II have thought about this off an on for a while, and decided I will talk more about it here since I haven’t been able to find a more welcome place for someone who is considered spiritual and on the autistic spectrum. I’m not even sure what the right place is though as there are times I tend to feel lost in more ways than one and perhaps cut off when I get mistaken for an AI bot in a few places.
My story starts where I was born into a family with a Mormon Church ancestry, even though I wasn’t actually connected to the Christian Church. I’m not going to go into religion here since I don’t want this to turn into some religious argument. Anyway, when I was six or seven years old living in a house further away from my grandma’s house, it seemed apparent that I was more connected to nature where I would watch water running along the ground in little rivers.
After my family had moved back closer to my grandma, I found myself going out into the woods behind her backyard almost every time I was visiting her and going to the stream back there to look at it. I remember during the time it seemed magical and mystical while I was exploring on the frozen marsh there in late fall and was looking at the twilight in the sky at sunset realizing I needed to head back to the house.
During one of the times I was out in those woods as a kid, I had encountered something that looked human that said "hey there’ and I ran all the way back to the house scared not knowing what it is. Sometime after that, there was upheaval going on between my parents which may have been due to the time the chimney was blocked and the house was smoking up, I ended up being brought to my grandma’s house with my siblings to spend the night. I have memories of wearing footed pajamas with the vinyl feet, but had developed holes in the feet for some reason. It was night and I could sense there is something out there.
When I was home again and it was sometime around late spring or summer, I had become interested in the Care Bears and while I was playing with brick blocks, wooden blocks, and large train tracks that were plastic from a riding train in the basement playroom, I was writing letters to Tender Heart Bear and leaving them in the kitchen window where they were being answered. I think it may have been because I was looking for a friend since I was friends with the neighbor girl Carrie before, but then she stopped being friends of me and my siblings weren’t being kind to me either.
At some point, I was allowed to get this three foot tall Tender Heart Bear plush from Toys-r-Us after getting good grades in school, and it became my only friend. Sometime later, there was upheaval going on between my parents again and we ended up being forced to leave there and go on a cross country trip to Washington State. I couldn’t bring much of anything with me and so I lost a number of things including my three foot Tenderheart Bears.
While I was in the van traveling by woodlands, I had this mystical sensation of something out there calling me to come back out into the woods for some reason and couldn’t do anything while in a van. On top of that, I remember seeing the darkening sky and sensed some kind of mystical connection with the western sky for some reason as well, and this might be related to the feeling of being disconnected from nature and lost.
Years later, when I was back on the east coast and was living in a town house in northwest New Jersey after moving a couple more times, I recovered my three foot Tenderheart Bear and I also had a dream about seeing a white mouse who was named Heather in the backyard who was sad. She told me her husband was killed by a croaker while searching for one of the two greatest treasures in the world, and she was pointing to a steep grassy hill that appeared in the distance from the house as she continued saying one of the two greatest treasures lies just over that hill.
This may been related to where I used to live in Pennsylvania where there is a tree covered hill in a similar location from the front of the house, and over it is where my grandma’s house is located. During that time, my mother had met someone who was having me forced to be going to a Christian Church and I really didn’t seem at all comfortable with it, but thankfully I was no longer going there after she broke up with him. Sometime after that when I was beginning to look at Pagan and Druid stuff out of interest, I was visiting my grandma’s house again thanks to my sister.
During a visit out there again, I was sensing this presence there and wasn’t sure what it was even though it led to me having dreams about a fox. I ended up looking for help and was soon hooked up with a seer calling herself Yotewah and Coyote’s Green Eyed Daughter, She also went by the name of Kikyo and I told her about the presence I felt at my grandma’s house while showing her a sketch I did of a fox wearing blue clothing I had seen and remember from one of my dreams, and she astral traveled afterward to find that it is a fox boy called Kane.
A while after that and feeling like he is a friend I lost years ago at my grandma’s house, I ended up with my getting someone to make me a custom Kane the Fox plush so I have something physical I can cuddle up to. Sometime after that, I had a dream about a girl outside the first townhouse I was moved to in Northwest New Jersey, and brought that up with the seer who found it was a fae girl named Lindsey who is an elf girl. She saw she was being chased by something dark and evil and took care of whatever it was. That later ended up with me having a custom plush I made of her using her description that I remembered,
When I started having a couple dreams about darkness out in the woods behind my grandma’s house that may be related to what I saw out there when I was a kid, I told the seer about them and she had astral traveled there to cleanse the woods and my grandma’s house. She told me there was some sort of guardian that she cleaned as they were being harmed by something that had the form of the Sprite from the Secret of Mana game.
