very wrong with your child,” can be replaced with, “There’s something very, very right with your child.”
I tend to be a bit of an existentialist actually, in that I think the things in life mean whatever we make them mean. I mean, what does it actually matter whether or not something is true? Anytime I’ve ever heard an argument about whether or not something is true (who gets to be right and who has to be wrong), it has always been the silliest argument I’ve ever heard. This is what I hear,
“The walls are a soft, sunny yellow.”
“No, there are dirty dishes on the table!”
“No, the walls are a soft, sunny yellow!”
“No, there are dirty dishes on the table!”
It’s an argument you hear people have all the freakin’ time about all kinds of different things if you eavesdrop the way that I do. But the only thing that’s actually true is that people are looking at the same things with different perceptions, and hurting each other in the process of their arguing.
The way I see it, I’m the only one who has to live in my own skin. Therefore, I get to believe whatever makes me happy. Because, in the end, none of it is true and all of it is true, or, truth is really whatever we decide it is. And I believe that the things that are in front of me are in front of me for a reason, otherwise they wouldn’t be there. This frees me up to believe that it’s all true, if for no other reason than because it’s more fun than believing that none of it is.
The only issue I really have with the “angel” and/or “indigo/crystal children” ideas are that they still make my kids different than other kids. And they are different, there’s no denying that. But we all are, aren’t we? It’s the one common denominator amongst all humans, that we’re all different from one another. Funny enough, it’s the only thing that makes us all the same. All children are here for some magnificent spiritual purpose. And of course we’re evolving. We always have been, and we always will be. And every human being on the entire planet is a crucial part of that.
The one thing that has stuck for me in learning about all of this stuff is that I can use the Autism in my life to help me become the kind of person that I’ve always wanted to be. It’s funny how when the outside dreams start to die (the perfect family, the 2.4 normal children, the white picket fence, etc.), the inside dreams (who I'd really like to be in relationship to the people, places, and things in my life) can then become the dominant motivators in my life.
Whether or not it’s true that the purpose of the Autism in my life is to make me better person, is irrelevant. If I use it for that purpose, then I’ll get to get better. I mean, if you think about it, you can really use anything in life for that purpose. And it helps me a lot for the Autism to have a purpose, even it is nothing more than one that I’ve created.
I started writing a book some time ago, but I stopped when I got to the part where I could no longer avoid talking about my brother. It was a block like I’d never known before, because in order to write out my own story I have to expose my brother in his entirety. My brother has never officially been diagnosed with high functioning Autism. He’s thirty six years old now, and being raised next to him has colored every single perception I’ve ever had in my life. But I couldn’t write about it because I couldn’t risk pissing him off.
I talked to him about this these new aged hippie ideas (the indigo, crystal child ideas) a couple of weeks ago, and these ideas held his attention for nearly three hours straight (and nothing that I’ve ever seen has ever held his attention for that long before). And I said to him, “Do you think it’s possible that you’re here to bring out the worst in others so that they have to see, and possibly heal, those parts of themselves?”
You’d think this was a rather offensive question, but he actually laughed. And I don’t mean that he giggled. I mean that he laughed from the very core of his belly (a very unusual thing for my brother to do). This question touched a truth in him somehow.
“You didn’t bring out the worst in everyone. Well, almost everyone. But in some people, people at that old church camp we used to go to for example, you brought out the best,” I told him.
“There’s this lady at work,” he said, “and she has to put her glasses right in the center of the napkins. And I can’t help myself, I really can’t help it, I swear. I just… sort of… push the glass slightly off center. And she looks at me, picks up the glass, and sets it back in the center of the napkin. And as soon as she’s not looking, I move it off center again.”
I sighed a sigh from the bottoms of my toes, because that right there is an example of why our childhood was the way that it was.
“I’m writing a book,” I said.
“Oh, wow,” he said.
“And you’re in it. And I mean everything is in it – the bullying, the gangs that tried to blow up our house, all the things that mom thinks gave you post traumatic stress, are going to be in the book. I’ve decided to go ahead and write it. But when I’m done, I’ll read it to you (because he can’t read past the third grade level), and if you don’t like it then I won’t try to get it published,” I said.
And he said, “Oh, I think you should just write it and get it published if you can. I don’t mind what anyone thinks.”
My block was removed that day, and it made me think back on the prayer that I said for Cale, “Dear God, I’d like to see you cure anything in Cale that can be cured, and I promise that I’ll love him no matter what.” And this is where it has led me so far - what if it’s not really about getting people with Autism to conform to the ways of this world? What if it’s really about healing my own perceptions, looking at the yellow walls instead of the dirty dishes, of my own life? It’s dawned on me that maybe one of the things that needs healing in my son’s life is actually me.
I'm back on writing my book again and this time with my brother’s permission. But, even though I'm very happy about this, I’m still not making any promises about actually producing a book because every time I set myself up like this I seem to get blocked again. But, oh well. I still get a lot out and processed this way. And thanks for listening.
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