Unconditional Love or Narcissistic Need
Unconditional Love or Narcissistic Need
Practices can turn into religions, practices like new age tools and even yoga. In fact, religions usually start out as a Practice and then morph as leaders emerge and the religion is commercialized and an industry profit driven power structure is constructed. As soon as power, prestige and money come into play, many (if not all) Spiritual Practices can become corrupted in order to attract and keep followers who will support a religion with the hopes of redemption, rather than doing the work of Spiritual Cultivation themselves. Religion is where you take on the beliefs of someone else’s experience; a Practice is where you have the personal experiences yourself that may or may not match what your religion tells you to believe or feel. You can have safely have spiritual experiences under the tutelage of a Teacher as long as that Teacher is not telling you “what” you “should” be feeling or experiencing (like, “that is your heart chakra opening”) or that Teacher does not interpret your experience for you but rather asks you questions and through those questions suggests perspectives to help you work out your own interpretation.
The current culture of commercial new age spirituality is showing full blown signs of becoming a religion, from the edicts of yoga, to new age pastors, and the thousands of people operating under the flag called “I have a gift.” We are living in an age of self-proclamations: “I am amazing.” Most if not all of these new religions tell you to not only how to practice so-called unconditional love, but also what it should look like when you do it, and how it should feel. And the masses practice what they are told to believe, in spite of their own feelings, situations, experiences and circumstances. This is producing many disastrous outcomes that are showing up in therapy offices, increase in medications as well as my studio as people continue on in self-defeating, self-sabotaging behaviors all the while buying into stories they have been told by some spiritualist on how to “act” to “express” unconditional love.
One of the big stories of the new age commercialism is not only that you “should feel” “unconditional” love, but also there are very specific behaviors (apparently) that dictate that you are correctly “showing” that you are “feeling” and “practicing” unconditional love. Institutions (or just folks who have decided to gather some followers) tell people how to act and feel will produce followers that will do what they are told as if that will somehow absolve them or solve a problem while continuing on with harmful behaviors ranging from pedophile to alcoholism and in the new age codependency or even borderline personality tendencies. As if doing what you are told from some so called spiritual person makes you spiritual without you having your own authentic experience or without you having to make some very real effort on your own behalf to grow and evolve. Very scary to see this in organized religion and terrifying to see it now in the yoga, crystal, oils, angels, past lives, etc. culture of the new age. The ideas are not in and of themselves bad, it is that you are taking on someone else’s stories as your own. You are allowing someone else to tell you how to feel and act without any of it coming from your own discovery or your own work and effort. In fact, with religions “telling” you how to feel and act, you will be taught, and will learn to suppress your own feelings and judgements in order to comply with, or fit in with, the culture of your choice. That is how a culture of cults is created.
First of all, I do not believe humans are capable of unconditional love, only Spirit is capable of that and that is why we surrender to, and accept fully the Guidance and Divine Love of Spirit, not humans. Every human has conditions running in the background, like an app, or in some cases like a virus. Sadly because most people do not work on themselves, on being mindful of their own thoughts and feelings, willing to discover these thoughts and feelings rather than suppress them or run away from them because they are uncomfortable or don’t fit the edicts of your religion (“I should be feeling unconditional love”), these conditions running in the background remain suppressed, or in the unconscious part of your mind, hidden or in denial.
Humans are challenged with loving someone in spite of, in spite of being hurt, or afraid of being hurt, or even not “liking” the person. Narcissists (which are like a virus in the new age now) will preach that “you should feel unconditional love” and act accordingly. This allows narcissists to completely misbehave and yet ensure you will allow this bad behavior without question and continue to accept whatever they say and do. Preaching unconditional love typically begins with love bombing (Google that term and learn about it) so the love empty narcissist can win your adoration and bathe in the energy you give them in return for the complements they give your (“you have a gift, you are amazing, your mission is…..etc.”) and the “love” vibe of this (so-called, usually self-proclaimed) leader/healer/teacher (“I am bathing you in purple light, my angels are blessing you, etc.”) . This is not love, this is, mutual masturbation. I make you feel good, and that makes me feel good, but not because I love you (I don’t even know you, the real you) but because I NEED to feel good and you are my current drug of choice, my fuel, like blood for a vampire. This is the culture of cults which include organizations or people that act like religions. After all , they have to seduce you into participating in this mutual rubbing of feeling good. People need to learn self –love and learn to feel the Divine Love of Spirit for themselves, not become new age groupies to collect compliments, platitudes and hugs at workshops and classes.
