You’ve probably heard of the term “Spiritual Bypassing”. The concept was introduced by John Welwood, a Buddhist teacher and psychotherapist in the 80s. The idea behind spiritual bypassing is that instead of facing difficult emotional issues, wounds or unresolved conflicts, one would use spiritual practices as a way to side-step or hide from doing the “real work”.
We acknowledge that this definitely happens. Not just in spiritual circles, but in all walks of life. So, we think understanding the concept is important when it comes to self-reflection and “keeping it real”. But, we have also observed bypassing being used as a way to diagnose other’s progress and this, to us, is just as shadowy. For example, is someone intentionally “bypassing” or are they just not ready to look at something that’s difficult? Of course, if someone is using spiritual concepts to not only “bypass”, but also inflict harm onto others, that’s another issue.
When it comes to bypassing, much with other aspects of this work, we like to stay in our own lane. Similar to the idea of projections, we should not assume what someone else is intending to do, or experiencing on their end. We can only fully and thoroughly speak for ourselves. The rest is a guess, at best.
So, while we may on some level be bypassing something, we might not even be consciously aware that’s what’s going on. This is why we need to tread careful and approach ourselves gently. What others may call bypassing may in fact be a blind spot. Not being able to see something, is much different than refusing to see it. When we aren’t able to see something, it may be because it’s too painful, we’re not ready, we don’t have the emotional reserves or we’re just simply not there yet. Whether we’re bypassing consciously or not, we can rest assured that the thing doesn’t just disappear. It will wait for us, and our readiness, and in the meantime, we can try to keep judgments to a minimum.
❂ Draw A Card Prompt: What is a blind spot I'm now ready to face?