12h (edited) • 🪩 Reflections
When Does Spiritual Growth Become Spiritual Narcissism?
I’ve been reflecting on something lately, and I’m genuinely curious how others see it.
It concerns contemporary spirituality and personal development culture.
There is so much language today about:
• sovereignty
• alignment
• stepping into your highest self
• expanding your capacity
• becoming more powerful
• building your own container
And at first glance, much of this sounds healthy. Especially for wounded people.
Healing matters. Growth matters. Learning to stand upright matters.
But I find myself asking:
What is the final direction of this growth?
Is it toward deeper communion , or toward a more refined form of self-centeredness?
In the Christian tradition (and especially in the Eastern understanding of theosis), the goal of spiritual ascent is not self-expansion but participation in divine life.
To become “like God” does not mean becoming sovereign and self-defining.
It means becoming self-giving.
God is not an isolated super-self.
God is communion.
Love poured out.
If the cup is filled with divine love, the natural movement is overflow. First toward family, then friends, then community, and ultimately the world.
Not: “How do I enlarge my cup?”
But: “How do I let it pour?”
What I sometimes sense in modern spirituality is a subtle shift.
The starting point is often healing wounded individuals. This is good.
But if the path never moves beyond “my alignment,” “my energy,” “my fulfillment,” then the ascent stalls.
It can even invert.
Because a spirituality centered on “my highest good” risks becoming a polished form of egocentrism, even if it feels expansive, powerful, luminous.
There is a real difference between:
• being filled so you can give
and
• being filled so you can feel more full.
One leads to communion.
The other can quietly lead to isolation, even if it feels intoxicating.
This doesn’t mean self-denial in a pathological way.
It doesn’t mean pleasing others at the expense of well-being.
On the contrary:
You must be rooted, healed, strengthened.
But only so that you can love more.
Not so that you can orbit yourself more efficiently.
So here’s my open questions to the group:
- How do we distinguish between authentic spiritual ascent and spiritual self-absorption?
- At what point does growth turn outward into service, sacrifice, and communion?
- And if it doesn’t turn outward, is it still growth?
I’d genuinely love other perspectives on this.
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When Does Spiritual Growth Become Spiritual Narcissism?
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