If and when you truly love someone, you want that person to learn to love themselves,not come to you for a pump up of complements (love bombing). The latter creates servitude, not self growth. People with low self esteem are drawn to religions and cults who then can use love bombing type tactics to encourage dependency and servitude (read repeat customers) rather than build independence and build belief in the Self and one’s personal connections with Spirit. If you truly love someone, or you truly want to help them grow and evolve, you will be willing to take actions that will not win adoration from others. When you are willing to take action to help someone grow you risk making that person uncomfortable or even angry because instead of trying to win someone’s love or adoration you will be challenging him/her to be stronger and better than they are currently behaving. Love is energy, not an action. The same action can be done with love and with hate, for example, setting a boundary. The energy (authentic energy not just naming it unconditional love without feeling it) is what makes the action different. The action itself is neutral. Therefore running around smiling, hugging, giving compliments (part of love bombing tactics that narcissists crave), are not in and of themselves acts of love. They are acts of love bombing, getting others to show YOU love based on what you do to them so they will “love” you back. Someone challenging you, in love, to be a bigger better person is not acting from aggression or hate. If you can feel energy (which takes having a personal Spiritual Practice) you can discern and distinguish between the action itself and the energy behind it. If you are living from your wounded self that needs a band-aid (which is the norm for many) you will be fooled by love-bombing and vulnerable to the machinations of narcissistic wounded people looking to use you as their band-aid.
Love is energy, not just an action. Men who beat their wives will genuinely cry and proclaim their love, their love made them do it. Pedophiles often claim they are the ones that truly love a child. Sociopaths and narcissists will love bomb their current prey with compliments and gifts, and “normal” cheaters will often love bomb when cheating (a kind of reaction formation defense mechanism, see previous article) to offset the cheating. Addicts will seduce you with “love” (lovers, parents, siblings) and then steal you blind because you have again been won over to let them stay in your life. People who have been preyed upon by others using these kinds of stories of “love” have learned, unfortunately the hard way, to sense the “energy” of love, versus narcissistic manipulations of a person who wants something from you whether it be material things, or if they crave to see your loyal adoration in your eyes which will ease their own psychic and emotional emptiness. Otherwise, unless you truly know how to sense and work with Energy, the true language of Spirit, you will have a difficult time distinguishing between the manipulations of the needy who need adoration from you (or need to live off of your energy or material support in other ways) and therefore will feed you compliments and “ unconditional love” to seduce/manipulate you into giving them whatever they want or need, and someone truly coming from a deep abiding concern for your well-being, growth and expansion.
Wounded people, unhealed wounded people, will have the hardest time with making these distinctions between what looks like “love” and what feels like love. Their craving to see love in the eyes of someone else is the addictive wound from their un-examined, unhealed childhood which will make them do anything to see that look of “love” in your eyes. Those who become narcissist will do anything: Sex, compliments, gifts, and stories of the “greatness” they (and only they) see in you, the other half of the wounded. The wounded victim will submit to anything to “receive” anything that looks like the missing love of their childhood. All un-healed wounded are masters of manipulation because as a wounded child that was the only way (literally) to survive as a child was by learning to manipulate someone else in order to not get hurt. Manipulating someone through compliments and stories so they will act like they love you (that way you don’t get hurt, tortured or killed) is one of the giant sign posts of an unhealed wounded childhood. (It can also come from other trauma such as being a prisoner of war, Stockholm Syndrome, etc.). Living from the energy of being a victim means you are always manipulating people (be it consciously or unconsciously) to “take care of you” and/or shower you with “unconditional love”. You will also typically feel that it is "abusive" when others ask you to start stepping up and partake in your own healing. Your wires are crossed, damaged, for now, by your wounded self who is used to manipulations and receiving "feedings" from others. Once you start healing, this will change.
