The Subtle Narcissism
of Spiritual Teachings

This post is about the subtle narcissism that creeps into a lot of spiritual teachings.

Subtle or overt narcissism is when someone claims authority over other people and attempts to control the narrative and emotions that are present in other people’s experience – they know better than others, even about the other person’s own immediate experience.

The narcissist or narcissists become the people who get to dictate to others what the truth is, either overtly or subtly. They’re not allowing for people to be in their own reality.

Rather than there being a natural and flexible flow of power where some people know more and some people know less, the self-enforcing power dynamic of subtle narcissism means that the narcissist control the situation to maintain their power at all costs.

They are enforcing the belief that they know the truth and other people don’t, rather than empowering people to step into their own reality and finding a mutually productive relationship.

A lot of this energy or dynamic in spirituality seems very benign, but carries deep roots for affecting how people understand the truth to be.

It’s also an incredibly subtle move that a lot of people probably don’t even know they’re doing or are subject to. It’s a huge personal and cultural shadow.

The Double Bind

When authoritative energy is clean – for example, someone with power or wisdom giving someone with less power or wisdom constructive feedback – it isn’t a problem. The person with authority is embracing their role as an elder and sharing something from a place of clarity.

For someone to be able to do this requires an ability to be wholehearted and mature in their communication. They don’t need to be unquestionably accepted all the time because they have enough inner strength and maturity to be disagreed with or to get it wrong sometimes and to take in this feedback.

A double bind is created when the frame can’t be questioned. This arises because the narcissist’s ego is so fragile that they can’t handle being challenged. Their capacity to stay in the authoritative role requires them to be perceived as always knowing more or being better than others in some way. Anything that challenges that is a huge threat and gets excluded as a possibility or shut down immediately. Any conflict results in them being stuck playing out the drama triangle all the time.

Rather than being oriented around truth, love or other deep spiritual values, the narcissistic energy is concerned only with maintaining or growing its status and power. It removes vulnerability by controlling the narrative and shaming or dismissing anything that falls outside of this narrative.

One of the most manipulative parts of this energy is that this can include the narcissist becoming the victim, because they will use the threat to their ego as the ultimate wrong that someone else could possibly do. They are at once the victim and the aggressor, which doesn’t give the other person or people anywhere to go with it; the people being controlled can either agree with the aggressor or cause major ruptures.

This role-reversal makes subtle narcissism complex, hard to spot and hard to extract yourself from. The narcissistic part of it wants to retain power in whatever way it can and it will lie, manipulate, blame and use subtle or overt aggression to do this. The subtle is exactly that, it does this under the radar in subconscious ways or ways that can be denied. Often people in power are not even conscious of the ways they are doing this, as they have just learned to emulate authority in the way it was modelled to them.

It is also worth saying that most people have some aspects of this energy within them, it doesn’t necessarily make someone a full-blown narcissist. The important thing is that people are able to reflect and move towards more open and balanced communication over time.

With that in mind, here are some power imbalances to look out for and some healthier ways of being that people can aspire to.

Signs of power imbalances:

• Walking on eggshells
• People don’t really mean what they say and become defensive or aggressive when questioned
• People’s behaviour does not match their words
• Only one person’s voice or perspective is heard
• People are not allowed to disagree
• Some people’s opinions, questions and comments are dismissed as irrelevant, while others are held up as ultimate truth
• Some people’s questions and comments are rationalised away, trying to prove that they are unquestionably wrong, while others are believed to be unquestionably right
• When disagreement or discomfort arises, force is used, either physically or by creating an emotional mood that overpowers the initial issue
• Sustained or strategic stonewalling is used – evasiveness and a refusal to engage and cooperate in open and honest dialogue
• Lovebombing and the promise of specialness is used either subtly or overtly to reward people who support the status quo
• The threat of being cut off from the tribe or personal freedoms being taken away are used either subtly or overtly to punish people who question the status quo

Signs of a healthy flow of power:

• People feel free to express their emotions and experiences
• People mean what they say and are willing to clarify or update their beliefs if it is received differently to how they intended
• People’s behaviour is an example of their integrity
• Space is made for people to share their experiences
• People can hold and share different opinions
• People’s experiences are valid and valued; wisdom and experience is respected
• There is curiosity around different perspectives and a shared commitment to discover or honour truth
• People own their own behaviour and emotions; people can be held to account for this and can take constructive criticism
• People can disconnect temporarily to manage overwhelm, but are willing to find ways to communicate in a cooperative or collaborative way
• Boundaries are set from a place of love and care for self or other, rather than judgement. Boundaries are the safe distance from which people can love or respect each other.

Power Structures

Narcissism comes from fear and greed. People don’t want to have to show up in every moment afresh with the fear that they might be hurt. They would rather give themselves a special status that means that they are always in the right, so they create the frame from which this feels true.

