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What Does Spiritual Bypassing Mean?
The term spiritual bypassing was first coined during the early 1980s by the late psychotherapist John Welwood who was a leading figure in transpersonal psychology.
John defined spiritual bypassing as the
“…tendency to use spiritual ideas and practices to sidestep or avoid facing unresolved emotional issues, psychological wounds, and unfinished developmental tasks.”
He saw that people in his Buddhist community (including himself) would use spirituality as a protective mechanism. Spirituality became a way to avoid that which should’ve been faced.
Spiritual practices can be a way of growing and living a happier and more fulfilled life. But it gets problematic when we use them for avoidance. This then may result in a false feeling of security and happiness.
Avoiding deep and uncomfortable personal work through a “good vibes only” attitude will undermine our spiritual growth.
When we spiritually bypass we fall into the trap of trying to solve our emotional and psychological issues by avoiding them. John Welwood called this premature transcendence.
We want to rise above all the raw and messy parts of being human without having faced and made peace with them.
As a result, we may develop a compensatory spiritual identity that covers up our underlying deficient identity. Our spiritual practice then becomes a form of escapism. A separate area of our life instead of actually improving us as humans.
“People will do anything, no matter how absurd, to avoid facing their own souls.” – C.G. Jung
Signs of Spiritual Bypassing
There are many different signs of spiritual bypassing. Sometimes in severe distress, it might be an adequate temporary relief to avoid overwhelm. But, in the long run, spiritual bypassing brings us further away from our goal of spiritually growing.
Some signs of spiritual bypassing
• Avoiding negative emotions
• Feelings of detachment
• Believing that spirituality is always positive
• Living in a spiritual realm much of the time; avoiding the present
• Rationalizing negative feelings
• Extremely high, often unattainable, idealism
• Frequent use of psychedelics to avoid facing reality
• Reading self-help / spiritual books to avoid negative emotions
• A sense of spiritual grandiosity
• Projecting your feelings on others
• Judging negative emotions in others
• Engaging in cognitive dissonance
• Pretending that everything is fine when it’s not
When we spiritually bypass it’s like throwing all our dirty laundry into the cellar but never getting down there to do it.
Short-term we might feel good in an “out of sight out of mind” way. But with time it will start to reek out of the cellar.
The interesting thing is often it’s our neighbors who smell the stench before we do. If we are deeply engaged in spiritual bypassing, we might then project the smell on them, “It is your cellar that reeks!”
We may even be so caught up in what is wrong with others and the world that we become dedicated to pointing out other people’s flaws and mistakes. Our resulting false sense of righteousness is then just another way to avoid looking inside and working on ourselves.
Results of Spiritual Bypassing
Spiritual bypassing can lead to a number of problems. The longer you are bypassing the more dirty laundry is going to pile up in your cellar.
Some consequences include
• Spiritual narcissism: Using spirituality to build self-importance and put yourself above others.
• Emotional outbursts/breakdowns: The constant suppression of negative emotions will be like a balloon that is continuously being filled with air. Eventually, it will pop
• Feelings of shame and guilt: When you can’t live up to your lofty spiritual ideals you might punish yourself. This can happen through thoughts of being inadequate or not “spiritual enough”.
• Disregarding personal responsibility: Instead of taking responsibility for difficult situations you might dismiss them by saying things like: “Everything happens for a reason.” Ultimately, you are avoiding responsibility for your life.
• We dismiss our basic needs and desires in an attempt to be non-attached: This just drives the need underground, where it is often acted out subconsciously in possibly harmful ways.
Spiritual bypassing can result in a lot of pain, suffering, and nasty behavior towards others. It can make us self-righteous and give a sense of false superiority.
Although spiritual bypassing can manifest in various forms, in the end, it’s all a way to dodge the truth we ought to be facing.
My Own Spiritual Bypassing Example
Spiritual bypassing is very common. The intensity and manifestation of the bypassing itself can vary though. Now to give you a concrete example of spiritual bypassing out of my own life.
After committing to spiritual growth for some time and doing my spiritual practices I saw many improvements in my life. But, after a while, I realized I was looking down on others from a spiritual high horse.
I recall a few patterns
• It was easier to see the faults and mistakes of others than my own. I quickly had forgotten that the wrong-doings of others were also my wrong-doings of the past.
• When I couldn’t live up to the high spiritual ideals, I had set for myself I punished myself with guilt and self-judgment.
• Whenever I became anxious or had some persistent negative emotions I would reach to the closest spiritual literature. Instead of facing and sitting with the emotion, I used spiritual philosophy as escapism.
• I always tried to keep up the appearance of someone who is constantly at peace with oneself. Even when I felt deep inner turmoil, I wanted others to think of me as some kind of Zen-like person. This also influenced my speech and behavior to the point where I’d overthink every word and action.
• Denying negative emotions because me “being so spiritual” should have transcended them by now.
Perhaps you recognize some of this in yourself.
The ego tries to grab on to whatever it can get hold of. And spirituality, which ought to help us reduce ego activity, can become a perfect subject for ego identification.
Taking responsibility for all this was not easy. But spiritual bypassing enables us to ignore the process of taking responsibility.