Sadly the new age is filled with the unhealed wounded who think that talking to spirit guides in the shower is proof that they are “okay” if not “gifted” when any shrink, even a newbie under trained shrink, will see the your walking wounds a mile away and would be able to identify what happened and the approximate age it happened just using their observation skills and their education in psychology. The wounded are drawn to each other, and they gather in the new age where the current culture is one of making each other feel good, victim and narcissist victim rubbing each other. Nothing wrong with making someone feel good, nothing wrong with heartfelt complements and love. However, putting that in place instead of the work of healing when it needs to be in addition to the work of healing, has produced a billion dollar industry of neediness filled with the vampirism of narcissism and the victim mentality that feeds the narcissist. For the walking wounded that are also functioning as parents, that neediness which uses manipulation and victim stories as the main ways of communicating and soliciting “love” is being passed down to the children.
Love should make you strong, independent, whole, flexible, and centered, centered on the Self and Spirit, not centered on another person’s compliments or expressions of love. While children need love modeled to them from parents or caregivers especially in the pre-verbal and pre-cognitive years, as a healthy adult the love of another is secondary to the love of Self and the love felt from your connection to Spirit. You listen most deeply to people you love and those you feel love you therefore it is the people who truly love you that can tell you things that might be difficult or challenging to hear. It is those who truly love you that are willing to risk your tears, your anger, or your disappointment, in order to deepen your relationship or to help you become a bigger and better version of you. What is the difference between abusive criticism and something difficult said in love? Energy, the energy behind the communication, and if you are wounded, you will have a very difficult if not impossible time making the distinction between love and abusive manipulations or even the plain old needy manipulations of another wounded person who seeks to have you adore them and make them feel good (via compliments, or telling you some fabulous new age story of a past life etc.).
There is no easy answer for this (and this is a short article on a profound subject-- google narcissism and start learning-- here is a good video) as it takes a personal Spiritual Practice of learning to feel the language of Spirit which is Energy, not words from a so called guide. Two things you can try in the time when you are learning to have a Practice: 1) Ask people what their daily Practice is and listen very carefully to the answer, reading between the lines as most people will lie or embellish 2) Be suspect of people who seek to make you “feel good” with stories for which there is no evidence (for example: “I see your guides and they are glowing archangels from Atlantis, and they are telling me your mission on Earth is…….. etc.” You get the picture.) Start there, and find an Energy Teacher who does not tell you how you are feeling, or should feel, or tells you a story but rather can read your Energy and can confirm what you are feeling without you having to tell them first or at the very least, asks you questions for you to discover for yourself how you feel and for you yourself to discover what you learned.
Finally, stop any narcissistic behavior on your part. Stop handing out compliments like amphetamine, instead hand them out like diamonds. Help people to love themselves by asking them to search inside, find, and identify their own progress. Then ask them to talk about what they found about themselves that is amazing so they can own it and learn to model self-love instead of seeking validation from other humans like a hungry puppy. Ask them to compliment themselves out loud and hug them for it. Any time someone gives you credit for their ability to grow in self-love (or any area of growth) remind them that they are the ones that actually did the work and therefore they deserve the credit for doing the work, all you did was make a suggestion. And at some point, start being brave enough to question others, from a true energy of love and after you have established a healthy relationship with them, to look at and question their victim behavior, or their reluctance to confront self-destructive behaviors.
Love makes us strong and independent. If you are a new-ager, this won’t be good for business as you will lose the workshop addicts that come for their fix of compliments and new age stories of amazingness. However, you will be changing the planet for the better helping to produce strong, free thinking, healed and healing citizens rather than a growing population of people manipulating each other to give and receive compliments so everybody gets a rush of “feeling good” coming from another human that will last as long as a snort of cocaine. In love, help other to create and practice having a personal relationship with Spirit and Self and help them to see and experience this statement: “I feel good about myself”.
