SPIRITUAL NARCISSISM - Part 2

More dynamics flagged by readers

I recently posted an essay about Spiritual Narcissism. This post clocked up the largest number of views (received up to that time) of all my pieces here on Substack. I shared the link on social media and invited people to flag other issues (or dynamics) I had not touched upon. The response was sincere and deeply thoughtful, so here is a follow-up post mapping and addressing those issues. With a HUGE thank you to everyone who took time reflect on this and write in!

Hypocritical statements, spoken with a total lack of self-awareness

My own definition of hypocrisy is “saying or claiming one thing but actually doing the opposite thing”. A more fancy definition is “the practice of feigning to be what one is not or to believe what one does not.” (Source: Wikipedia)

I actually do not fully agree with the latter definition. People often appear very sincere in their beliefs but completely fail to put those beliefs into practice and to shoulder the discomforts and long-term consequences of them. Yet, they seem genuinely oblivious to that fact!

As a side note: the psychologist Rob Henderson coined the phrase luxury beliefs in 2019. It refers to people showcasing cool or trendy beliefs as a way of displaying social status (or virtue signaling) but those same ideas injure other people in their practical consequences. Wikipedia gives the following example: “the belief that marriage and the nuclear family are no better than alternative family arrangements is often cited as a luxury belief. In fact, intact families are predictive of positive childhood outcomes”.

My own interpretation of this statement is that the benefit of intact families has been proven beyond doubt by research and statistics (I have looked into this and listened to many interviews with researchers of this issue). And of course the issue here is not whether the parents are actually married or not, or indeed any possible gender combination of the parents, but the commitment that two responsible adults make to providing emotional, educational and financial stability for growing children, for several decades, overriding any personal differences or desires in terms of priority-setting).

On the collective level, one thing which puzzles me in modern social media-driven politics is that most people want lower taxes but also a far greater investment by the government in the NHS (UK public health service), education and services for the elderly, people with disabilities, traumatized refugees and so forth. We only need to look at the Scandinavian countries plus Finland to see that this lofty goal can certainly be achieved, but the flip side is very high taxation and a very high level of governments setting specific tracks that everyone in that society follows. (In other words: in the Nordic countries there is a lack of diversity in personal options to shape your life by your own decisions. The most obvious example is excellent childcare and after school care - but all mothers are expected to work full time. Raising our children in the UK allowed me to work part time, during their early years. Something I am still grateful for!)

On the personal level my own observation is that hypocrisy is often a characteristic of people who never engage in shadow work (which I will define, for the purposes of this essay, as fearless self reflection on one’s own unflattering or unresolved issues). All negative material is projected out, onto other people. This creates the comfortable illusion of “being a good person”, while it is always “The Other” who is “bad” (at fault, “wrong” or misguided, morally reprehensible) etc. Blame is out-sourced, you could say.

It only takes a brief glance to spot this happening all around us. Having said that, it only takes even a little more focus to find this tendency or habit (hypocrisy) in ourselves! It is surprisingly hard not to be a hypocrite. We all experience hypocritical moments.

Spirituality as product for sale

Spirituality has long become a product that can be bought.

Now you can immediately refer back to the last heading and call me a hypocrite! I am a spiritual teacher. Undeniable fact: I make my living from teaching courses offering spiritual content and tools. However, in defense I would then say that I also spend a vast amount of time doing research into ancestral traditions and wisdom teachings. The books I took years to write bring in only a very modest amount of royalties (an amount of money I can earn more easily and swiftly by teaching just a few well-attended classes). Update on courses in 2024 - 2025.

I do not believe in “only one truth”. I am no Guru or Influencer. I am an old-fashioned teacher and people study with me to do structured and accelerated learning and/or to gain access to material they cannot read in the original language. (Of course there are other selling points, such as powerful communities, life-changing ceremonies and time spent sitting out in amazing locations!)

And, obviously, feel free to learn three Nordic languages yourself and do 20 years of intense reading, if you want to access the material I teach free of charge! When our eldest son, now 24, was born, I stopped watching TV and spent every evening reading (and learning foreign languages), while my husband travelled the world on business trips! Our eldest son, as a toddler, would point at every airplane overhead and say: DADDY!”

Oh and academic studies alone would not do it, you would also need an advanced shamanic toolkit (mastering those tools safely generally involves working with a teacher). So sure, theoretically it is possible to do all this - but are you willing to commit to the time and effort involved?

False or toxic positivity

This refers to the belief that we should have a positive outlook and attitude at all times, even when the most painful or devastating events occur. People dying of cancer are told to “just” visualize positive outcomes. In reality they might be better off, in terms of using very limited time and energy, putting their affairs in order, expressing their love for people explicitly and doing death preparation work.

This mindset soon spirals into truly frightening territories: perhaps your own mindset made you ill? All that negative thinking! As a relentlessly positive person I do not need to feel any compassion for you (delusion: it could never happen to me!)

