Do narcissists have a spiritual purpose we can’t understand?

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darknessintolight

This fascinating topic was raised in the comments section under The Man You Love to Hate…or Hate to Love.

The implications raised here are bound to be controversial to some, but I think Joan and CheriSunday may be onto something. In fact, I’ve sometimes wondered myself if narcissists exist for a good reason that only God can understand, but I always thought it sounded too crazy to write about and it was hard to formulate those feelings into words. I’m glad other people have had the same thoughts. It makes me feel less crazy. And it actually makes a type of sense.

CheriSunday says:
January 26, 2015 at 2:46 pm

As you wrote quote “Maybe when one chooses to become a narcissist…..you are drawn into darkness, and once you’ve entered you can’t ever escape.”
My response: I live in a darkness, however I know light shines through my being.
Why feel sorry, we like to suffer, for some , sufferance becomes their friend, that’s how we make peace with the darkness.
CheriSunday

Joan S says:
January 26, 2015 at 8:45 pm

That is very wow. I actually think that aware narcissists like Mr. Vaknin might be a gift. We can’t interpret that gift yet, but will remain till we can.

I like your point though that some like to suffer that it brings comfort. I just can’t believe that darkness can overcome the light though, that is impossible. Maybe if you felt that light long enough it will bring about the deliverance. They just have to want that deliverance. Have to want it. And that is where narcissists are stopped. JMHO of course. I like insightful things.

luckyotter says:
January 26, 2015 at 11:59 pm

Joan,
we don’t know what God’s reasons are or what his plan is. I have thought myself, that narcs may have been put here for a reason that only God knows. Maybe they are here to teach us valuable lessons about human nature and spirituality in general.

In thinking so much about narcissism, because it’s a mental disorder that most likely has a spiritual component, I have been brought much closer to God in the process and have found some semblance of joy and peace for the first time in my life. I have never been happier than I am now. So looking at it this way, narcissists may help us in our own spiritual journey.

I don’t think narcs are demons, I think they’re here for a reason and that reason is a teaching one, even if the lessons we learn from them are painful. Even Satan himself, was created by God and was initially God’s most beloved angel, and his purpose was to test our faith. His original name, Lucifer, means “light bringer.” He became too narcissistic for Heaven because he began to think he was greater than God so he couldn’t stay. (I don’t know whether or not this is a literal story or there is or ever was an entity called “Satan,” but it’s worth bringing it up in the context of this topic).

This doesn’t mean we have to (or should) associate with a known narc. But the ones we haven’t been able to escape from or those who raised us, at the end of the day (when we can finally see the forest for the trees), can make us stronger; their darkness can put our own light into sharp relief.

And in atypical narcissists like Sam, who have contributed so much good to the world (even if his motives were self serving), it could be that he (and those like him, if there are any others) are a special kind of gift, and that his darkness may be a necessary thing, both for himself and for us. We don’t know the reasons, but he may know, and although he suffers, he may have accepted this suffering as part of whatever his own mission on this earth is. He may not need deliverance, or maybe the deliverance will come at a later time or upon his death. We just don’t know. Only God does.

“What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” — Kelly Clarkson

luckyotter says:
January 26, 2015 at 11:43 pm

CheriSunday, first of all, welcome to this blog! 🙂 I love to see new “faces” around here.

If you know light shines through your being, you are not hopeless. Maybe there are some people who need to suffer. We don’t know the reasons. In a way I can relate. I flirted with darkness for many years, out of choice. Fortunately I’m coming to a place of more light but there are still dark days. I accept them for what they are, and realize those dark days may have some enlightening lessons in them. “Without darkness, there can be no light.”

I am curious, though, since you say you choose suffering and you have never posted here before, are you an NPD sufferer or have another disorder, like BPD or depression? Forgive my presumptuousness, but because of the nature of this topic and this blog, I don’t think it’s stepping on your boundaries to ask. I hope you don’t mind.

I also think most narcissists have an inner light that does shine through sometimes, except maybe MNs and psychopaths/sociopaths. There is a lot of light in Sam and that’s why I think he is still able to help people and victims looks up to him even though he is exactly the sort of person we’re trying to get away from. I hope that makes sense.

31 thoughts on “Do narcissists have a spiritual purpose we can’t understand?”

  1. Sometimes I think Sam Vaknin will be delivered once his true purpose is known. It’s like we don’t have the technology yet to discover it, but it’s not technology, its something else, and I don’t know what that is either. The narc whisperer might be on the way. I know this sounds weird, but it might be the case.

    Sam presses into some vital matters for us, even giving us ways to handle narcissists, long ago, way before we knew there were ACON’s. That’s so strange.

