I have made mention of a brain project I have been undertaking. I am leary to talk about it, but my intuition says maybe I should, so I will trust it if you are willing.

Well, they have discovered under FMRI that people with autism display what they call low functional connectivity. In a normal persons brain, at the same time one part is processing the thing it does best, it also simultaneously signals another region of your brain. This referencing region is what pulls those processes together and present it as something like a whole experience.

My autism is brought on by a mutation of my p-ten gene, which is responsible for cell division, especially neurons, and my neurons are larger than normal with far too many branches. In my experience, for some reason I do have access to regions of my brain that in theory I shouldn’t have, which does distort my perception quite a lot, but I have been improving that. But this is not the interesting part.

Sounds like you have an advanced brain. Thank you for saying so. I’m not sure I would call it that myself, but it does seem to be very chambered, compartmentalized. But the interesting part is, during my adolescence I suffered from seizures specifically in the temporal lobe. According to research this tends to make one prone to mystical thinking and alters their grasp of language. All I have really been doing my whole life is trying to manage my brain. I haven’t had any idealistic goals, no over arching beliefs, just finding a model of information that would make my brain make sense.

Well, with the new advances made in neuroscience, as well as my tendency to feel free to dabble in and use “fringe” science (it’s all the same to me), I have made headway. My intelligence testing is much improved. My coordination and affect of mood management is much improved, and I am discovering that there is indeed a coherent framework behind my experiences. This is why in the past I have been so wide ranging in my exploration, and really I still am. But before, it was all just artifacts that looked like they fit my jigsaw puzzle with no real sense of the picture.

I still find that what has proven true, and what is still showing up in my daily life experience and perception, is still universal. There are symbols for it everywhere and in every culture, but now I am also able to narrow it down to a smaller subset of symbolism. My reason for doing this is simple. Is a map of much use if it doesn’t show the place you are at? Or doesn’t give you any idea where you personally are on the map?

No, you always first look for the ‘you are here’ spot. A generic map of the mall is fine, but if it doesn’t show you where you are standing, you still have to guess and wander around in frustration. But yes, the cascading signal during my seizures wasn’t featureless. I could feel a seizure coming on because I would begin to cycle through altered states. I got really familiar with them, and after I grew out of the seizures, I could still navigate through them freely, easily, no drugs or special exercises necessary.

Aren’t seizures a way of the brain relaxing? The exact opposite. They are a total brain convulsion. The physical convulsions are just a side effect of the brain convulsion. I have had my entire organic brain fire at the same time, all at the same time, and well, it doesn’t leave things unchanged. Imagine your body not being actually injured, but for some reason your entire body and all your senses screamed at you at the same time. Can you imagine having your feet yell at you that they exist?

It must be incredible, total awareness. Actually, very, very frightening, because your entire sense of reality slips around you. You can’t be sure food is food, or a smile is friendly or preparation to bite you. You wind up having to make up your own mind again. This is why I delved into examples of holistic belief systems. World views, as most people presented them to me, just didn’t make any sense at all. This is perhaps why they say I am autistic and why they say I lack empathy and theory of mind. I can see those things that people feel have meaning, but they just don’t mean that to me. They don’t feel like that to me. I feel guilt for confusing people. I feel no guilt for contradicting people. I feel sympathy for heartbreaking relationship states. I feel no sympathy for physical hardship. I feel sympathy pains for peoples body image, and nothing for their body language. At least the projected body language, what they are deliberately communicating.

I don’t like people touching me, not because I am anti-social or prissy. Mostly because casual touch feels dead, automatic, and when my body begins to imitate that my mind rejects it completely.

I like animals touching me. Oh, I do too. I befriend animals easily. I only ever have a problem when they show psychological scarring, relics of human interaction, but that usually takes a long time and often extreme circumstances. So most pets are just fine, very young children still in their formative years. People remark how strange it is that they take to me when I am a “stranger”, which just makes children uncomfortable usually.

Why do you think they take to you? Communication. I feel present to their instincts which haven’t gone by the wayside. It’s not even necessarily always something I enjoy, but maybe that’s why they say first impressions are everything. Your presence is your presence if you are in fact sharing your natural presence. Otherwise, you just share a distorted version of your natural presence.

Can you feel us out here? I can. When I open my awareness, I feel something like a river of energy, or like a very busy and complex wind. If I focus on just a sample of something you communicate, or something you create, like your presence here in Second Life, I can use it as a conceptual address or phone number, sort of like psychic DNA, and pick out which part of the energy is you.

Generally, any specific persona is heavily tagged though. So people insist I should be able to tell their mind by some trait they identify with. To speak metaphorically, it’s like saying, “Oh, it’s the big green house. You can’t miss it.” But the sides of that green house are heavily tagged. It doesn’t look green at first glance, but if I look for a little bit, I can see a green corner to the wall, or recognize some natural feature you are connected to. This sound crazy?

So that’s what I have uncovered in my work so far.

Your thoughts are welcome. Be well friends.

Travis Saunders
Dragon Intuitive
~science,mysticism,spirituality~