spiritual bypassing
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January 13th, 2023
- I asked, Romeo Stevens answered:
- it seems to me that there are sort of a few things being meant by "spiritual bypassing":
- using [your ability to experience the reality that in some sense everything is okay] to avoid dealing with the sense in which problems are still problematic
- kind of like I talked about with Ryan T last night
- and he seemed to indicate it could sort of happen in a non-justifying sort of way
- interestingly, this also seems related to my post-regret post...
- and insofar as there was something missing there, it was kind of doing this bypassing
- book Spiritual Bypassing says
- > the use of spiritual beliefs to avoid dealing with painful feelings, unresolved wounds, and developmental needs
- > psychological issues often masked as spirituality, including self-judgment, excessive niceness, and emotional dissociation
- mistaking the finger for the moon / using spiritual language & conceptual understandings to rationalize stuff or to seem (to yourself or others) like you're doing something spiritually that you're not actually doing
- identifying with your sense of spirituality / getting fixated on measurements of spiritual attainment as meaning something significant
- (is this different from the previous one?)
- (I think this one could be described as being more about oneself, the previous one more about one's practices)
- > Fixating on an experience or state or concept as an goal in a way that suppresses what's trying to emerge into being known.
- (source)
- this is slightly different from the previous two although related
- if you combine a bunch of these you get the "good vibes only" version
- which is sort of about appearances but probably involves repressing probleminess rather than actually experiencing deep okayness
- okayness conditional on good vibes, not unconditional okayness
- > Always focusing on positivity at the expense of looking at your shadows and overcoming them, which is real (spiritual) growth.
- (source)
- I might reframe this somehow but I'm not sure how yet
- some other links
- > Can we be with our own pain, fully, without "Tomorrow-ing" it? Can we be with others' pain, as best we can, without shoving promises/expectations onto it? Can we stop gift-wrapping the Mystery, the fear, our present––covering it up somehow, as if that will make it better?
- fear & heartbreak as well
- it seems like if I'm keeping myself from feeling my own background pain, in an ongoing way, that might have a similar sort of effect, or something
- what is being referred to here?
- Yatharth asks "What is spiritual bypassing to you?"
- interesting take
- other interesting take
- podcasts
- Sam Harris talked about removing the streaks from the Waking Up meditation app to prevent people fixating on legible metrics
- ~"you shouldn't be asking if you're meditating every day. you should be asking if you're meditating every moment"