Dying as Narcissus & Finding Freedom

The spiritual traditions suggest that we need to rid ourselves of our ego-based motivations or, as I prefer to call them, the narcissistic demands of our idealized self-image. The goal is to die as Narcissus and be reborn as a person living from the empty, non-grasping heart. We can then love freely without sticky fingers.

Unlike these traditions, I believe we can harness our narcissistic motivation. In short term psychotherapy, we call this paradoxical intervention or prescribing the symptom. Rather than trying to counter hate, we harness its energy and shift it back to love. We use the acronym face. We need to feel instead of repressing and denying our negative emotions and the underlying issues associated with them. And we do this with acceptance, compassion, and empathy for these emotions and issues. As we empathize with our lower nature, the reptile and the hurt child in us, we transform ourselves and realize our higher loving nature.

Pema Chödrön presents a formula for freedom that she calls “the four R’s”: recognize, refrain, relax, and resolve. First, we need to recognize that we are feeling hooked. I would say, we must first notice that we feel irritated and stressed. Next, we must refrain from acting on the impulse, the urge. She uses the analogy of scratching. We must “refrain from scratching.”

Then we relax and face the urge. She calls this step “relaxing into the underlying urge to scratch.” To me, it’s important that we breathe deeply so that we can relax and feel with acceptance, compassion, and empathy what the urge is telling us.

We give the urge space. If we can relax and feel the urge as it is without trying to change it, fight it or flee from it, then we can redeem the reptile in us. By refraining from fight-or-flight and relaxing, we have a chance to gain freedom and insight.

By relaxing and feeling our irritation, we encourage the underlying issue to emerge so that we can heal it. Finally, we then resolve to keep interrupting “our habitual patterns.” These patterns interfere with our freedom, peace, and happiness. On the one hand, they are ways that we seek to maintain an idealized image and gain love and approval. On the other hand, the patterns are developed in childhood to avoid our parents’ anger, disapproval, rejection and abandonment. The early origin of our patterns makes them difficult but not impossible to eliminate and replace.

• Today, experiment with the four Rs: 1.) recognize you are stressed in an interaction with another at home or work; 2.) refrain from your habitual reactions (raising your voice in argument, defending your actions, verbally attacking the other's point of view, etc.); 3. ) relax your body and mind with a few slow, deep breaths (from this relaxed you can choose what you will say or do rather than react blindly to the other's comments; 4.) resolve to keep breaking your patterns so that you can achieve inner freedom and relief from stress.