what is the shadow? spiritual bypassing?
2020. Spiritual bypassing describes a tendency to use spiritual explanations to avoid complex psychological issues. In this book, Toward a Psychology of Awakening, the term was first coined during the early 1980s by a transpersonal psychotherapist named John Welwood. According to Welwood, spiritual bypassing can be defined as a "tendency to use spiritual ideas and practices to sidestep or avoid facing unresolved emotional issues, psychological wounds, and unfinished developmental tasks.
Spiritual bypassing is a superficial way of glossing over issues in a way that might make us feel better in the short term but ultimately solves nothing and just leaves the problem to linger on. While it can be a way to protect the self from harm or to promote harmony between people, it doesn't actually resolve the issue. Instead, it merely glosses over a problem, leaving it to fester without resolution and stifling growth. A few symptoms and signs of spiritual bypassing are avoiding feelings of anger, believing in your own spiritual superiority as a way to hide from insecurities, believing that traumatic events must serve as "learning experiences" or that there is a silver lining behind every negative experience, considering that spiritual practices such as meditation or prayer are always positive, extremely high, often unattainable, idealism, feelings of detachment, focusing only on spirituality and ignoring the present, only focusing on the positive or being overly optimistic, projecting your own negative feelings onto others, pretending that things are fine when they are clearly not, thinking that people can overcome their problems through positive thinking, assuming that you must "rise above" your emotions, and using defense mechanisms such as denial and repression. I have come across many people and healers that fall victim to this. They often come off as a very fluffy type of spirituality, where everything is love and light and not living in the messy reality of what it means to be human.
One of the more influential drivers of spiritual bypassing as a collective is our resistance to a not-so-admirable emotion, anger. Anger is one of those emotions that people connect with this term toxic masculinity, creating shame around expressing it. I see it everywhere in all humans, as well as within myself. I needed to give myself permission and find the right people to provide me with space to express anger. In my experience, it had to be fully felt and embraced to get to what was underneath. I have many moments when I allow myself to feel anger; it would immediately unravels into sadness, grief, and shame and dissipate into this state of laughter, joy, and calmness. Sometimes happening so rapidly, it felt like they were all coming out at once, leaving me feeling so much relief and calm in my body, mind, and heart.
I noticed that most buried by spiritual bypassing typically are very emotionally immature and passive-aggressive, and they lash out at anyone closest to them. Many hide behind spiritual terminology or Facebook memes. I have witnessed many using a particular spiritual phrase, 'You're outer reality is just a mirror of your subconscious,' to justify damaging behavior. Many of these terms were created to honor each other, not as an excuse to tear each other down. I am acting in this not-so-commendable way because you see me in this way. Some people on this part of their journey just aren't capable of seeing themselves clearly or taking accountability.
I used to have no personal boundaries and would allow just about anyone into my life. As I began to dive into my healing journey, I needed to let go of many relationships, and critical for me to completely dive inward alone. I started building my walls up and closed off to the world. I find, at times, in a hurt place; I fall back into this pattern of building my walls back up and hiding behind my spiritual practices. This is where I need to be more aware that I fall into victimhood or to this bypassing, and my practices become a way to go into hiding. One of the most influential plants to teach me this dance from South America is Mimosa Pudica. A plant in which the leaves will close up as a defensive mechanism when touched and will slowly open back up over time. This is the essence of relational boundaries. I am learning to navigate this dance forward and to allow people into my life at a slow pace.
We all fall in and out of this spiritual bypassing or what I like to call victimhood. My most significant step in overcoming this was embracing my humanness, realizing none of us are perfect, and allowing myself to feel it all. We are all learning to leave this way of being behind together. We make mistakes, we say or do hurtful things. What is essential is we can see ourselves clearly enough to take ownership of our words and actions and to move forward. To treat ourselves in this same gentle, forgiving way when we might not be so kind to ourselves. When our healing is so trapped behind these not-so-pleasant emotions, our relationship with ourselves and the world around us will continue to spiral down. The great purge is here. We can either give each other a safe space and permission to feel or have our evolution be forever kept at bay by the fear of knowing true harmony. <3 In Lak'ech Ala K'in <3
