Not All Who Trip Are Transformed: Beware The Spiritual Narcissist 🙏❤️‍🩹

Plastic shamans, charlatans, and profit-driven gurus. Exploring the depths of spiritual narcissism in the psychedelic space.

Sep 22, 2023

Pseudo-spirituality and spiritual narcissism run deep within the psychedelic realm.

On the one hand, mind-expanding substances offer real potential for spiritual growth and development — on the other, they serve as powerful tools for self-deception and ego-inflation.

A spiritual narcissist is someone who promises wisdom, enlightenment, and healing on the surface but harbors tendencies towards manipulation, control, and exploitation — often using the sanctity of spiritual spaces to hide their true intentions.

From emotional to financial manipulation, it's vital to discern genuine spiritual guides from those cloaked in false pretenses.

Pseudo-Spirituality & Spiritual Bypassing

Pseudo-spirituality refers to a performative engagement in spiritual practices without genuine understanding or self-awareness.

Such individuals use spiritual concepts like meditation, yoga, chanting, plant medicines, and psychedelics to avoid confronting their own psychological issues. This is a form of spiritual bypassing.

Despite superficially engaging in spiritual growth, their approach can be self-righteous, competitive, and manipulative — basically the exact opposite of how a spiritually aware person would behave.

Truly spiritually aware people are deeply conscious of themselves and how their actions affect other people. They don't judge people from a self-righteous positivity pedestal, and they don't feel entitled to recognition for their wisdom or generosity.

Spiritual Egotism: A Natural Hurdle in the Process of Becoming More Spiritually Aware

Before we dig into full-fledged spiritual narcissism, we have to touch on the concept of spiritual egotism.

This term refers to the paradoxical nature inherent to seeking spiritual growth and development. It's a normal part of the process of becoming a more spiritually aware person.

This is one of the many hurdles one has to cross while "putting in the work" toward a more enlightened state of being.

This is very different from full-fledged spiritual narcissism.

As The Zen Psychedelic points out in their post on Spiritual Arrogance:

"By seeking spiritual advancement, we have to accept that there is something to improve and someone to do the improving.
This suggests that this improvement somehow makes us better than someone who has not achieved similar levels of improvement.
This kind of thinking is inherently egotistical."

By simply taking the initiative to become more spiritually aware, we have to accept the fact that we are, in some way, adding layers to our ego — at least initially.

The Zen Psychedelic continues by stating:

"Can we avoid spiritual egotism? Probably not, but by learning to recognize it, we may be able to re-align ourselves towards the middle path when it inevitably appears over and over again throughout our lives."

Realizing and accepting our own spiritual arrogance is an important part of the process of "putting in the work."

Dr. Remani, a psychologist specializing in Narcissistic Personality Disorder, puts it this way:

The hard work isn't the chanting and the breathing — it's the willingness to do the deep dive. To excavate our demons and our anxieties. To be vulnerable in the face of them, and to integrate them instead of running away from them. And to get up and fight the good fight every day with empathy — real empathy."

Recognizing the paradoxical nature of one's own desire to shed ego requires genuine humility and vulnerability.

The narcissist is blind to the presence of such an ego. They end up using spiritual practice to try and mask this (now growing and festering) ego. This is spiritual bypassing.

The Zen Psychedelic says that:

"In essence, they become a victim of their own spiritual practice — they're blind to the paradox of the spiritual path and become lost in their own egotistical beliefs that their "way" is somehow better than everybody else's."

Characterizing The Spiritual Narcissist

A spiritual narcissist is someone who uses their spiritual beliefs or practices to assert superiority, control, or manipulation over others. They often present themselves as spiritually enlightened or advanced and may use spiritual language or ideas to justify their behavior.

Many self-proclaimed spiritual gurus and shamans have tendencies that could be described as spiritual narcissism — and there are a lot of people like this in the psychedelic sphere.

A recent study found people who practice energy work are the most likely to exhibit signs of spiritual narcissism.

Charlatans (AKA “plastic shamans”) do this by presenting themself as authentic shamans despite virtually no training, no approval from existing members of the indigenous communities these practices come from, and often a clear disregard for ethical boundaries. The charlatan justifies this through self-appointed spiritual authority or purported "divine" insights.

Cult leaders do this, too.

They create communities around spiritual concepts that place themselves at a higher level than everybody else — and give them varying levels of control over the members of the community they've built.

Think about plastic shamans or cult leaders like Charles Manson, Jake Chansley (The QAnon Shaman), Jim Jones, Bikram Choudhury, Keith Raniere, or Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh (AKA Osho) as high-profile examples of this.

All of these individuals used the mask of spiritual advancement to further their own agendas and satisfy personal desires.

