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 on reality and attempts to control the narrative and emotions that are present in other people’s experience to fit within their frame.

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.

An aspect of this is that 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.

A lot of this energy or dynamic in spirituality can seem 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 a leader 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. As a baseline, they respect other people’s reality.

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.

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.

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. Status is used to mask the truth.

This could be done in a range of ways from a flat hierarchy where everyone must always be equal, to a pyramid structure where the narcissist is always at the top, to a drama triangle where they are 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, or the people who have access to the truth, are not always the people who are higher up the hierarchy. When the hierarchy is narcissistic, truth and the natural flow of empowerment will be stifled.

Most people who have narcissistic 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.

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.

Trust

What and who you trust is one of the core beliefs that will shape your entire experience.

Narcissistic energy erodes a sense of trust and can become an endless hall of mirrors with people fighting for control of the frame. You start to lose the ability to know where to even start with what to trust.

Knowing what to trust is the route to identifying and creating healthy dynamics.

Here are four things that can help you step into something more trustworthy:

• objective reality
• healthy plurality
• impact
• embracing the mystery

I’ve written a little about them below.

Objective Reality

Life is an endless mystery with no ultimate persepective or final answer; however, within this there are also objective truths 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. Objective reality consists of things that exist outside of anyone’s ideas of them and that can be measured.

This could be maps and models that have been developed from a deep understanding of experience across a large group of people 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.

Healthy Plurality

Sometimes in spiritual practice the thing someone needs is to see the empty nature of the Universe, sometimes the thing someones needs is to be in their body and feel their feelings more. Some people would be better off feeling a much greater degree of non-self and others need to learn how to set better boundaries and be more present in their lives.

Some teachers are obsessed with every precise detail of phenomenological experience and some teachers just want as many people as possible to have access to a bit more love and ease.

There is no single correct way of doing spiritual practice. This doesn’t mean that there aren’t things that are more contextually beneficial, deeper, or more in line with the true nature of the Universe.

It just means that there are different ways to do things and different objectives of what people are even trying to do.

A healthy respect for plurality is one of the things that frees dynamics up from narcissitic control — there’s no way to win or be in control, because the thing is an endlessly multi-dimensional expression of creativity.

Understanding your own values and the values of others can help you find more trust in experience. It may be worth setting your unique intentions for practice or looking at the ways that different teachers embody and teach from different values.

Impact

Another way to extract spirituality (or anything) from subtle narcissism is to ensure that impact is being included as part of the unfolding of practice and experience.

Impact breaks down narcissitic frame control, because rather than focusing purely on the value of ideas, you are also taking into account the impact that a belief system, practice or teacher has on people and on the system.

Tracking impact removes the capacity for one person to overlay a frame and allows experience to show itself to you. You are listening to the bottom-up data, rather than just taking someone’s 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 fuller understanding of what experience is.

Embracing the Mystery

Life is an endlessly deep mystery that everyone is an expression of. This doesn’t mean that there are never correct perspectives you can take, but having this feeling of unknowability and endlessness as a backdrop or a refuge can stop you getting overly stuck in your way of looking.

You don’t know what the purpose of things ultimately is and trusting the greater mystery is an act of humility that stops your ego getting too big for its boots.

Appendix

I spent a lot of time navigating unhealthy relationship dynamics and have created this document about things that I learned in that process, including ways of spotting manipulation and what healthy boundaries look like.