YOUR COMPANY NAME
A tagline about your business
You May Be “Insane” and
Don’t Even Know It!
An Egopathy Handbook
How to “hear yourself think”
Copyright © 2006, 2010 Drew Mcpherson
ISBN 978-0-9782441-1-8
Thanks to all who have come into my life and enabled me to go through the sufficient experiences to write this book. You really inspire me. You know who you are.
If you enjoy this literature, look for my upcoming book about sociological structures, and how to design a better society which doesn’t have all of the downfalls of capitalism.
Copies of this book and the other works of Drew Mcpherson may be obtained at www.DrewMcpherson.com
Table of Contents
Foreword........................................................................................ 6
Introduction................................................................................. 7
The Psychological Spectrum................................................ 12
The Full Spectrum..................................................................... 32
The Triad of Imbalances.......................................................... 40
Egoic Expression of Imbalance............................................. 47
Personality Expression of Imbalance................................ 57
Emotional Expression of Imbalances................................. 69
Physical Expression of Imbalance...................................... 73
Pathway to Ill Health.............................................................. 79
Recovery Process...................................................................... 88
Appendix A.................................................................................... 111
Appendix B.................................................................................... 113
Glossary...................................................................................... 115
DSM Translations..................................................................... 120
Foreword
My main motivation for writing this book was because I was having difficulty understanding people and their psychological makeup. I have researched and studied the available literature on mental disorders and it seems completely inadequate. I have seen many supposedly sane people who seemed very unbalanced to me. Yet an aspergian who, in other cultures might be considered a shaman or healer, is deemed to have a serious illness.
Autistic children have even been said to have “mad child disease”. This reminds me of a movie that came out recently called “The Boy Inside”. It describes an aspergian child who has difficulties at school. He is teased, taunted, bullied and has a really hard time getting along with other children. So, during youth, if you are a violent, sadistic bully, then you are considered to be “normal”. If you are passive, good-natured and are bullied, attacked and mistreated in the schoolyard, then you are believed to have a “disorder”. Does this seem reasonable to you? Who is really the “mad child” here?
Not much changes in adulthood, except that the bullies sometimes grow up to be cops who have guns and clubs and can confine their targets in cells while they verbally and physically assault them. Abuse has become legally sanctioned by the state, and this social policy is creating more and more unbalanced psychopaths.
Introduction
Whatever you believe about yourself is true
Whatever you believe about yourself is true. Our thoughts are powerful tools; they can propel us to be outstanding, social members of society or they can drive us to the brink of insanity and beyond. In order to avoid the latter, we must separate the productive thoughts from the destructive thoughts using logic, knowledge and experience.
As many people are becoming increasingly aware, our thoughts have the ability to alter reality in astounding ways. Thoughts have the power to cure illness and disease, and to cause it just as easily.
When in a state of physical and psychological balance, our intellects, emotions and physical bodies function exceptionally well. We are capable of solving problems, feeling love and compassion, and staving off infection. It is only when something upsets that balance that we become vulnerable to all sorts of illnesses of mind and body.
When perfectly balanced, an individual has a propensity towards either predatory behaviour or philanthropic behaviour. That is to say, either the individual behaves more like a parasite or more like a host. If the individual is willing to satisfy selfish desires at the expense of others, then the individual is defined as parasitic. These individuals are called neurotypical. This term fits because the typical person, as a result of human evolution is predatory by nature. With intervention it is possible to change this innate biological tendency. On the other hand, if the individual is predisposed towards generous and self-sacrificing behaviour, much like that of a voluntary host organism, then the individual is defined as aspergian. Too much of either tendency can be unhealthy. A proper balance is somewhere between these two extremes.
There is a range of neurotypical and aspergian behaviours, which roughly relates to how much the individual is able to empathize with how their behaviour affects others. I have combined these concepts into what I call the psychological spectrum. Every person has a certain propensity towards predatory or host behaviour and has a certain level of empathy. These factors combine into a concept which is called the individual’s “spectrum value”.
The two ends of the spectrum are different forms of psychopathy. Psychopathy is characterized by a lack of empathy for other living organisms, humans included. On the one end, neurotypical psychopaths tend to behave like ruthless predators, satisfying their every desire at the cost of tremendous suffering of other living creatures. On the other end, autistic psychopaths tend to be recluses who are unable to form meaningful bonds and relationships with other human beings. People at each end of the spectrum are unconcerned with the immediate feelings of others, and are willing to go to any lengths to accomplish their objectives. While they are sometimes intellectually aware of the feelings of others, they either cannot understand the suffering and trauma that they are responsible for, or they simply do not care.
People towards the middle of the spectrum are more considerate and nurturing towards the immediate emotional turmoil of other living creatures.
A person’s spectrum value is in constant flux. Life experiences affect his empathetic knowledge and his state of balance, which has the effect of moving him along the spectrum in one direction or another. Experiences which instill stability and understanding will move an individual towards the middle of the spectrum. Difficult times or abusive treatment can erode an individual’s state of balance, and bring instability. If the instability is resolved with unhealthy coping techniques, this will effect a shift towards the ends of the spectrum. Antisocial triggers can be programmed as defence mechanisms, causing the individual to behave like a psychopath.
In addition to defining the psychological spectrum, I will also be describing different types of imbalances and how they manifest. All ailments, whether they be psychological or physical are related to an internal imbalance. Imbalances are common and often useful in the short term, though they can spiral out of control and become serious illness. I define three primary imbalances which I call the triad of imbalances. Nearly everyone suffers from some form of imbalance at some point. Let’s face it, life is traumatic. Many suffer chronically and don’t even know the reason why. Any time you have an unpleasant emotion, any time you lash out at someone, any time you come down with a physical symptom, the reason is simple. It may seem complicated and unintelligible. You may be told that it requires powerful medications with severe side-effects, or destructive and invasive medical procedures, but these are only band-aid solutions. The cure to all of these ailments is to rectify the problem at the source. This is how people mysteriously go into remission from diseases like cancer and AIDS.
Modern medical science aims to treat the surface level of problems, while completely missing the underlying root cause. It is kind of like pushing on an air bubble under some wallpaper. It is going to pop up somewhere else because the bubble isn’t the actual issue; it’s the air underneath the paper. The raised bubble only allowed you to see the underlying problem, but treating it does nothing to help you. The issue will recur in some other way. To resolve the issue for good, you are going to need a way to get beneath the surface level and pop that air bubble. If you allow the air bubble to grow and keep pushing harder and harder on it, it may eventually break open, but that is going to get messy and probably severely damage the wallpaper – ie: you.
Treating disorders at the superficial level is actually beneficial for the medical industry because it ensures that people remain unbalanced and sick, or that they have relapses and require additional expensive treatments. In a capitalist society, everything comes down to money, even health care. If there were a treatment that could genuinely cure someone of an ailment, then once someone was cured, there would be no need for them to keep spending money on pharmaceuticals and medical procedures. Pharmaceutical companies and medical professionals would go out of business. By keeping everyone sick, it becomes a self-sustaining, and very profitable industry.
The current definitions in the official manual of mental disorders used by psychiatrists and psychologists segments psychological disorders into discrete categories. Given the broad range of human experience, I feel this is quite unfair and limits the ability of practitioners to describe a patient. Also, the definitions pertain to superficial emotions and behaviours only, which makes it difficult for practitioners to accurately identify and treat the root cause of a patient’s suffering. Therefore, I have decided to redefine a person’s psychological state into a four dimensional continuum.
Let’s take a look at the definition of “continuum”:
1. A continuous extent, succession, or whole, no part of which can be distinguished from neighbouring parts except by arbitrary division.
This pretty accurately describes how I view the psychological spectrum and the triad of imbalances that I define in this book. Current psychiatry involves arbitrary and biased interpretations. Hence a diagnosis is often subject to dispute from practitioner to practitioner, and can never be exact. One small mistake and a person could end up in the wrong category, subsequently being subjected to contraindicated treatments. My objective is to create a more dynamic rating system which is simpler, but also acknowledges the ever changing, intangible breadth of human existence.
The Psychological Spectrum
Direction reveals everything.
You’ve seen them on the streets. You’ve seen them at work. You may even have one in your household. I speak of creeps, weirdos, freaks, psychos and other “crazy” people. Did you know that someone probably even views you in this way? Did you ever stop and think about why you view a person as “crazy”? Is it because there is some sort of universal truth about sanity which can be defined absolutely? Just like beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so too is sanity. I call this the law of psychological relativity. This means that those “freaks” probably view you as being insane too, and maybe you are.
Consider the following two stereotypical extremes: The first is an upstanding businessman, always well dressed and very keenly versed in etiquette. This person exhibits traits of selfishness, greed, jealousy, and an unhealthy need for pride, all with serious repercussions for those around him. He is basically a con artist, a thief, a liar, yet he is very charming and people seem to like and trust him instantly. He doesn’t care about other people beyond what they can offer him and he would seriously consider robbing his own mother if she had something he really wanted. He is the perfect salesman. This is an example of a neurotypical psychopath.
The second stereotype doesn’t fit in to society quite as well. He is a strange man who wanders around wearing colours that clash and clothes that look like they are from the 50’s. He has strange mannerisms and speaks in monotone most of the time. He acts friendly enough and graciously raises his porkpie hat to every passer by, saying “Good day to you fine sir”. Most people find him far too creepy and weird to even respond to his pleasantries. He may have genuine goodwill towards others, yet few would invite him over for dinner. Most people don’t trust him and wouldn’t even buy a newspaper from him. If you got to know him, however, you’d realize that he is so generous that he would give you the shirt off his back if he thought it would help you, even to his own detriment. He is willing to sacrifice immediate pain and suffering, his own and others, for what he views as the greater good. This is a problem because not everyone agrees on what is the greater good. Another big problem with him, is that he often says things which, while true and accurate, are hurtful to the feelings of others. He fails to see how white lies are any better than blatant ones. He has no recognition of the reality of how his words affect the emotional suffering of others, and quite possibly doesn’t even care. He is tactless and impolite. He is an autistic psychopath.
Autistic psychopaths and other aspergians are viewed as hostile and are often bullied in youth, shunned as adults, and labelled as being “mentally ill”. Because they are so selfless, and mistakenly assume others to be the same, they are often taken advantage of, and sometimes become jaded as a result. All of these ill treatments worsen the condition significantly, and often results in voluntary social reclusion. Acceptance and lack of judgement is needed to help them achieve a better state of balance. Unfortunately, because they are in the minority, and because they look so similar to others, they are frequently the victims of discrimination. Traditionally, discrimination has been committed against people with visually recognizable physical differences, though this has improved in recent years. In the case of aspergians, the differences are neurological. It is easier to get away with discrimination against them because there are no visually obvious features that set them apart. This does not make it any less hurtful, or any less real.
The neurotypical psychopath on the other hand, having masterful social prowess is able to talk his way out of negative labels as well as responsibility for his actions. In fact, clever neurotypical psychopaths are able to not only commit atrocious acts of cruelty and get away with it, but can actually convince others that they ought to be rewarded for it. Did you know that the man who invented lobotomy was given a Nobel prize? That pretty much sums up neurotypical psychopathy in a nutshell. Anyone else involved in turning someone into a mindless zombie by cutting open his skull and removing parts the brain would have been locked up and the key thrown away. That’s neurotypical psychopathy for you. It is likely that you know some neurotypical psychopaths and don’t even realize it. They are frequently found in positions of power in corporations and government. They are often ruthless businessmen and smooth-talking salesmen. Neurotypical psychopathy is an extreme case of a more general neurological architecture called NeuroTypicality. NeuroTypicals (NT for short) are wired similarly to neurotypical psychopaths but are much more balanced. They have many behaviours and motives in common, but are much less selfish and much less ruthless. Life experiences which instil empathy can bring someone who is born a neurotypical psychopath closer to the middle of the spectrum, and away from psychopathy. In fact, both types of psychopaths need to understand how their words and actions affect others.
Why is it that in our society, autistic psychopaths are classified as “mentally ill”, despite the fact that their intentions are generally oriented towards the greater social good, while neurotypical psychopaths who are purely selfish and antisocial are not even listed in the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistic Manual of Mental Disorders), the official manual of mental disorders used by psychiatrists and psychologists? Ironically this question contains the answer within itself. Autistic psychopaths have no interest in social manipulation because they do not desire to take advantage of others. Neurotypical psychopaths have much to gain and everything to lose when it comes to politics. They would much rather steal someone else’s belongings or ideas than develop them on their own. So naturally they strive to become masters of deception and manipulation starting at a very early age and are successfully able to fly “under the radar” of psychiatrists’ diagnostic abilities.
When unbalanced, humans begin to behave like psychopaths. Their spectrum value shifts from its original biological value towards the edges of the spectrum. When this happens, I call the condition egopathy. A lack of balance due to excessive ego mimics psychopathy. This is an unfortunate yet sometimes necessary function of self-preservation. In many cultures, there is a high rate of imbalance, and hence many otherwise stable and healthy people occasionally behave like psychopaths. This is the reason that in some city sectors you cannot leave your house or car unlocked for fear of being robbed. Many are non-violent and don’t even use physical force to breach your sacred places. Some deviously clever neurotypical psychopaths use the power of trust and manipulation in order to steal from you.
There is a broad range of different types of people who would be considered neurotypical versus aspergian, so I have defined a spectrum to classify this aspect of a person’s psychology. The two different categories of people can be described using the same spectrum. The two ends identify the least sociable psychopaths. The closer to the middle someone is, the more sociable they are. The least sociable example of a neurotypical on the one end is a neurotypical psychopath. The least sociable example of an aspergian on the other end is an autistic psychopath. Most people exist somewhere between these two extremes, usually towards the neurotypical end.
The definitions in the standard manual used by practitioners, titled the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistic Manual of Mental Disorders), currently only recognizes the aspergian half of this spectrum. It classifies the entire spectrum as a “disorder”, yet this is not necessarily the case. The truth is, autism is not a disorder at all. It is a different, not defective value system. It is far removed from the moral values of con artists, liars and other types of neurotypicals. Many of the most significant contributors to the body of art, literature, physics, music and everything valued by society, portrayed aspergian traits. Albert Einstein, Ludwig van Beethoven, Alexander Graham Bell, Alfred Kinsey, Bob Dylan, Bill Gates, Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Thomas Jefferson, Isaac Newton, Mark Twain, Vincent Van Gogh, Alfred Hitchcock, and others all exhibited stereotypical aspergian traits. Can you imagine Einstein being a used car salesman and conning you out of your money? He was certainly smart enough to do that, so why didn’t he? The reason is related to the reward and punishment systems of the brain. This concept is captured in the “psychological spectrum”.
The psychological spectrum looks like this:
Neurotypical
Psychopathy
Autistic
Psychopathy
(---------- Neurotypical -----------)
(------------ Aspergian ------------)
Another significant difference between neurotypicals and aspergians, besides level of selfishness, relate to communication style. Aspergians typically communicate verbally using semantics in a very logical fashion, precisely as described in the dictionary. Neurotypicals communicate primarily with emotional pragmatics, such as nonverbal information including tone of voice, inflection, and body language cues. Naturally, these two communication styles make it difficult to interact with each other. Human evolution towards verbal languages has progressed past the need for highly subjective and difficult to define pragmatic information. There is no standard pragmatic dictionary. There is, however, a standard semantic dictionary, which makes semantic communication much less confusing and ambiguous. Aspergians are far removed from the grunts and groans of caveman times, whereas neurotypicals still use nonverbal communication extensively. Verbal communication evolved for other reasons as well. It is more efficient because you do not need to be looking at the person you are communicating with. Your eyes can be focussed on an alternate task. No longer does communication have to take up 100% of your attention span. Also, with the advent of text-only mediums such as the internet, this style of communication is not only useful, but necessary.
When a neurotypical is deciphering the communication of an aspergian, he will be reading into the meaning of the words beyond that which is defined in the dictionary, unbeknownst to the aspergian. Naturally, many pieces of false information will be deciphered because the aspergian did not craft the pragmatics in the way that the neurotypical is expecting it. Similarly, when an aspergian attempts to decipher the information in a neurotypical communication, unless he is acutely aware of the existence of nonverbal information, he will be missing a huge part of the message.
This communication dilemma is the source of much conflict. Naturally each type of individual assumes that the other is communicating in the same way, which is not necessarily true. It is important to recognize the neurodiversity of human existence, especially when interacting with other members of the species. Assessing the communication style of the person you are talking to is very important to prevent misinformation from being integrated into each other’s belief systems. A simple miscommunication can and has been the source of tremendously destructive conflicts and wars. With empathy, we can all move closer towards the middle of the spectrum, and find a common ground whereby we understand the strengths and limitations of each other.