“I am not responsible for anything, the universe is!” Or “It is what it is.” Yet there comes a time where you should ask yourself, “But like what is it?”
How to Avoid Spiritual Bypassing
These are a few ways that helped me overcome my spiritual bypassing. And they still serve as a compass whenever I am avoiding something important.
Face and Feel Your Emotions
Accepting your emotions and feelings is one of the most important steps in spiritual growth. Only by surrendering to your emotions, you can let them go.
If you constantly suppress them, you’ll end spiritually bypassing like a champ. While it might be helpful to suppress them for a short period. In the long run, your emotion will come crashing down on you.
Whenever, you have a negative emotion, acknowledge it. Sit with it. Don’t distract yourself with anything else. Feel the accompanying sensations without judging them. In fact, don’t try to name tag the emotion. Literally just feel it.
I know this is unusual in the beginning. When we were children, we could do it effortlessly. But over time society, school, parents, friends, etc. told us which emotions are allowed and which are not. And eventually, we thought negative emotions are not there to be felt. They are a burden and we wish we didn’t have any.
But negative and positive are just our labels.
If we feel our emotions instead of labeling them we’ll realize that their difference is the sensations that we experience.
Every emotion is there to be felt. Feeling it will release it. What you deny persists what you look at disappears.
Be Honest with Yourself
Are you acting like a know-it-all sometimes? Do you want to be right all the time? Are you looking down and judging people?
Be honest with yourself. There is no one around judging you. So often we have the deep desire to be further than we are in our spiritual journey.
But not starting from here, from where you are, and claiming you are starting from there will just make the journey slower.
It takes courage to be honest with yourself. But it takes courage to aspire to spiritual growth as well. Hence, if you are reading this, I know you have courage!
Being honest with yourself also has a nice extra effect. You start being more honest with others. And when you are more honest with others, others will be more honest with you. Your life will be full of honesty.
Take Responsibility
By taking responsibility I mean being responsible for your actions, behaviors, emotions, thoughts. Taking responsibility for your life.
This can be hard when we are deeply engaged in spiritual bypassing. It’s easier to project your negative emotions on others.
But only by taking responsibility for your life, you can evoke real change. While it may seem hard in the beginning you will soon see that it is liberating.
You don’t feel yourself at the mercy of external influences or others. You know your life is the way it is because of your decisions and actions.
And you know you can change it in any other direction because only you are responsible for it. When you take responsibility, you will also take action if something can and should be changed. This is an antidote to apathy and passivity.
Because the only person who can change something is you. No one else can do that for you. You are responsible and no one else.
Listen to Others
When you listen be an empathic listener. Don’t just listen to talk or give someone a lesson and show your spiritual superiority. Listen to understand, to feel what the other person feels.
Leave your personal autobiography out of it. So often when others tell us something we swiftly reply with “that’s like that thing I have experienced…”
We immediately find a way to fit what the other person said into our story. But we can learn more about the other person and ourselves when we truly listen.
If you truly listen to others you can also see where you irritate others. Where your behaviors make others close down. Sometimes others will straight up inform you of your spiritual bypassing behavior (although they won’t call it that).
Take that seriously. Leave your ego out of it and ask yourself if there is a point to it.
Of course, others can project their emotions and insecurities on us as well. But by being open and listening empathically we can easier understand how they feel and the reason for their words and behavior.
Start to be a good listener. It’s one of the most underrated, rare, and highly valuable skills out there. When you are truly listening your projections and ego activity will decrease.
Hence, spiritual bypassing will be less common. As a bonus, your relationships with others will improve.
Face Your Cognitive Dissonance
Cognitive dissonance is when your behaviors and beliefs are not aligned. This can happen when we hold to contradictory beliefs.
Especially, in spiritual teachings dichotomies and paradoxes are common. Thus, cognitive dissonance is not uncommon in spiritual communities.
When you experience cognitive dissonance, you may have feelings of uneasiness, anxiety, guilt, or something not being right. In cognitive dissonance, we live in denial and tend to explain away our or other people’s behavior and emotions.
Facing the truth is often too painful. Here you can see how the previous points interplay. Facing the truth and taking responsibility is part of facing your cognitive dissonance.
As an example of cognitive dissonance, a spiritual leader might teach one thing but does another thing. Or you want to live in compassion for others but when a friend is in pain you tell him to get over it.
Facing your cognitive dissonance involves examining where your behaviors and beliefs don’t add up.
It also involves confronting your shadow self, facing the parts you tried to avoid. And this is not about punishing or shaming yourself but about being honest and letting go of self-delusion.
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Practices that can help you face and feel your pain and emotions are meditation, bodywork (Yoga, Tai Chi), any artistic expression, journaling, shadow work, catharsis among others.
It can be very upsetting and uncomfortable tearing down the veil of illusion and facing the truth.
But this is part of the spiritual path. It is a path of destruction, purification, and creation. Walking this path with courage will lead us into a life of clarity, joy, depth, liberty, expansion, and presence.
“We are not just humans learning to become buddhas, but also buddhas waking up in human form, learning to become fully human.” – John Welwood
Luka
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