Journey On
Practices can turn into religions, practices like new age tools and even yoga. In fact, religions usually start out as a Practice and then morph as leaders emerge and the religion is commercialized and an industry profit driven power structure is constructed. As soon as power, prestige and money come into play, many (if not all) Spiritual Practices can become corrupted in order to attract and keep followers who will support a religion with the hopes of redemption, rather than doing the work of Spiritual Cultivation themselves. Religion is where you take on the beliefs of someone else’s experience; a Practice is where you have the personal experiences yourself that may or may not match what your religion tells you to believe or feel. You can have safely have spiritual experiences under the tutelage of a Teacher as long as that Teacher is not telling you “what” you “should” be feeling or experiencing (like, “that is your heart chakra opening”) or that Teacher does not interpret your experience for you but rather asks you questions and through those questions suggests perspectives to help you work out your own interpretation.
The current culture of commercial new age spirituality is showing full blown signs of becoming a religion, from the edicts of yoga, to new age pastors, and the thousands of people operating under the flag called “I have a gift.” We are living in an age of self-proclamations: “I am amazing.” Most if not all of these new religions tell you to not only how to practice so-called unconditional love, but also what it should look like when you do it, and how it should feel. And the masses practice what they are told to believe, in spite of their own feelings, situations, experiences and circumstances. This is producing many disastrous outcomes that are showing up in therapy offices, increase in medications as well as my studio as people continue on in self-defeating, self-sabotaging behaviors all the while buying into stories they have been told by some spiritualist on how to “act” to “express” unconditional love.
One of the big stories of the new age commercialism is not only that you “should feel” “unconditional” love, but also there are very specific behaviors (apparently) that dictate that you are correctly “showing” that you are “feeling” and “practicing” unconditional love. Institutions (or just folks who have decided to gather some followers) tell people how to act and feel will produce followers that will do what they are told as if that will somehow absolve them or solve a problem while continuing on with harmful behaviors ranging from pedophile to alcoholism and in the new age codependency or even borderline personality tendencies. As if doing what you are told from some so called spiritual person makes you spiritual without you having your own authentic experience or without you having to make some very real effort on your own behalf to grow and evolve. Very scary to see this in organized religion and terrifying to see it now in the yoga, crystal, oils, angels, past lives, etc. culture of the new age. The ideas are not in and of themselves bad, it is that you are taking on someone else’s stories as your own. You are allowing someone else to tell you how to feel and act without any of it coming from your own discovery or your own work and effort. In fact, with religions “telling” you how to feel and act, you will be taught, and will learn to suppress your own feelings and judgements in order to comply with, or fit in with, the culture of your choice. That is how a culture of cults is created.
First of all, I do not believe humans are capable of unconditional love, only Spirit is capable of that and that is why we surrender to, and accept fully the Guidance and Divine Love of Spirit, not humans. Every human has conditions running in the background, like an app, or in some cases like a virus. Sadly because most people do not work on themselves, on being mindful of their own thoughts and feelings, willing to discover these thoughts and feelings rather than suppress them or run away from them because they are uncomfortable or don’t fit the edicts of your religion (“I should be feeling unconditional love”), these conditions running in the background remain suppressed, or in the unconscious part of your mind, hidden or in denial.
Humans are challenged with loving someone in spite of, in spite of being hurt, or afraid of being hurt, or even not “liking” the person. Narcissists (which are like a virus in the new age now) will preach that “you should feel unconditional love” and act accordingly. This allows narcissists to completely misbehave and yet ensure you will allow this bad behavior without question and continue to accept whatever they say and do. Preaching unconditional love typically begins with love bombing (Google that term and learn about it) so the love empty narcissist can win your adoration and bathe in the energy you give them in return for the complements they give your (“you have a gift, you are amazing, your mission is…..etc.”) and the “love” vibe of this (so-called, usually self-proclaimed) leader/healer/teacher (“I am bathing you in purple light, my angels are blessing you, etc.”) . This is not love, this is, mutual masturbation. I make you feel good, and that makes me feel good, but not because I love you (I don’t even know you, the real you) but because I NEED to feel good and you are my current drug of choice, my fuel, like blood for a vampire. This is the culture of cults which include organizations or people that act like religions. After all , they have to seduce you into participating in this mutual rubbing of feeling good. People need to learn self –love and learn to feel the Divine Love of Spirit for themselves, not become new age groupies to collect compliments, platitudes and hugs at workshops and classes.