Also, with verbal-only communication comes a responsibility to be honest. Imagine an aspergian civilization, where the sole method of communication is verbal and semantic, which is full of liars. There would be no way to determine that a person is lying, and so misinformation would be rampant to the point of being extremely destructive to the civilization. Those aspergians who were dishonest would quickly become extinct, and so as a consequence of the evolution of this new communication style, a congenital predisposition towards honesty is also part of the aspergian DNA. Naturally, life experiences can and often do change this biological tendency, particularly when living with neurotypicals who become upset and defensive when the brutal truth is told to them in a way which lacks tact.
The two ends of the spectrum are different types of psychopathy. The neurotypical psychopath is “too selfish” at the expense of others. They are concerned with their own needs and desires far above and beyond those of anyone else. This trait results in anti-social behaviour and the successful neurotypical psychopaths end up with great personal wealth and power.
An aspergian is sometimes “too selfless”. It may seem strange to consider such a thing, but it is entirely possible.
A good analogy to illustrate this concept is when on an airplane and the cabin loses pressure. The oxygen masks drop and you need to secure it on your face during the turmoil and confusion which ensues. The safety lecture always makes sure to inform you that if you are travelling with a child, you must put the mask on yourself first, and then focus on the child. The seemingly selfless thing to do, though not very well thought out would be to put the mask on the child first. This is absolutely counter-productive. If you try to put the mask on the child first, you will be struggling to do so while you cannot breathe yourself and run the risk of passing out before you can do this – potentially resulting in both your deaths. By helping yourself first, you are in a much better position to help others, namely in this example a dependent you are travelling with.
A person can not only be out of balance by being too selfish, but also by being too selfless. Neither condition is particularly beneficial overall in the long term.
In the extreme case an aspergian can become an autistic psychopath. This type of person doesn’t care much about himself, nor does he care much about other humans, or sometimes other creatures or things in general. An autistic psychopath might be concerned with the earth, the universe at large, or something much bigger than this. This makes it very difficult to fit into society, when society is not seen as the “greater good”. The human race can sometimes be seen as a virus on the face of the earth that is destroying the planet and trying to escape into the universe to destroy other planets and solar systems. So naturally it is hard to fit into a society which he views as being a parasite on the face of the earth.
It is important to note that neither neurotypical nor autistic psychopaths are necessarily delusional. These psychopathic conditions are simply extreme examples of traits present in everyone. The reasoning behind the thinking is perfectly rational and sound, given the motives. Psychopathy is simply a matter of a severe lack of empathy for one’s own species. It is not illogical, it is merely anti-social.
Despite the fact that they have problems with empathy, and perhaps as a result of it, psychopaths are the kind of people who accomplish truly significant things and are remembered for a long, long time. Some accomplish things which contribute to humanity, like Beethoven. Some accomplish things which are extremely destructive, like Hitler. Tasks can be accomplished more effectively when there are no moral barriers preventing certain courses of action.
The reason for particular psychopathic behaviours relate to a person’s primary core motivational force. This is sort of like how ants have a particular caste, something they are good at and that they desire to do. Humans also have a driving force like this. A few examples are: the pursuit of knowledge, propagation, protection, leadership, etc. When we feel that our ultimate goals are not succeeding, this drives us to push harder and take more desperate measures to accomplish them. Psychopathy is often a combination of someone who is born with a very high drive to accomplish their tasks, coupled with life experiences that have made it difficult to feel like those goals were fulfilled. It is at this point that someone goes to extremes to fulfill their destiny. For instance, someone with a driving force of propagation might become a serial rapist. Someone whose driving force is to protect, might create wars just so they can fight off the enemy. Someone who is driven to be a leader, might seek out desperate individuals and create a cult.
Perspective works both ways. Those on the neurotypical end of the spectrum may view aspergians as being mentally disturbed. Conversely, those on the aspergian end of the spectrum sometimes view neurotypicals as being evil, lying, manipulative scoundrels.
Neurotypicals quickly learn to tell white lies to make others feel good, especially on first impression. Many people make their judgements about a person’s character within the first few minutes or even seconds of seeing someone new. Once a person has made up his mind about the intentions of a new acquaintance, it is very difficult to change this view. That is why a clever neurotypical psychopath will always seek to make the best possible first impression. Once he’s got his “victim” hooked, he can do almost anything and get away with it. In fact, some victims will defend their abuser even after they know what has happened. This is similar to the Stockholm syndrome, but to a slightly lesser degree and far less obvious. To aspergians, this kind of deception isn’t understood. They erroneously assume that since they always want to know the truth, others must also.
To an aspergian, a friend is someone who you would do anything for and give anything to, and know that they wouldn’t ask unless they really needed it. To neurotypicals, friends are people who have something to offer. There has to be a way of achieving personal gain from an individual, otherwise a neurotypical will have no reason to associate with the person. So naturally, it is easy to see how aspergians might be taken advantage of by neurotypicals. To alleviate these problems, it is important to teach empathy to each type of individual during childhood. This way aspergians can understand the need for neurotypicals to be made to feel good with tact and proper timing, and neurotypicals can understand how hurtful it is to take advantage of and bully others. Children start life near the ends of the spectrum, having very little knowledge about how they affect others. It is important to teach them empathy to help them to mature and move closer to the middle of the spectrum.
There can be a lack of empathy in both directions, because of the erroneous belief that others are fundamentally similar to ourselves. The old adage “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” definitely does not apply. This would only be true for two people at the exact same position on the psychological spectrum. No wonder there is so much confusion and mistrust in the world. A better adage might be “do unto others as they would have you do unto them”. Naturally within this is the implication that we must first know how others wish us to treat them. Neurotypicals seem to be born with an innate understanding of how their words affect the emotional state of others. Aspergians seem to lacking this, but are better at understanding the fairness of actions. These strengths can be leveraged to help in one’s life path, but an overall understanding of the effect of both words and actions is important for a balanced social existence.
It is possible to move back and forth on this spectrum throughout one’s lifetime. Spectrum values are by no means permanent. In fact, they usually fluctuate wildly throughout a person’s life time, and even sometimes within the same day, week or month. Certain factors may shift a person in one direction or another. The most abrupt changes in spectrum value occur due to changes in a person’s state of balance. For instance, severe abuse will usually create an imbalance in someone, especially a child which will tend to shift him towards the psychopathic ends of the spectrum. This is mainly because of the desperate coping methods needed to survive temporarily. It is hard to learn empathy for others when your primary concern is staying alive and avoiding harm. Later in life when these coping methods are no longer needed, the individual still uses them, though they are unwarranted and inappropriate. The problem is that during childhood, adaptation to circumstances is quick and easy. Later in life, most people have more difficulty adapting to new situations. They seem to become “set in their ways”, and so it is harder to recover from the prior experiences and fit in to new circumstances.
Have you ever noticed that basic military training and childhood abuse have a lot in common? Both have the effect of pushing a person towards the psychopathic end of the spectrum. If pushed far enough, you can create a trained killer, which of course in the military, is the ultimate goal.
Just the act of hanging around individuals of similar spectrum value will gradually shift a person towards that spectrum position. For instance, if a neurotypical hangs out with aspergians for long enough, he can become “aspergated”, which basically means that he has shifted towards the aspergian spectrum. Likewise, aspergians who live with neurotypicals for long enough eventually pick up their traits and habits, learning to use pragmatic communication and the power of politics better. This also works with animals. Have you ever noticed that pets eventually begin to behave like their owner?
It is often possible to detect relative differences in spectrum value of new acquaintances, intuitively, at first glance. It all has to do with the language you speak. I’m not talking about French or English. I’m referring to nonverbal communication. It has been observed that nearly 90% of all communication in any neurotypical interaction is nonverbal. This is particularly the case in communications with females. Incidentally, females are rarely aspergian. Nonverbal communication refers to such things as tone of voice, inflection, body language, facial expressions, gestures, and even more subtle movements. When a person walks up to you, he is broadcasting a massive amount of information, which is sensed and processed almost instantly by your brain without even being aware of it. This is an evolutionary trait that is used to warn of unfamiliar and potentially dangerous encounters. This is similar to the kind of communication that occurs between humans and animals.
People at a vastly different location on the spectrum than yourself, will seem weird or creepy or crazy or untrustworthy. There is an instinctive desire to help others shift towards one’s own spectrum value because of this. Someone closer to the neurotypical end of the spectrum than you will appear to be too selfish and you will want to help them learn to be kind and good to others. Someone further towards the aspergian end of the spectrum will seem too selfless and will have trouble charming people in social situations and will be frequently taken advantage of. Their neurotypical friends will want to help them to learn some political manipulation techniques to help them to win friends and influence people. Ideally there would be acceptance of all human spectrum values, without feeling the need to try and “help” them to overcome whatever limitations they may appear to have. If all people were at the same position on the spectrum, then the depth of human existence would be very shallow indeed. There are inherent advantages in certain situations for different spectrum value. No position on the spectrum is superior to any other. With increasing empathy, we can all learn to understand each other and live together in harmony.
Animals are also able to detect a person’s spectrum value. Have you ever noticed that animals react differently to different people? They too get that “creepy” feeling when they encounter someone who is far from their spectrum position. Some people tend to creep out most animals, and others are loved nearly universally by them. This is actually a pretty good indicator of compatibility. Let your pet check out a potential friend or companion. If your pet gets along with this person, and presuming that you get along with your pet, chances are, that person has similar intentions to your own.
We don’t say that someone has “neurotypical spectrum disorder”. Why not? The symptoms of being a neurotypical are just as debilitating as those of being aspergian. In fact, if the world were filled with mostly aspergians, neurotypicals would have a very difficult time trying to survive. They would be viewed as inherently different, and would be outcast from most social circles. They would have extreme difficulty communicating with nearly everyone. They would have trouble making friends and getting jobs because their motives would be seen as ulterior, and overly political. The reason that this is not considered a disorder is because most people in the world today are neurotypical, and it would be very alarmist to say that most people are on a spectrum which is considered to be a “disorder”.
It is unfortunate that the psychiatrically defined “autism spectrum” ended up being classified as a “disorder”, simply because most people currently are neurotypical and have difficulty empathizing with aspergians. Additionally, a source of confusion about what it means to be aspergian exists because many aspergians also happen to have organic brain damage and have come to the attention of the medical profession because of this. Few people would attempt to classify successful engineers and architects (who are often aspergian), as “disordered”.
Someone who is near either psychopathic end of the spectrum needs to learn healthy ways of relating to people. It is important not to force the issue, and let them develop at their own pace. By trying to push physical contact onto an aspergian child, for instance, you may only be making it more and more awkward for him. Great care must be taken not to appear to be preaching doctrine. It is better to point out the advantages of more empathetic social contact interactively during applicable situations. This is one type of knowledge that is very difficult to pick up in a “classroom” type setting. Real world experiences are needed to fully understand the benefits of being sensitive to the feelings of others.
A psychopath experiences discomfort from activation of the punishment system in the brain when viewing others’ happiness. This is often manifested as envy, and there is an inclination to interrupt the happiness of others to end the suffering of the neurotypical. Conversely, when a person is suffering, a severe psychopath feels good. This is an evolved trait of many types of predators. Cats are a good example. When they capture a mouse, they often don’t just kill it right away and eat it. They injure it, and then play with it for a while. The mouse, in the meantime is suffering in pain and anguish, deliriously trying to escape with whatever life it has left intact. Why does the cat do this? Do the fear juices that course through the poor mouse’s veins make it taste better? Unlikely, since tryptamines are quite bitter. It’s that the cat’s reward system is activated by watching the mouse suffer. A trait of a predator, a psychopath, is to enjoy watching the suffering of other living creatures which feel pain.
So now that we have a better understanding of what the psychological spectrum is, I can define more precisely this relationship between “sane” and “insane”. The law of psychological relativity states that people of similar position on the psychological spectrum will view each other as being relatively “sane”, and feel a desire to interact with one another. Those who are relatively far away from each other on the spectrum will view each other, respectively, as “insane”, and find interactions to be unpleasant for the most part. The farther away two individuals are, the more “insane” they believe each other to be.
The human race as a whole is much like a frightened child who is just beginning to learn to socialize in healthy ways. During early human evolution, it was necessary to develop selfish psychopathic tendencies to survive predators in the wild. Nowadays this concern, which was of primary importance in the past, is virtually nonexistent. Gradually, we are all shifting more towards a balanced state of existence, rather than a fear-based predatory one.
The human race originally evolved as a race of predators. It used to be that in ancient times there were both homo-sapiens and neanderthals on the earth. The neanderthals were more intelligent than homo-sapiens, with a larger brain mass. The homo-sapiens, however, were fairly intelligent and capable themselves, and had violent, predatory tendencies. The neanderthals were a peaceful, community-based race who genuinely displayed the cultural traits that are considered ideal by today’s standards. True group co-operation and sharing was their lifestyle. Homo-sapiens, however, being as violent and ruthless as they are, saw differences in the neanderthals, and fought them. Racism was born, and the homo-sapiens managed to actually genocide the entire neanderthal species.
Now that thousands of years have passed since then, the human race is still undergoing an evolutionary process. This past evolutionary history is the reason why most people today are neurotypical. Ironically, there is now a shift towards more aspergians being born, which is making the human race more and more like the neanderthals that were killed off so many eons ago.
Naturally, the first few mutations have difficulty dealing with an entire race that looks so similar to them, yet is different in so many ways. As with any evolutionary process, sometimes the mutations don’t work out quite right, and there are deformities. Since this particular evolutionary trait involves the brain, sometimes there are severe brain abnormalities, and the specimen ends up with organic brain damage. This is likely the type of autistic person that you may be familiar with because they are so prominently different.
Some of the ones that don’t end up on Darwin’s chopping block end up becoming known as the brilliant minds of our time. Eccentric, thoughtful geniuses are being born every day, more and more frequently. By 2012, there will be so many that a shift in the entire world consciousness will be inevitable. A new age of autism is dawning upon us. We ought to welcome the newcomers with enthusiasm and open arms, rather than shunning them and labelling them with a disorder.
Saying that autism is a homo-sapien mental disorder would be sort of like saying cro-magnon is a chimpanzee mental disorder. It would also be like saying that a person with dark skin has a disorder, and they ought to be “cured” in an effort to turn their skin white. There is no neurotypical person hiding underneath the autism. The only thing that is accomplished by giving them antipsychotic drugs is to damage their brain via chemical lobotomy, turning them into drooling zombies who cannot speak up for their rights. Please look towards acceptance of neurodiversity, rather than a misguided attempt to eradicate something which is not understood.
If anything, it would make more sense to say that neurotypicality is a disorder. For instance, Hitler was a neurotypical. Also, did you know that the neurotypical man who invented surgical lobotomy was given a nobel prize? That frighteningly summarizes societal values just a mere few decades ago. In my opinion, someone who endeavours to open up people’s heads and cut out parts of their brain to watch them become mindless drooling zombies has serious problems. This is a textbook example of someone very far out on the neurotypical spectrum, quite close to psychopathy.
When an individual is experiencing internal turmoil, this is called an imbalance. Individuals with severe imbalances can sometimes behave like psychopaths even though they are not normally that way. When this occurs, it is called egopathy, because the ego, which is responsible for all imbalances, is creating a condition that mimics psychopathy. The following chapters describe the different ways that imbalances become manifested in reality.
In summary, the differences between aspergians and neurotypicals is so significant and consistent that I would say there exists a legitimate variety in the trinomial species nomenclature, which I would call homo sapiens autistic.
The Full Spectrum
The previous chapter defined a psychological spectrum. While extremely useful in order to classify and understand individuals of different natures, it is not technically complete. The 1 dimensional spectrum was the “dumbed down” version which fits most people you will encounter.
The more complete psychological reality is that there are several dimensions which combine to contribute to a person’s complete psychological makeup. It just so happens that most of the time there is a correlation between the dimensions and so people generally fall onto a very predictable pattern in the multivariate psychological vector space.
For the sake of completeness, here are the set of axes that make up the entire psychological vector space from which the 1-dimensional psychological spectrum is drawn:
Attention Distribution (AD): Monotropism vs. Polytropism. Low attention distribution is monotropism. High attention distribution is polytropism.
Monotropism is the ability to focus on a single task at the exclusion of all else. It is a general way of thinking that often occurs in autism and asperger’s and makes it difficult to read non-verbal cues while simultaneously in verbal conversation, but makes it easy to concentrate on a single task to a very deep level of understanding.
Polytropism is the ability to focus on several tasks, activities or stimuli simultaneously. Polytropic individuals find it easy to have several overlapping conversations with different individuals simultaneously and to read non-verbal cues while speaking and listening all at the same time. Polytropic individuals have a difficult time focusing their whole attention towards a single task for long periods of time.
Selfishness (S): Dishonesty used for the purpose of personal gain is a hallmark of selfishness. The opposite of selfishness, selflessness is when one sacrifices personal gain in order to help others.
