Anyone walking a transformative path, knows what an exhilarating and terrifying journey it is. In the process of spiritual awakening, we open ourselves up to new levels of expansiveness and our experience of life becomes more visceral, shared and sacred. Yet a sudden awakening doesn’t mean sudden understanding and this incomprehension often leads to periods of deep frustration since we are faced with an inevitable confusion of different approaches and practices available to us, as well as a gruelling task of navigating internal processes as our personality structures begin to disintegrate.
Spiritual Bypassing is another precarious part of the parcel on this journey and the latest topic in Nurturing the Fields of Change, Alef Trust’s community of practice for holistic transformation and inner development for socal and systemic change in the world.
“Spiritual Bypassing” is a term which has been popularised in the 1980’s by John Welwood, a Buddhist teacher and psychotherapist, who described it as “the tendency to use spiritual practices to avoid or sidestep unresolved emotional issues, psychological wounds, or unfinished developmental tasks”. Some of the examples of spiritual bypassing include: exaggerated detachment, emotional numbing and repression, overly tolerant compassion or premature forgiveness, debilitating judgment about one’s own shadow elements, confusing anger with aggression or ill will which leaves us disempowered and geared with poor boundaries. While it’s a common practice to distance ourselves from what’s painful, distressed and unhealed, spiritual bypassing is also often used as a strategy to legitimize such avoidance.
Every one of us has engaged in spiritual bypassing to some degree. In my own personal journey, having had profound experiences of spiritual illumination and insight, I could relate to the warnings around the delusion of “I Have Arrived!” – an occasional moment of presumed messiahship, which can only mean that I am now also immune to all my psychological conditioning. Overtime, I had to accept and acknowledge how many issues remained unaddressed due to getting trapped in the zone of overdone niceness, always including only the pleasant truths due to anger-phobia and as such not allowing myself to experience this emotion. I would convince myself that I was simply “choosing love in every moment” yet not permitting same to show up in more challenging situations. But carrying anger becomes physically painful and while having to face it was extremely scary, I can see how necessary it is to dedicate balance to each level of experience. I have in the past also identified some of the most powerful spiritual practices for entering the state of bliss, including ‘Breath of Fire’ used in the practice of Kundalini yoga. During the process of integration, blissful states were often accompanied by painful childhood memories, and as such it certainly felt appealing to opt for the “quick fix”. However, I have recognised that instead of using spiritual practice to become more intimate with life, this could turn into another trap to support my avoidant personality traits.
“We need to awaken, but we also need to heal”…
This very same confusion of spiritual bypassing finds its way into the social and political dynamics. So much of the focus among the New Age spiritual communities is on transcendence and ascension, so the bypasser might spiritualize relational issues in an attempt to avoid the messiness and drama involved in justice and social change work because “it’s all just an illusion” anyway. Yet we cannot transform what we don’t engage in and only a counterfeit notion of enlightenment would give us a pass on turning away from human and planetary suffering. Surely, as individuals, we have by now uncovered enough of our own pain which exist only because someone else kept ignoring it. True spirituality to me is a journey of the heart providing both heat and light for what must be done. Mariana Caplan also reminds us that, “there is a very fine line between practicing the necessary process of nonattachment and falling prey to emotional detachment from life that is more of a protective mechanism based on fear than an expression of spiritual clarity”.
Another feature of spiritual bypassing includes making too much of a virtue out of “being positive”, one that seems to be particularly prevalent in the context of climate change. Staring environmental reality in the face can indeed feel overwhelming so it’s not surprising that we are more likely to defuse the full psychological impact of climate crisis by wishing for a positive future. While our attempts to quell anxiety or fear through believing in false miracle solutions may allow for temporary comfort, they may do so in ways that alienate us further from the sources of our distress. Anything we don’t allow ourselves to feel, our body stores and unaddressed issues continue to re-enter the fabric of our lives blocking us from healthy participation in preventing further climate breakdown. In this case, immersing in spiritual pathways doesn’t just mean moving towards the light, it’s about working through our emotions to generate an even deeper sense of vitality and engage in meaningful action.
“Spiritual life is, among other things, a continual revelation about what spiritual life is not”..
It is important to remember that spiritual bypass operates at every level of spiritual development. Those of us who have committed to healing, know what a big and ongoing work it is to scrape of the many layers of conditioning while taking the time to examine ourselves with ruthless self-honesty at each new level of expansion and awareness, yet as John Welwood puts it himself, “the higher levels of realisation cannot manifest on this planet until we learn to fully stand in our humanness”.
No Comments