Toxic positivity is often an escape route for people who are unable to be fully present to the (genuine) suffering of others. There is a childish belief that “thinking positively” will keep you safe from the misfortunes that hit all human beings at some point.

I am protected!

This is another one I hear all the time. It implies that some of us are protected and others are not.

If you survive a train crash in which many people die, ask yourself: why would those others not be protected? Because they do not practice the form of spirituality you subscribe to or because their spirit allies (or guardian angels) are less powerful than yours, or perhaps they were off-duty that day because you did not pray?

Even the most powerful teachers on the planet eventually die. Death is non-negotiable.

And perhaps we need our spirit allies most in our moment of death, when they embrace us and lead us to our destination in the afterlife? How could we ever say for sure that they were not there, at the (completely hypothetical!) train crash?

The Greater Good

This is another one! There may well be a Greater Good, on a cosmic or Divine level, it seems possible to me but who gets to decide that? A Power Greater Than Ourselves , not human beings.

I believe in the power of surrender. One can destroy a human life by battling forces or limits one has no control over (“Accept the things we cannot change and change the things we can”, as the Serenity Prayer words it). I also believe that there are many things that escape my human ability to understand them. I personally do believe in Divinity and Deities. But this does not mean that I can use the line “it serves a greater good!” for unfair situations, miscarriages of justice or social inequalities. It does not absolve me of personal responsibility for “being the change I want to see in the world” and making a difference as and when I can.

Nor does it stop me me from feeling deep grief when terrible things occur. Feeling grief is an integral part of the human condition.

The Healer as Martyr

I was raised in a Roman Catholic family, I know the blueprint (of relentless self-sacrifice) intimately. This trope still does the rounds on social media at regular intervals. “Healers should work for free!”

Healers, shamanic practitioners/teachers are expected to work “for the love of god” (not proper energy exchange). You “owe” others healing and huge investments of time and personal energy or life force, just because you have a divinely granted gift.

I firmly believe that mathematicians, electricians, engineers, dentists, shop owners, accountants and brain surgeons (and so on) have divinely granted gifts as well - but we would not dream of asking them to work for no pay.

The next argument trotted out is generally that “shamans in indigenous societies didn’t charge for their services (so people who do are charlatans!)” Well, think again: all accounts we have, suggest that their community brought them food, chickens, items of clothing and jewellery (and other valuable items). Not only that, their tribe knew that if energy exchange did not occur, the healing would not take effect (and the gods would be angered).

If you genuinely believe this trope, perhaps take a moment to think this through please? I have been a working mother of three children since our youngest son was four years old. I often took on the clients other practitioners would not even engage with (because I felt that they badly needed help). In my own life this presented a very steep learning curve indeed (talking about accelerated learning!)

Working for free, as I have certainly done on occasion, means taking time away from my children, from painting and writing, from maintaining my friendships, from visiting or calling my (now deceased) elderly mother, from providing Alzheimer’s care for my mother-in-law. It causes an imbalance and (frankly) an energy deficit in my own life. Time is insanely precious, even more so as I grow older. I do not buy into the idea that I owe a large number of complete strangers my professional time, just because of the nature of my profession or innate talents.

On related subject: I also get applications for (e.g.) my four year Seiðr/Old Norse Traditions practitioner program in Sweden from total strangers, demanding I take them on (after all the Norse gods have “called them”!) but free of charge. Ideally they would like me to offer free accommodation, meals and taxi driving into the bargain. Not going to happen!!

And one more reflection while we are on this topic: I was taught by my own teachers that we do not use our own energy in healing work. And there is no way that we can do healing work without our allies working through us. That is without doubt! But spirit allies do not send emails or invoices, answer endless follow-up questions or clean all the objects used in healing work (and indeed the physical space). That is all done by my human self, taken out of my (limited) human time budget on earth and it dips into my (limited) supply of daily energy. I often remind my students of this too: just like you operate healthy boundaries with other people (I hope!) you also need to set healthy boundaries with spirits. (They do not always grasp the constrictions of the space-time continuum here on Earth). I learned that lesson the hard way and I make sure to pass it on to my students.

The Blessed Island Mindset

Letting go of all “toxic people”, meaning you live on tiny tropical island where the sun always shines and palm trees sway in the wind. Paradise? Not at all! You would lose the ability to compromise, reconcile, rub along with others etc.

Life is not a safe zone. Life is about growing through facing challenges, restriction and opposition. I recently heard someone say that “there is such a thing a post-traumatic growth, not only post-traumatic stress”. That struck a cord with me, in terms of the trajectory of my own life.

And yes, some people (or even groups of people) are so detrimental to our well-being going no contact is the only way. It is a real thing and I have written about it before. But, as a rule of thumb, it does not apply to most people around us.