Intelligence (IQ): Intelligence is defined as the ability to accumulate, store, retrieve and use knowledge in theory and practice.
Empathy / Ethics (EQ): Empathy is a level of understanding of individuals other than oneself. Generally it is easier to understand individuals who are similar to oneself than to understand individuals who are dramatically different in terms of their core values and principles. Ethics is a manner of behaviour in practice which demonstrates a high level of empathy towards others.
The simplified 1-dimensional psychological spectrum as defined in the first chapter roughly flows from low attention distribution and selfishness approximately linearly towards high attention distribution and selfishness. Intelligence and empathy are low towards the ends of the spectrum, and high near the middle of the spectrum. As was noted by Dennis Gabor in his book “The Mature Society”, there is a correlation between IQ and EQ, so I am simply extending this observation with my own about attention distribution and selfishness.
It is difficult to visualize, but imagine a segment of an upward spiralling helix inside a more complete four-dimensional vector space. Trying to visualize this should make it clear as to why I simplified it into a 1 dimensional line.
In early human existence, certain characteristics were needed to survive.
For instance, polytropism was absolutely essential to survival. The ability to detect and respond to threats from different directions using different senses simultaneously was absolutely crucial to avoid being eaten by a crocodile or ravaged by a bear. Imagine an autistic in prehistoric human civilization. He would be staring at a shiny rock with fascination to the exclusion of all else and along comes a predator like say a lion and eats him. Autism was not a good genetic adaptation in early human history.
In today’s society however, such threats generally do not exist. In industry it is far more efficient and powerful to engage in monotropism and concentrate on one task to the exclusion of all else, much like wearing blinders. If a caveman were to put on blinders, he probably wouldn’t survive the day. In the modern workplace, if someone is overly polytropic, they’re going to be responding to stimuli all over the place, gabbing to people here and there and completely disrupting the productiveness of the work environment.
Today however, it is a genetic advantage to be predisposed towards the monotropic form of sensory and cognitive processing. This is resulting in a paradigm shift in humanity towards monotropism because it is beneficial to functioning and surviving in the current environment. Darwinism explains the reason why more and more autistics are appearing and thriving in our world today. A monotropic individual tends to be better suited to most tasks in industry, therefore resulting in receiving higher wages and being better able to procreate and support several children.
It seems plausible that the incidences of individuals born with monotropism, or autism as it is sometimes mislabelled are not rising, but rather those with this trait are now surviving more often, whereas in early human history they would likely not.
In addition to the genetic predisposition towards monotropism which occurs in autism and asperger’s, every single human being has the ability to be either monotropic or polytropic along a spectrum of possibilities.
During early childhood brain development, the mind becomes wired to adapt to its surroundings. There are parts of the mind that are already hardwired at birth, but much of it develops in the first few years of life. This happens primarily in the white matter of the brain where connections are made from one brain area to another. It is my contention that the genetic difference in between autistic individuals and neurotypical individuals is that in an autistic there are fewer connections already pre-made at birth. This essentially gives the autistic a bigger “blank slate” to work with in order to adapt to the environment and create connections in response to stimuli during the first few years of life.
Scientific evidence shows that during the first few years of life, the brain development occurring in an autistic is more rapid and encompasses a larger area than any neurotypical. This has advantages since the autistic has the ability to adapt more completely to the environment, but it can also be problematic in hostile environments because the autistic is far more sensitive and far more volatile to change during this period of brain development. This period of childhood development, particularly for the autistic should be treated in exactly the same way as a foetus still in the womb. Any repeated harmful stimuli at this phase will result in major long-lasting adaptations to that stimuli, which could be problematic later in life.
Selfishness was an important survival trait as well. Today pretty much everyone can count on survival. But in early human development, when resources were scarce, it was essentially guaranteed that some would die off. Selfish competition was needed to ensure that it was the strong who would survive. Those who were more powerful and adept would get to eat and live on whereas those who were less capable would die off. Simple Darwinism combined with the state of the environment has resulted in genetic human neurotypicality.
Nowadays, the environment has changed so much because humans have dominated it, so neurotypical traits are no longer advantageous. In fact, they are a detriment in many professions. So while the principle of Darwinism still applies, it is ironically different types of individuals who now have the advantage because of the changes in the surrounding environment; the lack of predators and the abundance of resources.
Look around you. Humans have conquered the planet. The built-in mechanisms in our minds and bodies that have allowed us to accomplish that are no longer useful, but are actually destructive at this point. These very mechanisms that have allowed us to rise to power are going to trigger our very downfall – unless we transition to the next level of human evolution.
Innovations in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) technology have allowed the structure of autistic brains to be compared to that of a neurotypical brain. This is pretty exciting because it demonstrates some key differences. Before I get to talking about what those differences might be specifically, let me explain briefly the technology which allows these differences to be detected.
The technology used to perform these measurements is called diffusion tensor imaging (DTI). This technique allows measurement of the anisotropy of tissues. What does this mean? In human tissues, there are often patterns whereby tissues have individual fibres which tend to travel in a parallel direction next to one another. This is common in muscle fibres and oftentimes in certain areas of the brain known as white matter.
A good analogy to understand this concept would be looking at the internal structure of a tree. There is a grain to the wood which travels in a certain direction. Alternatively, perhaps a more apt analogy for the brain would be to look at a bundle of cables which are all grouped together and travelling from one location to another. The brain has many bundles of this sort in the white matter deep within the centre of the brain.
Let’s compare the brain to a computer network. The brain has grey matter on the surface which is analogous to a bunch of computers. There is white matter beneath the surface which contains numerous long strands of neural fibre, called axons. These axons connect one part of the grey matter to another part to relay information. So this would be like the network cables which connect individual computers together.
In a neurotypical brain there are generally many connections all bundled together between specific parts of the brain. Individual parts of the grey matter tend to activate when performing specific human functions, such as using language, or mathematics and logic etc. This allows different parts of the brain to specialize in certain types of computations. Because of this, medical science has been focussing on examining these individual parts separately to determine their specific function.
What the new studies have shown, however, is that in an autistic brain, the typical bundles of axons which connect specific parts of the brain are not laid out in the usual way that is expected to be seen in a neurotypical brain. So where a neurotypical brain has thick bundles of neural axon fibres connecting certain parts to one another, the autistic brain does not have these. The connections tend to be scattered to a lot of different areas simultaneously.
What some have hypothesized this to mean is that the autistic brain is less well connected compared to a neurotypical brain. This is true to an extent, but I believe an important upshot of this fact has been completely overlooked.
Consider a specific area of the brain, for instance Broca’s area which controls a person’s ability to speak. The connections in a neurotypical brain to this area tend to be mostly to and from the Wernicke area which allows these two specific areas to collaborate and perform their language functions while leaving the rest of the brain to perform other tasks. In an autistic brain however, the connections to Broca’s area are spread out to many different areas of the brain, rather than being primarily to the Wernicke area. This means that in order to engage in speaking, an autistic needs to engage his entire set of cognitive resources. This makes it difficult to focus on other things simultaneously, like the visual field, hearing or other senses. This makes perfect sense, considering that autistics find it very difficult to pick up non-verbal cues when they speak.
There is a benefit to having interconnections to many different areas of the brain instead of just between two specific ones. For instance, when an autistic focuses on performing a certain specific cognitive task, he will be engaging more grey matter resources simultaneously than a neurotypical can. As a result, he will appear to be more proficient at the task and be able to contemplate more aspects about that task simultaneously than a neurotypical could. The neurotypical may be using only the Broca and Wernicke areas to speak, but the autistic is using more cognitive resources to perform the same task. So his pronunciation, grammar and proper use of dictionary definitions tend to be far more precise than most neurotypicals of similar intelligence.
Intelligence and ethics tend to be positively correlated as described in The Mature Society by Dennis Gabor. This is easily verifiable and stands to reason as mentioned in his book, so I won’t duplicate his work on that topic. Nevertheless, these two axes are important in understanding the different manifestations of autism and asperger’s.
Briefly put, the higher the intelligence, the higher the ethics. This is generally the only stable configuration for a society since if it were the reverse, our world would be filled with master criminals who would quickly tear it apart at the seams. Furthermore, since ethics is just a manifestation of empathy which is essentially just knowledge, it stands to reason that a person who has high intelligence would more readily assimilate the knowledge required to have empathy and hence behave ethically as a result.
Once we consider all four of these axes together, the picture becomes clearer, if more complex. The possible states of existence for any individual consist of a four dimensional vector space with axes attention distribution, selfishness, intelligence and empathy. While technically all states of being are theoretically possible, in practice the distribution of individuals in our society is highly correlated. The concentration of individuals generally is higher along a line through the vector space which corresponds to low intelligence and low empathy at one end, high intelligence and high empathy at the other end. Along the other two axes, attention distribution and selfishness seem to be correlated to create the autism-neurotypical spectrum, with low selfishness and low attention distribution at one end and high selfishness, high attention distribution at the other end.
When visualized, you might imagine a segment of a spring, spiralling upwards. The distribution tends in a positively correlated upwards fashion and bows in the middle. If you find difficulty in visualizing this, that’s ok, so do I.
The Triad of Imbalances
When writing in limerick, little ideas are monumental.
Like the Buddhist philosophy states, the root cause of all suffering is desire. I have mapped desires into three primary axes; I call this the Triad of Imbalances. Imbalances are very closely related to different kinds of stress. The primary imbalances stem from the desire for control, the desire for escape, and the desire for fulfillment. I use the term “egopath” to refer to someone who is severely unbalanced and suffering from some combination of these three desires. So if you are “behaving like an egopath”, then you are behaving in a very unbalanced manner, which is driven by your ego, rather than logic. Even aspergians when they are severely unbalanced can lose their logical reasoning abilities. The basic idea is that as a person becomes more and more emotionally unstable, their concern for the feelings of others decreases accordingly. This causes a person to behave more and more like an empathy-lacking psychopath, as a result of their unbalanced ego, hence the term “egopath”.
I will speak of these imbalances at many levels of existence and how they are manifested. Imbalances have corresponding features at each of the egoic (spiritual) level, emotional level, personality level, and physical level. A useful way to visualize this concept is to imagine an individual’s state of imbalance as a bar graph with three bars.
Here is an example representation of a person’s relative levels of imbalance:
The triad of imbalances are the primary psychological issues which can be mapped to any particular psychological or physical distress state. Much like all the colours of the rainbow can be created using only the three primary colours, so it is with the imbalances. It may appear that an imbalance is unique and unrelated, but it can always be mapped to these three basic ones.
These imbalances have various ways of expressing themselves at each level of human existence, in the ego (spirit), the personality, the emotions and the physical body. The spiritual expression is through an aura or chakra imbalance, which is also detectable as thought errors. The emotional expression occurs via a mood disturbance. The personality expression usually involves manipulative behaviour, typically portraying one of the “deadly sins” as defined by various religions. The physical expression is initially through a neurotransmitter imbalance in the brain, which then progresses to other organs and bodily functions.
All of these levels of existence are closely interrelated. That is why there is often confusion about what is causing a particular symptom or ailment. For instance, it is often assumed that a mood disorder is caused by a neurotransmitter imbalance, and treated with drugs that alter neurotransmitter levels. This association is not entirely accurate, and the treatment is misguided. The neurotransmitter disturbance and the mood disorder are both caused by an underlying psychological imbalance which initially manifests through thought errors. By treating it with psychoactive substances, the actual underlying issue is completely missed.
These three primary imbalances replace the Axis I disorders in the DSM. All Axis I disorders can be mapped onto a graph like the one illustrated above. Most of these are obvious, for instance Major depressive disorder is a deprivation imbalance. Generalized anxiety is a control imbalance. OCD is also a control imbalance, where the sufferer has adapted slightly different external coping techniques.
Some of the DSM diagnoses are combinations of the above three primary imbalances. For instance, Bipolar Disorder I is a combination of escape and deprivation imbalances. Bipolar Disorder II is a combination of control and deprivation imbalances. Paranoid Schizophrenia is a combination of control and escape imbalances.
Some disorders in the DSM are the same combination of primary imbalances with different severities. For instance, the difference between Bipolar I and Schizoaffective disorder is whether there is a greater deprivation imbalance or escape imbalance.
At the core, all mood imbalances can be classified in terms of different combinations of these three primary imbalances. This simplifies the life of the diagnostician who merely has to understand these three concepts, rather than memorizing dozens and dozens or even hundreds of different yet subtly similar categories.
A person’s state of balance may be noticed by careful observation of the face. The face is a holographic representation of an individual’s core inner being. A person’s state at birth may be determined by looking only at the left side of his face. This is what is known as the “soul side”. Conversely, looking at the right half of a person’s face will reveal how his life experiences have affected him. Try it out, look at a photograph and cover up one side of the face, then the other. There are usually at least noticeable differences in the two halves of a person’s face. Someone with a severely unbalanced face has changed significantly due to their life experiences. This sometimes means that he has not recovered yet from a traumatic event of the past and is still using the drastic coping methods that were needed at the time. The most symmetric faces are usually those of children, because they have not had many life experiences to affect them yet.
The easiest way to detect your own state of imbalance when it first begins is to notice when you feel particularly defensive or frustrated. If you find yourself using ego defences such as denial, blame or projection, this is a good sign that you are entering a state of imbalance. These are the primary roadblocks of recovery for the triad of imbalances. When these defences manifest, it is your ego asserting itself. This is not only normal, but can be helpful at times. This happens when pre-programmed triggers are activated inside you, which spawn a whole sequence of thoughts and behaviours.
Ego defences are a useful survival tool to trigger automatic reactions to situations which have caused you harm in the past. For instance, if a particular species of wild animal has attacked you in the past, you may become immediately excited and hostile when in its presence. You may blame the animal for these feelings and direct your violence towards it, thereby protecting yourself and facilitating survival. Unfortunately, triggers are often activated inappropriately and become the cause of severely negative thoughts, feelings, actions and physical anomalies. This often happens with abused children who have been conditioned to associate a hostile reaction with the presence of certain humans. Enormous social dysfunction can occur as a result.
Think about why people get defensive or upset at a comment. Is it because the comment is untrue? For instance, if someone walked up to you and said that he knows you are an alien from outer space, disguised to infiltrate the human race, you’d probably find it hilarious. This type of hyperbole is often used as a form of comedy actually. Now, on the other hand, if you actually were an alien, here to invade, you might become upset at the person making the statement, because you are worried that he will draw attention to something that you want to keep secret. The things we become upset and defensive about are those which we believe to be true, or at least believe to be possible. This is the ego attempting to defend and protect us. At the very least, you wouldn’t become upset at a blatantly false comment, unless you had self-esteem issues, which are ego issues themselves.
Defensiveness, if not resolved properly, can go on to become a full-blown imbalance which can be manifested in many different ways. As you will see in later chapters, the best thing to do is to take a moment to pause and breathe. If something in particular is continuing to be bothersome, sleep on it for a day and come back if necessary. With practice, it will become possible to pay careful attention to the things which upset you the most. These will be clues to what your underlying triggers are that spawn various states of imbalance. That is what this book is about, becoming aware of, and dismantling our destructive triggers which negatively affect our health.
Imbalances tend to make a person less social and empathetic, particularly when expressed through the personality. In this way, they can have the effect of shifting a person’s spectrum value towards psychopathy. This is the mechanism by which childhood abuse can create psychopathic individuals. When a child is overwhelmed by and desperately trying to stop or avoid traumatic emotional or physical suffering, it is unlikely that they will stop to think about how another person is feeling.
Since the world is filled with predatory unbalanced individuals, you cannot leave your house or car unlocked for fear of being robbed. If you make one little slip-up, and accidentally leave something unsecured, you could lose your entire life’s work or something sentimental given to you by a loved one. Even when you do everything perfectly, locking every door, window and possible point of entry, this still does not stop them. Some thieves don’t even use violent force to breach your sacred places. They use the power of manipulation and breach your trust in order to rob you. These are examples of more devious, unbalanced individuals, who seem to be far too prevalent in modern society. They may be “insane” and don’t even know it!
Egoic Expression of Imbalance
Many conformist people hate every rational statement.
Imbalances are related to egoic loss. To understand this, it must first be understood what ego means in this sense. Ego is something that you can only see if you don’t have it. It is a reality filter that alters perception and makes it difficult to decipher sensory data in an unbiased way. It is much like a coloured visual filter in the sense that if you are looking through a red filter, it is hard to tell which objects are actually red because everything looks red to a degree. This is how ego contributes to paranoia.
When a person is viewing reality through a certain paranoid egoic filter, everything seems to play into his fear in some way, even if it is actually fairly benign. Ego is like a psychedelic drug, in that it alters sensory data as it is processed. This is why psychedelics often have a tendency to affect one’s ego. They allow a person to examine the incoming sensory data in different ways, beyond his normal egoic filters.
