Dominion of Mind

You are the authority over your own mind. No one could possibly understand your mind better than you do: no psychologist, priest, or politician. Experts may share techniques and strategies, offer guidance and wisdom. Accept whatever you can put to use. But never give anyone the power to override your own intuition, your own experience.

For as long as I can remember, I was a mystery to myself, and a problem to be solved. I knew that I was different, but I didn't know how or why. Like most people, I assumed that difference implied that I was broken, or deficient. And this sense wasn't just prejudice -- it was validated by my experience of loneliness and frustration. I didn't know anything about autism. I had heard of it, but I assumed it was a something like having Down's, or schizophrenia. All intellectual disabilities and mental illness were lumped together in my mind in the outlines established by gothic horror stories. I knew I wasn't that: I knew that I was reasonably intelligent, and I was able to function and speak like a regular person. And yet, there was something wrong, something I didn't understand, and I knew one thing for sure: it had something to do with the mind. Not mental functions in the sense that modern psychology studies them, but the experience of consciousness itself.

Two examples come to mind. The first has to do with my own emotions. I often feel something bad, something heavy. But I do not myself know if I am feeling sadness, anger, or just plain tired. I know I want something very badly, but I do not know what it is that I want, what would satisfy my need. I feel deeply the pain and suffering of others and of the world around me, but I feel utterly powerless to do anything about it. And so on.

The other has to do with my relations to other people more generally. In every sentence people speak, I feel the weight of their intention: some expectation or judgement or desire that stands just behind the words. And yet the content of that intention is not obvious- I always have to try and figure it out based on context, past experience, and just plain guessing. Every social interaction is like a serious of puzzles, like an unending existential escape room.

And so, like so many autistic persons, I studied philosophy, spirituality, and even empirical psychology in my effort to understand the nature of mind, and the nature of the world I inhabit, and the reasons why I always felt such a disconnect and dissonance between my experience of the world and what everyone else says about their experience of the world.

Around 4 years ago, I got enlightenment. I attained the transformative cosmic transformative insight that I has so desperately sought, and failed to find, through academic study, through spiritual practice, through psychological self-inquiry. I came to understand that I am an autistic person. This was, and is, the key that allowed me to start to put all the pieces together.

And at the same time, I realized that I had done something else. In my explorations of the nature of consciousness, I had discovered and assembled a set of images which formed among them a kind of symbolic language. The language that the mind uses to communicate with itself. The realization of my neurodivergence and the revelation of the cards went hand in hand.

Was it that the cards provided the language and tools to uncover the nature of my own mind? Or was it that accepting and integrating my autism allowed me to see something about the mind itself that had been obstructed? I am not sure. But one thing I have learned is that for all the differences in cognitive style, in my relationship to language and social life, the nature of consciousness itself is, for lack of a less polarizing term, universal. My experience is my own, to be sure: unique and idiosyncratic. But the kinds of experience I have are quite common. I can express and translate my experience in terms that any human can understand. The cards provide that language, because the structure of the deck reflects the universal structure of mind itself. Translation is never perfect. But the translation is not the goal: translation is a bridge by which minds may come together.

The Deck is a tool and a method. The structure it offers, the picture is suggests about how the mind works, is meant to be accurate. But ultimately, its more important that it be effective in your inner work, your effort to know and understand the deep operations of your psyche. No one can know your mind better that you do. But the mind is quite mysterious. We are often strangers to ourselves. But the deck provides the language in which you can ask the right questions, and so get clear answers.

I do not know how many people are really interested in learning about the inner structure of their own mind. It is difficult, demanding work, and full of false starts and dead ends. But I do know that it is very hard to get what you want if you do not know what you want. How else can you even begin to ask for it, or seek it out? I think this is why so many people are willing to let others tell them what they want, and what they need. They give others dominion over their minds, because it seems easier. And maybe it is easier. But it is a devil's bargain, and an invitation to tyranny. This is why, for my part, I want to tell you this:

You are the authority over your own mind. No one could possibly understand your mind better than you do: no psychologist, priest, or politician. Experts may share techniques and strategies, offer guidance and wisdom. Accept whatever you can put to use. But never give anyone the power to override your own intuition, your own experience.