Take It Easy

@oasisness -- Seems we're all just having fun with "Take It Easy". Although I didn't read all the comments people left, when I saw yours it sort of popped off the page a bit. My daughter was also going to school, in her case to become a social worker & psychologist that helps children. Life also happened and she is now a mother and stepmother with many children instead. In both her planned life scenario and the one she actually encountered when she rode the wave, she took her "self" with her, including both her real self and her imagined view of herself. The latter was in deep, and is still having difficulty navigating life, even though she's carved out an "acceptable" niche. Interestingly, everyone has Narcissistic stuff on board. Rather than that being a negative, it is the real self offering the opportunity for one to get to know their own self...as most people lack adequate self-knowledge. Perhaps from your reading and training, you cite a lot of stuff you see as negative and attribute it to one's being self-absorbed. Actually, the opposite is true. People who fail at caring for others in meaningful ways fail because they don't know themselves and therefore have not come to a place where they love themselves. Because they don't love themselves due to their "self ignorance", they're out of touch with how to love. Love is a sharing of the inner resource of love, which requires one to get in touch with it first, then share it. Narcissism arises because of learned behavior, rather than being learned itself. The learned behavior is the societal traditions and culture, along with rules of morality (typically founded in religion) rather than morality based in inner knowledge of love. Because people learn and practice these things, specifically including avoiding paying enough attention to self and thus not getting in touch with their real self and their inner resource of love, people live disconnected and conflicted. While they think that and strongly believe that their choices are their own and are correct, they have actually become puppet like. They emote and behave according to patterns learned in their earlier years. They believe this is correct, is enough, is what might save the world someday if enough people just get on board. Unfortunately, as each century passes by with people doing this, the collective conflict, disconnect and inner dysfunction from this, masquerading as living properly, leads humanity down an extremely wide path into petty moralistic evaluation of life and of people, resulting in war after war after war. But, being caught up in and believing the same old stuff instead of being in touch with love within, they march ever forward into that pitiless abyss. In your comment, you alluded to the plight of people around the person labeled Narcissist, but seemed oblivious to the fact that this person beneath the label has a need and is at least trying to meet it where it is...within his own or her own self. The behaviors attributed to the Narcissistic person are perhaps well-founded historical fact, and yet demonizing that person and viewing them as less than others is neither appropriate nor helpful. Granted, they need help...and they are trying to help themselves by trying to find it. The person labeling them and casting other people around them into the role of "victim of the Narcissistic person" are missing the real point...that they themselves are indeed victimized, not by the Narcissists around them but by their own disconnect from believing they should not be self-centered (so they won't earn the Narcissist label). Rather than this comment being intended to become a winner in a pissing contest, it is given that the reader might contemplate the value and genuine purpose of setting as their very first priority...examination of oneself (beyond their history and the collage of judgments). Without the ability and ongoing practice in place to access their inner resource and thereby step out of the rote mold & role society has dictated for them to live by, they are actually in a trap. The single real goal in life is to get in touch with who and what you are. Although it seems all these other things and other people are important (and indeed they are), those other things and people cannot be properly loved and truly treated well without FIRST following the urge toward looking within and gaining intimate knowledge of oneself. Without this, their offering causes a conflicted and violent world. So Narcissism is the urge toward the opportunity to "get it right" and thereby have something worth giving to others.