Ego is a biologically necessary feature for physical survival. It is the belief that an individual is separate, yet important. It gives rise to all sorts of strange behaviours, many of which helped humans to survive and become the dominant species in a predatory world on planet Earth. Despite the fact that there are no predators to speak of as in our evolutionary past, many humans still act as though there are. Biology is a difficult thing to defeat.
As many people have noticed, there are 5 stages of egoic loss. Different people take different amounts of time to get through each stage. Some people have a propensity towards getting “stuck” in certain stages for a long time, thus causing a certain type of imbalance to manifest more severely in emotional, physical or personality disorder ways. If a person gets stuck, then anything that is said to them is either filtered out immediately if it doesn’t play into the story that is their ego defence, or it is used as corroborating evidence, even if inappropriately.
At this point, the only way for them to get out of the stage is through a period of reflection, or some kind of shock to the system. Anything that is said to the egopath, unless sufficiently shocking in the proper way, will only serve to contribute to the severity of the imbalance.
Those who are inexperienced at dealing with unbalanced egopaths should get away for a while, as it can be very draining trying to deal with them. If not careful, an inexperienced person might easily contribute to the imbalance, and in the worst case, could become unbalanced themselves.
The five stages are as follows:
Denial – The first stage emanates from to lower, more materialistic egoic concerns. It is related to deprivation imbalance. Its beneficial function in survival is reality testing. The philosophy “whatever doesn’t go away when you stop believing in it is reality” is used to verify that the senses are not being misleading. Failure to go through this stage might set off an imbalance of the upper chakras, and the individual may act irrationally, as if delusional.
Blame – This stage emanates from the central core of the ego and is related to control imbalance. This often comes across as anger at the person, thing or concept which is being blamed. In many cases this may be an individual. Other times it may be an institution, like religion, politics, society at large, etc. Sometimes it may be an inanimate object, such as a vehicle, or computer. The beneficial function of this stage is to ready the mind and body to survive a predatory encounter. Failure to activate this stage may make the individual appear lazy and only make half-hearted attempts to resolve an issue.
Projection – This stage is related to higher egoic unsteadiness and correlates to escape imbalance. This can be seen as emotional transference, or bargaining or delusional faith. This is the final phase along the pathway to ill health. The remainder of the stages are towards the direction of balance. This stage is an initial attempt to resolve the problem externally. Sometimes things do have external resolutions, though for personal imbalances this is only a band-aid. Still, sometimes an issue belongs to someone else and it is important to not allow that issue to be transferred. Failure to activate this stage may cause an individual to be always chasing his tail so to speak. Too much energy will be wasted on transient problems that will go away with time, or problems that are not the responsibility of the individual experiencing the stress.
Surrender – Once you surrender to yourself, you begin down the road to recovery. There is a great deal of compassion and sadness that must be experienced. This is to atone for personal guilt and to feel empathy for whatever it was in the external world that triggered the ego in the first place. Frequently the trigger has to do with someone who is suffering themselves and is trying to cope by manifesting a personality disorder. This is the stage of introspection where the issue is contemplated without ego and the options are considered. If this stage were skipped, we may attempt all sorts of inappropriate solutions.
Acceptance – Once the amount of sadness that was needed to resolve the imbalance has been experienced, then there is a great sense of relief and the negative emotions and physical toxins will have been eliminated. The physical act of crying actually expunges toxins from the body in the fluid of the tears. It is perhaps unfortunate that modern society deems the act of crying to be a sign of weakness. In actual fact, it is a sign of health in that it is the final stage of recovery from an imbalance. It used to be that crying was a sign of strength, and powerful warriors would shed tears over the death of their comrades and commander. This is the stage where the resolution of the problem is found. After thinking it through, the answer becomes clear.
Here’s a simplified version of a typical conversation to be expected with an egopath when you draw attention to their ego by saying “Your ego is asserting itself”:
1. No it’s not!
2. You’re making me angry
3. It’s your ego that’s raging
4. I give up, it’s hopeless
5. Ok, maybe I was on an ego trip for a second there
Egoic (spiritual) imbalances can be described esoterically as chakra or aura disturbances. This is just one way of viewing and describing an imbalance. Some people have learned to think in terms of these concepts, while others have learned to think in terms of neurotransmitters and brain function. They are essentially the same concept and can be mapped back and forth between each other.
The spiritual level of reality is the one unseen by most. It manifests the first signs and symptoms of all other physical changes that are to come. Those who are able to perceive information at this level of reality can notice an imbalance before it even begins to manifest in other ways.
The three primary imbalances correspond to disturbances in the upper, lower and central chakra areas. All other theoretical chakra imbalances can be described as combinations of these three primary imbalances.
At the egoic stage of illness, the primary symptom is subconscious thought errors. Externally, this tends to show up in a person’s body language and other nonverbal signals. The subtlety of these symptoms is the reason that most people fail to notice a problem during the initial stages of its progression. The thought errors are programmed by reinforcement of an idea through conscious thinking patterns. In order for a “thought error” to be defined, we must have a notion of “good” vs. “bad”. A thought error, simply put, is a belief about something “bad”, often referring to oneself. Some typical examples of thought errors in our culture are as follows:
- Oh no! I'm getting sick
- I'm dying
- I'm going crazy
- I’m guilty
- I’m afraid
- Everything has gone wrong
- Nothing ever works out for me
- My life sucks
- I’m fat, ugly, unhealthy, etc
- I’ll never achieve my goals
Notice that many thought errors are culturally dependent. In another culture, death is not something “bad”; it is a wonderful, celebrated experience of moving on to the afterlife. In some cultures, achieving “goals” is not viewed as setting out to do something and accomplishing it, but having experiences in life. Failure to do that which was desired or expected can be seen as an accomplishment in that there was a unique journey to enjoy. In fact, all of these thoughts could be viewed as being a “good” thing, if viewed in a certain manner or context. In that case they would not be thought errors at all; they would simply be good ideas.
In general, going through something which seems to be “bad” can be beneficial because it enables you to understand the experience better, so that you can help others to get through it later. Also, if we delete the notion of there being things which are universally “good” or universally “bad”, then any thought will be completely neutral and hence will not contribute to an imbalance. It must be a genuine belief, however. Faking it will not work.
Also notice how each of these thought errors is about one’s self. Sometimes, particularly with neurotypicals, these thought errors are converted to be about someone else, to avoid having to take responsibility for one’s own emotional turmoil. This is called personality disorder, and here are some examples of the kinds of thought which result when the internal turmoil is projected outwards:
-You’re making me sick!
- You’re killing me
- You’re driving me crazy
- You made me do it!
- You’re scaring me
- You messed everything up
- You should be nicer to me
- You messed up my life
- You think I’m fat, ugly, etc
- You’re preventing me from achieving my goals
Notice how these variations of thought errors make it seem like the egopath is such a victim. It is always someone else’s fault that he has problems, never any doing of his own. See the next chapter on Personality Expression of Imbalance for more details about this.
Once these thought errors become integrated into one’s core beliefs, they become like hypnotic triggers. As with hypnosis, or self-hypnosis, triggers can be planted which will spawn an internal thought upon receiving an external stimulus. If you think of human existence as a big complicated program, this would be akin to modifying the instructions of that program. In the case of thought error triggers, a negative thought can be set off by a particular external stimulus. This is what it means to “push someone’s buttons”. It may not be intentional, and it may not seem logical or sensible or even obvious that it is happening, but it is very real.
If you’ve ever been to a hypnosis show where the performer has planted some lingering triggers into the hypnosis subjects, you will have seen a blatant example of this. For instance, sometimes the performer will place a trigger into the subjects that whenever they hear the word “banana” they will say “cream pie” and touch their nose. It is quite uncanny to watch this take effect automatically, predictably in a friend of yours. They seem to have no control over themselves upon hearing the key word that triggers their actions. Eventually, because it is so obvious what is happening, they will be able to reprogram themselves to not respond to the trigger in this manner anymore. With less obvious triggers that inspire thoughts and emotions which are personally meaningful it is more difficult to reprogram oneself. I will refer to individuals with triggers in this book as “programmees”. This is one particular variety of egopath.
For instance, a programmee may have a trigger that causes them to feel angry whenever they see someone with long hair because as a child, they were abused by an individual with long hair. Or perhaps a programmee becomes sad whenever they see the ocean because their pet dog drowned in the ocean. There are examples of helpful triggers such as remembering to get gas in the car when a programmee drives by and notices a gas station. Of course, this feature of human psychology is often abused by the advertising industry.
Triggers are important to human survival and are often created during powerful emotional experiences. Triggers warn of danger, and give other survival cues, such as hunger, thirst, etc. Watching a friend being eaten by a bear, or drown in a lake would be a pretty powerful experience, and would likely trigger fear and avoidance upon encountering such obstacles in the future. This trait evolved in humans because of the invaluable survival skills it bestowed upon early homo-sapiens.
Those without the ability to have automatic triggers programmed into their minds were eaten by bears and drowned in lakes because they felt no fear of, and hence were complacent about these dangers. Those with the most powerful triggers, which not only inspired emotions, but very fast, automatic actions to deal with dangerous situations were the ones who survived. This is what is sometimes referred to as the “fight or flight” instinct.
Problems occur when there is over-triggering of negative thoughts, emotions and actions in inappropriate situations. You’ve probably seen someone before who suddenly snapped and lost control of themselves in a way which, to you, seemed irrational under the circumstances. Perhaps you asked your spouse to pass the salt, and they yelled at you and told you to get it yourself, for no apparent reason. This reaction was likely due to a trigger which was planted during some traumatic incident involving a salt shaker. Or maybe it was just that your spouse was waiting for you to say something so that he could yell at you for an earlier event. In this case, the simple act of you speaking triggered a reaction which was probably building for some time due to a traumatic memory being set off earlier.
To the external onlooker, the reaction seems unpredictable, unwarranted, and exaggerated. However, if you were to understand the sequence of events which led up to this outburst, it might make more sense, and you might have even reacted this way yourself. Understanding and empathizing with the complex sequence of events which lead to a person’s behaviour is sometimes referred to as “getting into their story”. Every thought and action is logical, if the events leading up to it, the “story”, is understood.
Programmees with many powerful triggers are sometimes known as “drama queens” or “emotional vampires”. They are said to have personality disorders. This will be examined in the next section.
Personality Expression of Imbalance
Only neurotypicals berate one’s rationality.
Often one of the signs of illness that is first noticed is a personality disorder. This is when a person seems to have irrational reactions to innocuous stimuli, and takes it out on other people. You probably know someone who acts like they are out of control, and you likely feel a bit drained after dealing with this person, even for short intervals. If you are not properly balanced when you encounter this type of egopath, you may become sufficiently drained and unbalanced to start acting irrationally as well.
The personality disorder expression of imbalance is caused by having a victim mentality. These people have had bad childhoods and have been conditioned to be a certain way. They have not yet figured out how to break free of their programming. In the mind of the egopath, it is ok to take out their hostility on others because others are the cause of their suffering. This of course is an irrational belief and the result is known as a personality disorder.
As discussed in the last chapter, programmees often have destructive triggers. In most cases, it is very difficult to deprogram these triggers, especially if they were programmed during childhood and have been repressed, affecting an egopath’s behaviour for years. During childhood, triggers are easily programmed, allowing the youngster to quickly learn to cope with traumatic situations. If these drastic coping methods are not dealt with until adulthood, when the person has become “set in their ways”, then it may be more difficult for the programmee to adapt to the new, and usually less hostile situation.
Adaptation is the key to programming and deprogramming. The old adage “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks” is somewhat applicable here. It is well known that as we age, our ability to modify our own programming usually declines, though it does not disappear completely. With practice, this skill like any, can be exercised and improved.
Imbalances manifested through the personality are what the Axis II disorders in the DSM attempt to describe. There is a tendency in the DSM to confuse issues by scrutinizing the minutiae of how a person behaves when they have an imbalance manifesting at this level. For some reason, medical professionals seem to have felt it useful to categorize the particular coping methods that an individual uses, and focus on those. There are actually trends with the particulars of how a personality disorder is manifested which correspond to the type of imbalance causing it. However, focussing on these details can be a distraction from the core issue, which is the recognition of, and recovery from a psychological imbalance.
Personality disorders have a sneaky way of being propagated. The direct causative factor is unhealthy triggers that have been programmed into an individual through some kind of traumatic experience. Brainwashing techniques often use traumatic experiences to make an individual susceptible to being programmed. This is the basic technique, which is often used unconsciously, without awareness by both the programmer and the programmee. In fact, there isn’t always an actual traumatic experience needed to implant triggers into a programmee. Performance hypnotists use techniques that are very effective, by creating a sense of trust in the programmer. This, of course, is quite conscious and quite deliberate on the part of the hypnotist.
In the case where an individual with a personality disorder manages to gain the trust of others, it is not necessarily deliberate. Still, the effects can be similar. Personality disorders do not usually become effective or even apparent until getting into a close relationship with someone. A programmee who trusts the individual with a personality disorder (programmee acting as programmer) begins to pick up triggers and traits that this individual exhibits. And so the cycle is propagated. Programmee becomes programmer and there is a new generation of individuals with this type of personality disorder.
In a sense, the personality disorder is much like a virus or parasitic entity which travels from host to host. Those who use esoteric terminology would describe this as “psychic hooks” being thrust forth to attack an individual, or “possession” by a malevolent entity, the “entity” of course being a thought pattern which is triggered unconsciously. Personality disorders are infectious, not necessarily because of any biological agent, but because of psychological conditions.
One of the big reasons that personality disorders are manifested is to avoid having to deal with the emotional repercussions of an imbalance. Programmees are conditioned to use ego defence mechanisms because they are effective coping methods for internal emotional turmoil. By externalizing one’s emotions using ego defences such as blame, projection and denial, a programmee can effectively suppress the negative emotions, though this usually triggers suffering in those who are close to the programmee.
Blame is when a programmee attempts to place responsibility for an internal emotion upon some external factor. Often times an external individual is singled out and accused of being the direct cause of an internal emotion; “You’re making me feel bad”. The truth of the matter is that we are all responsible for our own emotions. Others may trigger reactions in us, but it is up to the individual to use his frontal lobes and decide if he will react in this way or not.
Blame is often associated with control imbalances. When we feel out of control, we believe that others are controlling our own feelings, and so our ego uses blame to defend itself. The truth of course is that we have allowed external factors to trigger our emotions, and so we haven’t really lost control, though it may seem like it in the heat of the moment.
Denial is the failure to accept responsibility for our own emotions; “I’m not upset”. It is related to a deprivation imbalance. Rather than owning our own emotions, we seek to own external material objects to make up for this imbalance. Of course this can never succeed, and so the result is many ill-conceived attempts at shifting ownership from the internal self outward.
Projection is when a programmee claims that an internal emotion or thought of his own is actually contained within someone else; “You are the one who is jealous”. This ego defence is related to an escape imbalance. The ultimate goal is to ease the emotional pain. The manner in which this is done is not through resolving the issue. Instead, the egopath attempts to escape from taking responsibility for his own emotions, by pushing it onto other unwitting participants. The programmee attempts to reinforce this belief system by implicitly or explicitly involving others in the story.
There are usually two components to projection. The first is transferring the programmee’s emotions to the target, and the second is transferring the target’s emotions to the programmee. The goal is a sort of role reversal. The programmee desperately seeks external validation of this ego defence, because it is so irrational. This sometimes appears to be manipulation attempts to convince someone that they think or feel a certain way.
Certain drugs can induce this, such as cannabis. This explains why people with chronic escape imbalances (for instance, schizophrenia as defined in the DSM) have a propensity for cannabis use. It helps them to cope by projecting their imbalance onto others. Often,
These ego defence mechanisms can be extremely disruptive in the programmee’s life, and in particular in the lives of those around the programmee. Often the behaviour resulting from these defence mechanisms is quite dramatic. These coping methods can become relied upon so much that the programmee appears to be a drama addict.
The common theme here is an attempt to shift focus from one’s internal self to the outside world. Blame is an attempt to attribute control of one’s own internal emotions to external factors. Projection is an attempt to escape from the emotions by creating a fantasy world where they exist in someone else. Denial is an attempt to disown responsibility of one’s own feelings.
Consider a thought experiment in the implications of a programmee’s life philosophy. If I am responsible for a programmee’s emotions, and I can directly cause emotions and behaviour in them, then I am in control of the programmee. This means that the programmee has no choice, and hence is simply an algorithm, not really alive. It essentially means that since I control the programmee, therefore I am the programmee in addition to being myself. This means that there is only one person who exists, and that is the person who takes all of the responsibility for all programmees’ emotions and actions. This control may be distributed among the population in a hierarchy. The people that I am responsible for are in turn responsible for others, and so on and so forth. At some point there must be someone who is responsible for it all, otherwise it is simply a circular reference and hence everybody is a program that runs without any free will.
