A Healing Space

by Matt Licata

  Here, rather than addressing clinical, pathological narcissism (again, an important topic but outside the scope of this book), I want to share a few thoughts about the nature of narcissism more generally and how we can come to bring light to our own narcissistic tendencies. The intention in doing so is to cut off unhealthy narcissism at its root and to do everything we can to reduce its effects and impact in our world. In order to accomplish this, we must discover the seeds, roots, and branches of narcissism within ourselves and illuminate this material with new levels of awareness, compassion, and clear seeing, not to shame ourselves or others with what we discover but to untangle the unique web of dynamics that can be so devastating for the soul, with the intention that the intergenerational transmission of unhealthy narcissism be interrupted, depotentiated, and ultimately ended. I realize it might feel like a mighty task, but it is up to us to do this for our ancestors, and for those yet to come—for the little babies being born now, and for all life everywhere.

  An indicator of narcissism is the inability to see the other as a subject in their own right. Instead, they are apprehended and related to as a mere object in our own awareness. It is that failure to hold the other as an actual person with their own ways of perceiving and making sense of their lives that lies at the root of narcissistic organization. When caught in the trance of narcissistic perception, we are unable to distinguish the other as having their own interiority and subjectivity, imbued with their own feelings, beliefs about themselves and the world, and unique ways of making meaning of their experience. We are unable to see them as a person with their own hopes, fears, values, longings, and dreams, which might or might not be similar to ours; in fact, they might be quite different or even contradictory. But despite these dissimilarities, just like us, they want to be happy, to be at peace, to be free, to love and be loved. Just like us.

  In a narcissistic state, we are unable to attune to the subjectivity of the other. Instead, we perceive them through the lens of whether and how they can meet our needs and reflect back to us our own basic goodness, with which we’ve lost touch in ourselves. In narcissistic organization, we search for this most primordial sense of self-worth in the eyes, words, and behavior of another, acting in whatever ways we must to compensate for our devastating feelings of unworthiness. Others are valued not according to their own distinctive qualities and unique interior experience but by their willingness and capacity to make us feel better about ourselves and remedy a profound self-hatred within us. In this sense, the other exists merely to serve a function in our own self-absorbed house of cards, an essential coconspirator required to keep our fragile sense of self from crumbling and exposing the shamefulness at the core.

  In a narcissistic trance, we lose touch with the holy reality of the other. We don’t see the miracle in front of our eyes. “Oh my god, this is another human being, a unique expression of life, not just someone sent to earth to mirror back my greatness, to reflect and buffer my self-image, and to care for and liberate the haunting ghosts of my unlived life.”

  It takes a lot of discernment to navigate this territory, to see how each of us from time to time perceive in this way in our relationships with others. It can be crushing (yet illuminating) to become aware of the ways we hold others as objects in our awareness, forgetting they are subjects longing to find meaning in their lives, to make sense of their experience, and to engage the mystery in their own way. It is not easy work and requires that we turn back toward a lot of feelings and parts of ourselves we have managed to stay away from over the years. Caring for the narcissist within us is a profound act of love, for ourselves and others, and will go a long way to healing the personal and collective pain and trauma in our world.

  Illuminating Internal Narcissism

  It is tempting (and much easier and less anxiety provoking) to locate narcissism outside ourselves, in another, and of course at times it is important and honorable to confront and call out the behavior of a narcissist and to care for ourselves and others in fierce, direct, and powerful ways. To enact forceful boundaries, say no loudly and clearly, assert our needs, engage in conflict, defend ourselves and others, and to make use of energies of aggression is needed. All of this is, of course, important.

  But, again, the primary invitation here is to cultivate the curiosity, courage, and compassion to meet the narcissistic one within us. The invitation is to illuminate this one, to bathe him or her in the light of awareness, and to finally enter into relationship with this figure to whom, in some sense, we feel so close but in another has retreated into the underworld. Narcissism is not only a personal matter but is cultural and archetypal. Just like Narcissus becoming enamored at his own reflection, we each have the potential to become self-absorbed at the expense of the integrity and interiority of the other. The challenge is to retrieve the narcissistic one from the dark soil and shadowy nether regions of the psyche and out into conscious awareness so that he or she is not running the show from behind the scenes, in ways that will inevitably generate further suffering for ourselves and others.

  Through turning toward this one, we can discover that the inner narcissist is not actually an enemy attacking from the outside but an unmet part of us, in some crazy way one of love’s children, requesting a moment of our presence, kindness, and care. He or she has been shamed, ridiculed, and exiled from the inner ecosystem for so long and will continue to appear in limitless forms until allowed back home. In unconscious configurations, this one can create a lot of difficulties in our ability to be present and intimate with others but when integrated consciously can be used as a bridge of connection. After some light is thrown into the shadow, the healthy qualities of positive self-esteem and self-worth provide important scaffolding through which we can more safely open to our vulnerability, take risks in relationship, and rest in not knowing. And as a result, we won’t be in a constant inner battle with ourselves and others, scrambling to prop up a fragmented sense of self and looking to others to mirror back to us our essential worth.