This could be a whole range of things from a flat hierarchy where everyone is always equal, to a pyramid structure where they are always at the top, to a drama triangle where they are always the victim.

Power structures and hierarchy are both vital aspects of how humans function in community, connection and organisations. They play an important role in society and how people relate to each other. When hierarchy and power structures are functioning well it creates safety and order by giving trusted people more power to hold authority on behalf of others.

However, this can easily get divorced from reality where the people who are the best to lead are not always the people who are higher up the hierarchy. If someone has enough fear or greed and enough power, they become motivated to put themselves at the top of a hierarchy and they get people to buy into it and validate it at any cost.

Most people who have this energy in them, have a pretty heavy history of trauma. Trauma or a felt lack of safety can also lead to people being very attracted to narcissistic leaders. It can feel safer for people to have their autonomy taken away and have an ‘all-knowing’ leader to look up to, even if the leader is abusive or disempowering.

The way in which narcissistic structures allocate shame can feel safer to people than real open-hearted connection, because it is more familiar to them.

A lot of spiritual traditions play to this dynamic, at least in some subtle way. The tradition or spiritual leader decides what is true and if you want to stay in the tribe you agree with it, bend and shape your experiences to fit in with what it should be and criticise yourself or others when your experience falls outside of this.

On the one hand, a little bit of this can create a sense of belonging, safety and inspiration for people to change in meaningful ways. On the other hand, it can be quite sad and oppressive. It can stop people living their own lives and validating their own experiences. People become mindless followers, always trying to change their experience to fit in. At worst it can be emotionally, psychologically, spiritually or physically abusive.

Sharing From a Place of Authenticity

Not all power structures and hierarchy need to be dismantled but in order for people to feel more empowered, authenticity or truth needs to be valued as highly or higher than personal status.

This needs to happen on both sides of the equation – both the teacher and the student – for it to work.

There needs to be some space for students to speak authentically about their own experiences, even if it is different or somehow contradictory to the teacher’s experiences.

It’s also important that wisdom and power is still respected. We need to make sure that we aren’t over-balancing into a place where everyone’s level of clarity and depth is considered equal. This also stifles authenticity.

Students can be narcissistic tyrants too and be subtly or overtly aggressive when teachers express wisdom in ways they personally dislike.

Ways of Teaching

To give some examples of ways of teaching authentically, the traditional model tends to be something like people look for teachers who have access to something that the student explicitly doesn’t. The teachers act as the gatekeepers of knowledge and they become status symbols for students to emulate and aspire to. This tends to work well for people who are on the uphill part of their path.

The other way of teaching that I think is also important to include is more like teachers holding space for students to explore and understand their own experience better and for the student to embody a fuller version of themselves. The student’s experience and individuation path is going to be different to the teacher’s experience.

The first way of teaching has a typically more masculine flavour and tends to be what people instinctively recognise as power or authority, and the second has a more typically feminine flavour and tends to be written off as less important or less skilful.

Both of these are valid and important ways of teaching; to only include one would shut down a lot of experience and potential.

There is also a cultural shadow where people tend to be more comfortable with men taking the authoritative role and women taking the facilitating role and it’s worth being aware of this.

Objective Truths

Everything I’m describing here comes down to trust and who’s voice you trust as an authority on experience. What and who you trust is one of the core beliefs that will shape your entire experience.

An important step in being able to answer this question with clarity and in a self-empowered way is to see through narcissistic people’s self-narrativised ideas that they are an authority and to feel the actual value of what someone is sharing.

It can be helpful to recognise that the people who are claiming less authority may also be the people who are giving others a greater access to truth, even if it’s a little harder to spot at first glance.

Beyond the question of who you trust, there are also objective truths in reality and it’s possible to build these into an understanding of what experience or spiritual practice is and to measure people’s capacity or progress against this. This could be maps and models that have been developed from a deep understanding of experience or it could be data from things like EEG machines.

Including a healthy dose of objectivity while also being careful not to undermine the mystery and ineffability of experience, can take some of the power out of narcissistic hierarchies.

Impact

Another way to extract spirituality (or anything) from subtle narcissism is to ensure that impact is being included as part of the on-going dance between practicing, learning, experiencing and teaching. This is another way that things can be measured or understood more objectively.

Impact breaks down the capacity for one person to claim spiritual authority, because rather than focusing purely on the value of ideas, you are also taking into account the impact that that belief system or method has on people and on the system.

Tracking impact removes the capacity for one person to dictate to others what experience is and allows experience to show itself through the system. You are listening to the bottom-up data, rather than just taking the top-down idea as a given.

Looking at impact also creates an opportunity for spiritual teachings to be held to a higher degree of rigour; where intentions for practice can be clearer, feedback loops can be more open and outcomes can be observed to create a more open and free way of understanding what experience is.