There is a different life philosophy which can be applied here. The idea is to exercise the frontal lobes and recognize your choice in all matters within yourself. If somebody behaves in a certain way that has an effect on your emotions, determine why precisely that is, internally. Find out how those emotions were triggered. Then once you have determined the root cause, internally, you can better understand how to improve your emotional state without using ego defences. Sometimes this means altering your thoughts and emotions through meditation, sometimes it means talking out a situation with another person rationally, avoiding the ego traps described above, sometimes it means thinking about the emotions and motives of others involved (empathizing). Often, especially for beginners, it may help to distance yourself from someone temporarily to allow each other to return to a better state of balance independently.
The reason that programmees are able to shirk their emotional responsibility and project it onto others is because of false perceptions of what is happening in these situations. The belief that hostility is personally directed towards an individual enables it to have an effect.
For instance, if someone is behaving in a manipulative and/or aggressive fashion, and you view it as being directed at yourself, you may become stressed out. You could instead recognize that it for what it really is. It is simply the hostile individual’s own personal internal emotional turmoil. He is in pain and is trying to cope in any way possible.
Sometimes particularly for selfish people, such as neurotypicals, this means projecting it onto others. It is his own way of coping with his internal imbalance, and there is no need to become upset by it. It is hard to see it for what it really is because of the neurotypical deception involved. However, once you do realize that it is an expression of human suffering, you could feel compassion towards a person who is suffering so badly that they are desperate to get rid of the pain. They have never been taught socially acceptable ways of expressing emotional pain, and so are acting out like an immature child.
This is the penultimate expression of neurotypical egopathy. The most helpful thing for all parties is for you to not become upset by the hostility, but rather to have empathy for the sufferer. This will prevent the cycle of pain from continuing, and you will become a grounding influence to help alleviate the negativity. Changing your perception of what is happening effectively blocks the personality disorder from having a negative effect on you.
The key to effectively blocking personality disorders is to remain balanced yourself. The goal of the unbalanced person with the personality disorder, whether they are aware of it or not, is to cause you to become unbalanced as well. Meditating before an encounter with the egopath to strengthen your state of balance helps a great deal. Also, maintaining a perspective that is emotionally distanced from the tumultuous situation throughout the encounter will reduce the drain on your energy.
When the personality disorder is defused, the egopath is left to feel his own emotions for himself. If everyone responded in this way to hostility, then there would be no personality disorders to speak of. It takes two to manifest a personality disorder. No one can have a personality disorder on an island. Usually personality disorders are manifested by neurotypicals because it is fairly selfish to push your pain onto innocent bystanders.
Aspergians usually direct the pain of their imbalances inwards, which turns into emotional and physical turmoil. I suppose this would be why the phrase “Only the good die young” makes sense. Those who are really “good” by dictionary definition would never direct their pain outwards, and would also likely take on the pain of selfish individuals in addition to their own, so this would quickly accumulate and turn into serious emotional and then physical illnesses.
Much like how the scorpion feeds on other insects, so do people who manifest personality disorders. They are somewhat like emotional vampires in this sense. The initial effect of being stung is a strange blissful sense of detachment from reality. This is how the scorpion and the emotional vampire suck their “victims” in and keep them coming back. I put “victim” in quotes because this technique only works so long as there is the perception that someone is a victim. By changing perceptions about the situation, as described earlier, the personality disorder can be effectively blocked, though this is difficult when society at large believes in the concept of “victim”.
Once the injection of emotional venom is complete, and the emotional vampire goes away, the victim is left to experience the trauma and turmoil of the poison coursing through the veins. If you ever notice that you feel strangely blissfully detached when with a certain person and then experience ill health afterwards, this may be what is happening.
Other people who are not under the spell of this emotional vampire may notice far better than you what is happening and may try to point it out. It is unlikely that you will believe them because you are already under the spell of the vampire. Try detaching yourself from this person for a few weeks and see what happens. If you become healthier, and the suspect falls into a state of illness or imbalance, then they were probably using you as a receptacle for their pain and trauma. They will certainly try to seek out a new victim to project their turmoil onto so that they can feel better using this coping technique again.
Imagine the pain of imbalance being like a liquid, and a human soul as being a receptacle for this liquid (imbalance). Whenever something predatory happens, whether it is necessary to the survival of the predator or not, it generates some imbalance in the prey, ie: some liquid is poured into the receptacle. Usually the predator eats the prey, and the receptacle is shattered, releasing all the pain of imbalance (liquid). Occasionally, the prey survives, and still contains some pain liquid. This pain (liquid) goes into the total pool of imbalance pain that exists among the species, and the species as a whole becomes even more fear-based in their behaviour.
Obviously it would be desirable to avoid this happening if possible. This is why hunters are always careful to make a clean kill of their prey. This is also why predators, such as cats and serial killers, torture their prey before they kill it and eat it. It releases some of their pain into the prey and then subsequently removes it from the material plane.
Predicting who will become a serial killer based upon which children torture animals or are serious bullies is a pretty reliable indicator. It indicates that the individual is already full of pain to the limit of their receptacle as a child, and so in adulthood will likely snap many times over and act abusively to release their pain. The reason why psychopaths often become serial killers is because the available space in their receptacle is so small.
Once a pain receptacle is full, an abuser cannot release any more pain into the target. Attempting to do so will likely cause the target to lash out at the abuser, thereby passing the pain back. If the target is closer to the middle of the spectrum, this is less likely to happen, and instead the target might spontaneously break down into tears, going instantaneously through the stages of egoic loss in order to release some of the overflow of agony. The blocking of personality disorders is possible by altering one’s belief structures to disallow the transfer of imbalance pain in this fashion.
There are two main ways to get rid of the pain (liquid) is to either pour it into someone else’s receptacle, by using personality disorder to attack them, and make them the new prey (“victim”), or to poke holes in the receptacle using meditation techniques to relieve the pain, thereby going through the stages of egoic loss. Pain receptacles are of certain size, and when that receptacle gets full, they “snap” and become fear-based entities who will abuse others until sufficient pain is released to be able to function normally again.
It seems that aspergian receptacles are generally much larger than neurotypical receptacles because they are capable of functioning in a balanced fashion, without using personality disorder to release any pain for a much longer time before they snap. Neurotypicals seem to be more likely to become serial-killers and/or manifest serious anti-social personality disorders. This would explain why in childhood, neurotypicals are bullies and aspergians are bullied.
The psychopathic child can handle only small amounts of anguish before they lash out at others. Children closer to the middle of the psychological spectrum are capable of not only receiving and coping with the usual agonies of family life, but also of direct and blatant bullying from other children as well. They serve as deep wells of pain that other people throw onto them.
The total quantity of imbalance pain (total volume of liquid) in all human receptacles is due primarily to the early evolutionary years of humans when predators were still preying on them. Since humans have become the dominant species on the planet, there has been little genuinely new imbalance pain created, and it has just been passed along from parent to child for eons. The original source of the pain has long since been forgotten and would need to be traced back from child to parent for generations upon generations.
The reduction of wars, violence and overall human predation, or emotional and physical vampirism is due to the fact that the species as a whole has a much smaller volume of imbalance pain to deal with, and is now able to recede from being a totally fear-based species and can experience deeper emotional states such as love and compassion.
Emotional Expression of Imbalances
Never doubt egopathic control.
If the egopath fails to be successful at shifting responsibility for his own emotions to an external source, or if such a source is not readily available, then the imbalance begins to affect the emotional centres of the egopathic brain. The thought errors, having no defence to explain them away will spiral out of control and leak into the limbic system, which controls emotions. It is at this stage that most people will readily recognize an imbalance in progress. This will likely feel quite unpleasant, which is why there is a tendency to attempt to explain away the negative feeling by using ego defence mechanisms as described in the previous chapter. Upon failure of these, or if these are not attempted, then there is no choice but to experience the emotion personally.
If left unresolved, an imbalance that has progressed to the emotional stage can become quite pervasive and interfere with one’s life significantly. This is what many of the Axis I DSM diagnoses attempt to describe. Unfortunately, the DSM focuses mainly on marketing the pharmaceutical industry. Therefore the primary treatment options offered are medical interventions, some of which have the potential to alter an imbalance at this level.
Drugs can make an egopath more comfortable temporarily, however drugs do not address the underlying issue that is actually causing the imbalance. Invariably, the imbalance will be asserted again, either when the egopath stops taking the drugs, or when the imbalance grows to proportions that even powerful psychoactive agents cannot affect it.
All imbalances demand to be known, and it is sometimes useful to use temporary medical interventions to bring the sufferer back “down to earth” long enough to learn meditation techniques to resolve the original issue. This should only ever be attempted when an imbalance has progressed to the point where the sufferer is completely out of control and unable to function. Ideally, an imbalance would never be allowed to get to this stage.
Control imbalances are manifested by increased noradrenaline levels. This is sort of like being permanently on a stimulant such as caffeine or ephedrine. The result is what one would expect to see from a serious coffee addict. The individual will be restless, have trouble sleeping, be always “on the go”. The individual may resort to obsessive ritualistic behaviours, such as cleaning, or fidgeting to use the excess energy caused by a noradrenaline imbalance. Substances, such as alcohol, cannabis and other depressants are often used as a self-medication coping method.
An individual suffering from this form of imbalance may come off as overly controlling of situations, a perfectionist, a stickler for detail. You’ve probably had a boss at some point who was suffering from a control imbalance. This kind of manager becomes upset at the slightest mistake that is made. Sometimes this feeling is transferred to the employees using ego defence methods described in the previous chapter. Other times the boss suffers in silence, and needs to take time off work frequently for mental health, and often physical health reasons as well.
Escape imbalances are manifested through overactive dopamine transmission. This is very similar to what happens when someone has been doing cocaine or amphetamines for too long. There is a tendency to have a serious departure from reality when this imbalance is severely manifested. Paranoia, delusions, even sensory hallucinations can occur. This is the ultimate escape from consensus reality.
Some people have chronic escape imbalances, and they are often labelled schizophrenic or bipolar. This kind of individual, if they are far enough along the neurotypical spectrum can charm others into believing their fantasies. This can become extremely dangerous, especially if authority figures become involved. Sometimes these types of people like to single out and target a particular person to direct their ego defences towards. They attempt to convince everyone that it is this other person, not them, who is the crazy one. Sadly, since many neurotypicals are very convincing, this often works.
Deprivation imbalances are manifested in the serotonin neurotransmitter system. This creates an irrational but incredible feeling of need. Many people mistakenly attribute this overactive feeling of need to actual needs of a lesser degree. For instance, some people overeat because they believe they need more food than they actually do. Some people oversleep because they feel they need it. Others accumulate possessions and material wealth in a misguided attempt to address the overwhelming feeling of desire. Sometimes promiscuous sexual activity or substance abuse are used as attempts to fulfill the desire caused by this imbalance.
Once an imbalance becomes noticeable in the emotional mind, it is not far from being able to affect physical functioning. It is well known that stress leads to physical symptoms, and stress is just another word for imbalance.
Physical Expression of Imbalance
251,976 word rebuttal, one trigger.
If an emotional imbalance is allowed to persist, by ignoring, repressing, or aggravating it, then the undesirable brain activity escalates, and cannot be contained within the limbic system. The imbalance leaks into the physical control systems, such as the circulatory system, the immune system, and major organ control systems. Depending upon the type of imbalance, different systems are typically affected. See the Appendix B for a table describing the different physical systems that are affected for each type of imbalance.
Despite so many correlations being known, the fundamental root cause of most illness is not well known. Ironically the tobacco companies were at least partially right. There is a third factor involved in the smoking-cancer relationship which both causes a person to smoke and causes cancer. It is an underlying imbalance, and it is the fundamental cause of all disease and discomfort.
To see an example of some physical effects that life experiences have on someone, just look at the location and depth of the wrinkles on an old person, particularly on the face. These small lines tell quite a story and it is no coincidence that a person who has frequently furrowed their brow with frustration will develop lines on their forehead. It has long been known that facial expressions relate to emotions in a culturally independent way. So too, the physical expressions of imbalance are culturally independent.
Consider the profile of a typical person with a deprivation imbalance. Sometimes they are greedy, gluttonous overeaters. They are at risk of acquiring type II diabetes. These people also tend to be fairly depressed; it is commonly known that eating disorders and depression are related. The reason that some people are never satisfied no matter how much money or how many material possessions they accumulate is because the root cause is deprivation imbalance. This cannot be resolved through external means. It is entirely an internal battle.
This form of imbalance arises out of a survival mechanism which helps the human organism survive throughout a period of physical deprivation. This coping mechanism results in the body’s metabolism slowing, more sleep being needed, and other attempts to compensate for whatever is lacking. In the absence of any actual deprivation, this imbalance tends to result in weight gain, oversleeping, loss of serotonin, and other undesirable physical effects.
An individual with control imbalance is the kind of person at work who gets upset if you come in and work on “their” project. They need everything to be precisely “right” according to their own perspective, regardless of whether it makes logical sense or not. They are frequently irritable, and often develop anxiety and stress-related disorders. During their most controlling moments, their heart rate rises, and their blood pressure soars. This would be a good thing if they were engaged in battle with a predator, however it often occurs as a result of seeming innocuous stimuli. They are often very angry and demanding. This kind of person is well on their way to having a major cardiovascular malfunction, like heart attack or stroke. The sad irony of the situation is that while the individual attempts to control external situations, he loses control over his own internal functions.
People whose jobs hold a responsibility over the well being of others often develop control imbalances. Having control over another person’s health or even their life can easily trigger this type of imbalance to manifest. Those especially at risk include palliative care workers, flight controllers, hospital staff, and generally anyone whose mistakes mean the difference between life and death. The primary physical symptom initially is to activate what is widely known as the “fight or flight” autonomic reaction.
During early homo-sapien evolution, humans were confronted with dangerous situations where a tiny mistake could mean the difference between life and death. For instance, when confronting a predator, those who were able to take control and be successful up against the opponent, survived to the next generation.
Most dangerous situations in early human development consisted primarily of dangerous creatures that either needed to be overpowered or fled from. Physical reactions such as elevating blood pressure, increasing heart rate, and rapid breathing were extremely useful to improve muscular and cardiovascular function during a dangerous encounter. Those who had these particular reactions were the ones who survived. Nowadays, since the typical life-or-death situations usually do not require fleeing or fighting, these reactions are not just useless, they are actually counter-productive. They result in all sorts of unforeseen medical conditions and inappropriate violence.
Thrill-seeking egopaths with escape imbalances often have manic moments. They can become delusional and paranoid and often have problems with their reality filters. They attribute innocuous occurrences to bizarre or sinister phenomena. They engage in self-destructive sexual behaviour and drug use. These behaviours have long been associated with AIDS, but the cause has been misinterpreted as viral.
AIDS has a circular definition which requires both autoimmune disorder symptoms and the presence of HIV antibodies. It is possible to have an autoimmune disorder which is not technically called AIDS because of the strange, circular definition involving the HIV antibodies. It is also possible to have HIV antibodies present but not suffer from an autoimmune disorder. The truth about HIV is that it is a simple viral infection, much like chicken pox, in that it causes some mildly unpleasant symptoms for a short time, and once it has been eliminated by the immune system, antibodies are produced so that infection cannot ever occur again. The “AIDS” test is actually a test for HIV antibodies. A positive result indicates that the subject was once infected with the HIV virus and is not only cured, but is also immune to any future infection by the same virus.
AIDS is actually just an autoimmune disorder which is caused by a severe psychological imbalance, and can be cured by resolving the underlying issues. It is already known that psychological imbalances cause autoimmune dysfunction. The AIDS thing just got out of hand with media sensationalization. The unfortunate truth of current medical science is that because of the misconception that AIDS is related to a viral infection, the drugs developed to treat it actually suppress the normal functioning of the immune system. AIDS drugs actually cause AIDS symptoms, and eventually result in death. This is one of the reasons that AIDS is currently considered to be a terminal illness. The drugs used to treat it have “death” as a side effect.
Similarly, the understanding of cancer followed much the same path as AIDS. The same individual who successfully stirred a media frenzy attributing AIDS to the HIV virus actually initially attempted to do the same thing with cancer. He claimed that cancer was caused by a viral infection. Fortunately in the case of cancer, the possibility of being caused by a viral infection was quickly ruled out by logical analysis. Unfortunately, however, few have realized the actual cause and hence standard treatment currently consists of severely toxic and destructive radiation and chemical poisoning. Again, the cancer treatment itself is usually the direct cause of death in cancer patients. The mechanism by which cancer overwhelms the body is through a long, painful series of manifestations of an egopathic imbalance.
