Lead story Spiritual bypassing
October 2024
Camouflaging our concerns
Some people who are reluctant to face their problems head-on, use spirituality as a means of escape. This phenomenon, called ‘spiritual bypassing.
She is the epitome of calmness. People in her social circle talk of her spiritual journey which she began a little before she turned 50. Her expensive house is filled with spiritual motifs and showpieces. Candles and incense waft out of it as much as the fresh breeze from the sea. She attends spiritual talks and retreats. Sponsors leading gurus. Reads spiritual texts and watches television shows focussing on the wisdom of the ages. But lately, she has been plagued by a series of physical ailments. She attributes it to soul cleansing – her body is working out her karma – she says. And though she takes her medications, she feels the real cure, the true healing for her, is going for a deep reboot to a wellness retreat in the solitude and sanctity of the mountains.
What she doesn’t want to address, or process is the trauma she underwent when her husband of 20 years, left her for a much younger woman five years ago. She does not talk about it, pretending as though nothing happened. Though her visits to gurus, ashrams and charitable trusts have gone up exponentially, she is still hesitant to explore the wounded, unhealed parts of her psyche, that could be the reason for her frequent illnesses.
‘Spiritual bypassing’ is a term first coined during the early 1980s by a transpersonal psychotherapist named John Welwood, who describes it as a tendency to use spiritual explanations to avoid solving complex psychological issues. According to him, spiritual bypassing can be defined as a “tendency to use spiritual ideas and practices to sidestep or avoid facing unresolved emotional issues, psychological wounds, and unfinished developmental tasks.” When a spiritual practice is employed to compensate for deleterious traits such as low self-esteem, social isolation, or other emotional issues, it corrupts the actual purpose of that spiritual practice. In other words, using these practices to cover up problems instead of uprooting them is known as spiritual bypassing.
Shalu Mehrotra, a practising psychotherapist with 28 years’ experience and a holistic approach to therapy, says, “Some people use spirituality as a mask instead of undergoing psychological therapy. What they practise is not real spirituality, which is a method to attune to a higher power, but a camouflage to cover up deep-seated issues.” She observes, “Since people revere those who practise spirituality, the practitioner feels that this is where my answers lie. We can’t take away from these spiritual practices of course—there are definitely some immediate gains—but you can go on a high with them and feel that you have leapfrogged all your complexities without actually confronting them. So, these practices become spiritual bandages put over emotional wounds.”
To sum it up, we evade our core emotional issues, bypassing them by doing spiritual practices. In an effort to avoid pain and discomfort, we pretend to be in another dimension—the spiritual dimension.
“Also, the fear of being seen as weak or incompetent can make us bypass spiritually. We are considered achievers in the spiritual world, so we skip being present in the 3D world,” says Alpa Kapadia Teli, an executive coach and trainer, who has over 20 years’ experience in Personal Transformation Coaching.
Signs of spiritual bypassing
Signs that we are spiritually bypassing are wide ranging:
• Avoiding feelings of anger
• Believing in your spiritual superiority as a way to hide from insecurities
• Aiming for extremely high, often unattainable, ideals
• Feeling detached
• Focussing only on spirituality and ignoring the present
• Emphasising only the positive or being overly optimistic
• Projecting your negative feelings onto others • Pretending that things are fine when they are clearly not and thinking that people can overcome their problems through positive thinking.
“Since the emotions are not processed, the trauma is not healed. They still hold energy in your body, and they can lead to psychosomatic issues. You can fall ill very often, start building anxiety, get depressed, or develop obsessive
compulsive disorder (OCD), because when things are not in order within you, you want to create order outside you,” says Mehrotra.
Nature has its own way of trying to tell you to wake up. There can be a lot of irritation or
bitterness in your daily life because some part of you is engaged in dealing with those emotions.
Case study
He had a rough childhood. Caught often between warring parents, he felt that he was the cause of their misery and, as a result, felt unwanted. Through his school and college years, he had very few friends and felt like an outsider even in their midst. He is highly educated but has often felt that his real calling is somewhere else. He discovered spirituality quite by chance when a family friend invited him to a discourse. He has never looked back since. Chucking up his cushy job as a finance analyst, after reading and attending various spiritual courses extensively, he has set up his own spiritual practice where he delivers lectures and conducts spirituality-based cleansing programs. He comes across as learned, focussed, and attentively gentle as he takes you through his journey and his ‘breakthrough.’ He has many followers that make up for his lack of friends and love in his formative years. But once in a while, he flies into a rage, very
often at the most innocuous thing. And he doesn’t know why.
When you preach from an exalted sense but the practice does not percolate into your personal life, such outcomes are routine. When you don’t walk the spiritual talk but are more focussed on showing the world that you have ‘arrived’ spiritually, you can often get caught off-guard by your reaction to small matters.
