Accepting Autism is an Opportunity for Spiritual Growth
What Emotional Acceptance Really Is
I knew I needed to change the way I viewed my son, but for the life of me, I couldn't figure out how. It's one thing to recognize you need to shift your perspective; it's another thing entirely to actually do it. I felt stuck between what was and what could be—caught in that frustrating space where I knew something better was possible, but the path forward remained hidden.
What I needed was a guide—someone or something to show me the way through this foggy landscape of emotions I'd been wandering through. I'd spent so many years looking at my son's autism as a problem to solve rather than a reality to embrace. But something was changing inside me. The clouds in my mind were beginning to part, allowing rays of understanding to shine through.
I knew I couldn't go back to my old thinking patterns. I'd tried that approach—seeing my son as broken, focusing on what was "wrong" with him, and exhausting myself trying to "fix" what I perceived as damage. That path had only led to more pain and frustration for both of us.
There is no genuine acceptance when your heart is filled with negative judgment and resistance. I finally understood that the task wasn't to accept that my child was broken. That approach was fundamentally flawed from the start.
Though I couldn't see clearly what lay ahead, I sensed there was something more waiting to be discovered. A different kind of relationship with my son, a different understanding of his autism, a different experience of parenthood. For the first time in years, I felt hope bubbling up inside me—hope that I could find happiness, joy, and peace of mind again, not in spite of my son's autism but somehow in harmony with it.
Definition of Acceptance
In my spiritual quest for answers, I stumbled upon a definition of acceptance that stopped me in my tracks. It was simple yet utterly challenging: Wholeheartedly accepting things as they are with no desire for things to be any different.
I couldn't wrap my mind around that. It seemed not just difficult but impossible. That couldn't possibly be right, could it? I'd always thought acceptance meant finding a way to deal with what was bad—learning to live with an unfortunate situation while still acknowledging its inherent negativity.
"How can I pretend something is good when it's actually bad?" I asked myself. "And how can I see what is clearly bad as anything other than bad?" It felt like a dilemma with no solution, a mental puzzle I couldn't solve.
Wouldn't I always have a burning desire for my son to have a "normal" life? How could I possibly want for him to be autistic? Wouldn't that mean I was giving up on him? These questions haunted me, creating inner resistance at every turn.
My resistance to this definition came at me from every angle. Which, if I'm honest, was a strong indication I was probably onto something important. I've learned through experience that whenever I have such a strong emotional reaction to an idea, I should stop and consider why.
Was it because the definition was fundamentally wrong? If so, why was I having such a visceral reaction to it? Or was it because the definition was right, and I just didn't want to believe it? Perhaps denial was responsible for my agitation.
Emotive Meditation
I've discovered that answers are only as good as the questions posed. Understanding and processing this definition of acceptance would require me to question my basic assumptions and ask better questions—questions that would lead me toward growth rather than keep me spinning in circles.
What I found most challenging was that intellectual understanding often precedes emotional understanding by years. Knowing something in your mind is not the same as knowing it in your heart. There's a vast difference between comprehending a concept intellectually and embodying it emotionally.
To help bridge this gap, I began working with a form of meditation focused on thoughts and feelings. Some traditions call it object meditation, others contemplative meditation, and new age practitioners might describe it as a form of mindfulness meditation. Whatever the name, it's the process of thinking about concepts and working to sustain and build the feelings that arise.
This practice is more than just watching your mind. It isn't passive observation of random thoughts. Emotive meditation is extremely focused. The practice engages thought, but you don't follow trains of thought as they naturally arise. You aren't trying to empty the mind and purge all thinking. Instead, you focus on specific thoughts and concepts while allowing yourself to follow the currents of feelings these thoughts generate.
It's a technique for mental and emotional purification. I found that the mind can be purified to eliminate suffering by changing the emotional weights assigned to thoughts. This makes it more demanding than standard mindfulness meditation, which doesn't attempt to direct thought or feeling. I came to see mindfulness meditation as a pre-practice warm-up—it strengthens the capacity for observation and focus, which you need before moving into emotive work.