Let’s take skin cancer as an example. This particular variant has been attributed to interaction of ultraviolet light with the epidermis. When a UV wave hits a skin cell, there is a certain percentage chance of the cell turning cancerous. Since there are billions of these waves hitting billions of cells daily, the chance that at least a few of them will turn cancerous is quite high. In a healthy body, the cells which turn cancerous are quickly dealt with and do not persist. In a body which is distracted by a severe imbalance, all sorts of systems fail to function properly, thus allowing cancerous cells to multiply and proliferate.
The first physical symptoms of an imbalance are usually mild and often written off as being unimportant. These include such things as restlessness, shaking hands, minor sleep disturbances, suppressed immune system, moderate hypertension, etc. Physical expressions of imbalance can easily escalate to more severe symptoms such as night terrors, panic attacks, severe hypertension, autoimmune disorder, and even cancer. All physical ailments can be traced back to an underlying imbalance which usually starts off with psychological symptoms. Illnesses such as cold and flu infections are frequently blamed on external factors, but this is just an excuse. These germs are constantly coming in contact with the body, and when there are no psychological stressors, the immune system is eradicating them just as quickly as they enter. Many people feel depressed and psychologically unwell during winter months, and that is precisely when illness strikes most frequently and the hardest. This is no coincidence.
Pathway to Ill Health
Even tired Hindus identify self by opening one’s karma.
In order to understand the road to recovery, we must first grasp the pathway to ill health. It all begins with a thought. The psychological filters that allow humans to function in an infinitely complex world were designed to discard thoughts which are not helpful to our survival. Occasionally, a thought slips by that is potentially harmful and is integrated into one’s belief system. This often happens without even knowing it, completely in the subconscious mind. Other times it occurs consciously, but seems insignificant at the time or irrelevant or even somehow appropriate, and the origin is soon forgotten, but the belief structure persists.
Usually the general reasoning behind the thought is sound, but an error in the perception or understanding of facts in a situation makes it destructive. For instance, being mindful of your weight is a sensible and healthy thing. However, you might erroneously believe that you are fat because someone was mean and called you a “fatso” out of anger. This is called a “thought error” and it signals the very first stage of egopathy.
Egopathy is caused by excessive ego. Ego is a useful survival function which allows an organism to view itself as separate and place value upon its own survival. This can become overpowering and destructively stressful at times. If, instead you view yourself as just another cog in the wheel of reality, and that no matter what happens it is the “proper” thing, then suddenly all concerns melt away and egopathy cannot take hold. It is during departures from this philosophy, that selfish desires become cravings and the decision making process becomes irrational and harmful to that very “self” which seems so important. In effect, egopathy is when self concerns are overactive, to the point of being counter-productive.
Let’s examine how humans make choices about the world.
We all hold certain beliefs about the world and how things “are”. These beliefs are generally useful and allow us to make choices that enhance our physical survival. Some common beliefs are that we need clean air to breathe, we need food to survive, we must stop at red lights when driving, the earth is round, and so on and so forth. Few people question their beliefs, let alone know that at a fundamental level, beliefs (sometimes unverifiable) motivate choice. In most cases, choices are made automatically, without any need to have conscious thoughts about them as they are happening. Even in situations that would seem to require a great amount of conscious thought, once our belief systems are strongly programmed, we can act without thinking. I’m sure many of you have driven your car home, only to realize that you were not consciously aware of your actions the entire time. It is your deeply ingrained belief structures about how reality works that enabled you to do this, and wasn’t it useful at that?
A thought error is defined as a belief about the world that causes an imbalance that is not necessary or useful to survival or enjoyment. It is a thought with negative utility, in that it not only fails to serve any beneficial purpose, but it engages one’s survival mode at inappropriate times. For instance, a perfectly useful thought in one situation, ie: that bear is going to eat me, could be twisted around and be complete nonsense, ie: my friend is trying to harm me. Now this is not to be confused with perceptiveness. In some cases your friend may very well be trying to harm you, and you may have picked up on some clues that genuinely indicate this. What I am referring to is a belief that does not hold up to scrutiny in reality.
This does not mean that you have a thought error if you are the only one who believes a certain idea. There was a time when no-one believed that the earth was round. Pythagoras did not have a thought error, he was just very perceptive! Here’s a quote I like to paraphrase: “Reality is anything that doesn’t go away when you stop believing in it”. The power of this book lies within this adage. I am stating things which many people will not necessarily believe, yet they are true anyway. Just like how there was eventually enough evidence to convince society that the world is indeed round, this too will become clear in time.
Another important pitfall to be aware of is beliefs about why something is. Let’s say you have made an observation for instance: “Nobody likes me”. This may very well be true, and hold up to scrutiny in reality. The first inclination is likely going to be to look towards oneself for the reason why. Perhaps you integrate the belief that: “Nobody likes me because I am ugly”. This is certainly going to affect your behaviour, and it will become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Your posture will slump, you will likely feel no need to take care of yourself, and you will become that which you believed, even though it may not have been initially true.
Consider altering your belief to something like: “Nobody likes me because I am so great and they are all jealous”. Having a belief like this is likely to improve your self-confidence, you will stand tall, and appreciate your appearance and abilities more, and this will drive your happiness and contentment, which in turn spirals towards you becoming even greater. People will notice, and those who do not suffer from jealousy will admire and respect you for it. Those who are suffering from jealousy will likely avoid you and believe me, it’s for the best. Do not pay attention when the jealous ones attempt to influence you into thinking that such thoughts are arrogant and egotistical. That is just their way of saying that they wish they could think the way you do, and feel and look as great. It is their personality manifestation of their own poor self-image. Instead of trying to elevate themselves to your level, they try to bring you down to theirs.
Now this brings me to the idea of internal beliefs vs. external beliefs. An internal belief is a belief about your internal self. An external belief is a belief about the world around you. Because of the fact that whether you realize it or not, you are in complete control of your self, internal beliefs will become self-fulfilling prophecies. Remember, all beliefs about your self are true. Now what does this mean in terms of the adage about reality? Well since there are no things which remain true about an individual when that individual stops believing in them, then internal reality therefore must be completely dynamic. In other words there is no fixed “reality” when it comes to the concept of “self”. There is no static “I”. For instance, if you stop believing that you are ugly, then you will become beautiful to yourself and those around you who are stable and balanced enough to see past their own filters. If you stop believing that you are lazy, then you will put more effort into your endeavours and all things that you do will reflect your new belief system. If you genuinely believe that you are happy, then you are, even if your life circumstances seem grim to others. However, if someone manages to convince you that you are unhappy, and this becomes integrated into your beliefs, then it will become reality for you. Now, with this stated, there are usually certain patterns that you may have a tendency to revert to because of your upbringing, but it is always possible to reprogram your beliefs with sufficient persistence.
External beliefs may or may not hold up in reality, though some of these can also become self-fulfilling prophecies too. If you are able to convince others of your beliefs, whether they be rational or not, then collectively it can become real. This is a form of projection, as discussed earlier. For instance, a clever, yet unbalanced egopath may succeed in convincing a target individual or a group of people that the egopath himself is sane and rational, and it is the target individual who is paranoid, or delusional, or “crazy”. This is particularly effective if the target and group are very trusting, and lack in sufficient self-confidence to hold to their convictions. This happens quite frequently on small scales as gossip amongst cliques in high school, or in business in the form of office politics. On larger scales, it happens in provincial, national and world political arenas. It even happens closer to home in the form of corporate advertising in the mainstream media.
You could be an abused prisoner in a war zone and as long as you believe strongly that the experience will be good for you in the end, then you can be happy. You may genuinely feel that there is some higher purpose for you and that this torture is necessary for that purpose to be fulfilled. This may seem completely delusional, and it may very well be, or it might simply be wisdom beyond the circumstances. There is no need to wait for the future to put 20/20 hindsight to use. Even if they are delusions, you will be strong and happy and healthy, and those are precisely the kind of delusions that I want you to be having. This is the reason that many religious faiths actually work. While they may be “delusional” by some cultural standards, they fill the participants with a sense of higher purpose.
It is not necessary to subscribe to any particular religious faith to achieve this kind of enlightened sensation. You can be your own messiah, it is not necessary to follow someone else’s dogmatic teachings, though many find it easier to follow this kind of pre-established philosophical system. That is the purpose of this book, to establish a healthy philosophical system independent of all established systems which over the years have lost much of the original message and have sometimes become tools used for political gain.
Beliefs are not always happy ones. For instance, if you genuinely believe that you are a victim then you are a victim, even if your life circumstances seem wonderful to other people. You will feel downtrodden and abused because of this belief. Everything that happens to you will be viewed through this filter and all injustices, no matter how slight will go towards strengthening your viewpoint. You will have what is known as a “victim mentality”. This may seem delusional to others around you, and maybe it is. This is a particular type of delusion that causes imbalance, ie: a thought error. This particular variety of thought error is very common in the world today. I’d much rather have “delusions” of happiness than delusions of anguish.
Once a thought error is integrated into your belief systems, you will have triggers that can be set off at a moment’s notice that will spawn negative emotions. This is the second stage in the pathway to ill health. If these emotions are set off frequently enough and with enough severity, they can seriously affect your life. Your performance at work may degrade, your hobbies and interests may deteriorate and you may feel very emotionally unstable frequently. It is at this stage where personality disorders may become apparent. This is a misguided attempt to cope with the perpetual trauma that is a result of the underlying thought errors in the belief system. Failing that, a full-fledged mood disorder can easily manifest. This is the stage of illness that the DSM Axis I and II disorders attempt to describe.
If the emotional turmoil persists, and you manage to continue with your life somehow, you will begin to show physical symptoms. There are many ways of coping with an imbalance, both healthy and unhealthy. If healthy techniques are not used to dispel the trauma, then the imbalance will persist, no matter what other coping method is used. Some common unhealthy coping methods include substance abuse (including chronic use of prescription drugs such as anxiolytics, neuroleptics and antidepressants), eating disorders, personality disorders, thrill seeking, gambling, compulsive shopping, promiscuity, and many other bad habits.
Depending upon which unhealthy coping method is used, different physical symptoms will appear. For instance, if you cope with a deprivation imbalance by filling the void with food, then you will likely become obese and develop diabetes. If you mellow out from your control imbalance by abusing alcohol, then your physical manifestation of the imbalance will likely include liver problems. If you cope by smoking, then lung cancer is likely. If you cope by projecting your illness onto others with personality disorder, then the loved ones who are close to you will likely become ill with flus and colds and other illnesses as they become more and more stressed.
The specific manner in which an imbalance is manifested is also determined partially by genetic predisposition. For instance, some people have a genetic predisposition towards kidney problems, or epilepsy or Chron’s disease. In these instances, imbalance has a propensity to be manifested physiologically in specific ways. This is not to be confused with causation. Even someone with a strong family history of disease is able to remain free of symptoms by maintaining a holistic state of balance.
The specific direct “cause” of a physiological disorder is of little importance, and merely serves as a distraction from the actual root cause. It is simply one of many pathways for imbalance to manifest. For instance, it may be that smoking results in lung cancer, but why were you smoking in the first place? It is unreasonable to expect someone to simply quit smoking without either resolving the underlying imbalance or resort to some other unhealthy coping mechanism, which will cause a different physical problem. If nothing is done about the underlying imbalance and only the superficial symptoms are treated, for instance with drugs or surgery, then the progression continues. More and more physical symptoms will occur until the root cause is discovered and resolved. An imbalance demands to be noticed, and if ignored it will only grow and become ever more unavoidably obvious.
It is never too late however, and even in extreme cases where a doctor has proscribed mere months for a patient to live, many have survived, and illness has miraculously gone into complete remission. It is important to realize that even severe physical imbalance does not have to be a death sentence. Egopathy can be spontaneously resolved, without drugs, surgery or other external intervention, even if it has progressed to serious physical symptoms and diseases. In the next chapter I will describe techniques you can use to help bring this about.
Recovery Process
Patience, acceptance, contentedness
Many people with imbalances seem to have trouble getting to the point where they are ready to start down the road to recovery. They often keep getting mired in certain stages, entangled in their own egos. This is fine; everyone progresses at his own pace, even you. It is important to avoid trying to force someone to recognize how they can improve their well-being. It is particularly important to avoid approaching discussions like that from a negative point of view. For instance, never talk about a person’s “problems” or how “messed up” they are. No matter how good your intentions may be, this will be absolutely guaranteed to exacerbate egoic pain.
It may be obvious to third parties that a particular person is suffering, feeling upset all the time, lashing out at others, and so on. It may seem like needless anguish. Many people actually need to go through their imbalance over and over again. It can be difficult to learn lessons that are so personal about one’s own core ego which is so deeply ingrained into every single experience, every single perception. It can also be difficult to learn to accept the suffering of others as necessary, especially of loved ones.
Once an individual is ready to begin the healing process, it is good to have some guidance about where to start. That is where this chapter comes in handy. The road to recovery can be a long one, so it is important to have patience, and accept your failings for learning experiences. Western culture makes it difficult to be healthy sometimes. If you went into the lotus position on your desk and started chanting OMMMMM... you'd probably be taken to the loony bin – ironically for being healthy. But if you go out to the bar after work and get drunk out of your mind, you'll win friends an influence people.
If you are aspergian, you may have many instinctually healthy coping mechanisms like rocking back and forth, making certain noises, or various repetitive behaviours. These will be frowned upon by neurotypicals, but it is important to express oneself naturally and not be negatively influenced by discrimination. You are different internally, and you behave differently as a result. This does not mean that your thoughts, emotions, or behaviours are invalid. There is nothing wrong with you! It means that you are a minority, and throughout history minorities have been judged, mistreated and oppressed.
The world has not yet learned its lesson from past mistakes of racism and bigotry. This is ok, they will learn in their own time. Focus on yourself, and do your own thing. The more aspergians who are comfortable with their lifestyle and express it publicly, the sooner acceptance will come. There have been many misguided movements to attempt to “cure” such disorders as homosexuality, dark skin, Judaism, etc, which resulted in truly horrific and gruesome incidents that I don’t even want to get into. We are currently mired in an age of misguided autism “cures” and this too will be outgrown as more and more people recognize and accept the validity of other forms of life on this planet. In the meantime, to avoid falling prey to the judgemental traps of despair and anger, simply recognize the truth.
The ego will flare up throughout the recovery process, so don’t be discouraged. If you have gone most of your life with imbalances, the egopathic triggers within you may have become so deeply ingrained that they will seem almost like instinct at this point. Sometimes powerful reactions will occur as if conditioned by hypnosis. Ironically, this is very close to reality.
It is important to recognize that you are not a static entity, no matter how old you are, or how “screwed up” you think you have become, or how physically ill you may be. The sooner the healing process begins, the sooner you will be healthy.
Habits are habitual because you do them so often. You get used to the thoughts, emotions and behaviours and they become an important part of your life which would be upsetting to lose. As irrational as this may seem with bad habits, there is always something that would be missed. Otherwise they wouldn’t have become habits in the first place.
The conditioning process takes a while to have significant effects. It has taken many years of programming to get you into the state that you are currently in, whatever that may be. Once you change directions, it will take some time to get to wherever you are headed. Even Pavlov’s dog did not learn to drool overnight. Imbalances are habit-forming just like all behaviours and substances. Imbalances are manifested as behaviours and substances (neurotransmitters) at various levels of existence, so this stands to reason. Forming a new habit which contradicts an old one will be difficult at first. Practice makes perfect.
The more often an imbalance is triggered, the more it becomes conditioned as a response. The more often stability is present, the more it becomes ingrained into everyday life. This is the reason why it is so difficult to recover from many imbalances that have persisted for a long time. Conditioning becomes easier as time goes on and that applies to all directions, either towards imbalance or towards stability. Often there are people, places or things around you which stimulate the programming. These are sometimes known as enablers, or x-factors. It is helpful and often necessary to work on those factors first, before progress can be made on the actual imbalance or habit in question. Once this is done, the process becomes much easier. There must first be a solid commitment to recovering from egopathy. That means distancing yourself from stimuli which trigger your imbalances, at least in the beginning. Stay away from bad influences for a while!
There is no magic pill that you can take as doctors may have you believe. The onus is upon you to heal yourself. It always has been, it’s just that others have been taking the credit, or the blame. For instance, antidepressants have for a long time been known to be less effective than placebo for treating depression. Why is this? The reason is simple; the beneficial effects from antidepressants come from the placebo effect (ie: you healing yourself through techniques described in this book; altering your belief systems, etc). The advantage that placebo has over antidepressants is that it has no side-effects, and does not cause physical dependence.
