155: Spiritual bypassing: human reality and when spirituality becomes detrimental

Spiritual bypassing.

This word gives me goosebumps.

If you don’t know the meaning of spiritual bypassing, it’s when people are using spiritual ideas, practises or conscious words to avoid facing unresolved emotional issues, shit going in their lives, human reality and experiences.

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I’ve been getting fed up with things I’ve been seeing on social media -e.g. being miss positive all the time, calling people out, people using “signs from the universe” as an excuse to do something shitty to another person, or when people constantly talk in spiritual conscious language (I'm like, can you just talk normally?) It's taking the human-ness out of our experiences. All these 'cool words' being used by people who aren't actually being grounded in the ideologies of what they’re talking about.

Take some time to have an honest think about this question: where are you having a tendency to use spiritual ideas as a way to hide your human emotional feelings, issues, or psychological wounds?

What about times when you feel like things are fine, when they’re not?

When you shut down your human-ness, you shut down the part of yourself that wants to be expressed. If you’re not allowing yourself to feel frustrated, upset or overwhelmed and constantly replace this with "it's all happening for a reason", you're ignoring your truth and draining yourself energetically.

Another way you can spiritual bypass, is when you see signs as your next action steps. I see signs, but I don’t make a sign into something huge, at least until I’ve got multiple signs. Here's an example: the guy I’m dating wants to get a visa to come to NYC. If his visa got declined, if I was to spiritual bypass I'd be like ‘oh it’s a sign we’re not meant to be together’, but in truth my human-ness would actually be seriously bummed. There could have been 100 reasons why it got declined, it's not always the universe giving a sign. There would have to be multiple signs in any situation for me to be like ‘fuck it, I’m out”.

What I want you guys to become aware of is: where am I not being in my human-ness? Where am I not allowing myself to really experience the emotion that I’m truly feeling? Where am I feeling challenged but I’m bypassing it by not allowing myself to experience the hurdle?

So, why do people spiritual bypass, and what are some examples?:

- It's a coping mechanism

- A trauma response because you feel shamed or anxious

- A way of surpassing what you're really feeling because you don't want to feel it (e.g. going through a heartbreak, saying it was 'meant to be' but in reality you're ignoring your own grief)

- You're heavily in your masculine (and a bit of a control freak) so you shut down the anxiety you’re feeling

- You struggle to sit in the unknown so you ignore your own experience as a way to deny these difficult emotions (anger, hurt, sadness)

- Feelings of confusion (e.g. which step do I take next?). If you pull in a sign, instead of actually sitting in with your body and making a decision after time of contemplation.

When can spiritual bypassing become detrimental?

Spiritual bypassing, particularly on social media, is when spirituality and personal development can become hurtful - everything becomes divine and nothing is allowed to be human.

When everything appears to be perfect, meant to be and enlightened. It’s not cool because it makes other people feel like if they complain about their human experiences that they’re not enlighted, awake or concious. It diminishes other peoples experiences because these 'enlightened' people put themselves on a pedestal and have the energy of making other people feel like their human experience is wrong and they should ‘trust the process’.

I'm so for the spiritual stuff, I fucking love it, but I’m here for the human side. Yes, trust the process, but also allow yourself to have a meltdown, give yourself permission for it to be too much sometimes, and sit in these feelings of hurt, frustration and sadness.

Chicken nuggets:

Don't make small moments mean everything.

Feel the emotions, express them and move on. Don’t bypass them. Experience it, say "this is shit", next.

You want to feel everything quickly and deeply, to allow them to move through you faster so you’re back on track.