How To Avoid Spiritual Bypassing

Spiritual bypassing may serve as a defense mechanism against things that we perceive to be dangerous, but it ignores an important fact. We don't get to pick and choose which feelings we feel. Life cannot exist solely on the basis of positive thoughts, sentiments, and emotions. We must suffer the lows in order to experience the highs.

Some things you can do to try to overcome a spiritual bypass tendency are:

• Avoid categorizing feelings as positive or negative. While some emotions are unpleasant or negative, they all have a purpose. Emotional experiences are not inherently harmful or taboo, and experiencing them does not make you a bad person. Accept your feelings and know that all emotional states are fleeting.
• Keep in mind that negative emotions and thoughts have a function. The purpose of life is to use such thoughts to propel positive acts, not to avoid having such thoughts. Putting on rose-colored sunglasses and ignoring a problem will not address the situation.
• Remember that uneasy sensations are typically a warning that something isn't right and that something needs to be changed. If you constantly strive to escape discomfort by avoiding it, the situations that cause you pain will remain the same. Instead of seeing these unpleasant emotions as a burden to be avoided, see them as a chance for growth.

While spiritual bypassing makes it harder to recognize legitimate sensations, it's crucial to remember that spirituality can be a good factor in your life. Spirituality has been shown to have a variety of physical and mental health benefits, according to research.

How do you know if you are spiritually bypassed?

Many customers, according to Welwood, came to him with a life impasse that their spiritual practice had been unable to penetrate or help them with, whether it was a personality issue or a relationship problem. He was often astounded by the fact that, despite their advanced spiritual practices, these people typically did not practice self-love.

I've learned the significance of compassion for myself as well as those that present themselves as problems after visiting multiple spiritual retreats and meeting many leaders in the industry. “You never know how others feel unless you walk in their shoes,” my father used to say, and his old-fashioned wisdom still rings true three decades later.

• Not paying attention to the present moment; spending a lot of time in a spiritual dimension.

What is religious bypassing?

The inclination to utilize spiritual concepts and practices to sidestep or avoid facing unresolved emotional issues, psychological traumas, and unfinished developmental tasks is known as spiritual bypass or spiritual bypassing. John Welwood, a Buddhist teacher and psychotherapist, coined the word in the mid-1980s. Pastoral psychologists have observed both positive and negative aspects of behavior that can be classified as spiritual bypass.

What is toxic spirituality?

The solution is far more straightforward than you might think. You are practicing toxic spirituality if you believe that you must always be positive and that anything negative is wrong.

What makes this notion so dangerous is that it prevents us from learning and growing by suppressing positive emotions.

Each of our feelings has information. This information is neither good nor bad; it is simply that.

Emotions Inform Us

When you have anxiety, for example, you are not a bad person or doing something wrong. Anxiety is trying to tell you something.

It could be a sign that you need to leave the house a few minutes earlier than usual since you dislike traffic. You escape traffic and, as a result, are less likely to develop road rage if you leave the house a few minutes early.

And no amount of meditation or prayer will alleviate the stress. It will almost certainly stay until you have learned the lesson and have left a few minutes early.

When you ignore or fail to gain information from your emotions because you've suppressed them for the sake of being “positive,” you'll either be stuck in your current circumstance or, worse, start self-medicating.

This belief that you must be positive at all times is harmful to your spiritual, mental, emotional, and physical well-being.

How do you know if you are a spiritual person?

The first evidence of a spiritual person is their lack of fear. When you have a fear or a chronic worry, that fear takes over your life and you are unable to be in the present moment. Fear of public speaking, fear of heights, and fear of bugs are the three most common fears among Americans. Many people, however, are terrified of death, rejection, loneliness, failure, illness, or making poor judgments. Spiritual people understand how to yield to forces beyond their control. In this way, they are similar to children in that they know how to ignore their minds and live fearlessly.

What is spiritual trauma?

Spiritual trauma is the result of a person's reaction to a belief system that dismisses and degrades them on behalf of a deity or a set of deities. More information can be found here. Christians are frequently encouraged to recruit for their religion, and losing a Christian friend or family member can be devastating.

Is spirituality a defense mechanism?

There are so many claims out there that this route or that practice will allow you to live in a state of eternal pleasure while accomplishing all of your goals and becoming wealthy and slim in the process. Who wouldn't want that?

Over the years, I've become fascinated by how we try to feel wonderful all of the time. We've gotten better at using alternative means to alter our awareness, such as self-help literature, meditation, yoga, prayer, and special diets, rather than using drugs or alcohol. We are now spiritually distracting ourselves from our sentiments in certain respects, but we believe we are on a healthy spiritual road.

This is referred to as spiritual bypass. A protective mechanism is spiritual bypass. The defense is more attractive than other defenses, yet it fulfills the same goal. Spiritual bypass protects us from the reality, separates us from our emotions, and allows us to avoid seeing the big picture. It's more about checking out than checking in, and the distinction is so subtle that we often don't realize we're doing it.

Grasping rather than thankfulness, arriving rather than being, avoiding rather than receiving are all shorthand for spiritual bypass. It's spiritual practice used to suppress feelings, mainly because we can't stand how we're feeling or believe we shouldn't be feeling how we're feeling.

Almost every good activity we can do for ourselves, including spiritual practice, has a negative side. In a “willful” fashion, any spiritual or psychological instrument can be applied. Self-care, for example, can sometimes be about taking care of ourselves: unplugging from too much work and reconnecting with more balance and harmony. But, sometimes, we're just checking out under the pretext of self-care, rejecting what's going on and how frightening it is to show up for life.

What does spiritual bypassing look like?

Spiritual bypassing is a technique for concealing one's identity behind spirituality or spiritual pursuits. It inhibits people from expressing their emotions and isolates them from both themselves and others. Following are some examples of spiritual bypassing:

• To conceal from insecurities, you can believe in your own spiritual superiority.
• Believing that tragic occurrences must serve as “learning experiences” or that every negative experience has a silver lining
• Believing that spiritual practices like meditation and prayer are always beneficial.

Spiritual bypassing is a flimsy means of avoiding problems, which may make us feel better in the short term but ultimately solves nothing and leaves the situation unsolved.