I’ve been interested in theories linking autism with spirituality ever since I was 17. At this age, I was extremely depressed and wanted to find more meaning to my life than being stuck at school, feeling stressed about exams and how my grades would dictate my future path. I started reading interesting theories online linking autism with spirituality which gave me hope when coming to terms with how different I was to everyone else at school. Since then, life has been busy. But now, lockdown this year has given most people this year a chance to discover new things and that has certainly been the case for me. I’ve dived into reading books linking autism with spirituality, partially as research for my book Girl, Misunderstood as it’s an area that continues to fascinate me.
After carrying out a poll on Instagram, I was really pleasantly surprised about how many people were interested in this topic. Without further ado, here are my favourite books linking autism with spirituality:
AWEtizm: A Hidden Key to Our Spiritual Magnificence
This book is about the journey of a non-verbal, autistic girl called Lyrica and her mother Gayle. With love and patience she stops at nothing to penetrate her daughter’s wall and communicate with her daughter. As time goes on, Gayle is welcomed into Lyrica’s world. At age 8, Lyrica begins to communicate, first on a keyboard, spelling “I am not retarded, I am intelligent!”. While Gayle attempts to teach her daughter, she discovers that Lyrica is an enlightened spiritual being, sharing wisdom beyond this world.
As Gayle opens up to Lyrica’s gifts, miraculous events begin to shape her life. Lyrica and friends, Leslie, Kellen, and Sara, write how they love their lives in autism and are here with a grand purpose. They share their mystical abilities, including telepathy, soul travelling, healing, oneness, gridding Earth energy, and communing with angels. Lyrica reveals that autistic souls are wired at a higher frequency that enables them to experience multidimensional worlds.
The book is written in two parts: first, her mother describes her younger years, including bits of material Lyrica had written, and how she overcame obstacles and lessons, and the second part is written by Lyrica. I found the first half of the book extremely difficult to read and found myself skipping large chunks of it. It was like I felt it was too painful to read through Lyrica’s experiences as autism is still something that is deeply misunderstood. It broke my heart to learn that when she was younger, she hated people. She laments, “Bitter people treated me like I was retarded. No way to hope in happiness. Lived to feel hurt. Hurt was the only feeling I knew. Not trust in any person or anything.”.
The second part was like a breath of fresh air. It was like the comforting feeling of being under a weighted blanket. It showed me a totally different perspective on autism from a perspective we rarely get any insight into. She explained everything I’ve always known in my heart, but was not validated by society in any way. A society that believes autistic people have an inherent deficiency, a disability, who do not “understand” others. And in many ways, the latter is right. According to Lyrica, the truth is autistic people “are service orientated and agreed to come here to be Lights into the world”. She explains that they have an “autism shield of protection” with the aim of not “becoming part of its (the world’s) lower consciousness”.
So many people will ask “well, if they were here to be spiritual teachers, why don’t they speak?“. She explains this very clearly in the book. There is a clear reason for this. According to her, it is difficult to speak the truth in this dimension due to being attacked in toxic and hurtful ways. She explains “we must hide our voices until the world is ready to hear them”. She explains that “we have held our truth silently until the world vibration can hold a Higher Message.” She shares her truth that autistic people have stayed separate to not share Earth consciousness, that which is characterised at the moment by selfishness and service to self before service to others.
I found her section of the book absolutely fascinating. It made me think about the autism spectrum itself, and how interesting it was to think that those who are non-verbal could have a stronger connection to spirituality than those who are not. I realised that although we are on different ends of the spectrum, we have the same feelings about the world. This book made me feel seen somehow, and helped me to understand more about myself. She said that we have to learn to empower ourselves and “rid ourselves of the energy holds that live in the poor reputation of autism“. “We have to come out of our shells and take a stand. We must speak for those who are trapped in silence. We must stop the hatred of autism and seed its truth“.
It made me think, that’s what many of us are doing on social media. We are spreading messages of empowerment, and in being autistic advocates teaching our message of self-love and self-acceptance, we are paving the way for a brighter future.
You can find the book here.
Pleaidians on Autism
This next book is very “out there” and also very mysterious. I was lucky to find a copy of this book when I did because the book has since mysteriously vanished and is currently unavailable in all online stores. This book is about a psychic woman who channelled messages from an entity known as Alexandrit for the Pleaides. The Pleaidians are said to be an alien civilisation from a constellation of stars near the constellation of Taurus, who are kind and loving and wish to help those of us on Earth. After her Dark Night of the Soul, she established a mental connection with her and this book was the result of the channelled messges she received.
I loved this book for a variety of different reasons. First of all, one of the main messages of the book is that autistic people choose to be born autistic as it is their soul’s path. They are said to come from the Pleaides, but have chosen to be born here on Earth. Not every autistic person is from the Pleaides, and they key to differentiating this is whether or not the person goes through karmic experiences. According to Alexandrit, Pleaidian autistic people they have come for the purpose of helping the planet transition to the next stage of its evolution. While most humans come here for karmic experiences, autistic people do not come here to learn life lessons and to develop through human experiences. The autistic mechanism has been developed to enable the Pleaidian essence to arrive and settle on Earth in human bodies, without losing this consciousness altogether.
