| “My candle burns brighter because it stands next to yours.” Keri Bowers, co-founder |
Creating attitudinal and perceptual shifts with conscious collaborations
The Mission of The Autism Shift in to engage individuals and organizations at a higher level of dialogue, thought, and collective action steps to raise awareness, education, and opportunities in the global autism community.
What is The Autism Shift?
The Autism Shift is about creating a transformative shift in our collective consciousness by looking deeper into our individual and common perceptions and values in autism. We believe that by taking intentional and directed action to evolve our intellectual, spiritual, emotional, and perceptual values, we can then come together at a greater level of global velocity, connectivity, and common purpose that benefits all.
Through intentional collaborative efforts, we will vision for – and support others – at the same time we promote our individual goals to create sustainable programs, services, products, and possibilities on the world stage. Each member will contribute their time, talent and ideas to the collective – as the collective gives back to the individual members.
Where Does The Shift Begin?
The Autism Shift begins with our core attitudes, awareness, actions, beliefs, behaviors, consistency, and communication styles. Those characteristics affect the way we relate to autism and in turn, how we “choose” to experience autism everyday. When we begin to explore our core values, we can then make choices in autism – as opposed to autism making choices for us. As we work on ourselves, we then begin to see The Autism Shift.
We begin by becoming conscious in our thoughts, words, and actions rather than being reactive and fearful.
Why is The Autism Shift important?
Our lives are a projection of our thoughts and beliefs upon which we build our perceptions. In turn, those perceptions about our circumstances determines what we experience.
The day-to-day realities of autism for self-advocates, parents, caregivers, organizations, and even government is often undeniably difficult. Autism, in all its variations and forms, expressions and experiences are unique to our personal journey, and yet we all share commonalities as well. From budget restraints, to life at home, school, and the workplace, to IEP’s, MTP’s and other guiding mandates, we are often tired, fearful, and even lonely in our journey. We also share much joy and reason to celebrate!
We don’t know why autism has touched our lives and increased in the world – as those are, for now, unanswerable questions with loads of hypotheticals and research that for now, has no concrete answers. And so we may ask “Why me?” and find ourselves “desperate” for the “cure”, or feel it’s “us against them.” At The Autism Shift, we believe these are flawed questions, values, and positions. They don’t serve us in the “now” of autism. Based on experience, we believe that a shift in perception is necessary to open up an entirely different experience of autism and its day-to-day rewards and challenges. We believe that when we overcome the “death of a dream” and come to a place of acceptance and co-existence in autism and even an elevated purpose through autism, we are able to operate at a higher level of velocity, being, and possibility.
We who participate in The Autism Shift have seen first-hand that a higher level of consciousness, coupled with a desire to collaborate with like-minds has grown our personal and professional experiences in autism. Coming together to help others and create partnerships of mutual respect, we become stronger advocates, parents, professionals, and human beings.
Join the dialogue on the Autism Shift Facebook page – www.facebook.com/theautismshift