How Emotive Meditation Works
Each thought carries emotional content. Some thoughts feel pleasant, others unpleasant, and some relatively neutral. These emotions can be weak or intense. The emotional content of our thoughts generates identifiable feelings in our bodies and minds.
Emotive meditation starts with a thought or concept to contemplate. Often these ideas are associated with why you want to do something or not do something. They contain the "whys" and benefits of certain practices.
When the thought generates a feeling, the meditation involves holding that feeling as long as possible. If the feeling fades, you return to the contemplation to regenerate it. This can be done over and over again, building a stronger connection to the emotional content of the thought.
With practice, you can hold the feeling and explore its flavors and variations. You can flow with currents of feelings, noticing how they shift and change.
When contemplating reasons for practices, you might remember times when the reason proved true in your life. For example, compassion is a feeling that mixes joy and sadness, and feelings of compassion differ based on the circumstances, providing different emotional flavors.
Emotive meditation is like being marinated. The feelings seep into other thoughts, changing how you experience your life. For example, the thought "special needs children are helpless and endure much unnecessary suffering" generates compassion.
If it's a fleeting thought, it doesn't carry much weight, and it's unlikely to change behavior. However, if you spend a lot of time thinking about that fact and imagine what their lives are like, it will increase your motivation to do something to make circumstances better. At least it did for me, or this book wouldn't have been written.
Resisting the New Definition of Acceptance
I struggled with the definition of acceptance, questioning it from multiple angles. Shouldn't acceptance provide an opportunity for dealing with things you don't want or desire? Accepting what you think is good is easy, but it wouldn't be called acceptance if it wasn't hard to accept what you think is bad, right? Isn't the "bad" implicit within the definition?
The answer I eventually found was that acceptance is embracing something completely with no resistance. You aren't trying to digest what's bad. You are challenged to recognize it wasn't bad to begin with.
Your judgment was premature at best and incorrect at worst. Acceptance is a call to suspend judgment and recognize that if you suspend judgment, there is no "bad" for you to accept.
I also wondered how one could accept injustice and other events that seem objectively bad. Not everything can be rationalized away as not bad—the death of a child, random violence, the fruits of evil, ethnic cleansing, the suffering of special needs children. These things seem undeniably negative.
The answer that gradually emerged for me was that good or bad is a point of view. Even universal agreement on the judgment doesn't make the negative judgment desirable. The judgment itself is the problem. Strong opinions provide profound unhappiness.
I believe all the items I listed are undesirable—bad, if you prefer. But acceptance isn't about right or wrong, good or evil. A meteor destroying the earth would be undesirable, but it could be accepted. Suspending judgment is a personal spiritual practice. Even if the entire world agrees with your negative judgment, the judgment itself is still upsetting.
The intent isn't to be aligned with the collective judgment of others or the imagined judgment of God. This is why so many religious people are not happy. Many believe their opinions are absolutely right and backed by the righteousness of God. Those who behave this way lack the basic wisdom and humility to see that they are not God, and they can't judge with the certainty of God.
When reality intervenes, when "what is" conflicts with their god-inspired truth, they either retreat into denial or become deeply despondent. In many cultures, people hide their special needs children out of fear of judgment. The special needs child is perceived as a punishment from God for some sin.
The intent of acceptance is to prevent the negative internal states associated with negative judgment. If the judgment is not made, the negative feelings associated with that judgment do not arise.
What Exactly Is Desire?
As I rolled these questions around in my mind over many months, I came to realize the word "desire" needs a careful definition. You can parse the difference between want and desire. The difference is not academic or legalistic—it reveals the core of spiritual practice and a method for overcoming attachment.
Desire is the emotional measure of aversion, pain, and anger obtained when the desire is thwarted. Wanting is the emotional measure of the joy, pleasure, and satisfaction obtained from fruition of the want. Desire is bad or unskillful, and wanting is necessary, good, and skillful. Wanting and desire are completely different and separate measures of emotion, though most people incorrectly see them as inseparable, either the same thing or different sides of the same coin.
