I first laughed out loud. Sometimes laughing is all you can do to cover so much hurt.
There she was on Facebook, smiling in sunglasses, posed as an innocent country girl against a tree in the mountains, wearing a highly revealing tanktop that said YOGINI. My YOGINI attacker’s implants and new face work were in full bloom. My 45 year old single mother narc had started the sales job that I fell for all over again.
It had been two month since my NPD/BPD high-powered attorney fiancé lit a match, burned my house down, and then had me falsely arrested as retaliation for throwing her clothes out on my porch. She hadn’t literally burned the house down, but in one night Armageddon happened and I ended up in a squad car at 1AM off to jail on a retaliatory arrest by my narc. I had called her out on repeated emotional child abuse, domestic abuse, alcoholism, extreme rage. I even thought at the time she was bipolar, and said it. She attacked me with the force of the legions of the devil, possessed by her demons, unstoppable.
4 days later she and her young children moved out under the pretense that she was a “victim”, despite no logical evidence of the night or history to support that. (Thank god now she moved out). I was in shock, devastated, confused, in jail. I didn’t know she was BPD or NPD. She was the love of my life. A lovebomb machine. A great mother to her young children and my young children who recited every self-help and parenting book as dogma. We built a beautiful blended family together of four young children and planned a limitless future. Gone in one night. Nothing for an entire year was real.
My narc abandoned my young children whose love she built. Vanished. She broke up two five year old girl’s very close sister-like friendship. Discarded. My narc stole her beautiful kids away from the man who was their “father figure,”, who suddenly was sold as a villain. She faked a crime scene to retaliate for me resisting her and calling her abuse crimes out. She falsely arrested me for misdemeanor battery (an alleged push during her 2.5 hours of raging lunacy), sent me to jail for 14 hours, 3 months of hell through the court system and $8000 in bail/legal fees before the DA finally dismissed the charges. My narc tried every which way to get me to say anything “incriminating” to further jail me, defame me and discredit me, should her ex-husband use my knowledge as a witness for a future child custody battle. Or should I press charges for child abuse and false arrest.
There was the enlightened YOGINI – the self-aware, spiritual gangster on Facebook. It was her new online dating pic, no doubt. Her “friends” commented on how beautiful she looked. Little do they know. No kids in the pic, my single mom narc never shows her young children. At 45, 2 ex husbands, 2 more secret ex-husbands (I was nearly the 5th) the last thing a desperate single mom wants is to show she has young children.
All of this evil of course was after months of the crazy – highly abusive nights that I forgave repeatedly, illimitable rage, manipulating her son to bring me home when I tried to escape, no impulse control, alcoholism in front of her kids, lunatic bizarre accusations of infidelity, trials and crucifixions, threats, selective editing of the narrative to make her the innocent victim and every man in the world to blame. On came the gaslighting, trying to make me a villain to discredit the child custody battle witness. Lies in the child services interviews after the arrest. The list goes on and on. My NPD Yogini walked off with sins and crimes, unscathed, no remorse. Paranoid, BPD, NPD, PTSD, botoxed and store bought, sweet as pie to all the gullible PTA moms and gym rats who love her. She is everything that Yoga is not.
Now I like Yoga. I used to do it with my narc before I knew she was a narc. It was cathartic and a journey. Yoga is also the modern-day Xanax, socially accepted self-medicating, grossly abused and leveraged for self-centered gain. What could be wrong with self-improvement, self-focus, self-healing, self-actualizing, self-awareness? Wow, that’s a lot of self. A lot of self-deception. I love Yoga, but now that I am a narc hunter, I can easily see I’m in a den of narcissists and their perfect prey – emotionally vulnerable people. Any Saturday morning in a yoga studio is like watching wolves and the lambs side by side on a floor of yoga mats doing downward dogs.
The new age of westernizing a truly spiritual practice has bastardized Yoga and self-help into just another mask for narcissism. When looking hot in Lululemon is more important than the true inner experience, you are a spiritual narcissist, not a spiritual gangster. When you wear Yoga tropes on your shirt, “YOGINI”, you are the marketing department to yourself and the world, you’re not a real yogini. Like all things narcissism, the marketing department is wearing the Spiritual Gangster tank to convince the world she is enlightened, a victim, a survivor and a thriver on her “journey” of self-discovery. It’s a sham. It’s lip gloss. It’s the devil in a new age tank top.
I’m not that jaded, despite living in LA. You can find the real deal in the yoga studio. Good people who have encountered real adversity. I was one of them. That said, while many yoga practioners are on real healthy journeys, in the land of Kardashians the yogini in the $80 Lulu tank is as self-indulgent and ego-driven as the coked up gym rat of the 1980s. This is old wine in new skins. Yoga is too often just another delusion and mask, sanctified in the temples of narcissism – gyms, pilates dens and yoga studios. What better place for my narc to find her prey and supply then a hive of vulnerable, emotionally recovering and/or gullible yoginis. As amazing as the practice of Yoga is, it’s also the bastion of narcissist wolves or who are the empaths and co-dependents that the wolves prey on. The wolves and the lambs, side by side.
Many spiritual practices seek to increase our ability to witness and bring mindful awareness to ego drives which allow us to master, instead of being enslaved by our ego. When ego gets too big it can be hard to swallow, yet spiritual liberation invites us to expand our sense of self beyond the ego, beyond time and space.*
Wow, I can actually hear that coming out of my UCLA law student Yogini’s mouth. And she may even be distorted enough to believe it. This is the same Yogini NPD / BPD who damaged her children, abandoned my children, destroyed our blended family and nearly destroyed me with extreme malice and reckless abandon for standing up to her. She may even be so distorted to believe she lives a life of mindful awareness. God knows, she preached it to me and her congregation of gullible friends all too often. And I know now it’s all words, nothing more. She’s an erudite advisor who advises because she cannot do.
There’s nothing worse than narcissism posing as humility**
Spend a couple of days on match.com, and you’ll see the patterns. Yoga obsessions, pics of Lululemon victory poses on the top of mountains, animal rescuers who ask that you “must love dogs”, women “living every day to it’s fullest”. It’s laughably obvious. Interview a few and you’ll cut through the self-indulgence quickly. No doubt, LA can be the same, I’ve heard many stories. You can start smelling the narcissism in those pretty little profiles, they all read from the same template. Narcs are quite predictable actually. It starts with the commitment to yoga, self-empowerment and the professed loved of “me”. Run for the hills.
But I won’t give up on Yoga. I believe in it’s true power for spiritual awakening, enlightenment and healing. It’s great exercise. And I’ll recite my Namaste side by side with the wolves and the lambs. I am a narc hunter now, I can see it, I can smell it.
The gross commodification, bastardization and smokescreen for narcissism that we’ve subjected Eastern Philosophy to is just another socially validated drug – like alcohol, Xanax and fitness hives. The next time you’re in Cobra pose, just look around you., because there are real cobras in the room. It’s probably the one’s marketing it the hardest, wearing the yogini and spiritual gangster advertisements on their sleeve.
*http://upliftconnect.com/spiritual-narcissist/
** http://www.slate.com/articles/life/the_spectator/2007/03/the_hostile_new_age_takeover_of_yoga.html
By Christian Nohan