While these high-profile examples are good for illustrating the types of personas these people present — they're just the tip of the iceberg. The vast majority of spiritual narcissists are operating outside the public lens. They're running workshops, retreat centers, and offering personalized psychedelic coaching sessions.

We, as a community, need to learn how to spot these traits to avoid falling victim and to ensure that the sanctity of psychedelic and spiritual healing is respected.

None of this means you can't gain something from attending retreats or workshops run by spiritual narcissists — but it’s important to be aware of the signs, take what they say with a grain of salt, and learn to maintain clear boundaries.

Nobody gets a free pass for breaking those boundaries just because they present themselves as being in some way "spiritually advanced."

As we discussed earlier, a truly spiritually aware person understands and respects these boundaries already. They don't use self-serving excuses to exclude their participation in basic moral and ethical standards.

What Are the Traits of a Spiritual Narcissist?

In our recent post about narcissistic personality disorder (NPD, we list all the clinical traits associated with the condition and differentiate between the clinical diagnosis of (NPD) and people with "narcissistic" tendencies.

For this list, we've dialed in on the "spiritual" presentations of narcissism:

Superiority Complex — They may feel or act superior due to their spiritual knowledge, practices, experiences, or supposed level of enlightenment.
Manipulation — They may use spiritual concepts or language to manipulate others, justify their behavior, or evade personal responsibility.
Lack of Empathy — While they may talk about love, compassion, or empathy; their actions may not align with these values. They may show little regard for the feelings, boundaries, or well-being of others.
Constant Validation Seeking — They may be overly concerned with their image as a spiritual person, seeking admiration, praise, or validation for their spirituality.
Spiritual Bypassing — They may use spirituality to avoid dealing with personal issues, emotional pain, or psychological wounds. This can also involve dismissing or invalidating others' feelings or experiences by labeling them as "unspiritual."
Virtue Signaling — Demonstrations of one's moral superiority. It could be through toxic positivity, performative acts of kindness or selflessness, or downplaying everyday concerns to highlight their higher spiritual priorities.
Using Spirituality to Justify Harmful Actions — Cherrypicking or twisting spiritual teachings to align with one's actions.
Competitive Spirituality — Assigning levels or tiers to one's spiritual progress.
Fake Experiences — Inventing spiritual experiences, insights, or abilities they didn't actually have.

🚩 Psychedelic Guide & Facilitator Red Flags

These traits are all fairly broad, and it's not so easy to identify these kinds of things in guides or spiritual teachers you've only just met (or haven't met at all yet).

It's helpful to understand the basic red flags for vetting psychedelic facilitators. Many of these red flags help you dodge spiritual narcissists; others help you fish out people who just don't know what they're doing.

Sofie Mikhaylova, writer at Shroomtown, recently published a list of facilitator red flags to watch out for that we absolutely agree with and want to share with you.

Psychedelics have a profound capacity to heal, but only when used correctly.

Choosing the right facilitator matters A LOT.

Misusing these substances not only won't provide you any benefit, but it can actually cause additional harm.

Here's Sofie's Facilitator Red Flag 🚩 List:

Making it All About Themselves — Someone who is very focused on themselves in the ceremony/journey rather than you, who brings up that they've "healed" or "awakened" X amount of people and is more interested in sharing their experiences and expertise rather than ensuring your safe journey and passage.
Overemphasis on Title — Someone who is overly attached to the "shaman" or "guru" or "healer" role and constantly refers to themselves as such.
Promises of Healing Miracles — This is a gross overrepresentation of what psychedelic therapy and medicine work is and is an extremely dangerous mindset to have overall. Psychedelics are in no way a magic bullet.
No Informed Consent Process — It should be made explicitly clear before you take the medicine what is allowed from/to the guide in the session and what isn't.
Lack of Clear Credentials — This isn't to say that the only type of validity a guide can have is a legal license, but they should have some type of history or background that shows that they know what they're doing, have received some type of training or have experience, whether they've facilitated other ceremonies, overseen them, or learned from traditional healers.
Prioritizing Money Over Care — Asking for money, especially very high amounts, before you've even had a conversation to see if you'd work well together.
Mysterious "Proprietary Blend" — They won't disclose exactly what they are giving you. A good facilitator should always be transparent about what they are giving you and disclose where it's sourced from.
Lack of Empathy & Patience — Getting frustrated, angry, and annoyed with you if you are worried or anxious about the process (which, by the way, is completely normal).
Knowledge Gaps — They can't answer basic questions about the substance. This is pretty clear. If someone facilitating a DMT session doesn't know much about DMT, you'll know. And you should back away slowly.
Bad Vibes — It sounds simplistic, but this one is pretty important. First, learn to tell the difference between your intuition and your anxiety. Next, trust your gut.

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