Stage Three: Metamorphosis

Individuality is only possible if it unfolds from wholeness.

- David Bohm

A crucial step to leaving the narcissist regime’s orbit for good is to establish your own point of gravity. This means being sensitive to when people pull you off centre by targeting your triggers, desires and emotions. In time, you will have an anchor point for when the temptations and emotional storms come. And they will come, as will the desire to surrender your centre to a source outside yourself, whether to a narcissist or other toxic person, group or movement.

By being centred, you will know yourself beyond duality. That is, you will not lose yourself in the vertigo of ‘good enough’ or ‘not good enough,’ ‘loveable’ or ‘unlovable.’ It is in this environment that a narcissist may approach you and lather on the charm. Because you will have grown accustomed to your internal centre, you will notice yourself drifting from calm to shame, from reality into fantasy. As a result, you will instinctively disengage from the narcissist’s Dystopia and return to the safety of your centre. Even if you do get sucked in, you will have moments of clarity as you learn to re-centre yourself despite the narcissist’s crazy-making manipulations. Leaving the situation then becomes much easier. In the wild storm of daily life, you will always have your anchor at hand.

A narcissist needs you engaged and off-centre at all times. They need you fluttering in the wind. A centred person can still share themselves, but they do so from an awakened, aligned place – not on the whims of others.

Finding gravity within

Before anything, we need to understand what a ‘centre point’ is. In his book ‘The Sacred and The Profane,’ Mircea Eliade explored the religious and spiritual practices of archaic and tribal people. One consistent theme he found in all cases was the establishment of a centre point, an axis mundi which represented the very centre of the world, without which the society would fall into chaos. By having a fixed pillar which connected Heaven and Earth, a people could integrate the sacred realm into their be...