On 6th October, the Nurturing the Fields of Change group gathered to speak to something I’ve long felt but have been unable to name; the ways in which non-dual language can both heal and quietly harm. We spoke about how teachings of oneness can often be a source of support, and deep ethical work for social change; and, how they can also be co-opted into an avoidance of pain.
Spiritual bypassing is not spiritual practice itself, but a misuse of it. The ego, an expert at survival, can disguise itself in non-dual words to avoid difficult inner work, to invalidate psychological wounds, or to paint over injustices. Throughout the conversation, we kept returning to one painful truth: when the paradigms of oneness erases difference, it can also erase the histories of marginalised groups, and, in so doing, can perpetuate harm rather than heal it.
For years, I have carried a persistent story about my body; that it is ugly, fat, unworthy, and unlovable. Those words aren’t just private cruelties, but have been woven through culture, gendered expectations, and historical control over women’s bodies. The mind-made stories that run through my head are both intensely personal and unmistakably social.
When I first encountered non-dual Kashmir Shaivism, something in me wanted to refuse it outright. I was invited to consider that my body was an “expression of the divine.” This felt, initially, like a betrayal. How could the flesh I hated possibly be sacred? My body felt less like an altar and more like a prison. My body, an “altar made of flesh,” was stapled together by shame and historical violence.
The teachings of non-dual Kashmir Shaivism forced me to consider two truths simultaneously. On the one hand, the teachings assert that, at the deepest level, we are perfect, whole, and untouched. On the other hand, this is not a permission to ignore the wounds that have been inflicted on us by social structures and personal histories. However, this philosophy names not only the ultimate unity, but the very human layers that obscure it: the vikalpas (mental constructs) and samskaras (emotional wounds). This perspective doesn’t ask me to perform instantaneous love for my body; it asks me to discover what stories have been layered onto my being, and to start the messy work of unpicking them.
There is a crucial difference between saying “you are divine, now get over your pain” and saying, “you are divine, and here are the layered wounds that make that truth hard to see”. One silences the wounds; the other gives them a voice and a space to be seen. In the latter, the spiritual teachings become a foundation from which to do the hard, embodied labour of healing, advocacy, and repair. My struggle is to hold both realities: to receive the radical, inconvenient, uncomfortable truth that something in me is already whole, while refusing any spiritual gloss that would make my suffering invisible. I am invited to hold my shame and my truth simultaneously; to trace how cultural narratives have woven themselves on my body, and to practice the painstaking work of loosening the threads and unravelling the tapestry altogether.
So, what does this mean for those of us who wish to use spiritual practice to support social change? First: beware the seductive comfort of positions that resolve complexity too quickly. Second: when teachings of unity arrive, ask what work they ask you to do. Do they encourage examination of wounds and structure, or do they smooth experience into silence? Third: remember that true spiritual practice in the service of justice is never abstract. It is incarnated, noisy, and often inconvenient.
If non-duality is a map of what is true at our core, then let it also be a map for unpeeling the layers that keep us from that truth. Let it be a call to tender, furious work: to name the histories that carved shame into flesh, to dismantle the structures that perpetuate that shame, and to practice love that looks like labour.
No Comments