Gifts From the Past

Today I submit a post that differs substantially from my previous discussions. Whilst lacking the analytical rigour and insightful perception of my usual blogs, this time I present a narrative, a tesimony even, on something that I feel led to share.

When I was in my early teens, I had a strange and sudden awareness one day whilst walking the dog. I felt that God was instilling me with some sort of psychological gift. The memory is perhaps best captured by the image of 'Neo' in 'The Matrix' being 'plugged in' to computer programmes that instantaneously impart information into his brain. This new-found ability consisted of the externalisation of self-perception: to be able to 'jump out of my own brain' and to see myself in the third-person. This is obviously impossible; even viewing yourself from without does not eliminate the definitional necessity that I must still be perceiving through my own senses or psyche. Hence, this was some sort of recursive, continuous process; I felt that I was able to continually jump out of myself into an 'external self' and then to immediately jump out of that external self into an ex-external self. An image of infinitely concentric circles serves to illustrate. In this way, the ability was one of a process, striving towards some non-human knowledge rather occupying some super-human persona.

The image of Neo performs well as a comparison, because it would probably be possible for Neo to know how to do something without knowing that he could do it (hopefully that was a cogent sentence). In other words, at some point in time, he may find himself in a situation that demands a particular skill, which he is surprised to find that he indeed possesses. He then retrospectively identifies the point in time at which he received this skill. This is indeed what happened to me.

I have an obsessive characteristic in my personality, which has led to both success and to self-destruction in my life. In this way it is not a virtue or vice, but rather a trait that has creative and destructive potential. Indeed, it is often thought that the link between genius and autism is not intellectual, but rather based on the obsessive characteristic of autism that allows a person to concentrate on one task, however menial, for long enough to discover certain patterns, which may in fact be obvious even if previously unknown. Indeed, most 'great theories' seem obvious once they have been discovered. Consider gravity.

After recovering from a debilitating illness, brought on through this obsessive trait, my psychologist remarked that I had displayed a remarkable, and in his experience unique, ability to externalise the problem. Indeed, recognition of the problem (which they say is half the battle) came very early on for me. Recovery then consisted of a battle between the external self, which consciously acknowledged the issue, and the internal self, where the issue lay. I was able to rationalise my own irrationality: to frame it, analyse it, and battle it.

This is obviously a necessary feature of any psychological recovery, especially for sustainability. However, after emerging from this episode in my life, I now look back on that time when I was but 14 years of age, as the point in time that God invested in me the capacity to defend myself from myself. In this way, God saved my life.

God has healed me in much more direct ways since then, which require expansive explication in themselves. However, I feel especially led to record this experience.