    No one trusts him on our side because he is a narcissist, and narcissists are liars by default. I don’t blame them, that is true. As for me, I don’t blame any narc except my mother, not even my ex’s, because truth be told, I should have been safe and secure in the world from narcs, and I was not, and its because of her and her alone. For making me into a perpetual victim. This was her doing. All on her shoulders.

    Since my awakening, I’ve had dealings with narcissists and its been ok. I’ve not been locked up in “no knowledge”. Its been great actually. They don’t hurt me. Sure PTSD still exists, and all that, but everything has been made manageable. I love it. Me being a victim all the time, was the problem. Not now. Before I was always chewed up by the wolf, now I send the wolf back into the forest. This doesn’t mean the wolf is bad, he does have a purpose on earth. His purpose does not include cuddling with me.

    So with that I think I can now say that sure they do have a purpose, I needed some recovery first, now, we just have to hope to find out what they are all about.

    I hope this won’t offend my ACON people, I am still with them for sure. I’m just curious about this.

    Liked by 2 people

    • Joan,
      This is incredibly profound and thought provoking, and I love profound things. 🙂

      If I may ask, what exactly is a “narc whisperer”? Can you elaborate? God telling him what his purpose is and then delivering him from his suffering? Or is it another person?

      It is very strange that a malignant narcissist, of all people (I still have my doubts how “malignant” Sam actually is though but he insists he is so I will take his word on it), was for years the only voice on the Internet or anywhere, for that matter, who addressed the very important topic of narcissistic abuse and offered a way to help victims cope with their abusers. I personally don’t care what his motives were, if they were selfish or not, sometimes the end is more important than the means. He has helped a great many people escape and/or cope with their abusers and he has helped me immensely just in my being able to study his writings so closely and get inside his mind. I believe God wanted me to do that because it was important in my own recovery. Sam has helped me more than any one human being I can name, in ways I can’t even begin to understand. But I have changed because of what I know about him and what I know about a disorder (NPD) I knew so little about until the past few months.

      So this malignant narcissist I have never even met has changed my life and has changed the lives of others in positive ways. He is doing the world a great service and yet, he is still trapped in his narcissism and has never been delivered from it. He is forced to still suffer from it, even as he is helping others escape from their abusers. It’s not fair but it’s the way it is. God has his reasons. Maybe he still has more work to do before he is delivered, I can’t say. I think he will be delivered someday though I don’t know when or how it will happen. It’s not for us to know.

      Actually, it’s not always people on “our side” who don’t trust him. They seem to be about evenly split. Some think, “oh, he’s a narc, I won’t bother reading his book, he’s a fraud, etc.” and others worship the ground he walks on as if he were some sort of God. Neither is accurate: he’s just a man, maybe a very unusual man with a special purpose and a tragic disorder that still allows his light to shine through anyway, but he’s still just a man and isn’t a god and he isn’t a devil. I try to keep a balanced view about him, but I can understand why people on both sides might think the way they do. He is definitely controversial which is no surprise.

      Surprisingly, from my readings on the web, the smallish community of people trying to recover from NPD (mainly the Tony Brown/Attitudinal Healing followers that still populate Brown’s site) are, ironically, the most hostile to Sam and his writings. They feel he is morose and negative, and very pessimistic, in his insistence that NPD cannot be cured. These “NPDers” feel like Sam’s given them a kind of death sentence, and I agree with them that he is quite negative about the possibility of a cure (not just treatment) for NPD. They also dislike the way in his books he has a kind of “us or them” style of separating the “narcs” from everyone else–and I have to admit they have a point. The way he describes narcissists doesn’t even sound human. He appears to demonize them and even hate them. They feel that this hopelessness is very destructive to healing NPD.

      But what I think Sam is actually doing (and I don’t know if he’s aware of it or not) is projecting his own self-hatred onto narcissists in general. I could be wrong, but in reading “Malignant Self-Love” I get a very strong feeling that he demonizes narcs because he demonizes himself. It’s like self-flagellating. He’s punishing himself for being what he is (or having the disorder he does, because that’s not the real him, only the false self) and at the same time makes himself a sort of guru and celebrity due to his book and how victims look up to him.

      Sam has chosen to identify with the victims rather than narcs, perhaps as a way to redeem himself for being a narc. It must ease some of his guilt over what he did to himself when he chose narcissism.
      I could be all wrong about this but these are the impressions I am getting.

      Liked by 1 person

  2. I think I remembered Peeps mentioning a narc whisperer a few posts ago and I liked that. I think she said one doesn’t exist and sometimes we try to be one, and that may have been a clue for us. A step along the way, that we needed. I don’t know what that all means yet.

