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An overly simplistic 101 of autism is: It is one who struggles with or does not pay attention to another's body language. Most notably, autistic people rarely pay attention to another's eyes and facial expressions. This one aspect then ripples out into most autistic symptoms, but not all autistic symptoms. For example, one might be wired in an unusual way where they're overloaded all the time and can't pay attention to small body language cues because of it, showing even if they go out of their way to pay attention to body language their autism is still there. Some are unfortunately even worse than that. When kids avoid eye contact and social interaction their brain develops in a certain way. Different parts of the brain are more liquid than others. Most high functioning autistic people can be taught, even later in life, how and when to pay attention to another's face. This, with some exercise and learning some social skills, will make them seem normal to everyone else. However, some parts do not get rewired. They will still be different in certain ways, like noticing patterns often in detailed ways beyond the average person. However, these semi-permanent side effects can vary from person to person. All in all, you're not wrong, but are a bit overly simplistic. The brain does physically change to our environment, but not everyone is willing to learn and grow in certain ways, and even then some aspects of the brain change very slowly over years, or so slow it might as well be static. And as someone who has mastered many different kinds of meditation and qualifies as arhat (You did say, "Please enlighten me." :P) if you're looking to gain full self programming of the brain, including ending dukkha, it's very much worth pursuing mastering the subject, if not for fun, because it benefits yourself and the rest of the world. ^_^ |