There are many more side-effects to psychiatric drugs than are widely known. For instance, it is now becoming apparent that antidepressants cause suicide. Why did this not come out earlier? The reason is in the approval process for new drugs. A pharmaceutical company creates a new drug and performs studies on it. They do rigorous scientific tests, many of them, and see what happens with this random substance they’ve cooked up in their laboratories. The trick is that they are not required to submit these tests to the federal health agencies. They are allowed to pick and choose the studies that they submit. So if a drug causes death sometimes, they simply need to do enough studies until by pure chance, one of the trials ends up with no subjects dying, and submit that to the approval agency. Even in roulette, eventually black wins. This actually happens, which shouldn’t be too surprising, and the evidence is coming out gradually, though it is massively downplayed in the media. After all, capitalism is run by those with money, and the pharmaceutical companies certainly have a massive amount of money, and would like to keep it that way.
The fundamental problem with modern medicine is that it waits until there is a definite detectable physiological change, and jumps on that with band aid solutions. As has been described, physical symptoms exist in the final stage in the progression of imbalance, and treating symptoms at this level typically only ever provides temporary relief. The few cases where it appears that medical science has “cured” someone, it is usually mere coincidence that the individual happened to cure himself at the same time that the doctors and psychiatrists were performing their horrid experiments. This usually has to do with a shift in the individual’s belief system regarding his illness.
Sometimes a medical treatment can have a lasting effect. Curing an illness or eradicating a parasite using medical science is sort of like trying to kill a tree by cutting off some leaves. If you cut off enough leaves it may cause some serious damage to the tree, and in time it may actually die. Typical ways to treat someone using modern medicine is either to cut them open and mess with their insides, or to get them hooked on drugs for life, sometimes both. It is sad to see this happening when it only exacerbates the problem in the long-run, and the actual solution is to know thyself and make intrinsic life philosophy changes.
The first step in the recovery process is accepting responsibility for your own emotions. Your emotions are inside you, and therefore are your sole responsibility. After all, you are the one who has to deal with them, so you might as well accept that. It is true that others may be able to trigger certain emotional states, but it is always up to you to react to it. This may be a very difficult concept to get past because triggers can seem overwhelming, like you have no control in the matter. It is important to recognize that while it may seem difficult at times, you do have control. Otherwise, you don’t really exist, and that is very doubtful. Once you are able to delete the blame of your own emotions on others, you can work to understand and resolve your own issues which are actually causing the emotions.
The next step in the recovery process is acquisition of knowledge about what is going on. This is difficult in today’s society because of all the constant distractions. City noises, television, close proximity to other people, and many other factors all contribute to the tendency to look outwards, instead of inwards. When we are too busy looking at external stimuli, because it is interesting, or perhaps because we are afraid to look at ourselves, it becomes very difficult to know exactly what is going on inside our minds and bodies. We may rely on others to tell us how we are feeling or what medical conditions we have, and how to treat them.
Sometimes certain very perceptive people have some useful insight. Naturally, however, the person to know these things best is the individual in question. When distractions are eliminated, our mind and body tells us exactly what is wrong, and how to fix it. This ability has evolved over millions of years and is necessary for the survival of the species. The early humans who did not know what their corporeal forms needed to survive didn’t. Someone in your ancestry knew exactly what was needed for his health, and you have inherited this trait too.
This is where meditation comes into play. Meditation, quite simply, is the act of clearing one’s mind of distractions and reverting to a pure state of being. The first stage of meditation is to eliminate external distractions. For beginners, it helps to reduce noise and light levels, adjust the ambient temperature to optimal body temperature, and remove any external sources of physical stimuli. Once you get better at it, you will be able to meditate even with all of these things going on because you will learn what it means to look inwards, and will have practice at doing it regularly. To start, however, I recommend reducing external stimuli to as little as possible. Once this is achieved, sit or lie down in a comfortable position. Many people like to sit in the lotus position while meditating, though I find this to be uncomfortable and prefer to lie down on a bed or couch. There are no rules or doctrine about how meditation ought to be done, so feel free to do whatever suits you. The key is elimination of distractions.
Once in position, begin by focussing on some aspect of your self. Paying attention to breathing patterns is a good start. Focus your breathing to be deep and slow. This will also help eliminate the distraction of oxygen deprivation, which many people suffer from chronically due to improper breathing. Don’t force your breathing. Just allow the air to pour into your lungs as deeply as it is comfortable to do so, and allow it to empty out, just as easily. During this exercise, if a noise or distraction occurs, don’t allow it to get to you. It is ok for this to happen, because, as I said, practiced meditators will be able to perform these exercises even in the middle of a busy city street. Simply accept any distractions as background noise, and try to focus your attention inwards.
Once you’ve become accustomed to listening to your breathing for a time, maybe 5 or 10 minutes, you should begin feeling more relaxed. Now, start paying more attention to other aspects of your self. Feel your heartbeat in your chest, and feel the pressure of your blood flowing through your limbs. The sensations you experience may seem quite odd at first, but do not be alarmed. It is quite normal, and nothing to be concerned about. Some people have never really noticed the feeling of their own heartbeat. I assure you that you’ve been living just fine all this time with these sensations happening inside you, even if you have never noticed them before.
By now your mind is likely racing, or rather, it was already racing, but you’ve just begun to notice it. Again, this may be alarming, but it is quite normal. You are simply beginning to hear your own thoughts. Ever hear of the saying “I can’t hear myself think”? Interestingly, this is not far from the literal truth. Constant sensory overload makes it very difficult to focus on internal thoughts, emotions and physical sensations.
The next stage of meditation is to empty out the distraction of thoughts. Listen to them, one by one, accept them for what they are, just random chatter in your head, everybody has it. And move on to the next thought. Once thoughts are perceived and acknowledged consciously, they tend to go away. If there is a persistent thought which keeps reasserting itself, then this is important to note, but do not suppress it. It demands to be asserted, and the goal is to regress back to the source and understand it better. Do not attempt to have thoughts, do not contemplate the moral implications of your thoughts, do not theorize or work out any problems in your head. Just listen to them. This may be very difficult at first, because probably one of your triggers is to have judgement about everything, even your own internal thoughts. Notice yourself doing this, but do not judge yourself for judging, that would be completely counter-productive!
Every thought happens for a reason. The really intense and frightening thoughts happen for very intense and important reasons. Once this is understood, even the most disturbing and distressing of thoughts can be recognized as a product of some internal process that began as egoic imbalance and was abstracted and convoluted into the conscious thought you are experiencing. Not all thoughts contain beneficial strategies, but all thoughts are a product of useful biological survival mechanisms. Sometimes those mechanisms backfire because of the rapid changes that have occurred in the human environment in the last few thousand years. If these unproductive thoughts are allowed to fester, they cause disorder and disease. When the unproductive thought is identified and accepted as a valid and necessary expression of human existence, it tends to go away and stops having a negative impact. Self acceptance is fundamental for individual health.
It is helpful to have a key phrase that you can use to help trigger your meditative state. Something soothing, like “peace of mind, calm of body”. You could try repeating this phrase over and over again during your meditation sessions. “Peace of mind”, as you breathe in deeply, filling your lungs with oxygen. “Calm of body”, as you exhale, and the oxygen absorbed by your lungs is distributed to your blood and organs. Visualizing this process helps to achieve a serene state of being. In fact, visualization in general is helpful. Perhaps you might visualize yourself as a glowing body, with your pain within you and surrounding you as a white ball of healing light. If you use the same visualization or key phrase frequently, it will become programmed as a trigger to help you enter the meditative state. This can be useful during particularly stressful situations, such as at work or in traffic.
While in the meditative state, you can program additional key phrases that will help to alter your belief structures. You can make yourself think or be any way you wish. For instance, by visualizing a row of master files in your mind with a clear, calm channel running through the middle for quick, easy access and repeating a phrase like “I am a powerhouse of knowledge and intelligence”, you can improve your cognitive abilities and memory. Perhaps you visualize a little man running around, grabbing memory files and distributing them to the desired locations. You could enhance your self-esteem by programming phrases like “I am highly desirable, I am adored by all, I am beautiful”. With this technique, the sky is the limit. Try some unique phrases and visualizations of your own to address particular areas of improvement. Additionally, you can help to manifest changes in your life circumstances by visualizing them actually happening. This will program your subconscious mind with a specific goal, which will trickle throughout all of your choices, small and large and help to manifest the change that you so desire.
It is important to note that you can only successfully manifest goals in this way that do not violate your internal moral code. You could try, but your deeper moral structure will override the command and it will backfire. However, manifesting changes like curing an illness more quickly, or doing well on a test or exam, or impressing people at a business interview are quite doable. The deeper the level of meditation you get to while doing this programming, the more effective it will be. The depth of meditation is based upon how many filters have been deleted, and how close you are to experiencing your core inner consciousness that drives all of your choices. The longer you meditate and the more focussed you become on your internal self, the closer you will get to this.
So now you are sitting or lying there, completely free of distraction, listening to your own thoughts. The ultimate goal is to accept all of your thoughts and get to a serene state of tranquility and nothingness; Nirvana. You may actually be able to feel yourself drawing in energy from the universe through your spine. This is the very same energy that people are attempting to steal when using personality disorders. By generating your own, you will not only have plenty in case someone tries to steal it from you, but you will also avoid contributing to the energy vampirism problem. You will find that after your meditation sessions, you will feel calm yet energized and have less of a tendency to lash out or exhibit symptoms of emotional or personality disorders.
We all meditate, in one way or another. Meditation is simply a release of the stress that is being generated by our survival instincts by surrendering to it. Disease and disorder is just a severe form of meditation. It forces us to surrender. For instance, cancer occurs in severe cases of control imbalance. This is your body forcing you to release control. You cannot control the spread of cancer, even physically removing parts of your body doesn't always help. When you have a severe escape imbalance, you might get AIDS. You cannot escape AIDS - microbes are all around us. Deprivation imbalance gives rise to diabetes, at which point you must halt your consumption of basic sugars.
Disease forces a person to give up whatever tension they've been holding, though it will only occur in extreme cases where a person refuses to relinquish for a very long time. The most drastic result of disease and disorder is of course death, and that’s the most powerful form of surrender there is. The idea of healthy existence is to not let your imbalance get to that point. Give up, or die trying. As Yoda says, there is no try – do or do not. Trying is just a painful way of not doing something. Stop trying to possess, control or escape and instead release that tension and pain.
Achieving a state of Nirvana may not happen on your first session, or your second, or maybe even your tenth. The secret to getting through the deepest levels of meditation is to give up. What are you trying so hard for anyway? This is your opportunity to give up on everything, even if for just a moment. Only after you give up on everything are you free to do anything. Don’t try to possess anything, don’t try to control anything and don’t try to escape anything. Give up on all of this and surrender. End the war of internal conflict. Recognize that everything is and always has been perfect just the way it is. The universe was doing just fine before you got yourself into it, and it will do just fine long after you are gone. The only thing that you are doing by being a self-centred egopath is ruining your unique opportunity to experience the beauty of life around you. The ultimate goal is to accept all things as they are right now and just observe them with quiet awe. This is key to deleting emotional baggage.
Emotional baggage is simply a constant thought process about a past traumatic experience that distracts from and taints the present. Failure to accept what is now because of what has occurred in the past is the primary reason for imbalances. Initially you will find it difficult or seemingly impossible to come to this level of acceptance. This is perfectly ok. Accept your inability to accept things, and you will be well on your way. So you see there are all of these traps set up for you to draw you back into a self-centred, egopathic way of thinking, which are really a lot like catch-22s. This is your biological instinct kicking in to try and “save” you from some non-existent threat. Simply recognizing what is happening is sufficient to prevent you from getting caught up in yourself again. Maintain faith in your ability to heal yourself, and you cannot fail. Recognize that healing is a constant process. Don’t get caught up by setbacks and remember that at every step of the way you are “getting better”.
Your goals are contentedness, patience and assurance. These are the three virtues which correspond to the three primary imbalances of deprivation, control and escape. See the Appendix B for details. Like all skills, practicing these virtues improves performance and it becomes easier as you go along.
During particularly intense meditation sessions, you may have a tendency to want to burst into tears. This is not only normal, it is extremely healthy. Emotional and Physical toxins are shed from the body through tears. Ever notice how you feel much better after a good cry? This is a necessary part of the healing process, and can precipitate much change. Do not be dismayed by this, simply recognize it for the beautiful thing that it is; a healing miracle.
Throughout this process it is important to recognize your protective layers. Don’t lie to yourself. You may be able to convince others that you feel better than you do, you may even be able to fool parts of yourself, but you cannot fool the forces of the universe, and that is the great decider of all things. The only thing that this will do is push your imbalance into your physical systems. You will develop strange diseases like Chron’s, Diabetes, Cancer, AIDS and others. There is a cure for these things. It lies internally, not externally. Spiritual health, emotional health and physical health are closely linked; in fact, with time and wisdom you will see that they are one and the same.
Once you’ve made significant progress in accepting your thought errors, it is important to recognize and acknowledge any new thought errors as they occur. This is not a quick-fix magic pill solution. It is a complete life philosophy. By examining your thoughts and belief systems daily, you can successfully recognize and accept thought errors before they begin to have deleterious effects on your health. Dealing with psychological issues early on is the best form of preventative medicine, not just emotionally, but physically too. This may seem like a lot of work, and it can be at first, but it becomes easier as you get used to it. Also, the alternative is extremely unpleasant and ends up being even more work in the end.
There is a little analogy I like to use to describe this. Let’s say I am lazy and don’t like to wash dishes. I dirty some dishes and put them in the sink, letting them sit there for several days. That’s a pretty lazy thing to do right? Wrong! By letting the dishes sit in the sink, I create more work for myself. The food becomes crusted on and needs to be scrubbed vigorously, I lose the use of my sink for the time that it is filled with dishes and have to go to another sink or move all those dishes aside if I need to get in there. By the time I actually get around to doing the dishes, I’ve created so much work for myself that it is exhausting. Alternatively, I could simply take 10 seconds to rinse them off right away when I dirty them, and put them away, potentially saving me hours of work later. Your imbalance, if not dealt with right away will become much harder to rectify later. When you think about allowing an imbalance to sit around in the “sink” of your mind, please remember the dirty dishes analogy.
There will always be new situations that will trigger slight imbalances. It is important, especially when beginning the healing process, to pay attention to and deal with early warning signs of imbalance. Take note of your thoughts, emotions and physical sensations, and do something about discomfort immediately. No matter what you are in the middle of, it can wait. When you notice the first signs of an egopathic imbalance spiralling out of control, anxiety for instance, you must stop everything immediately, and do at least a few minutes of meditation. Even if you just take some deep breaths to allow your mind to relax for a moment so that you can think objectively long enough to channel the energy into something constructive.
There are many healthy outlets for the various imbalances. Imbalances stimulate the mind and body, so engaging in a physically or mentally stimulating activity to release an imbalance is extremely helpful. In the wild, this is precisely how an imbalance would be dealt with naturally. For instance, a control imbalance would be dealt with by running from a threat. An escape imbalance would be dealt with by coming up with creative ways to get out of a painful situation. Deprivation imbalance would be dealt with by consuming more roots and berries. Vitamin supplements may be useful in this case.
It may seem intrusive to stop everything suddenly, but think of how intrusive an unchecked imbalance can become. There are always options. For instance, if you are at work, take a break or go to the bathroom to collect your thoughts and breathe. If you are driving, pull over somewhere and focus. If you don’t do this, the imbalance will only increase and it will be harder to deal with later. Additionally, you may be putting yourself and others at risk by driving in an imbalanced state. Road rage happens because people drive around while suffering from control imbalance. This excess energy could be channelled into physical activity or coming up with creative ideas for action movies.
The sooner an imbalance is caught, easier it will be to deal with and the less damage is will cause. Remember the dirty dishes analogy. Please won’t somebody think of the dishes!! This is where learning to meditate with distractions comes in very handy. Sometimes, like when on a plane for instance, it will be very difficult to find a quiet, distraction-free environment. Use your key phrase and practice inducing the meditation feeling spontaneously. This will help to bring you into that serene state of bliss even when there are others around you panicking during a crisis situation.
You may find it helpful during the early stages of healing to have a regular meditation schedule and set an alarm so that you remember to do it. It is easy to forget to meditate, especially at the beginning of the journey, and particularly during the heat of the moment, which ironically is when it is needed most. With time, practice and dedication will eventually reprogram your triggers so that instead of going into an unhealthy emotional spiral, you will be triggered to meditate and enter a serene state of bliss.