After I had been moved out into a rural area with a yard that had some trees, I remember having a dream being in the yard there and could feel this pulling sensation. So I had contacted the seer about there and she found out there is a vortex and guardian there nearby. Then while I was back at my grandma’s house and talking to her about Kane the Fox, she assumed it represented me due to having the Todd as one of my surnames. After I told her about the seer I had been talking to and showing her all the records that I kept, she had wanted to know her credentials even though she had not asked for money or anything in return. I later did that and ended up learning the seer was taught by the Elder of Serpentstone, it let to a little bit of an argument with her and I continued talking to the seer.
Not long after that, I had a dream about something pretending to be Kane that had a crescent moon on its cheek and I was uncomfortable. I also remember seeing an eclipse in the sky in the dream. After I had another dream where I could hear Kane calling for help, I contacted the seer and she looked into it and found that it was a Kane Pretender who trapped Kane away from me. She not only found and brought him back to me, but sealed the Kane Pretender away in an ice sphere of love and placed it in an ice glacier somewhere guarded by a dragon.
After that ordeal, I started having dreams again with Kane in them and was better. I continued having the dreams about him off and on as well as a few about Lindsey, and soon I had moved one last time into a house with a larger piece of property that included woods out back. Just after the move, I was feeling rather uncomfortable and had a couple dreams about fairies. I told the seer about this and after investigating, it turned out that I have fairies that are not only fond of me, but had been told the name of their queen. I continued having dreams about Kane and my grandma’s house off an on and at some point, I have lost contact with the seer.
Some more years have passed and now I have been feeling worried and a little depressed (lately around the winter solstice when the days are short and no greenery to be seen outside other than bamboo, plus too cold to go outside). It may be due to the state of the world and things being forgotten and taken away leading to the feeling of them being lost, and the fact that recently I have been seeing trees dying off. It could also be the fear that I’m having on and off about emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, the fear of an artificial super intelligence, and brain computer interfaces and stuff that are a threat to the innermost privacy of the mind, and there being too much change happening and autistic people cannot adapt to change well.
This could very well be because of my strong connection with the woodlands and there being decline of woodlands that is upsetting to me like I can feel the pain of what is happening to nature and to the fae folk. At this time, it seems I’m feeling so lost and so cut off since I haven’t picked up much friends. There were also were attempts to get me back into the christian church and be cut off my attachments with the woods and the spiritual friends I have. When I first brought this up in a Pagan subreddit on Reddit, someone alerted Reddit Help Resources which I don’t think if that was right as I wasn’t even talking about committing suicide as its not quite that bad, and I’m not thinking that for that matter.
Right now, I have been thinking positively on what thinks can be talked about or done, and it feels like we need to bring back something like a Koala Kafe in the comforting woods to talk about stuff like this. I also keep thinking about the Last Mimzy movie where it feels like Gaia, the soul of our world, has become sick and people are becoming isolated and warlike (see what is happening to Ukraine and Israel), and our world is frightened and is dying. And has feeling like looking for a great scientist to try many times and is willing to try once more, this is the Last Lindsey (based from the elf girl with a strong affinity for the forests since she is of the forest). Her task feels like it would be teaching of how precious the woodlands are and saving them, as well as finding a soul not contaminated by the technological pollutants that fill our bodies and minds like our precious quality of humanity has been turned off, and it is said the soul’s tears would contain an instruction for an awakening that would spread like wildflowers.
Anyway, sometimes I feel like we could use something like a Koala Kafe in a peaceful woodland place that is like being among the comforting koalas, even though they are listed as endangered in Australia and need our help. I also have lots of created characters and ideas and had been trying to work on a few stories, but I feel bringing them online in the wrong place will lead them being scraped by AI Bots and be used against me to make things worse. I’m just afraid whatever I create and write to give to be helpful would also end up be given to the elite few thanks to their AI bots. I feel that I currently need someone to talk to about this and figure out what the solution to this is.
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My brother in Christ I see the spark of a good and gentle person in you, so as a fellow neurodivergent individual, please at least give this a half thought:
What you are describing is something else other than your autism. These conditions often worsen over time if left untreated, and youth trauma does not help.
People just like you and me spend 10+ years of their lives studying and conducting science to create medications that help people like us.
Please consider looking into a referral for a psychiatrist to discuss these issues further.
