Hi all!
Over the last several months, I have been listening to The Telepathy Tapes, a podcast that started out as an exploration around autistic nonspeakers and what actually is happening with them.
I am not usually a podcast person – I would much rather listen to a book than a podcast, but many people kept recommending it to me, so, finally, when 3 people in one week mentioned it to me, I decided to give it a try.
And, of course, I fell into it in a surprising way. Because the premise of the whole podcast is about changing narrative.
The narrative that if a person is a nonspeaker, that they are not intelligent or able-minded or conscious in some way. It is a narrative that is based on science materialism – because these folks are seen in the context of “normal” and do not fit. Nonspeakers seem to be disabled cognitively because this is what can be seen and measured.
But it is not necessarily true. The podcast explores how many nonspeakers can communicate in many different ways, especially if they receive help using spellers to spell out what they need to communicate. That the assumption that they have nothing to say just because they do not know how to control their bodies is a myth, a narrative created to “explain” and toss aside people who are nonspeakers.
Over the years, people have been changing this narrative, and this podcast is one of the ways. They explore not just how nonspeakers can speak through spellers, but that they can communicate through telepathy with people they care about and with other nonspeakers.
Among other amazing things. Like really amazing things that show how many nonspeakers are incredibly intelligent, full of life and brilliance.
| Part of the podcast gives research, talks about testing, shows testing on their website in order to show our materialist science minds that the amazing things are possible and probable – even if we can’t quite explain it through science just yet. Changing narrative. Of course, many of the nonspeakers speak with others not just through telepathy but also through dreams and dreaming. One story included a nonspeaking young man who broke into his mom’s dream to talk with her when he had never been able to speak in his waking life. ~~~~~~~ I do love that this mainstream podcast by a mainstream kind of person is diving into changing narrative around not just nonspeakers but other areas where the kind of rationality we have been groomed to believe as the best way of being and as a kind of universality is just one way. The myth of rationality as universal. And while, yes, there is always space for this kind of rationality and, yes, there is importance in it – it is also not the only way of knowing. Not the only way of perceiving. And it is often, well, wrong. I mean – rational western science believed for a long time that you could measure the size of a person’s skull to determine intelligence [guess who was measuring whose skulls…yes, it was based on racism]. I was taught – groomed – to approach dreams with the rational and with the idea of categorization. I was taught – groomed – to put dreams into a rationality based on our understanding of some things now. And based on “founders” who lived a long time ago. And who were measuring skulls and neck deep in racist and misogynistic beliefs and practices. Part of what I feel dreams have been teaching me and everyone is that they are immeasurable and uncategorizable and that our attempts to rationalize around them do not even scratch the surface of what they want to bring to us. I mean. I feel that when working with my dreams and with my dreamers. That there is so much here. ~~~~~~~ Earlier today, I was with a dreamer who used the word feral to describe something they do in their own practice. I love the word feral. It means more than just wild – it means a wildness that has escaped domestication. I joked with Bill that we should call what we do Feral Dreaming. And, well, it does kinda fit. Dreams want to break us from the ways we have been domesticated so that we can claim our wildness. Dreams also want us to become feral dreamers – breaking from the attempts of centuries of humans trying to domestic their gorgeous and amazing wildness. It is a line I love navigating – the line of wildness and bringing in the rational at the same time. Because both are important. The rational needs the wildness and the wildness needs the rational. ~~~~~~~ In the coming year, I hope to bring more of the feral into our conversations around dreams and dreaming. To bring in the wild. To keep breaking what wants to domesticate us and our dreams…. |