Spiritual bypassing

With so many more people turning to spiritual pursuits, I feel it is worth mentioning spiritual bypassing as I keep seeing it showing up. We have to be so careful as the spiritual ego is often trickier than the ordinary ego and we can get ourselves into all sorts of problems if we don’t keep a check on it, it is the same with spiritual narcissism. 

Spiritual bypassing has been described as a “tendency to use spiritual ideas and practices to sidestep or avoid facing unresolved emotional issues, psychological wounds, and unfinished developmental tasks”. The term was introduced in the early 1980s by John Welwood, a Buddhist teacher and psychotherapist.

The term can help people to understand how the ego can, and does, co-opt spiritual ideas and practices by attempting to bypass, rather than work through, the wounded, confused, and even damaged aspects of our psyches.

Spiritual bypassing operates at all levels of spiritual development, from beginning students to advanced yogis and spiritual teachers. Access to spiritual truth, when not integrated, is a very dangerous weapon. The primary hazard is that we can effectively fool ourselves into believing we are more realised than we are and miss the deeper possibility that is available to us. And if we are in a position of power, we are likely to bring this confusion to other people too.

As mentioned above, the egoic mind is a highly intelligent mechanism, and we should not underestimate its extreme cleverness and the absolute efficiency with which it carries out its task of obscuring the recognition of our deeper nature and thus protecting its identity. In its managerial function, the ego keeps us safe and organises our lives but is also capable of creating and destroying civilisations.

One of the goals of all esoteric spiritual traditions is to become free from the stronghold of egoic identification and domination, and yet we must realise that, for the most part, it is this same egoic mechanism that manages and guides us along the spiritual path.

What this means is that those of us who are deeply serious about our spiritual practice find ourselves in a real predicament; the very ego that motivates and sustains much of our spiritual direction and practice must also be carefully scrutinised and worked with. As the soul experiences the glory of awareness of its deeper nature, the ego simultaneously experiences the possibly of transformation as a literal death threat.

In its great intelligence, the ego co-opts the language and concepts of truth and transformation to ensure that this ‘death’ does not happen, but it does so in the name of truth. It’s very defence structure, the spiritualised ego, is made of concepts, ideas and even unconsciously concocted imitation of spiritual auras, energies, and insights.

We cannot assume that simply because we have had profound experiences of spiritual illumination or enduring insights, that all aspects of our psychology have been touched by our awareness. It is tempting to think this, but it is rarely the case. Our increased awareness can certainly impact our psychological dynamics, offering us a wider perspective on our conditioning or giving us the courage to go deeper into the shadows.

But rarely does heightened awareness take the place of the necessary and humbling tasks of learning to feel and digest our own psychological pain, or of the gritty challenges of dealing with human relationship, self-hatred, lack of self-worth, lack of self-acceptance, shame, sexuality, and intimacy with others.  

Spiritual insight can, but often doesn’t, penetrate psychological conditioning. When we have not learned to manage our psychology, our psychology will manage us. Many of us have unconsciously come to spiritual life as a way to transcend the painful suffering that remains from our childhood conditioning and/or trauma.

Authentic transformational work can, should, and in many cases, does, help alleviate this suffering. By learning how the conditioning of the mind works, we gain an increasing capacity to observe and misidentify with its incessant repetition of thought patterns and see that we are something other than our perceived identity and stories.

But there is a very thin line between practicing the necessary process of non-attachment and falling prey to neurotic detachment from life that is more of a protective mechanism based on fear than an expression of spiritual clarity.

It is useful to explore how our approach to spirituality can support us in avoiding important areas of our being and our lives that need attention. For example, do we use a meditation practice to escape life or become more intimate with it? Do we indulge in self-care to truly care for ourselves or to avoid responsibility? Do we use spiritual concepts to avoid feeling or to help us feel more deeply?

Those of us who have committed to the spiritual path find ourselves on a never-ending journey in which each level of expansion and awareness we achieve is accompanied by new levels of complexity and challenge. Increasingly subtle levels of self-deception arise as we gradually move towards establishing ourselves in a more integrated place of being. It is essential to be discerning.

It is important, also, to remember that spiritual bypassing is likely to arise as part and parcel of the spiritual path. Understanding its dynamics and learning to identify it as it arises is how we protect ourselves from falling into its trap.

Avoiding the trap allows us to move forward on our respective paths with consistency and integrity. Spiritual life is, amongst other things, a continual revelation about what spiritual life is not – yoga, and especially Reiki will further help us recognise this!

Love Emma x