“An example of spiritual bypassing is when you don’t address what is going on in your life but are all over the place doing social service for other people or organisations,” explains Alpa Kapadia Teli.
Deep down, the finance analyst has a lot of forgiving to do. But he chooses to skim over it since the effort would require him to revisit and relive those painful experiences that he has left far behind in his life. Unbeknown to him, they still fester and erupt violently, often unannounced.
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long-term strategy to suppress problems. For Mitali Akarte, a psychologist, who combines neuroscience, psychology, and metaphysics in her therapy, says that examples of spiritual bypassing are nuanced and widespread. They are not overt but are recognised by patterns of behaviour and habits. She cites examples: “An ungrounded person calling themselves spiritual to take on an identity, or a person who is quick to forgive others because forgiveness is needed to heal and grow.” Mitali adds, “Forgiveness is a journey. If it is hastened, then we haven’t processed our anger, resentment, and hurt well, and these feelings may be lying suppressed in the system. Apportioning blame to the perpetrator is an important step in healing.”
Short-term solution
Spiritual bypassing isn’t always a bad thing. In times of severe distress, it can be a way to temporarily relieve frustration or anxiety. However, it can be damaging when used as a instance, it could be someone who thinks that it’s all happening for their growth and evolution, and doesn’t allow themselves to feel painful emotions. Or someone attributing their anxiety, fear, and discomfort to the surroundings and the energy of places and people, and not looking within to search for the root causes of these emotions. This leads to a vicious cycle where any physical ailment is ascribed to esoteric causes, which, in turn, fuels more belief in them, and the pattern enters a closed loop.
While we are all energy-sensitive and have psychic abilities, it’s equally important to look within and ask, What is this person, who I feel uncomfortable with, really making me feel deep down, and where could this be coming from?
“In essence, someone who is spiritually bypassing adopts a flaky, floating approach
to life and lives in a fantasy bubble of evolving and enlightening,” Mitali says.
Social isolation due to spiritual bypassing She is very fond of reading, she says. A look at her teeming bookshelf reveals a bias towards self-help and spiritual bestsellers. The books spill over into her living area bedroom. She is usually reading three to four books at a time, she admits, and devours her books at breakneck speed, the same way that she speaks. She feels energetic. A feeling she was never acquainted with for the longest time during her growing years with an autocratic mother and distant father. She was hardworking and cleared her engineering exams with flying colours but always felt that colour was missing in her own life. She started reading voraciously during her placement time in college, her books supplemented by breathwork courses and short-term courses by spiritual masters. She received a certification in meditation from one of them, and now, having left the engineering career far behind, has donned the mantle of a healer practising several modalities and has people lining up for appointments. Often, her manner of giving rapid instructions during meditation and her resolute determination and vehemence to attribute everything to a higher plane rather than the human condition give more perceptive clients a reason to pause and question.
People adopt this route for a plethora of reasons, “essentially to avoid facing painful emotions and experiences, and divert attention to higher states of transcendence,” observes, Leena Jacob, an erstwhile chartered accountant, who left a corporate career to focus on her healing journey and now helps others through various healing modalities.
“Additionally, it also makes them feel better and superior. Unfortunately, since they fear facing reality and their feelings, they may also misinterpret spiritual teachings, lack psychological awareness, or habitually use shortcuts to feel good.”
Like many constructs, spirituality gives people an identity. This superficially helps those who have low self-esteem and a poor sense of self. “That’s because it feels easier and lighter, and one can bypass feeling uncomfortable emotions. It falsely justifies feeling ungrounded and disconnected, and spares people the struggle of making challenging relationships work. Quitting in the name of energetic mismatch is relatively easier,” adds Leena.
Apart from a variety of physical ailments which can surface due to spiritual bypassing, a host of other problems can also crop up. “There may be a risk of social isolation. Avoiding and cutting ties with people is easy just because you are vibrating at a ‘higher frequency’ and others are at a ‘lower frequency.’ You can’t tolerate them,
Like many constructs, spirituality
gives people an identity. This
superficially helps those who have low self-esteem and a poor sense of self. That’s because it feels easier
and lighter, and one can bypass
feeling uncomfortable emotions.
It falsely justifies feeling
ungrounded and disconnected,
and spares people the struggle of
making challenging relationships
work. any commitment phobic people suffer from unresolved trauma will not introspect, and would rather disconnect than work on your patterns,” explains Mitali Akarte. “Feeling that you can sense the energies of others and know what their intentions are can cause needless anxiety or paranoia. Again, it may be a gut feeling, but it could also be projection and fear-based thinking if you haven’t cleared your mindscape,” she adds.
Some commitment-phobic individuals use spirituality to justify their flakiness instead of addressing traumatic memories that hinder meaningful and lasting relationships.