Death denial

Western culture is youth-obsessed and in collective denial of death. This creates an Illusion of Immortality. We use filters on Instagram and cosmetic surgery is a booming industry.

(Side note: I often wonder about dating apps: do people even recognize each other, when they meet in person after messaging from behind enhanced photographs? I have been told that not everyone does a video call before the first date. WOAH!)

The great paradox is that Death gives Life meaning. Life is short and that urges us to live our passions, get our priorities straight, and tell our loved ones how precious they are. Human beings do not value resources which are (seemingly) not restricted (just look at what we have done to the world’s oceans and rain forests!) The same things goes for the time and energy of healers and teachers (as discussed). The moment you work for free, (most but not all) people perceive no limits on your time, energy and availability.

Last but not least (coming full circle):

Poverty Consciousness

Some (but not all) healers and spiritual teachers buy into what we call poverty consciousness. They believe that “something coming your way means there is less available for me”. Instead of practicing what they teach, they play power games to get clients or followers. Or they start closed groups that soon show traits of cults, with themselves in the role of the Saviour figure, who leads everyone to the “Light”.

Let me just remind everyone for a moment that a good teacher is like a parent: they encourage you to leave home and become independent, to spread your wings. Or to use an art metaphor: they paint themselves out of the picture! Our current culture discourages this: content creators are taught to build “sales funnels”, “achieve audience growth” and develop “strategies to convert abandoned carts into sales”. As if the words no thanks or on reflection I decided against it no longer have any relevance. We just turn the full blast of spyware on them and push harder? No thanks!

The New Age obsession with co-creation, cosmic ordering and visualization has created an illusion that “we can have or achieve anything we like”. The entire self-improvement industry is based on the same principle (and it offers many powerful tools for sure!)

But in truth I believe that a harder and far more complex reality prevails: some things are not meant to be (in the Old Norse Tradition you would say: it was not fated, the Norns did not carve it!) We often learn a great deal, and embark on powerful journeys, on quests for things we perceive ourselves as lacking. There is an element of the Holy Grail to this: we may never find the Grail, but a huge transformation occurs along the way.

Human beings are not born with equal opportunities or under comparable political regimes. If you are born with a serious disability, foetal alcohol syndrome, or to parents with mental health issues, your life will be different from the life of an able-bodied person from a loving and high-functioning family. If you are born a trust fund babe there is swathe of things you will never worry about (but all many other things will affect you exactly the same way as all other mortals). Sometimes being born rich gives people a lot of rope to hang themselves with. Sometimes people with a horrendous childhood become famous over-achievers - but of course many of them don’t. There are always outliers.

Any good teacher knows that you do not compare students with other students, but you compare their starting point to where they are now. You compare them to themselves!

The modern focus on “manifestation” creates an illusion that we are in total control of our lives and destiny. That easily leads to harsh judgement of, and lack of compassion for, those who face challenges beyond our own (filtered and limited) comprehension.

Poverty consciousness is a thing. But poverty is also a very real thing that defines and blights too many human lives on our planet!!

In the comments, please tell me which points my two essays (so far) missed! I am not promising a third essay exploring this subject, but depending on the response - who knows!

I aim to post two essays a week here on Substack, but if you would like to see my daily posts about about sacred art, Nordic spirituality and my life as a Forest Witch, please follow me on Instagram or Facebook, thank you!

Imelda Almqvist, London UK

BIO FOR IMELDA ALMQVIST

Imelda Almqvist is an international teacher of Sacred Art and Seiðr/Old Norse Traditions (the ancestral wisdom teachings of Northern Europe). So far she has written four non-fiction books and two picture books for children. Natural Born Shamans: A Spiritual Toolkit for Life (Using shamanism creatively with young people of all ages) in 2016, Sacred Art: A Hollow Bone for Spirit (Where Art Meets Shamanism) in 2019, Medicine of the Imagination - Dwelling in Possibility (an impassioned plea for fearless imagination) in 2020 and North Sea Water In My Veins (The Pre-Christian spirituality of the Low Countries) will be published in June 2022.

The Green Bear is a series of picture book for children, aged 3 – 8 years. The stories and vibrant artwork, set in Scandinavia, invite children to explore enchanting parallel worlds and to keep their sense of magic alive as they grow up.

Imelda has presented her work on both The Shift Network and Sounds True. She appears in a TV program, titled Ice Age Shaman, made for the Smithsonian Museum, in the series Mystic Britain, talking about Mesolithic arctic deer shamanism.

Imelda is currently working on a handbook for rune magicians (about the runes of the Elder Futhark) and on more books in the Green Bear Series. Imelda runs an on-line school called Pregnant Hag Teachings, where all classes she teaches remain available as recordings which can be watched any time!

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Online School:                  https://pregnant-hag-teachings.teachable.com/courses/

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