Towards a Spirituality that does not Bypass

While spirituality’s domain is the Absolute nature of Reality, a lot of teachings aim at that at the expense of what’s here and now and what’s practical.

This is how you get spiritual bypassing: The use of spirituality to bypass, downplay, or deny the impact or importance of different dimensions of our lives. Such dimensions include the physical, the social, the emotional and relational, and the personal and anything else that could simply be called, “the practical.”

May we all find the integrity and courage (and the support!) to transcend spiritual bypassing.

Certain types of spirituality are notorious for body denying, as if our only spiritual reality is some kind of out of body existence where we merely float above everything in bliss and light.

It is one thing to be told, “You are not the body” directly in the presence of a qualified teacher and to explore under their immediate guidance what that could mean, it is something altogether different (and potentially dangerous) to read it in a book or hear about it and to make a belief out of it in the hopes of freedom from suffering.

Advanced and mature realization doesn’t show our true nature as something apart from the body, but reveals the true nature of the body as Spirit.

In other words, there is only One Substance. Look at the Heart Sutra in Buddhism for more on this.

I’ve heard from more than a few speakers/ teachers of both Buddhism and Non-duality all kinds of absurd reasons why we shouldn’t think about social problems. Such reductionist spirituality tends to say things like, “The World has always been in turmoil, and always will be” or “There is no society.”

Don’t you dare talking to some spiritualists about other people’s suffering, and especially if some of this suffering is caused directly because of systemic social issues! They will be very quick to divert you back to their version of what Enlightenment should be like.

A deeper vision for awakening (which includes direct social action) has not yet matured in these people.

A big blind spot of a lot of spirituality is emotions and relationships. Most people initially get attracted to spirituality precisely because they are suffering from emotional and relational pain!

And they will use their spirituality to create a new belief system in which if only they are “more awake,” they wouldn’t be angry or scared or sad or perhaps not even need relationships. The kind of short-cut to freedom being sought here is not noble but desperate, is not mature yet potentially gullible, is not empowering yet heartbreakingly self-dishonouring.

Spirituality is not a solution to everyday human emotional and relational pain. Pain stays and so do our emotions - all of them. What can go away is your making a problem out of your precious humanity. Your hatred of your humanness - that can go away!

Even to say emotions “calm down” or “settle” after awakening as if this is always some kind of success on our part, is to mislead people, because for some their emotions are going to be a lot more intense simply because now they aren’t repressing them.

Intensity is a problem only for those who believe Enlightenment must be “calm.”

The personal is the last dimension of ours that the Non-dualists are ever willing to really talk about. From parroting phrases like, “There is no person” to straight up yelling at people, “You don’t exist!” these dissociated nobodies do anything to not remember what first got them into spirituality.

If only they can reclaim and begin to heal the wounding (and traumas) they have been trying to escape from (and using awakening to do so!) then perhaps their teachings could become more nuanced.

The truth of non-duality is not used, but merely abused by such teachers and speakers and they tend to be very much blind to the impacts of their half-baked teachings.

As we mature (which happens in time and through very human and often messy life experiences) there is a chance for both students and teachers to become more nuanced and simply more skilled at communicating certain truths.

Such dialogue and healthy questioning between student and teacher is needed, but my conviction is that we cannot get there if such teachers and their ways of teaching aren’t first confronted and challenged, as directly as might be necessary, and as widely as possible for the well-being and sanity of one and all.

With that in mind and heart, I wish you true well-being.