If and when you truly love someone, you want that person to learn to love themselves,not come to you for a pump up of complements (love bombing). The latter creates servitude, not self growth. People with low self esteem are drawn to religions and cults who then can use love bombing type tactics to encourage dependency and servitude (read repeat customers) rather than build independence and build belief in the Self and one’s personal connections with Spirit. If you truly love someone, or you truly want to help them grow and evolve, you will be willing to take actions that will not win adoration from others. When you are willing to take action to help someone grow you risk making that person uncomfortable or even angry because instead of trying to win someone’s love or adoration you will be challenging him/her to be stronger and better than they are currently behaving. Love is energy, not an action. The same action can be done with love and with hate, for example, setting a boundary. The energy (authentic energy not just naming it unconditional love without feeling it) is what makes the action different. The action itself is neutral. Therefore running around smiling, hugging, giving compliments (part of love bombing tactics that narcissists crave), are not in and of themselves acts of love. They are acts of love bombing, getting others to show YOU love based on what you do to them so they will “love” you back. Someone challenging you, in love, to be a bigger better person is not acting from aggression or hate. If you can feel energy (which takes having a personal Spiritual Practice) you can discern and distinguish between the action itself and the energy behind it. If you are living from your wounded self that needs a band-aid (which is the norm for many) you will be fooled by love-bombing and vulnerable to the machinations of narcissistic wounded people looking to use you as their band-aid.
Love is energy, not just an action. Men who beat their wives will genuinely cry and proclaim their love, their love made them do it. Pedophiles often claim they are the ones that truly love a child. Sociopaths and narcissists will love bomb their current prey with compliments and gifts, and “normal” cheaters will often love bomb when cheating (a kind of reaction formation defense mechanism, see previous article) to offset the cheating. Addicts will seduce you with “love” (lovers, parents, siblings) and then steal you blind because you have again been won over to let them stay in your life. People who have been preyed upon by others using these kinds of stories of “love” have learned, unfortunately the hard way, to sense the “energy” of love, versus narcissistic manipulations of a person who wants something from you whether it be material things, or if they crave to see your loyal adoration in your eyes which will ease their own psychic and emotional emptiness. Otherwise, unless you truly know how to sense and work with Energy, the true language of Spirit, you will have a difficult time distinguishing between the manipulations of the needy who need adoration from you (or need to live off of your energy or material support in other ways) and therefore will feed you compliments and “ unconditional love” to seduce/manipulate you into giving them whatever they want or need, and someone truly coming from a deep abiding concern for your well-being, growth and expansion.
Wounded people, unhealed wounded people, will have the hardest time with making these distinctions between what looks like “love” and what feels like love. Their craving to see love in the eyes of someone else is the addictive wound from their un-examined, unhealed childhood which will make them do anything to see that look of “love” in your eyes. Those who become narcissist will do anything: Sex, compliments, gifts, and stories of the “greatness” they (and only they) see in you, the other half of the wounded. The wounded victim will submit to anything to “receive” anything that looks like the missing love of their childhood. All un-healed wounded are masters of manipulation because as a wounded child that was the only way (literally) to survive as a child was by learning to manipulate someone else in order to not get hurt. Manipulating someone through compliments and stories so they will act like they love you (that way you don’t get hurt, tortured or killed) is one of the giant sign posts of an unhealed wounded childhood. (It can also come from other trauma such as being a prisoner of war, Stockholm Syndrome, etc.). Living from the energy of being a victim means you are always manipulating people (be it consciously or unconsciously) to “take care of you” and/or shower you with “unconditional love”. You will also typically feel that it is "abusive" when others ask you to start stepping up and partake in your own healing. Your wires are crossed, damaged, for now, by your wounded self who is used to manipulations and receiving "feedings" from others. Once you start healing, this will change.