When faced with a decision, whether big or small, he turns towards his soothsayer, his guru, whose solutions he trusts implicitly. When to travel, which course his son should study, the clothes he needs to wear for an important meeting, who his daughter should marry, where the placement of the new cupboard he has purchased should be in the house, which driver he should hire among the three applications he has received—all such dilemmas are placed at the feet of his astrologer, who then directs his answers through a set of solutions, which he is more than happy to adopt. Over time, his family too has started depending on the advice of this guru; they put their unwavering faith in his predictions, solutions, and potions. He sometimes wonders what would happen to him if something happened to his guru and feels the ground shake beneath his feet at the very thought of it.
Dependency on occult sciences like astrology, palmistry, or even extreme reliance on a guru or a therapist falls under the gamut of spiritual bypassing. Shalu Mehrotra says, “Trusting someone else completely and using spiritual methods as crutches rather than as tools for growth and empowerment make you a spiritual bypasser.”
“Astrology and numerology are sciences and, as such, are genuinely helpful if used in the right
manner. But if you are not growing and, rather, you are leaning on them, so much so that you cannot take any decision without resorting to them, is a huge red flag,” emphasises Shalu. “You would rather depend on something outside of you since it is socially acceptable instead of thinking for yourself.”
“In addition to leading a spiritual life, you have to look at your emotional well-being too. You have to confront your anxieties, suppressed emotions of anger and unforgiveness that are painful to stay with,” explains Shalu. “So, some people find it easier to be soothed by lectures by a spiritual guru. These lectures can be helpful if you are dealing with your pain too alongside,”she reflects.
Lack of awareness
In many instances, a lack of awareness that they are spiritually bypassing keeps people from addressing and rectifying it. “Until I had heard a few talks and read books on the topic
Extreme reliance on predictive sciences can stall your growth “In addition to leading a spiritual
life, you have to look at your emotional well-being too. You have to confront your anxieties,
suppressed emotions of anger and unforgiveness that are painful
to stay with. Some people find it easier to be soothed by lectures by
a spiritual guru. These lectures can be helpful if you are dealing with
your pain too alongside.
around 10 years ago, I had no awareness of the concept of spiritual bypassing. I observed that I was using spirituality to bypass a lot of painful emotions,” admits Leena Jacob.
“One needs to balance psychological and spiritual needs. Choose a practice that is holistic and not one-sided. In addition, seek help and work with others who are spiritual since it’s very tough to see your own blind spots. Shadow work and integration help in holding compassion for the self and others. Usually, spiritual bypassing is a coping mechanism, and when we face the fears and emotions that we are avoiding, we don’t see them anymore,” she advises others on the path.
Most of our coping mechanisms develop in our formative years by watching others around us.
“If you have not seen healthy role models in your life who accept feelings and talk about them, if parents themselves are carrying bitterness, then children too will exhibit the same traits,” explains Shalu Mehrotra.
We will default to these patterns unless we bring them into our awareness and consciously and consistently expunge them from our system.
“Yoga is an excellent way to ground the body,” suggests Alpa Kapadia Teli. “Do things with your hands. If nothing works, life has a way of knocking you down and shaking you up!”
The collapse of the edifice
Home for her was a hotbed of anger and unpredictability. Her brother had issues and let it out on their parents. Over time, not knowing how to deal with him, and conditioned by society to hide signs of discord in the family, the parents pandered to his rage without seeking any medical
help. She kept herself outside the house, going after office hours with friends to movies and walks. She couldn’t bear to go home and face the unhappiness that her parents were facing. They counted on her to be the reliable, strong, ‘steady’ one, and she felt overwhelmed by their expectations. She felt utter hate towards her sibling for putting her through this. At this difficult juncture, she found succour in the lectures of a guru her friend had complete faith in. Over time, with a couple of failed relationships which didn’t give her the unconditional love and security that she had always craved for, she started, what in hindsight, she terms as her ‘spiritual shopping’ phase. Anaesthetising herself by attending spiritual talks, reading spiritual literature, and going for retreats, she began to dole out her special brand of ‘forgiveness’ gyaan, to everyone she came across, claiming that she wiped off all the negatives of life with the magic wand of positive affirmations. It was not until her marriage collapsed and she lost her job at the same time that everything came crashing around her. She started introspecting,
34 LifePositive | OCTOBER 2024
Reading spiritual books and
attending discourses and retreats is fine. However, tools are of no value if they aren’t put to good use. Take
action by applying your learnings from these modalities consistently. Integrate them into your life daily. If these ideas remain abstract and
merely intellectualised, they will not be able to help you create long lasting and permanent change.
feeling her pain, and owning her feelings. She learnt to sit with the messiness in her life and see what she had been doing. Spirituality had become her drug of choice. All that was raw and wounded inside her was still there, bleeding into her being. Today, after months of therapy, and understanding how she had numbed herself to all that was happening, choosing to escape rather than face what was festering inside her, she can finally accept herself as she is. She combines meditation with psychotherapy, finding that the cure is buried right within her pain.