Let me give an example of big wanting with little desire: I want to win the lottery. I would feel much joy, pleasure, and satisfaction from winning. However, I have little or no desire to win the lottery. If it doesn't happen, I am not upset by it. My expectation of winning the lottery is low. My life will be good whether I win or lose.
In contrast, here's an example of little wanting and big desire: I don't want an asteroid to hit the earth. I don't derive much satisfaction from knowing each day that an asteroid didn't hit the earth. I had a low expectation of the event. It's more difficult to be thankful or derive much satisfaction for what doesn't occur.
However, I have a big desire for the asteroid to miss the earth. The death of billions of people would be the cause of much pain and suffering and would require the digestion of a lot of sadness. Though I can accept the loss and endure the sadness, I don't want to. Nobody wants to increase the amount of sadness they must endure, even if meditating on compassion is part of your spiritual practice. You don't set out to create sadness.
How to Want Without Desire
This is one of the most perplexing challenges in spiritual practice. It's a viable solution to overcome attachment. I haven't achieved it, but I recognize it is the goal. It provides me clarity on what I want to accomplish.
Many people falsely believe that in order to eliminate your attachments, you must stop wanting things. People who attempt this become strangely detached from everything. You can't feel compassion if you don't want people to be happy and free from suffering.
I want to help special needs children and parents. If my book doesn't help them, I will be sad that I missed an opportunity, but it will not become a source of pain and suffering for me as I will accept the sadness. If I had not wanted to write this book for fear of attachment, you wouldn't be reading it now, and any positive impact it may have would have been lost.
You can't achieve a high level of spiritual liberation if you don't want it. Trying to stop wanting is a spiritual ditch, a dead end in failure. Wanting without desire is a practiced skill.
The key to reducing and eliminating attachments is to reduce the importance of satisfying those wants. In the lottery example, you could see how wanting can be large, but the importance of obtaining can be essentially zero.
When obtaining objects of wanting is reduced to an importance of zero, you obtain all the upside of joy, happiness, and satisfaction when you get what you want, and you avoid all the pain and suffering when you don't get what you want. You enjoy objects of desire when they come to you and release them when they don't.
So what is the key to reducing the importance of obtaining objects of desire to zero? Meditation on or contemplation of the impermanence of all things, and the practice of gratitude and thankfulness. More on that later.
Won't Acceptance Reduce My Motivation?
I wondered: If I accepted my son's condition as good, wouldn't I stop trying to help him? I want my son to continue to grow and improve to overcome his limitations. If that doesn't happen, I will be sad, but I will accept it. I want for him to improve, but as I've defined it, I don't desire it. Wouldn't my acceptance reduce my motivation to help him?
The answer I found was that acceptance is not resignation. I can strive to help my son gain more independence while still accepting his current level. Acceptance is about embracing what is. Resistance is a strong motivator but a spiritually draining one.
How could I want my son to be autistic? How could I want my son to be dependent on others his whole life? How could I want my son to be isolated by his lack of social skills—no friends, no wife, no children, no relationships outside his family? How could I want that for him?
The answer is that acceptance is not about wanting what are perceived as negative circumstances. One hundred and eighty degrees from wrong is also wrong. I can accept those circumstances for what they are without the negative judgment.
I've wrestled with these distinctions, tried to put them into practice, and evaluated the results. I still do this today. Spiritual practice evolves and improves through experience. It isn't a "once and done" kind of thing. You never achieve spiritual perfection.
If you were "enlightened," it wouldn't mean that you stop being mentally disciplined. It would mean you found the practices that sustain your peaceful mental and emotional states.
Through this journey toward acceptance, I've discovered that seeing clearly isn't about having perfect vision—it's about removing the filters of judgment that distort what we see.
When I look at my son now, I still see autism, but I no longer see it as something that needs fixing. Instead, I see it as part of who he is, part of what makes him uniquely himself. And in that clear-eyed vision, I've found a peace I never thought possible.