Although I found it hard to distinguish between a Pleaidian autistic and a ‘normal’ autistic person, I really liked reading more about this idea that we have a different purpose here on Earth. I’m not sure if I resonate with the Pleaidian idea, I find the Lightworker label more familiar and easier to resonate with personally speaking, but I like that there are similarities. I have definitely had quite a lot of karmic experiences which means that I don’t resonate with her idea even more, but I wonder if the purpose of these karmic experiences was to help the people I came into contact with evolve which corroborates with the idea that we have a different soul’s path to other people here on Earth. And perhaps these experiences were initiatory for me, as they have made me a stronger person.
She explains throughout the book that autistic people have two purposes here on Earth. The first is healing family karma. Fear, anxiety, lack of trust, anger and violence is in almost every family unit. These fear-based energies are passed down through the generations and create more karma. For example, guilt is one of the most common ways to energetically abuse children. Autistic children tend to be born into family units as they do not respond to those same elements of power, control and guilt. Or if they do, they are more likely to heal from this as adults and stop the passing down of family karma, therefore raising the vibration of the planet. I really liked the addition of this into the book because I think it could bring comfort to autistic people who have had to deal with narcissistic family members. It brought comfort to me, as I am trying very hard to heal from the power plays I was exposed to as a child.
The second reason that autistic people have come here it to perform what she calls inter-dimensional consciousness work. If this is true, this corroborates with the first book, where Lyrica goes into great length about how she connects with other autistic people telepathically to perform crystalline grid healing. This is something I found quite alien to me, but I think it’s fascinating nevertheless. So, apparently, Pleaidian autistic people are here to heal the crystalline grid, which surrounds the entire Earth and works as a selective filter of frequencies, by enabling only light frequencies to go through it. However, there is another grid situated between the crystalline grid and Earth that prevents ‘light’ from penetrating and reaching the planet. This is called the shadow grid. Over thousands of years, this has become condensed and now very little light energy can reach the planet. The time has come to “shatter” the shadow grid, and this is the reason why they’re here. I believe that even by autistic people being here, is enough to help raise the vibration of the planet.
I could write a whole essay on why I love this book, but I’m going to have to stop myself there! It’s absolutely fascinating. The book corroborates with a lot of alternative material I have read, and it again really presents a different perspective on autism than society’s view. I would argue it is more important for autistic people to find meaning than the general population due to our isolation and alienation at various points in our life, and I think reading this book could be of some comfort to people who are equally as interested in spirituality as I am.
If you would like to know more about this book, please feel free to contact me.
Autism and Spirituality
As for the next two books, I didn’t quite enjoy them as much as the previous two. I think it’s because the next two are academic in a sense, and the amount of information in these books are overwhelming in comparison to the first two which read as stories. Although a lot of the information in this book went over my head, I really liked her analysis of the sensitivities found in autism. She goes into greater depth about this than other articles or books that I have read, and there are many interesting observations that she talks about, particularly how autistic people have different ways of expressing themselves because of their sensitivity.
One of the interesting myths that she busts is that of empathy. As we all know, there are a lot of myths that are spread around about the fact that autistic people lack empathy. This summer, I started reading a book called Empathy by Roman Krznaric and was shocked to read that he lumped autistic people in with psychopaths as being two of the worst categories for having empathy for others. According to him, these 2% of people are not “hard-wired” to have empathy, unlike the other 98% of people. Shocking, right?! And this book is about having empathy for others! Quite ironic, really.
The author busts this myth, explaining that there are two types of empathy: emotional empathy and sensory empathy. ‘Normal’ people have emotional empathy but some of them may be very deficient in sensory empathy. By sensory empathy, I mean that autistic people can pick up the emotions (emotional energy) of others and become quite distressed by it. I’ve lost count of the amount of times I’ve asked people close to me if they’re angry with me, and when digging deeper, find that something else is troubling them and they aren’t angry with me at all. She explains that this might be the reason why autistic people exhibit ‘challenging’ behaviours as they seem to amplify their carers’ emotions and feed them back. She quotes Temple Grandin (2006) who says the following:
“I really relate to physical hardship. I have observed that normal people have had bad visual empathy. They are often not able to perceive how another person would see something.”
Another thing the author talks about is that of spiritual intelligence (abbreviated as SQ). Spiritual intelligence is the ability to ask ultimate questions about God, the meaning of life and the ability to experience the connections between individuals and the world. Wolman (2001) distinguishes seven factors of spiritual intelligence: divinity, mindfulness, extrasensory perception, community, intellectuality (a desire to study and discuss spiritual material and/or sacred texts), trauma and spirituality. In particular, the author brings our attention to a particular list that delineates ten distinctive features of highly developed SQ:
- The capacity to be flexible (adaptive).