Clearly, if we want to avoid the pitfall of spiritual bypassing, we must express and allow our emotions, wounds, traumas, and pains to surface in a healthy manner with compassion. And the first step towards this is self-awareness. This is the fundamental cornerstone; it is not
36 LifePositive | OCTOBER 2024
a one-off event but a continuous process. It involves tuning into your thoughts, emotions, and behaviours with an objective lens, especially when faced with adversities. Make a conscious effort to feel your emotions instead of suppressing them, and do not judge them when they arise.
Reading spiritual books and attending discourses and retreats is fine. However, tools are of no value if they aren’t put to good use. Take action by applying your learnings from these modalities consistently. Integrate them into your life daily. If these ideas remain abstract and merely intellectualised, they will not be able to help you create long-lasting and permanent change.
Embrace your emotions. Emotions are not your enemies but signals and signposts. Each feeling, be it a gentle ripple of joy or a storm of anger, carries a message, which you can learn from and redirect your thoughts and actions. So, however unsettling they might be, it’s in your interest to embrace your feelings. They’re the stepping stones towards authentic healing.
“I would suggest that you try and wear 3D glasses. For a moment, see yourself as an outsider in your own world. How are you behaving? What would you think about someone else who was behaving the way you are?” advises Alpa Kapadia Teli.
Measures to heal the habit
There are steps to healing spiritual bypassing effectively:
• Feel fully.
• Let go and release fully.
• Understand why others behaved the way they did. Get others’ perspectives. • Get a spiritual understanding if needed.
This is the last step, not the first (Is it karmic? Was there some unfinished business? Is the situation teaching you lessons and helping you grow?).
• Honour the physical experiences of life, including money and pleasure.
The alternative to spiritual bypassing is actually simple but by no means easy. It is to feel our feelings across the spectrum. To live as though every emotion were acceptable, with none being better or worse than the other. To accept that all feelings are temporary, this too shall pass, and none of our emotional experiences are wrong or forbidden. They are what they are.
It involves acknowledging our feelings in response to situations that aren’t about us. The times when we feel the urge to jump in and rescue someone. The times we want to shut down their pain because we feel uncomfortable witnessing it. This requires a degree of
mindfulness which we can only cultivate through consistent practice. This comes from being willing to sit, listen, and be, instead of doing something about it.
We can make a conscious effort to feel our emotions instead of bottling them up and judging them when they arise. We turn to bypassing to cope with our internal pain and suffering. Examples include addiction to food, drink, drugs, shopping, sex, and work, focussing on others, and diverting attention away from ourselves. We should make peace with being uncomfortable. Our striving should be towards being more authentic. If we keep numbing ourselves, the energy lingers and creates a breeding ground for other complicated issues, making recovery even more difficult.
Shalu Mehrotra offers an analogy: “For example, exercise can be painful in the beginning. But if you tell yourself that it’s better to sleep for
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another hour instead of using that time to strengthen your muscles and go through that pain, you will never experience the joy of having a fit and sprightly body.”
She advises, “Similarly, for emotional well being, you have to confront your anxieties; you have to face whatever you’re going through and stay with that. That will help you build emotional resilience and mental muscle.”
However, if we take the shortcut of spiritual bypassing, our feelings will remain just beneath the surface. Eventually, this underpass will intersect with the main road of our life, obstructing our path and placing roadblocks on our journey.
Confronting what’s inside us, without judging or labelling it in absolute terms as good or bad, allows these feelings to be accepted and integrated into our system. They are a part of us. They have shaped us into who we are today, and to go forward in a healthy, mature manner requires that we learn from them to guide us onwards in a way that is open, compassionate, and real.
How do you know you are spiritually bypassing?
Here are a few important signs:
• Not focussing on the here and now; living in a spiritual realm most of the time • Overemphasising the positive and avoiding the negative
• Being self-righteous about the concept of enlightenment
• Being overly detached
• Being overly idealistic
• Having feelings of entitlement
• Exhibiting frequent anger
• Engaging in cognitive dissonance • Being overly compassionate
• Pretending that everything is okay when it’s not
If you say these things, you might be engaging in spiritual bypassing:
• “Everything happens for a reason.” • “You create your own happiness.” • “It was for the best.”
• “It was a blessing in disguise.”
• “Good vibes only!”
• “Thoughts and prayers!”
Sharmila Bhosale is a writer with deep interest in photography, travel, music,nature, psychology and spirituality. She is also the former editor of Life Positive Jr.
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