A narcissist is the ultimate test of your spiritual practice. Your desires can get you burnt, over-identifying with the narcissist can get you incinerated. And like the frog in slowly boiling water, you won’t even know it is happening.
Grandiosity is not unique to narcissists. We all carry grand visions of a bigger, brighter future. Life wants to evolve, and grandiosity is the fuel which propels us toward that. We imagine the perfect relationship. The ideal home. Prosperity. Connection. All the things that make life worth living.
We also tend to over-value things. The classic example is the child who sees their parent as the ultimate authority, full of infinite strength and wisdom. They see the parent as boundlessly loving and supportive; the ultimate manifestation of a human being.
This projection slowly dies in a healthy person. The truth gradually seeps into focus as the growing child realises their parent has limits, wounds and flaws. Their parent does not have it all worked out.
This also applies to the greater world. Our sense of wonder early in life is gradually challenged as we begin to see the ugliness of things. We encounter bullies, mental illness and homelessness. Some people are steadily awoken from their Garden of Eden, others are snatched out of it by a traumatic experience or a traumatic childhood.
Yet we persist in our hope and belief that things can get better. We believe that beauty awaits us nonetheless. This is healthy and expected. Life CAN be beautiful. We CAN learn to see the beauty in it.
The mistake we make is to apply that hope and belief in a narcissist. To believe that everyone is in it for love and fairness. That a person exists out there who is perfect; flawless in their inner and outer being, infinitely curious about us, infinitely loving, and would never hurt us in a million years. This shared fantasy is co-created. The narcissist does their best to project this image, and we do our best to help them. The most profound question a target of narcissism can ever as is why? Why did we help them? This is where recovery begins.
One of the few good outcomes of narcissistic abuse is that it brings us closer to the fall from our Garden Of Eden. We get a peek into hell, and are shocked by what we witness. There is more lurking behind the facade of beauty. Power, hate, rage, shame, control, manipulation, hurt and grief. Why did we believe that these things would never visit us? Why did we believe that this person was it? Because we were yet to awaken. We worship when we have not yet awoken to the truth.
What is the truth? That nobody is to be worshipped except God. Those who have no connection or belief in any kind of God are more vulnerable to replacing God with a narcissist. This is where our spiritual practice should begin.
Let go of your compulsion to worship others. Go within yourself, and seek the truth. Welcome beauty into your life, but always be aware of its ugliness.Be prepared for this ugliness to visit you. And when it does, be ready to deal with it. A narcissist is a fox. Be that fox. Worship only the truth, and never, ever, worship a narcissist.