  The importance of illuminating the shadow is so that we can provide sanctuary and safe passage for the unwanted parts of ourselves, previously abandoned feelings, and the darker aspects of our experience. As a result, paradoxically we release the light to come into our lives and into the atmosphere around us. The inner work we do is never for ourselves alone but for all of life, including the natural world. Through coming to trust in the ultimate workability and sacredness of what we once considered obstacles on the path, we discover in an experiential and embodied way that the path is in fact everywhere, that we are being invited in each moment to be crafted as a vessel in which love can come here to this place and heal and awaken everything it encounters.

  As we end here, let us allow the implications of all this to flow through us and filter down into this world as we dedicate the work we have done and will continue to do to the liberation of all life everywhere. May this great befriending pour through our bodies and hearts and out into the four directions.

  May all beings be safe, happy, and free. May each discover the majesty of the alchemical silver and gold hidden within, buried in the earth, and scattered in the stars. And in this discovery may we devote our lives to helping all form to know its essence.

  Epilogue

  How Well Did I Love?

  Sometimes we pretend there really is something more than love that matters. We look up into the starry sky and are just not sure about it all. We know that somehow it must be possible for life to give us more: more connection, more grace, more awakening, more intimacy, more healing, more joy, more lovers. We wonder if we’ve done something wrong: perhaps we’ve not prayed hard enough, or in the right way; meditated enough; healed enough; hurt enough; opened ourselves enough; forgave enough; grieved enough; let things go enough, accepted enough, surrendered enough.

  And then in the next moment, somehow something is different. The veil parts and for one microsecond we see what love is doing. We’re given this much grace, to see for ju
st one moment. The curtain is pulled back and we are shown. Despite the problems, the pain, the confusion, and the burden of becoming, our breath is taken and our hearts dissolve into the realization that there is no healing and no awakening coming in the future. The wholeness we long for is only now, even if paradoxically it is realized only within the very shards of our brokenness.

  For just a brief moment, we see into the entire display. It is illuminated from within by a light crafted of an unknown source. What it reveals is the always, already raging perfection of this most sacred and rare human experience. Everyone we meet, every kind word that we speak, every time we touch another with our hands and with our hearts, each time we are called to be the space for another to remember the raging truth of what they are—somehow it has all been set up and orchestrated by love itself.

  We are overwhelmed and awed by such intelligence, by this sort of cosmic creativity. And we know that in any moment that could ever be—whether joyful or sad or content or blissful or vulnerable or scared or confused or anxious or depressed or overflowing with gratitude—we could never find any separation between ourselves and love, between ourselves and life.

  And then we look back up into that same sky . . . though something seems a little different. It’s more vivid, the display more magical, we can hear the hum of the sacred world churning out the stars and each and every cell of each and every human heart. We behold Venus, the moon, the comets, this precious milky way that we call our home . . . with nothing left other than an unwavering faith in love’s perfection.

  We are relational beings with open, sensitive, vulnerable hearts and mirror neurons and can offer one another so much. May we listen to one another and attune deeply to what our sisters and brothers are feeling and how they are making meaning of their experience.

  May we not shame the story they are telling or the ways they have come to imagine themselves and the world but to hold it in a spacious, compassionate, merciful awareness. May we allow it to touch us as we embrace the unknown together.

  And may we truly allow the other to matter, to remember what is most important, to be held by the oceans and the trees, to fall to the ground in awe as the sun yields so that the moon and the stars may make their offerings once again.

  In the busyness of the inner and outer worlds, we can so easily forget the miracle that is unfolding here moment by moment. The rarity and preciousness of the whole thing, being broken and whole together, never quite knowing how love will shapeshift and take form, even during difficult times. It can take our breath away. If we will allow it.

  In those moments when our heart breaks in response to this world, the temptation can be overwhelming to put it back together again. But if we will ask the heart if it wishes to be mended, it will take us into the mystery. “In trying to heal me you remain too far away,” the heart pleads with us. “I want you all the way inside, to bear witness to my brokenness, to stay close as I ache, to hold me, and I will show you the way home. Please don’t turn.”

  Behind the scenes, love is at work, the beloved spinning out worlds of experience, longing to know itself through form, finding illumined passage through us as vessels of light and dark. Each time we listen carefully to another, speak kind words that validate and affirm, provide safe passage for their emotional world to be held and to unfold, we offer the gift of a soothed nervous system whereby they downregulate and rest . . . together we break more, burn more, and somehow become more whole.

  How Well Did I Love?

  It is so easy to take for granted that tomorrow will come, that another opportunity will be given to bear witness to a sunset, take a walk in the forest, listen in awe to the birds, or share a moment of connection with the one in front of us. But another part knows how fragile it truly is here, how tenuous, and the reality that this opening into life will not be here for much longer.

  Before we realize it, we can so easily fall into the trance of postponement. The spell of tomorrow looms large in the personal and collective psyche.

