For many, patriotism and religion are a kind of disguised narcissism.
Narcissistic patriots may praise America, but feel no obligation to care for its people or to protect its lands. They may wave the flag and rejoice in the military, but it is glory and power they really love, not their country.
Narcissistic religionists may praise Jesus, or whatever being they worship, but their prayers make it clear that religion is a way of cajoling divine power to protect and serve themselves. However much they may praise their “God,” it is themselves they truly worship.
The problem with only loving ourselves is that we are going to die. Such self love therefore brings about inevitable fear and disappointment. Only by loving all of life and nature can our love of self find fulfillment in the larger common life..
While we love only our own small lives, we are holding onto ashes. Narcissistic religion is like loving a reflection of ourselves in a mirror. Such self absorption will never really meet our needs, never lead us to meaningful lives, never give us the experience of truly loving another being.
As Jesus said, if we hold onto our lives we will surely lose them. One does not have to be traditionally religious to understand there is something deeper within us than our social selves. When we observe the web of life, or the cosmic process, something deep within us stirs. The happiness we seek in life is not our luggage. We are vessels for IT. Knowing this, we are wise to give ourselves fully, joyfully and with abandon to the pulse of life within our deeper being.
The stream that will not empty itself becomes stagnant and cut off from its source. Only by “dying” from our smaller lives into a deeper and larger love can we find what the life within us is seeking to find.
If mystics use the word “God” at all they use it as a symbol of a deeper larger mystery. Whatever is meant by the symbol “God,” Van Gogh was right:
“The best way to know God is to love many things.”