- A high degree of self-awareness.
- A capacity to face and use suffering.
- A capacity to face and transcend pain.
- The quality of being inspired by vision and values.
- A reluctance to cause unnecessary harm.
- A tendency to see the connections between diverse things.
- A marked tendency to ask ‘Why?’ or ‘What if?’ questions to seek fundamental answers.
- Being ‘field-independent’ (being able to work against conventions.
- Being responsible for bringing higher vision and value to others (inspire others – being a servant leader).
Although she doesn’t explicitly say so, I believe that she is trying to imply that there are traits of autism which allow autistic people to have a more highly developed SQ. By being detached from other people to a slight degree, it can allow us to have a more spiritual experience and go against the norm. It would have interested me to see whether this is what she was trying to imply. Her work reads more as an introduction to various different topics, but there was no argument running through the book which slightly disappointed me. Nevertheless, her examination of autistic traits and sensitivities was an interesting read.
You can find the book here.
Autism and the God Connection
Another really good book to read is one called Autism and the God Connection. The book helps parents realise their child’s uniqueness and reaffirm that our gifts can be seen as a blessing. Through multiple interviews, William Stillman (who is also on the autism spectrum) documents extraordinary examples of spiritual giftedness, and boldly challenges our traditionally held beliefs about people with disabilities.
Right from the beginning, he talks about the pitfall of an autism diagnosis in our society. He says “the clinical definition of autism is not family – or individual – friendly. It is, unfortunately, oftentimes an indicator of one’s perceived deficits rather than one’s strengths, gifts and abilities. Many parents tell me their child’s diagnosis is a death sentence… The focus so frequently becomes how to best manage and control those with autism for the sake of conformity and normalcy.” This interestingly corroborates with both the Pleidians on Autism and AWEtizm books, where the authors all state the same thing: by the parents seeking for their child to be like everyone else, this actually damages autistic people more than does them good.
According to Stillman, he belies that “if our souls are on a path of perpetual learning in a journey toward attaining spiritual perfection, it may be congruent that those individuals with the greatest life challenges are among the most advanced of souls”. By stating this, he implies that although autistic people ahve more challenges, that we are the most advanced of souls because we have had to overcome a lot of challenges in just one lifetime. He repeats what an autistic girl called Angela has told him:
“I pray Heaven has a plan for my life. God loves people with lives like mine.”
It is his belief that we are selectively chosen to be challenged in collaboration with a Higher Power. He explains “no wonder autistic people often use the analogy of feeling like strangers on a foreign planet – the distance from their spiritual tier to our earthly plane is vast”. Reading this quote gave me goosebumps because I truly believe we operate on a different “frequency”, and this is why as a result we have such a difficult time here. If you’re reading this and feel sceptical, it might comfort you to know that he does not want to suggest every autistic person possesses multisensory abilities (such as being protected by divine intervention) but it does seem to be a common thread.
There are too many stories to review in detail, but I’ll share my favourite one. He describes a group of autistic people called The Nightingales which was a monthly gathering from across Pennsylvania and its bordering states. They all used alternative forms of communication including Facilitated Communication, and each member brought his or her communication device to the meeting, whether it’s a paper keyboard or an electronic word processor. By email, he contacted the leader in 2003 to add to the agenda the topic of autism and spirituality. The leader, Mark, forwarded the request to the group and he received his greatest response ever as many had a strong interest in this, and the biggest turnout to the meeting ever. As he met with the group, and spoke to them, people gave their various comments:
“You are a blessing.”
“Not everyone understands.”
“I teach loving. I picked my life… I have an old soul that is nearer to Heaven. I was an old soul a long time. I love my life… I want to give my gifts to all.”
Not only that, but many of them explained how their spiritual protectors were grandparents with whom they were close. One told him “I have seen grandpa so many times when I felt I could not go on. He has told me that I can go on and I should because I have a job to do before I see him again.” As a result of sharing, many family members also present at the meeting were brought to tears when hearing of such divine experiences.
I really enjoyed reading this book because a lot of it resonates with me. I am in awe of the author who bravely came out with this book despite the complaints and negativity directed towards him for speaking his truth. I think he was brave to do so because autism is still vastly misunderstood, and many people cling to their version of the truth, one in which autism is a “lifelong disability”. This is just a label, or one version of the truth, but it doesn’t have to be every autistic person’s truth. This book emphasises that it may look that way on the surface, but there is a reason as to why we chose this life.
You can find the book here.
I really hope you enjoyed reading my review of these books, and I hope that in doing so, they make you question things the way that it has helped me to question and evaluate my own journey. It can often seem like being here is an uphill battle and that life is meaningless but according to these books, it seems like we have a lot to do and to give while we’re here. I hope these books serve to encourage you along your journey.