Sadly the new age is filled with the unhealed wounded who think that talking to spirit guides in the shower is proof that they are “okay” if not “gifted” when any shrink, even a newbie under trained shrink, will see the your walking wounds a mile away and would be able to identify what happened and the approximate age it happened just using their observation skills and their education in psychology. The wounded are drawn to each other, and they gather in the new age where the current culture is one of making each other feel good, victim and narcissist victim rubbing each other. Nothing wrong with making someone feel good, nothing wrong with heartfelt complements and love. However, putting that in place instead of the work of healing when it needs to be in addition to the work of healing, has produced a billion dollar industry of neediness filled with the vampirism of narcissism and the victim mentality that feeds the narcissist. For the walking wounded that are also functioning as parents, that neediness which uses manipulation and victim stories as the main ways of communicating and soliciting “love” is being passed down to the children.
Love should make you strong, independent, whole, flexible, and centered, centered on the Self and Spirit, not centered on another person’s compliments or expressions of love. While children need love modeled to them from parents or caregivers especially in the pre-verbal and pre-cognitive years, as a healthy adult the love of another is secondary to the love of Self and the love felt from your connection to Spirit. You listen most deeply to people you love and those you feel love you therefore it is the people who truly love you that can tell you things that might be difficult or challenging to hear. It is those who truly love you that are willing to risk your tears, your anger, or your disappointment, in order to deepen your relationship or to help you become a bigger and better version of you. What is the difference between abusive criticism and something difficult said in love? Energy, the energy behind the communication, and if you are wounded, you will have a very difficult if not impossible time making the distinction between love and abusive manipulations or even the plain old needy manipulations of another wounded person who seeks to have you adore them and make them feel good (via compliments, or telling you some fabulous new age story of a past life etc.).
There is no easy answer for this (and this is a short article on a profound subject-- google narcissism and start learning-- here is a good video) as it takes a personal Spiritual Practice of learning to feel the language of Spirit which is Energy, not words from a so called guide. Two things you can try in the time when you are learning to have a Practice: 1) Ask people what their daily Practice is and listen very carefully to the answer, reading between the lines as most people will lie or embellish 2) Be suspect of people who seek to make you “feel good” with stories for which there is no evidence (for example: “I see your guides and they are glowing archangels from Atlantis, and they are telling me your mission on Earth is…….. etc.” You get the picture.) Start there, and find an Energy Teacher who does not tell you how you are feeling, or should feel, or tells you a story but rather can read your Energy and can confirm what you are feeling without you having to tell them first or at the very least, asks you questions for you to discover for yourself how you feel and for you yourself to discover what you learned.
Finally, stop any narcissistic behavior on your part. Stop handing out compliments like amphetamine, instead hand them out like diamonds. Help people to love themselves by asking them to search inside, find, and identify their own progress. Then ask them to talk about what they found about themselves that is amazing so they can own it and learn to model self-love instead of seeking validation from other humans like a hungry puppy. Ask them to compliment themselves out loud and hug them for it. Any time someone gives you credit for their ability to grow in self-love (or any area of growth) remind them that they are the ones that actually did the work and therefore they deserve the credit for doing the work, all you did was make a suggestion. And at some point, start being brave enough to question others, from a true energy of love and after you have established a healthy relationship with them, to look at and question their victim behavior, or their reluctance to confront self-destructive behaviors.
Love makes us strong and independent. If you are a new-ager, this won’t be good for business as you will lose the workshop addicts that come for their fix of compliments and new age stories of amazingness. However, you will be changing the planet for the better helping to produce strong, free thinking, healed and healing citizens rather than a growing population of people manipulating each other to give and receive compliments so everybody gets a rush of “feeling good” coming from another human that will last as long as a snort of cocaine. In love, help other to create and practice having a personal relationship with Spirit and Self and help them to see and experience this statement: “I feel good about myself”.
Journey On
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