Spiritual bypass occurs when people use their spiritual practice as a way to avoid dealing with and taking responsibility for their feelings. Anything that is used to avoid taking responsibility for feelings or feeling itself becomes an addiction. Spiritual practices can be used just like alcohol, drugs, food, social media, watching TV, work, gambling, spending, shopping, anger, withdrawal to avoid life.
Are you replacing feeling with spiritual practices unnecessarily?
If, when a difficult or painful feeling comes up, you immediately go into meditation in the hopes of blissing out and getting rid of your unwanted feeling, you may be addicted to spirituality. Distracting when we are uncomfortable is a form of avoidance.
Staying in tune with the ineffable or connecting to the vast consciousness is nice. And, yes, you might even have some very nice spiritual experiences when you practice yoga or meditation. A lot of spiritual practices like yoga asanas and breathwork can indeed help you on the physiological and mental levels. But, avoiding feelings by replacing feelings with meditation or whatever else, that is avoidance and/or repression. Avoiding what is and feelings about what is will only resurface later if you don’t deal with them in the now.
Life includes all the emotions and feelings and, the truth is that impermanence (a ginormous pain in the ass) is painful. If you add even more spiritual practices to your daily life, you might think that bad things or bad feelings won’t happen or come. They will, you are a human being living on the Earth. Trying to transcend the experience of life on Earth essentially means that you aren’t truly living.
Your feelings are meant to be felt. It doesn’t mean you need to linger in them forever, there are ways to disrupt negative spirals and self-criticism; Confront your feelings. Experience everything. Set boundaries. Value both your animal and spiritual natures. Recognize that fear and ego serve a purpose and can help you intuit your next actions.
Spiritual practices are as important to your wellbeing as food and water!
I am absolutely NOT arguing for you to dismiss spiritual practices. They are as important to your well being as food and water. We can even drown by drinking too much water – it’s rare but possible – you get the point – balance.
Meditation, breathwork and yoga postures are essentially training tools to help you navigate your life path. They are the tools that help you to tap into the silence, to tap into your gut.
P.S. Meditation will work better for you in your daily life if you simply take five minutes in the morning and/or five minutes in the night to sit quietly. It’s not that complicated.
