Neuroatypicality - an esoteric view

[Polyhymnia]

I think that the sometimes emerging attitude of hiding things in pathologies – outer "absolute" problems, which are so much more easier to understand as blocks & tags – would disappear, should there be also more sets for "healthy" behaviour. To show how different people can be, in good & bad, assets & handicaps, without there being one rigid normal.

There is a series of youtube videos my friend introduced me to recently that interviews people with various physical handicaps and neurodiversities in an effort to showcase exactly this and it's quite incredible how eye opening it is, at least for me, as it showed me how uneducated I've been in the idea that things of this nature don't exist in absolutes.

[Angolmois]

Often times my empathy (if it can be called that) isn’t the kind where emotions are obviously present.

I would even say that the feelings are not the most important part of empathy. They can even become a substitute for actual empathy. By "empathy" I mean most of all compassion, the living conviction of buddhic unity, which ardently seeks to help. To lessen the suffering of the world. Once discovered, this buddhic understanding is like an ever-burning torch. In case one confuses empathy as compassion and love with feelings, its outer veil, problems will arise.

I would have never thought that feelings and empathy could be separated. This gives me a whole new lens under which to view empathy as a whole. Sometimes while empathizing with a specific situation I will become frozen or sick with sadness. Though I am able to overcome this with some quiet, inner work, I identified it as a part of the empathy. I think this separation (empathy/feelings) will help me work through it quicker, and with practice, to a place where maybe I won't need to work through it at all.

In case one considers compassion in an emotional way, one is likely to spend one's days in complete emotional suffering which leads to complete inability to do anything and one is likely to be destroyed under this kind of strain, since no one can bear emotionally the kind of load that this brings. It is also very likely that it ends up in anger, resentment, and paradoxically even in violence since emotions are made up of sympathies and antipathies; one will want to destroy that apparent source of suffering. I have been here. For the past few years I have been living in emotional numbness but I think it has only brought forward true compassion that can work its way through the intellect maybe even better than through emotions.

[Polyhymnia]

In case one considers compassion in an emotional way, one is likely to spend one's days in complete emotional suffering which leads to complete inability to do anything and one is likely to be destroyed under this kind of strain, since no one can bear emotionally the kind of load that this brings. It is also very likely that it ends up in anger, resentment, and paradoxically even in violence since emotions are made up of sympathies and antipathies; one will want to destroy that apparent source of suffering. I have been here. For the past few years I have been living in emotional numbness but I think it has only brought forward true compassion that can work its way through the intellect maybe even better than through emotions.

...wow. You just described what happens to me on a regular rotation. I just don't know how to stop thinking of compassion in an emotional way. I hope that as I progress on my Path I, too, may carry this torch of buddhic understanding, and gain the keys to help unlock the doors along the way.

[Angolmois]

I just don't know how to stop thinking of compassion in an emotional way.

Maybe you should practice some LHP oriented detachment, namely detachment from identification to emotions. It can make you externally more cold but doesn't take away compassion internally. It works at least as a safety measure towards too much emotional suffering and make one more functional.

[Polyhymnia]

Maybe you should practice some LHP oriented detachment, namely detachment from identification to emotions. It can make you externally more cold but doesn't take away compassion internally. It works at least as a safety measure towards too much emotional suffering and make one more functional.

I don't even know where to start for such a task. Sometimes I feel that in uniting my paths, my left often falls short of my right. If you or anyone else is willing to give me some guidance/suggestions, I'll be very glad to listen.

[Angolmois]

Maybe you should practice some LHP oriented detachment, namely detachment from identification to emotions. It can make you externally more cold but doesn't take away compassion internally. It works at least as a safety measure towards too much emotional suffering and make one more functional.

I don't even know where to start for such a task. Sometimes I feel that in uniting my paths, my left often falls short of my right. If you or anyone else is willing to give me some guidance/suggestions, I'll be very glad to listen.

First of all I need to say that I'm not that good in detachment myself either but this is the "by the book" advice: one should practice "positive indifference" to any emotions when they arise. For example, the suffering of the world doesn't go anywhere if one burdens oneself with it too much, it actually increases. Right? Learn to say "I am not this".

As Nefastos said well in The Left Hand Path, LHP kills/destroyes the emotional identification; you freeze yourself regarding emotional identification (ice). You Let yourself die, apparently: what a relief!

Then, invoke joy; it doesn't necessarily take away the emotional burden but it does make it lighter to bear by counter-balancing the suffering. For example, think all those things that are beautiful and well in the world and in your own life. Learn to be happy, even in Hell. "When fasting, do not look sad like the hypocrites". Focus on your immediate surroundings, give all your love to your close ones. Heaven starts from home.

Focus on some practical work and mundane tasks and do them as well as you possibly can; cleaning the house works for me. Invoke fire: The world is as it is, so there's no reason to dwell in its incompleteness too much, you can start whenever to make it better by focusing your strenght on some idealistic work of whatever nature that is. If any work is out of the question for the time being and music is your thing, turn the volume up and sing along. Pray aloud; no, shout! It brings a release.

An esotericist will have to learn to function even when there's no hope, without despairing; it may require forcing (in a positive sense). One works for eternity, so patience is also a semi-absolute requirement. No hope, no fear.

These are my two cents.

[Polyhymnia]

Ah, two cents worth more than gold. Thank you. This gives me a very good jumping point. The exercise in positive indifference will be the most challenging, but that’s a good mantra to repeat.

[Angolmois]

The exercise in positive indifference will be the most challenging, but that’s a good mantra to repeat.

That's a very demanding exercise in which I'm only a beginner myself also, especially now when my emotional structure has gone through a small scale vivification. (On a side note, one Finnish esotericist pondered that one reason for schizophrenia could be that one has lived too intensely in emotions - in the astral plane.)

[Polyhymnia]

That's an interesting theory. Has anything in your experience pointed to there being some truth to that?

[Angolmois]

Has anything in your experience pointed to there being some truth to that?

Everything.