Cutting Through Spiritual Narcissism

I understand narcissism as being central to the human condition and the transformational process. It is a malady set up in the process of incarnation - our emergence or differentiation from the 'ground of being' (the word becoming flesh). This dynamic process coupled with childhood wounding creates a self-separating shell that prevents genuine availability to others and genuine participation in spiritual and instinctual life/love energies. I believe spirituality then, is a transformational process in which we collaborate together to uncover and let go of our narcissism so we can surrender to the sacred mystery from which everything arises and the self transfiguring energies that arise from the ground of being.

Much contemporary spirituality is based in based in Eastern/Buddhist practices (guru yoga, meditation, etc) which are strictly non-relational approaches to spirituality and are all about becoming 'one' — but genuine relationship takes two — self and other. Furthermore Eastern practices promote vertical individual 'inner' transcendence (over horizontal, relational, and embodying practices) which can further arrest transpersonal development in subtle 'spiritual' narcissism. Our inability to perceive our world as Paradise and approach it as the Beloved is because of our collective state of arrested incarnation . To fully incarnate and come into being as a divine person we must cut through spiritual narcissism and overturn the deeper subject-object split between self and other, self and word, self and 'all that is'.

For us, the transpersonal is paradoxically in the interpersonal and the ability to make authentic contact with the other. But there is more, to genuinely celebrate our companion, to affirm our friend's face as a Breathing Face of Divinity is to reverse the flow of our objectifying, devouring, self interested narcissism. The disease of spiritual narcissism is pervasive but can be offset through undoing the blocks that soften the unconscious posture toward the dynamic ground. Whatever truly opens the heart and melts the archaic, submerged and frozen posture in concerted participation is a balm for the great spiritual malady of our times. Spiritual narcissism is a subtle disease that can only be revealed in relationship because it is here in the human encounter where these offensive and defensive postures emerge — the heart is truly open when it opens to the other.

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