  At the end of this life—which is sure to come much sooner than we think—it is unlikely we’ll be caught up in whether we accomplished all the tasks on our to-do lists, played it safe, healed all the wounds from our past, wrapped up our self-improvement project, or completed some mythical spiritual journey.

  Inside these hearts there may be only one burning question: How well did I love?

  There are soul-pieces and lost parts orbiting in and around us, the ghosts of our unlived lives; those aspects of ourselves that have not been allowed sanctuary and permission. To attend to that which remains unlived—to listen to its poetry and provide a holding field for its emergence—is a radical, revolutionary act of compassion.

  One day we will no longer be able to look at, touch, or share a simple moment with those we love. When we turn to them, they will be gone. One moment will be our last to encounter the immensity of one more breath, experience awe at a color or a fragrance or the blooming of a violet, or to enter into union with the vastness of the sea.

  It will be our last chance to see a universe in a drop of rain, to have a moment of communion with a friend, or to weep as the light yields to the night sky.

  One last moment to have a thought, feel an emotion, fall in love, or listen to a piece of music. To know heartbreak, joy, sorrow, and peace—to behold the outrageous mystery of what it truly means to be a sensitive, alive, connected human being.

  What if today is that last day? Or tomorrow? Or later this week?

  Knowing that death will come, how will we respond to the sacred and brief appearance of life?

  Perhaps our “life’s purpose” has nothing to do with what job we will find, what new thing we will manifest or attract for ourselves, or what mythical healing or awakening journey we will “complete.” Perhaps the purpose of our life is to fully live, finally, to touch each here and now moment with our presence and with the gift of our one, wild heart.

  And to do whatever we can to help others, to hold them when they are hurting, to listen carefully to the ways they are attempting to make sense of a world that has gone a bit mad. To slow down, in awe, and bear witness to the erupting miracle of the other as it appears in front of us. Perhaps this is the most radical gift we can give, to offer ourselves as a true healing space in which love can come alive here.

  Acknowledgments

  My heartfelt gratitude to the great internal Other, who continues to appear in her infinite forms, guiding me into the depths and secret places and revealing to me even a glimmer of the mystery. A special thank you to my dear friends and family who have held and supported me during the writing of this book, most especially Noah Licata, Charles Licata, Nancy Licata, Krista Marleena, and Jeff Foster. I’d also like to thank my dear friend Mirabai Starr for writing such a merciful and holy foreword and for participating in this project of love with me. Finally, I’d like to thank my friends at Sounds True, especially Tami Simon, Jaime Schwalb, and my editor Gretel Hakanson for their care and commitment to the Great Work and to the unfolding of soul in the world.

  Notes

  Introduction

  1. Edinger, Anatomy of the Psyche.

  2. Although scholars debate the first appearance of the term prima materia, I refer to the work of C. G. Jung and James Hillman, as well as two of Jung’s students who took a particular interest in alchemy: Marie-Louise von Franz (Alchemy and Alchemical Active Imagination) and Edward Edinger (Anatomy of the Psyche).

  3. Jung, Alchemical Studies.

  4. Edinger, Anatomy of the Psyche.

  Chapter 1. Reimagining What It Means to Heal

  1. I’d like to acknowledge and thank Caroline Myss (personal communication, 1996 and 1997) and Bruce Tift (Already Free, 2011, and personal communication, 2014) for introducing me to this idea and helping me to explore these unconscious processes in myself and others.

  2. Tift, Already Free.

  3. I’d like to acknowledge and thank Bruce Tift for introducing me to a stage-sensitive view
of working with and integrating difficult emotional material, which I have adapted in part (Already Free, 2011, and personal communication, 2014).

  4. Hayes and Smith, Get Out of Your Mind and into Your Life, 30.

  Chapter 2. Already Held

  1. Winnicott, The Family and Individual Development.

  2. Welwood, Healing the Core Wound of the Heart.

  3. Welwood, Healing the Core Wound of the Heart.

  4. Siegel, The Mindful Therapist.

  5. Heller and LaPierre, Healing Developmental Trauma.

  6. Siegel, Mindsight, 137.

  7. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections.

  Chapter 3. Self-Compassion and Caring for Ourselves in a New Way

  1. Jung, The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche.

  2. Jung, The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche (italics in the original).

  3. See the groundbreaking work of Stephen Porges (2011, 2017, 2018) on the polyvagal theory for a detailed exploration of the autonomic nervous system and the sympathetic and parasympathetic pathways available in a moment of activation.

  Chapter 4. A Sacred Deflation

  1. American psychologist James Hillman and colleagues developed archetypal psychology as a post-Jungian form of psychology and psychotherapy that incorporated some of Jung’s core ideas (although critical of others) with outside influences including Greek mythology, the Romantic and Renaissance traditions, the Sufi imaginal approach of Henry Corbin, and the larger field of depth psychology, including the work of Sigmund Freud and Alfred Adler. For an introduction to the field, see Hillman, Archetypal Psychology, Re-Visioning Psychology, and A Blue Fire (Thomas Moore, ed.), as well as Moore (2005, 2016) for a more popularized and accessible rendering.