“Break free of yourself. Take note as to whether even here, you are acting for me or for you. Cease to exist in your own eyes and focus everything on me. first and foremost your thoughts, since your actions depend on them. At noon couldn’t you take stock of your inner life in such a way as to tighten the bonds between us? I call you so often. Call me, so that you may come; it’s not I who fail to come. Ask my mother for the grace to live like her, in our company which is more real than all the visible world. “Enter, enter into me. what really counts is the life of your soul, you understand? Everything should be subservient to it. And the center of it should be I, your Christ. All things uplifted to me, everything for me, since we are one as I and my father are one. Didn’t I give the example? “Oh, my little girl “oh, my little girl, in this hallowed grotto, give yourself wholly and for always.” . . . Bossis, Gabrielle. He and I (Kindle locations 2991-2999). Pauline Books and Media. Kindle edition.
Narcissism, on any level, is based on a lie. It is not something that is expressed on a conscious level, but, is lived out to a greater or lesser degree in our interaction with those we meet. I can only be truly aware of my own ‘consciousness’, and with that comes the ‘illusion’ that the whole universe revolves around me. Of course, this can be insulting to other ‘consciousness’s’ who again, to a greater or lesser degree, live under the same illusion. I certainly do it, and when it is in full force, I can, in reality, be like a 3-year-old, who desperately wants to get my way, or I will pout, cry, stamp my feet, and who knows, maybe even hold my breath until I turn blue.
So yes, it is often about ‘me’. As frustrating as that can be. Since those around me won’t play the way I want them to. Yet over time, most people slowly learn, that there are in fact others who need to be taken into consideration, and even honored, as another self.
It is a terrible way to live, fighting others all the time so as to get my way. When I do get my way, it is then not something that makes me happy, or content, for long. I think this is so because I wish to be free of the dominion of my fear-ridden, angry, pouting, inner narcissistic child. Being part of a large family has helped me a bit on that. Also experiences of feeling freer, and happier, lighter even, when I actually do reach out to others or help them, even if I do not want to. Some say I feel that way because we help others out of a selfish need to feel good about ourselves. Now, there could be some truth to that. Yet I also think there are layers in our souls that also bring out this inner sense of happiness, and lightness of being. It is because we are working out of our true nature. Being made in the image, and likeness of god, who is revealed as love, is also our deepest reality, we are beings made of love. When we forget this and seek other loves that are unworthy, it is then we suffer deep pain, insecurity, and as time goes on, bitterness and rage.
When we reach a place of truly loving others, it is then that we get out of our way, and allow the grace of god to pour through us. Self-seeking, in the end, often leads to isolation from the very thing we seek the most, the love of others, to be seen, and accepted. The tyranny of self-centeredness, to the exclusion of others, is a hard taskmaster. The world is a place to be consumed, yet our appetite is for the infinite, so finite desires and pleasures, just fall into an infinite abyss. Our hunger can only be fed by the divine, by infinite love.
How do I get out of my way? Still working on that. However, I am slowly learning that much of my love of god and seeking, is in reality, a desire to escape from my own inner fragmentation, and fear of annihilation. I can’t give myself what I most desire. I have to learn to not fear pain, to seek the infinite because that is my true home, and grace is the way that god allows us to walk that narrow path. To let go of self-regard, of seeking to make god an extension of myself, and to stay at a level of a three-year-old, still trying to get back to what it was like in the womb. We are called to the exact opposite. Oneness with god is not going back to the womb, but a dive into ‘reality’, ‘clarity’, to death to the small world that I seek to create, to allow that to be transformed into the ‘real’ world of divine love.
Br. Mark Dohle, OCSO
Holy Spirit Monastery