This doesn’t feel right to me and made me feel uncomfortable and somewhat anxious and scared. Like I feel what I was talking about here may be getting misunderstood.
I’m glad you decided to open up about your experiences. You are very welcome to come to https://slrpnk.net/c/animism and post about your experiences there.
I admit that your world of reference is strange to me - but I have learned that the terms and names people use are often very different and that we mustn’t get hung up about it. I grew up in a big city where I couldn’t really connect with nature, but I felt the lack of trees so much that I ran away with 17 to live in a greener place. Started to connect with plants. And much later I started to befriend a group of rocks. I can’t say that it comes natural to me as to you.
I feel that a lot of people are coming to this knowledge again. For me it’s about developing a better relationship with the landscape we’re living in. There’s a lot of conscious and knowledgeable entities out there ready to help out people who are lost and lonely (and some mischievous ones we want to stay away from).
So far my problem is when I dive deep into the non-human it’s very hard to connect with humans. And vice-versa it’s really difficult to be aware of the otherworld while I do human things. For example I’ve been busy and didn’t visit my rock friends for weeks. Hope they don’t mind as they run rock-time anyways.
Never mind those who have been brought up to be deeply scared of these experiences and dismiss them as pathological. For me, I’m done with so-called experts capping my power under the guise of wanting to improve my mental health. My mental health is fine, but the destruction of woodlands and watersheds is something we all should be deeply concerned about, and getting support from our good spirits is very much needed.
Yeah, I felt that I could open up more and share more of my experiences here to see what people think since I’m not sure where would be a more welcoming place. I have tried talking about this in a Pagan community as they sometimes deal or work with fairies, but it led to getting a few confused responses and someone reporting me to Help Resources thinking I was going suicidal, and I wasn’t.
Anyway, the feeling I have with your comment is much, much better and more comforting to me. It could be that I’m also Animist as well as Autistic even though I also tend to look at things differently where I feel many people don’t seem to understand correctly. It’s like I may be looking for anything that may have been overlooked or something.
It’s good that a lot of people are coming to this knowledge again and developing a better relationship with the woods and landscape, as I feel more comfortable being in woodlands and overground abandoned places then in the middle of any every changing city.
And if should be noted there is nothing wrong with my mental health either even though someone had commented here saying I was describing something else other than Autism and that I should see a shrink saying it is something that often worsens over time. I didn’t like that as it made me uncomfortable with somewhat more anxiety and scared.
Right now, I’m trying to work on this story of mine that focuses on a small group of kids, some of them Animist in a way, who had a tree house and fort in the forest. There is a park nearby down the street and they are also having concerns with these strange large ear shaped metal dishes being installed on telephone poles. The boy who the story focuses on had a dream that morning about mysterious anthropomorphic bears and he and his sister head to the park to go into the forest there to see if there is anything odd and related there. Just as they are about to go in there, a siren sounds causing the ear dishes to turn red with an antenna sticking out of them. This leads to the boy passing out and having a vision of trees with all their branches cut off that makes him sad. He also encounters a group of anthropomorphic bears being threatened by something in it and then finding himself in a large park. At the same time, hearing a girl singing part of the opening song of the Tenth Kingdom. He then wakes up back in the actual park with his sister looking over him worried, and he tells her what happened. They soon leave the park and head to their friend’s tree house to meet with him there and tell him about what is going on as they also noticed a number of trees appearing to be withering and dying for some reason. They soon look into an old book that came from an antique bookstore that is about bears and begin working on figuring all of this out, even though they will likely soon find their way into a medieval fantasy world.
Anyway, if you are interested, I can take a picture of the plush Kane the Fox and the plush Lindsey the Elfin Girl within the wooded area here and upload it here as soon as the weather is better and dry again to do it. I also feel the destruction of the woodlands and watersheds is something we all should be deeply concerned about, and that is where my thoughts of the Last Mimzy and thinking of the Last Lindsey being about Lindsey teaching about how precious the woodlands are and saving them, In a way, its like getting support from our good spirits which is very much needed since it feels like the soul of our planet, Gaia, has become sick and people are becoming isolated and warlike. Our world is frightened and is dying.
as they sometimes deal or work with fairies, but it led to getting a few confused responses and someone reporting me to Help Resources thinking I was going suicidal, and I wasn’t
This is so funny (and sad). I avoid discussing spirits with people who put a very strict framework (especially all taken from another culture) onto their inside world and try to convince others it’s the best or only way. There are millions of worlds of reference out there, and I couldn’t give a flying fuck whether the spirits take the forms of historical pantheons or TV series characters - because there is literally (sic) no difference. They are all stories, and whatever works for you works for you.
