#006 - Spirituality, spiritual bypass and our internal compass
When I became familiar with the concept of ’spiritual bypass’ - I felt a big sense of relief and like I had found a missing piece of a puzzle that I had wanted to put together for a long time. It helped me make sense of my relationship to ’spirituality’ at a time where I felt confused about it. It provided a new point of orientation from which to discern what felt useful to me and what didn’t.
I’ve dabbled in spiritual concepts and practices for about a decade now. I didn’t grow up any bit spiritual, neither within organised religion or the more alternative variations. I had a brief stint as part of the Lutheran (Christian) church in my late teens, but this feels like ’prequel’ to my spiritual journey rather than the beginning of it. When I came across spirituality that was more centred around our relationship with the earth and bringing awareness to how we can grow us conscious humans - I felt like I had landed on something that resonated.
So many spiritual teachings have brought understanding, clarity, hope and strength. At the same time, on occasion I would come across spaces or people within the spiritual realm - that just would not sit right with me. Something felt off, and I did not feel like I could 100% trust them. I didn’t feel like I could really bring all of myself to those spaces or people. It was an interesting space to navigate - because to some extent, all of the ’woo’ was sort of unfamiliar to me. Therefore, it made sense and was to be expected - that it might feel strange and ’not sure if I totally trust this’ at the beginning. In some cases I eased into the new culture and was happy about how I was able to connect and self-express within it. In some cases - I may have adopted an approach or a belief from the ’woo’ culture that I later on would perceive as ’spiritual bypass’.
So what do I mean by this term?
Going with the first definition that comes to me, I would define Spiritual Bypass as
”The use of spiritual concepts and practices to ignore or sideline the real, felt experience of a person (yourself or another)”
Examples:
1. Not wanting to be around peoples’ painful or ’negative’ experiences - ’High Vibes Only’
2. Using reasoning or assumptions around spiritual unity and togetherness or ’unconditional love’ to disregard peoples’ boundaries or reservations or need for space
3. Filling one’s time with spiritual retreats, spiritual events and seeing spiritual healers in order to avoid healing the wounds of the past
4. In manifestation practices - using only ’superficial’ practices such as affirmations and visualisations without addressing the subconscious beliefs of unworthiness that one projects from.
5. Lack of integrity - i.e. doing the talk but not walking the walk. Saying big things along spiritual lines, but in practice behaving in a way that disrespects themselves or other people somehow.
When I realised that I had been using spirituality superficially to gloss over what needed more presence, more acceptance and compassion to be truly healed - I temporarily even ’fell out’ with spirituality. In my disillusionment of having seen how spiritual approaches can be used ’wrongly’ - for a time I judged almost all things ’spiritual’ as unhelpful and ungrounded, something to be doubtful of - as something I couldn’t trust.
When I learnt of the concept of ’spiritual bypass’ - I realised that I was rejecting all of spirituality because some of my experiences in this realm had the flavour of spiritual bypass - of not allowing all of my experience, feelings and emotions to be present. Of rejecting some parts of the human experience in order to ’fit in’. The energy of trying hard to be at a certain level of thinking and perceiving, rather than allowing and accepting What Is.
Understanding the concept of ’spiritual bypass’ was pivotal for me. It gave me a framework for seeing why some spiritual teachers and practices resonated with me, and others did not. It also gave me the ’permission’ to distance myself from some forms of spirituality (implementing boundaries) whilst welcoming the ones that were serving me. This has also highlighted a personal sacred truth for me, which is:
”I will always honour my own knowing first”
This means that above any spiritual (or other form of) authority - I prioritise my ’inner compass’. I will take every bit of information that I have not confirmed through my own experience with a pinch of salt. It means that no matter how great somebody might come across, how revered by others - I will always honour my boundaries if I feel reservation around this person. It means that I have boundaries with the amount of narratives and stories that I let myself be influenced by. It means that to honour the fact that sometimes I will prioritise ’reinventing the wheel’ myself, making my own mistakes along the way and learning from these - rather than always seeking to keep things as clean and efficient as possible.
That is because I honour doing right by myself more than I prioritise doing the ’right thing’ all the time. I prioritise honouring my feeling of
’I like this’ or ’I don’t like this’,
’I want to try this’ or ’this is fun!’
’I’m not sure about this’ or ’I feel uncomfortable about this’.
For a long time, I wasn’t living from that kind of place. I was always seeking the ’truth’ outside of myself and would often convince this inner voice about why it was wrong and should not be listened to. I spent much of my energy trying to do ’the right thing’ - be living ethically, not pissing anyone off and so on. The driving subconscious programming beneath this was to ”find out the right way to do life and then I’ll be loved and happy”.
What I didn’t see is how much this outward focus and energy of control was keeping me in a state of paralysis. Seeking to define and to live by this standard of ’Universal perfection’ meant that I was limiting myself in many ways - one of which was not allowing myself to try things out and to make mistakes. I wasn’t allowing myself to learn by doing, to ”not know all the answers” and most importantly - I wasn’t allowing myself to follow my gut and upholding the trust that this would lead me where I needed to go. That this would give me the lessons that I needed to learn.
Now I feel that even if following my inner voice means that I do something that I would not do again - I will truly KNOW this for myself. It will not be because I read it in a book somewhere, or somebody else told me about how it might be. I honoured my truth at the time and I followed it - I lived the experience and learnt from it. Most importantly - I learnt about myself in that process as well.
— So, how this relates to ’spiritual bypass’ is that there have been times where I have initially not resonated with something around a spiritual teacher. I have judged them based on my first or second impression, thinking ”they smile too much, they’re too positive” or ”they’re too superficial, too privileged” etc. But then, usually after a few months or weeks I might come across them again and at this point I would see that my initial judgments were misplaced. I eventually recognised that these people were actually mirroring something that I may have had a limiting belief about in myself, a belief that created distance between me and that other person. In the case of the abovementioned examples, it was:
”He smiles too much”
My subconscious belief was: ”Happy people can’t understand me, they don’t understand my painful experiences”
Or in the case of
”She is too privileged”
I had the assumption that this person was born into a different circumstance and therefore has had it easier in life, so again was not someone I could relate to or who I could learn from.
In both these cases - once I got to know the stories of these people more, I saw that they had actually both come from lack and poverty, had faced many personal challenges, mental health struggles and low self-worth. I understood that where they were today was after doing years of personal growth work, but that where they had started from was not ’ahead of me’. Turns out I have learnt a great deal from these teachers and my initial resistance has turned to appreciation and love.
This to me was an important lesson too: just because somebody doesn’t initially resonate does not necessarily mean that it’s necessarily ’spiritual bypass’. It might be that this person is grating at us, because they are mirroring something in ourselves that we may need to look at and integrate in order to become more whole.
However, I wholeheartedly believe that we should still honour own own pace with these people, as with any spiritual practice or resource. Recognising that ’spiritual bypass’ is a thing to watch out for - but just because something or somebody feels grating to us at first does not necessarily mean that this is what’s happening there. Finding the way to honour our gut feeling, our boundaries - but also not needing to completely shut someone off because they might be stirring up something. Allowing room for second and third impressions - but also recognising that not everything is for us and that it’s okay to say ’no’ to those people or experiences.
TL;DR: Spiritual teachings can be incredibly supportive, but there can be a shadow side to spirituality too - sometimes it might be your own shadow at play though. In any case: trust and honour your inner compass above all. Always.