    Sam might be the narc whisperer or he might be drawing one in, someone who gets this and understands. But unfortunately, I don’t think it will be Sam. Sam won’t be believable, simply because of his narcissism.

    And I think that is sad. He has so much to give. He is giving help for ACON’s and has no hope for narcs. God has taken bad things before and used them for his purpose, then he delivered them from all their trials.

    I used to use food banks all the time. I know how painful that was. I don’t use food banks anymore, now I volunteer at one and I helped form some rules to make this comfortable for the clients. It was like I had to be needy, otherwise I would be just another volunteer asking invasive questions, I would have not known better. But I had to be needy first. To identify with it.

    I would like to see more help for us too. As ACON’s. And I want healing for my daughter, we are open about her narcissism now, and she confessed to so much. She is all normal, then the next thing she does is lie. This is confusing. Ok, let it all be crappy, but make it make at least some sense. It doesn’t.

    Liked by 2 people

    • Joan, it’s all so confusing. I am praying your daughter can find healing. She is still young and maybe has hope. Is it possible she could be Borderline rather than a narc? They can act very similar–I have the same issues with my daughter. The jury is still out on her diagnosis. I think she is BPD though.

      This sounds very strange…but I remembered now when Peep talked about a narc whisperer–I think she was referring to me in that example. I don’t remember the exact context; I’ll have to go back and look.
      But something you said gave me goosebumps, it was this:
      “Sam might be the narc whisperer or he might be drawing one in, someone who gets this and understands. But unfortunately, I don’t think it will be Sam.”
      I have no idea what this would mean but it just gave me serious goosebumps. I really have no idea why.
      There’s something big here going on, I don’t know what it is, but it’s big. That’s all I know. Think I’m ready to be taken off in a straitjacket yet? LOL
      This is crazy, crazy in a good way. I can’t explain it. God is behind all this. I just know it.

      ACONs do need more help, but we are helping each other, and there are more of us coming out of the closet every day. There’s a lot of healing going on.
      I just wish there could be healing going on for the narcs too, but again, there may be another agenda for them that involves a deliverance of some kind. Maybe someone like Tony Brown could be cured of NPD because he was delivered; maybe all his work here was done. It’s very interesting that he died shortly after he was cured.

      Liked by 1 person

  3. I don’t think one chooses to be a narcissist…they don’t even realize they are and deny that they are. My experience is that something has happened in their life that has caused them to center on themselves, be the victim, punish the people who love them. I the case of my narcissist he was abandoned by his mother, put into an orphanage with his 3 siblings who were adopted as siblings but they never mentioned the fact that their younger brother age three was also in the orphanage, this was not divulged by the children or the birth mother for two years, at which time the adoptive parents took the child and adopted him as well. Hard to believe, but I think it was so traumatic and explains his narcissism and drug addiction. That’s my take on it.

    Liked by 1 person

    • I think you are correct, Heartafire. (thanks for following me too).
      Almost all narcs were abused as children. Many by MN parents. They lash out at those who love them and try to help them because they feel like they don’t deserve love. They hate being loved because they hate themselves. The mask they wear that appears to make them look like they love themselves is just a lie. It’s overcompensation for self hatred. It’s interesing that so many (Sam included) love to be hated and feared. They like to be hated because that’s what they think they deserve, so they get gratification from that, and therefore act in ways that will make people hate them. It’s a very twisted and tragic way to live. But it makes sense, to them.

      My MN ex was raised by a MN mother who was as evil as they come. She herself was responsible for raising 8 younger siblings and punished if she failed at this enormous burden put on a child. One day I will write about HIS childhood and how I think his MN mother turned him into a narc. Like most children, he wasn’t always like that and remembers longing for love from his mother and never getting it. I think he “made the choice” to become a narc at age 13, when his father died and his mother refused to do anything about his father’s dead body lying on the bathroom floor. He had to take care of everything himself, and was stuck forever at age 13 and began to make terrible choices and do terrible things after that point.

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      • It’s amazing how much our n. had in common environmentally as children and adolescents. I would love read the story of this man of yours. I would love to write the story of my N. He had a gentle spirit but was totally messed up by his unorthodox upbringing, being abandoned, abused as a child, self medicating to escape himself and being a state of grandeur until it wore off then the self hatred. Omg, what a terrible life, I don’t know how I stood it, but I was in love …he died of an overdose last April, it devastated me. I am glad you have addressed this issue, people don’t realize the complexity of family abuse patterns and the effects on their offspring. Thank you very much for let me blather on.