It is important to not expect this system to work overnight. You cannot cure yourself in a day. If you have taken a long time to get to the point you are at, which is necessarily the case with serious physical ailments, then it is going to take a very long time to get back to baseline. If you are currently taking any medications or treatments for a physical or psychological ailment, it is important to remain doing so. You can’t just meditate your way out of a physiological dependence that you’ve developed. There are very real physical limits on the human body, and while you may be able to heal any physical or mental distress naturally, it is necessarily a gradual process. It must be a daily thing, using these ideas sporadically or once in a while is not good enough. It has to be integrated completely and fully into your belief systems so that the stop and heal concept is activated nearly automatically. Much like how some religions force a person to stop and take a day of rest every week, any healthy philosophy requires regular time outs.
Let’s consider a complete example of a healthy and balanced way to handle a genuinely distressing egoic loss situation. After working on integrating the life philosophy described above, this will come much more naturally, though it probably doesn’t now.
Let’s say you just found out that your girlfriend or wife has cheated on you. At the time you find out, you are at work. She called you up and told you over the phone. As you hang up the telephone, you sit there, staring at the work in front of you and you now have some very important choices to make.
The first choice you have to make is whether to attempt continue with your work or to stop everything while you sort out your head, heart and body full of thoughts, emotions and sensations. The unhealthy thing to do would be to try and get through your work day. This only represses and amplifies the dozens of thought errors that have suddenly exploded inside of you. Even if you were able to get through your work at this point, you’d hardly be able to concentrate on it and would make so many mistakes as to be pointless anyway. Furthermore, when you finally do stop and think about it, you will be so overwhelmed and be in even bigger distress. You might as well take a break and go for walk somewhere secluded. As you are walking (a good meditative technique) you notice that your mind begins to race.
The first thoughts that come up are things like: “This can’t be happening, is this real? Did she really do that? No, she couldn’t have. Maybe she’s making it up”. This is the deprivation imbalance being expressed. You may suddenly feel a desire to go buy something or overeat. You may suddenly feel empty inside, like some part of you is missing and have an overwhelming desire to fill the void. If you have substance abuse problems, you will likely feel a sudden craving for your substance of choice. Listen to these thoughts and the feelings they invoke. They are valid, you have good reason to be thinking them. Breathe in deep, and let out a sigh of relief. Do it several times, fill your void with oxygen, not other things. You probably stopped breathing normally for a short time and so the void you feel is oxygen deprivation. Take a drink of water, concern yourself with your basic physical needs first. Make sure you are comfortable in a physical sense, use the bathroom, crack your back and neck if you can. Release as much physical tension as possible.
After a time, you will feel something inside of you shift. Your thoughts will turn to angry blaming ones. “What a bitch! How could she do this to me? How disrespectful of her! She’ll regret this!” The turmoil is converted into a control imbalance. You may feel angry, violent animosity towards her and blame her for making you feel this way or ruining your life or whatever. Your heart races, blood pressure goes up, you may feel like you’re about to die and want to try and escape or attack someone to cope. You will feel a wounded sense of pride, and you may have the urge to try to get it back by hurting her or someone else. Instead, just walk a little faster, let out a primal scream and breathe really fast and hard, especially when breathing out. If you are near anyone or anything, get away immediately. If you are sitting talking to someone you may have to stand up immediately and just walk away. Tell them you need a second and off you go.
This will calm you right down in short order. However, you will now have some really bizarre thoughts. You may want to bargain or plead with her. You may start making up ideas to explain the situation away, sometimes paranoid or delusional ideas. Things like: “This can’t be happening to me and my family. Maybe she was tricked into it. My wife’s body has been taken over by aliens, it wasn’t really her doing this. Maybe she was sent by some government agency to try and destroy me. I must be dreaming, or in an alternate universe.” It is important to listen to these thoughts, while not judging them as “crazy”. They are perfectly valid metaphorical expressions of your pain in an escape imbalance form.
You want to find any way you can to escape this painful situation and make it less real. It is important to really feel the pain. There will be a tendency to revert back to control imbalance, but don’t let that happen. If it does, just deal with it in the same way you did originally and the escape imbalance will present itself once more. When you surrender to the pain, you feel the true impact of the situation and release it. You will burst out with tears of grief which will help bond you to the people around you. This is the stage where it is especially helpful to talk to people about the situation and let your emotions be expressed freely. Whoever you come into contact with will see your tears and have so much deep compassion and care for you. This is one of the fundamental evolutionary purposes of tears. When someone in a close community is going through a difficult experience, others who are nearby share in the pain and support the hurt individual. This in turn forms important bonds which help to get past the grief of the loss and make future social and emotional connection.
After you have surrendered to the pain and really felt it and talked it through with someone, you will feel like a burden, deep within you has been lifted out. You will feel free and accept that terrible things like this happen sometimes. Your egoic filters will dissipate and you will suddenly see things more clearly. You may begin to understand your wife’s motive for her actions, and realize that she did it out of sheer agony herself. You will be able to empathize and not need to rely on denial, blame and projection for coping mechanisms. You will feel more balanced and able to function. You will still have a few recurring thoughts from time to time that will need to be accepted in the same way as the rest. These will decrease in frequency and intensity as long as the life philosophy described above is followed to deal with them. Pretty soon you will feel renewed and be able to get into a healthy relationship, having learned a great deal from the traumatic experience. Mistakes which led up to the incident can be avoided in future and you will be much better off for having gone through it.
Throughout your experiences, it is important not to lose perspective with judgmental thoughts that anything you are experiencing is “bad”. All experiences are just part of the journey and have inherently useful and beneficial aspects to them, which could just as easily be obsessed over as the purportedly negative ones. Remember, thoughts create reality, particularly internal reality and whatever you believe about yourself is true. We all control our own internal realities. All health ailments can be traced back to a simple thought error. The resolution is through acceptance of the thought. This can be done by clearing the mind and body of distractions, so that you can “hear yourself think” again.
The important thing above all else is to have fun. When you were born, your only goal in life was to have as much fun as possible, and even if you cannot remember it, you probably enjoyed it. Somewhere along the line that got all twisted and changed around. Learning of your mortality should have increased your ambition to enjoy yourself while you can, but for some reason it usually does the opposite. The fundamental purpose of meditation is not to toil away arduously at self-improvement. Meditation should be enjoyable. The purpose is to stop toiling and take a rest to just smell the roses. Meditation is your chance to give up everything. When you are free of burdens and baggage, when you have nothing at all, you are free to play with your existence and experience and spread happiness and joy throughout the universe. Heck, you might as well.
Appendix A
Here is a table to help distinguish between neurotypicals and aspergians. Please keep in mind that very few if any individuals will conform to all traits of a particular type. Each person has some neurotypical and some aspergian traits. The approximate spectrum position can be calculated by how many of each type of trait a person has, and by how social and empathetic the individual is.
Feature
NeuroTypical
Aspergian
Gluten / Casein sensitivity
None
Sensitive; Opioid-like effects
Social prowess in typical settings
Excellent
Poor
Social prowess in “geeky” settings
Poor
Excellent
Number of friends
Many poorly known acquaintances
Few, but very close
Desire for social power
Large
Small
Voice inflection / tonal variance
Widely varied, even from childhood
Monotone, pedantic (early in life, sometimes continuing later on)
Suceptibility to being taken advantage of
Low
High
Gullibility
Low
High
Literal interpretation, semantics
Uses and understands metaphor and pragmatics with ease
Very literal and pedantic
Honesty
Tactful, Deceptive
Brutally honest
Childhood / Workplace bullying
Is a bully
Is often bullied
Political interests
Very political
Apolitical
Logical reasoning abilities
Poor
Excellent
Verbal communication
Indirect, deceptive, more interested in social contact
Direct, honest, more interested in information transfer
Answering questions
Often answers “why” questions with “what” or “how”, etc
Answers with a semantically literal and true response
Charm
Extremely charming
Lacks panache
Body Type
Ectomorph
Mesomorph
Relative Body Temperature preference
Warmer
Cooler
Dwelling preference
Urban
Rural
Metaphor use
Frequent, with ease
Rare (especially during youth), and often convoluted
Engineering skills
Poor
Excellent
Physical Laziness
Lazy
Industrious
Selfishness
Selfish
Selfless
Eyes
Slitty, closed partway
Open wide
Feeling about socially adept people
Strongly like and respect them
Strong aversion, find them to be untrustworthy
Written communication
Poor grammar and spelling
Impeccable grammar and spelling
Nonverbal communication
Has immediate nonverbal instincts, knows how to “read between the lines”
Has trouble with nonverbal cues, eye contact, and frequently misses unspoken social norms
Social Tendencies
Instinctively Antisocial
Instinctively Social
Appendix B
Below is a table describing each of the primary imbalances and various related factors and symptoms.
Imbalance Type
Deprivation
Control
Escape
Personality Symptom
Greed
Pride
Envy
Emotional Symptom
Depression, Self-Pity
Anxiety, Anger
Psychosis, Delusions, Paranoia
Neuro-transmitter
Serotonin
Noradrenaline
Dopamine
Primary Fear
Fear of Starvation / Deprivation
Fear of Death / Failure
Fear of Self / Reality / Pain
Addiction Type
Addiction to Inactivity / Pain / Punishment
Addiction to Activity / Being right / Succeeding
Addiction to Fantasy / Drama / Excitement
Primary Ego Defence / Roadblock to Recovery
Denial
Blame
Projection
Related Chakras
Lower
Centre
Upper
Affected Organs
Spleen, Pancreas
Circulatory System, Heart
Brain, Immune system
Physical Diseases
Diabetes, Coeliac, Chron’s
Heart conditions, Stroke, Cancer
Alzheimer’s, AIDS, Epilepsy
Other Symptoms
Hypersomnia, Chronic Fatigue, Hopelessness, Shopping addiction, Eating disorder
Tachycardia, Hypertension, Hypersensitivity to stimuli, Restlessness, Insomnia
Hallucinations, Delusions, Paranoia, Intimacy issues, Poor reality testing
Related Virtue
Contentedness
Patience
Assurance
Primary Cause
Boredom
Worry
Hatred
Unhealthy Coping Mechanism
Consumption
Lashing Out
Fantasizing
Healthy Coping Mechanism
Activity / Exercise
Relaxation Techniques
Crying
Psychological Resolution
Accept what you have
Accept what you control
Accept what is
Physical Resolution
Fasting
Exercise
Meditation
Glossary
Aspergian: An individual on the aspergian end of the psychological spectrum whose value system is usually more selfless than selfish. Few people remain aspergian for very long because of the tendency for neurotypicals to take advantage, which conditions a person to be more cautious.
Autistic Psychopath: An individual on the extreme end of the aspergian spectrum who exhibits severely anti-social behaviour. This kind of individual was born an aspergian and was not properly conditioned to have empathy for other living creatures and hence was not shifted towards the middle of the psychological spectrum.
Biological Spectrum Value (Position): A loosely-defined quantitative measure of where on the psychological spectrum a person falls at birth. Psychological spectrum value can change throughout a person’s life, particularly during childhood, as a result of social conditioning. The biological spectrum value is dictated by genetic inheritance. By looking at the bloodlines of relatives, or better yet at a newborn child’s behaviour can help to gauge an individual’s biological spectrum value.
Control Imbalance: Arises from a stimulus that triggers a powerful instinctual reaction resulting in an obsessive need to control a situation. The evolutionary reason for this type of imbalance is to survive life threatening situations by stimulating the mind and body to act quickly and powerfully.
Deprivation Imbalance: Arises from a stimulus that triggers a powerful instinctual reaction resulting in an obsessive need to consume. The evolutionary reason for this type of imbalance is to correct dietary deficiencies in order to avoid malnutrition and survive.
Ego: A set of unconscious triggers within a person which, when activated, engage a survival instinct which is often counterproductive in modern society where such instincts are rarely needed. Ego engages a primal reaction designed to perpetuate the material existence of an individual self.
Egopath: An individual who suffers from egopathy. An egopath is essentially an emotionally-driven psychopath. They tend to commit their acts of cruelty as a result of emotional turmoil.
Egopathy: The condition of behaving in an anti-social manner as an attempt to cope with a perpetual state of imbalance through expression of personality disorder.
Emotional Disorder: A manifestation of imbalance at the emotional level. The sufferer is alerted to the imbalance by information known as “emotions”. Typically these consist of anger, sadness, anxiety, fear, etc. They may be subtle or strong, depending upon the level of imbalance.
Escape Imbalance: Arises from a stimulus that triggers a powerful instinctual reaction resulting in an obsessive need to escape from a situation. The evolutionary reason for this type of imbalance is to create a fantasy world in order to mentally survive intolerably painful situations which cannot be escaped physically at the time and must be endured.
Imbalance: A rudimentary form of stress which has many layers of manifestation in the thoughts, emotions, personality and physiology. Imbalances are useful for biological survival. They are triggered when the mind detects a threat of deprivation, death or pain.
Meditation: A process by which the cares and concerns of the physical world are deleted, allowing for purity of thought. There are many forms of meditation, both healthy and unhealthy. For instance, for many people, drug abuse is a form of meditation as it temporarily deletes all worldly considerations. A healthy form of meditation would be psychological relaxation techniques or some of the many religious techniques.
NeuroTypical (NT): An individual on the neurotypical end of the psychological spectrum whose value system is more selfish than selfless. Most people are NT.
NeuroTypical Psychopath: An individual on the extreme end of the neurotypical spectrum who exhibits severely anti-social behaviour. This kind of individual was born a neurotypical and was not properly conditioned to have empathy for other living creatures and hence was not shifted towards the middle of the psychological spectrum.
Personality Disorder: A manifestation of imbalance at the personality level. The sufferer uses hostility towards others to try and cope with their pain. This can be subtle, in terms of passive-aggressive pragmatics, or overt, in the case of yelling and violence.
Physical Disorder: A manifestation of imbalance at the physical level. The sufferer experiences physiological problems such as immune dysfunction, viral infection, organ malfunction, cancerous growths, neurochemical imbalance, brain dysfunction and other physical symptoms and diseases.
Psychological Spectrum: A scale used to measure a person’s underlying character which is based upon a combination of their instinctive tendencies at birth, and their accumulated wisdom and empathy and communication styles. Individuals who are near the ends of the spectrum tend to be unbalanced and lack empathy. For instance, someone can be “too selfish” or “too selfless”. Both extremes cause problems. A healthy existence is to maintain balance between the needs of the self and the needs of others.
Psychological Spectrum Value (Position): A loosely-defined quantitative measure of where on the psychological spectrum a person falls at a particular point in his life. Psychological spectrum value can change throughout a person’s life, particularly during childhood, as a result of social conditioning.
Psychopath: An individual who behaves in an anti-social manner even when balanced as a result of inadequate empathy training. This is the classic idea of the sociopath who can commit inhumane acts of cruelty with a calm demeanor. This is not to say they do not have emotions, but that they are capable of behaving in an anti-social way in the absence of emotional turmoil.
Thought Error: A manifestation of imbalance at the level of conscious thought. This is typically the first obvious symptom of imbalance that is readily noticed by the sufferer. In order to address other, more abstract manifestations of imbalance it is necessary to regress and trace back to the thoughts which are underlying at the lower level of imbalance and alter them. For instance, to cure anxiety problems, it must be determined what thought errors are being triggered and to stop them in their tracks before they spiral out of control and affect the emotions.
Unbalanced Ego: Occurs when the sense of "self" becomes overwhelming and goes into "survival mode" to the point of controlling one's actions, often in destructive ways.
Unbalanced Spectrum Value: Arises from a lack of empathy, usually resulting from a lack of life experience, or choosing to learn a selfish lesson from difficult life experiences. Unbalanced ego and unbalanced spectrum value can be interrelated, affecting each other indirectly.
DSM Translations
The DSM describes diagnoses of certain mental illnesses which can be translated into this system, which adequately explains all of those and other symptoms and illnesses as well.
Please note that in almost all cases the levels of imbalance change regularly, so a person might not be experiencing symptoms continuously. In the case of some cyclic patterns of imbalance, such as in bipolar disorder, the changes happen in a certain repetitive sequence, over and over again.
In bipolar I disorder, the pattern of imbalance tends to fluctuate between high levels of deprivation imbalance to high levels of escape imbalance. The severity of the manic or psychotic episodes depends upon the level of the escape imbalance. The severity of the depressive episodes depends upon the level of the deprivation imbalance.
Also, there tends to be some control imbalance associated with this type of illness, though specific levels vary on a case by case basis and from day to day.
This is a particularly dynamic disorder so the levels are rarely static, so are difficult to represent in a single graph.
In bipolar II disorder, there is a similar cyclic pattern to bipolar I, but is usually more severe in the extremes.
Schizoaffective disorder tends to have a more pronounced and persistent level of escape imbalance than in bipolar. Both describe a similar set of imbalances. In bipolar, the pattern tends to be alternating between deprivation and escape. In schizoaffective disorder, the levels generally are less dynamic and don’t usually alternate as dramatically between the two.
Narcissistic PD
NT 7
© Your very own custom website designed and built by you