I have finally visited my favourite rock yesterday, to say thanks for all the good things it has brought to my life. I am due to walk a lot of kilometers between rocks and trees to keep the good spirits flowing. Things work for me, because I permitted myself to listen to the landscape around my house during a time in my life when I felt really weak and tired, without letting myself fall into the paranoia of ‘schizophrenia’ or ‘psychosis’. I got really good advice, where other people’s advice would have been too confusing.
Yesterday I spoke to a person who would be considered mad and useless by most. He is a street clown. When in fact he has a centrally important function of reminding people of the irrational and shaking them out of their sad rails. He keeps the chaos alive in people’s hearts and is an essential worker. Real power can be very quiet. Real power with the goal of kindness is the best of all.
Hi, I just wanted to add here that I have gone ahead and took a picture of Kane and Lindsey since its a nice day today, and this is what they are look like if you are curious.
As you can see, Kane is the fox boy and Lindsey is the elf girl in that picture. These are just a couple of my spirit friends which I had custom plush made of them and I love them a lot. I’m also attached to them as well as the forest near here that I took the picture in, though Lindsey looks like she may need to have a surface cleaning soon.
I like them, and the place where they are. Glad you’ve got them taking care of you!
Even though I’m caring for and feeling very protective of them, and want to protect the woodlands they like to be in.
This is so funny (and sad). I avoid discussing spirits with people who put a very strict framework (especially all taken from another culture) onto their inside world and try to convince others it’s the best or only way. There are millions of worlds of reference out there, and I couldn’t give a flying fuck whether the spirits take the forms of historical pantheons or TV series characters - because there is literally (sic) no difference. They are all stories, and whatever works for you works for you.
Well, I have not been responding anymore to that thread in the Pagan community. To me, fairies are real as I had seen them and that works for.
I have finally visited my favourite rock yesterday, to say thanks for all the good things it has brought to my life. I am due to walk a lot of kilometers between rocks and trees to keep the good spirits flowing. Things work for me, because I permitted myself to listen to the landscape around my house during a time in my life when I felt really weak and tired, without letting myself fall into the paranoia of ‘schizophrenia’ or ‘psychosis’. I got really good advice, where other people’s advice would have been too confusing.
That just has me thinking about talking a picture of the plush Kane and Lindsey and showing them to you here as I tell more about them, since they were made after spirits I have seen in a number of my dreams.
Hi there! Looks like you linked to a Lemmy community using a URL instead of its name, which doesn’t work well for people on different instances. Try fixing it like this: [email protected]
Personally, I understand developing and embracing AI (specifically Machine Learning what people refer to as AI keeps changing), but I hate how everyone is basically stealing everything that’s public to train their ML models. In my opinion, that should be illegal depending on what the model is then used for. I heard of a concept called “glazing” where content is given edits to make it harder for ML models to learn from, but I don’t know how effective that will be. There really needs to be better protection from companies using all your data to train their stuff.
I do often like to observe nature. Also, when I was younger I’d sometimes feel like there was something trying to speak to me through various song’s lyrics that played on the radio.
I don’t really make too much effort to remember my most of my more recent dreams. I definitely dreamed last night, but I can’t make much sense of the events. I think it was representing minor anxiety? There was something about taking a small train to a clearing in a forest I think? Something about playing with my cat?
It’s often nice to take a break to collect your thoughts and daydream.
Hi, I wasn’t exactly talking about developing and embracing AI as I feel that I’m against it for a number of concerns, when it comes to stealing everything that is public to train their models. I have that should be made illegal and its a reason why I’m reluctant with what I bring online. I have heard about ‘glazing’, but I’m not sure how effective that would be if I were to use it in protecting my stuff, which is why I’m still feeling rather uncomfortable bringing too much of my ideas and stuff online anywhere. And I also agree there really needs to be better protection here.
Oh, and I do like the observe nature at times, even if it means taking a walk out into the woods when the weather is nice enough to do so. And there were times I had the sensation that something is trying to speak to me from the forest as I had tried to describe in my post. For some reason, you got me thinking you were dreaming you were playing with your cat and he/she had led you onto a train (The Woodland Express?) that took you to a clearing in the forest. I got the feeling maybe you are going to meet people in dark green robs there and you were getting minor anxiety in not being sure if you want to follow them deep into the mysterious part of the forest.