        Liked by 1 person

        • Blather all you like. 😀
          That is so sad about your N. guy. He sounds tragic, he doesn’t sound like he was malignant though, am I wrong? I almost became a narc myself. I wrote a post about it (you can find that and also the story of my marriage and my upbringing my an MN mother under “My Story” in the header–all the links are in there). I think I have more understanding of narcissists or more curiosity about the way their minds work because I came very close to being one. You can read about that in this post: https://luckyottershaven.com/2015/01/21/how-i-almost-became-a-narcissist/
          I am so sorry he died 😦 That would be devastating especially because you were still in love with him.
          Families can wreak havoc on their children, and NPD is very contagious, BPD is common in children of narcs too and it’s a kissing cousin to NPD anyway.

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    • Agreed. How many times can both the terms, “chose to become” and “suffers with the disorder…” Seriously be used by the same person before the possibility of their own view being slightly skewed/ biased? Seems a little contradictory to me. *feigns concerned confusion*

      Liked by 1 person

  4. We want answers, I know. Its hard to figure out. Sam is needed, that’s all I know.

    Sorry, I can’t put this answer right below LO’s. I don’t want to offend Heartafire. Sorry.

    Liked by 1 person

  7. I think everybody has a spiritual purpose. I don’t know that being a narcissist is a purpose though. For the narcissist, this may be their ordeal to overcome and learn from.

    Liked by 1 person

    • We all have our crosses to bear; narcissists just have a bigger cross than most of us. Sometimes the most spiritually evolved people are given the greatest burdens of all.

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    • Yeah, that could be exactly it. I know its crazy, but I always feel there has got to be more to the story. My NM stole everything, and the pain of that is so much to bear sometimes, that I feel I need a reason for it. But yes jennydevildoll, you could be right.

      Liked by 1 person

      • I know this was not directed to me, but let me assure you are not crazy at all. Stick around,keep reading, keep talking, and you will find out the reason. There is one.

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  8. See, okay, I will say this. Very recently, like two weeks ago, I discovered I’m an empath. Some people take issue with this claim– they think it means divination or playing with the occult or telling the future or being clairvoyant or something. It has nothing to do with that at all. It’s nothing I’m “conjuring” or trying to do consciously. I think the occult is very dangerous actually.

    But all my life I have always been highly sensitive (always “too sensitive” to my MN abusers– that seems to be a common complaint for many of us) but I never saw the purpose for it. For years I was ashamed of it, I tried to hide it (which led to me “test driving narcissism” to run away from my sensitivity and the hurt it caused). That went on for 5-6 years. I finally woke up before it was too late and did not become a narc–instead i chose to be codependent and married my MN. I stayed with him all of 28 years (7 of which we were divorced). I was almost destroyed spiritually, mentally, emotionally, and even physically I was going downhill. I think I would have died had I not put a stop to it.

    I won’t get into the history of this blog too much but it started as self therapy mainly because I could not afford a therapist. Then I started finding out about Sam and reading everything i could get my hands on. Then I found God and accepted Jesus as my savior. I was assured I would be safe in this journey but to never think it was all about me. It isn’t about me, it’s about how God is choosing to use me in this life.

    Something happened two weeks ago and I realized that my high sensitivity I’ve done battle with all my life had a purpose besides just a way to be abused and hurt by human predators. I won’t–can’t–get into detail. But something did happen. I just know certain things. I’m not a mind reader, I can’t tell you what you are doing right now and won’t try because that’s not why I have this gift– I couldn’t do it anyway even if you asked. It’s specific and works in a specific way which I cannot let on. I don’t try to make it work, but it does when it needs to. It’s the greatest gift God could have given me and little by little, everything that has happened is all starting to make sense. It’s like a jigsaw puzzle that was just a bunch of random pieces that made no sense finally coming together to form a picture. And that picture is the most amazing picture I’ve ever seen. Again, I can’t explain it. It just…is. And I’m still far from seeing the whole picture yet. There’s a lot more that’s still a huge mystery.

    I really like Joan’s analogy here about dealing with narcissists:
    “Before I was always chewed up by the wolf, now I send the wolf back into the forest. This doesn’t mean the wolf is bad, he does have a purpose on earth. His purpose does not include cuddling with me.”
    They aren’t bad; it’s just in their nature to be predators. But that doesn’t make them automatically bad. Maybe just bad for us.

    Liked by 1 person

    • Lmao no need to apologize lol. I was hoping it wasn’t too arrogant, but feeling g quirky at the same time. Sorry I didn’t realize I’d had a reply, I’ve been typing away for awhile working on a contribution to the conversatio here.

      Liked by 1 person

      • I just read that long reply of mine before yours and I’m not as much of an empath as I thought. I think I *could* be though, if I can get rid of all the garbage that keeps me from being so. How were you being arrogant?

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