Hello friends. Welcome to the One Heart Podcast, I’m your host Brooke Snow and I’m so grateful you are here.
This is part 3 in a series I’m calling “Reclamation of Feeling”. In this episode we’re talking about spiritual bypassing. This was a term I’ve only learned in the last few years but I have experienced this emotional block my entire life, as I’m sure you have as well. Knowing what it is and what it looks like has been a key piece in learning how to regulate my emotions and move through things with more love and compassion. If you’ve ever tried to change how you feel by doing spiritual tools, if you’ve ever tried to just be more positive and optimistic, if you’ve ever tried to just look on the bright side or be more grateful and sometimes experienced that these things didn’t help you feel better, this episode will explain why that can happen. You’ll be able to spot where you do this to yourself, and perhaps when you might project this onto others in effort to fix emotions we judge as wrong or bad. What if there isn’t actually anything to fix? What if there’s just things that need to be felt? This approach can make all the difference.
Before we begin, I invite you to join me in a short three breath meditation to settle into your own heart.
SPIRITUAL BYPASSING
The phrase Spiritual Bypassing was developed by psychologist John Welwood in 1984. Welwood saw that many in his Buddhist community were using spiritual ideas and practices to avoid facing unresolved emotional and psychological wounds. Perhaps the Buddhist person would feel anger towards another person and instead of dealing with the anger she would use the spiritual tool of meditation to just meditate on happier thoughts.
“Just be happy!”
“Just focus on the good!”
“Just pick a better thought!”
She didn’t deal with the problem. She just used a spiritual tool to distract herself into positivity.
It’s not just Buddhists who do this. Christians do this. I also see it in the yoga community and New Age Spirituality, and self Help and the coaching world. All other well meaning people do this too.
– This is me when I have a deep emotional wound and instead of feeling my feelings I avoid it by reciting affirmations or mantras or meditating on something better.
– This is me when I have a challenge come into my life and I practice optimism and thinking a better thought rather than giving myself permission to feel disappointment or frustration or bitterness.
– This is me when I start listing things I’m grateful for so I don’t focus on my disappointments and longings.
The tricky thing here, is that these tools are really good things to do. They are! But they’re only effective when done in the right order. If I bypass the land of observation that we spoke of in the previous episode, then these good tools are going to become discouraging tools because I’m trying to get to a new emotional state without first acknowledging my current one. I’m trying to change myself without addressing the real and valid emotions I’m trying to ignore.
It was so common for me growing up to hear preachers at church tell people over and over again that the answer to all their problems was just to pray more, just read the scriptures more, just serve more…
Again, these are all good things…
But when you don’t address the underlying emotional issue, and instead prescribe spiritual tools as the answer to everything, this is spiritual bypassing. And when you spiritually bypass, the tools are not as effective. And I’ll even go as far as saying the tools can make things worse. You start to wonder what is wrong with you… you’re doing all the “right” things, but the tools are not working even though everyone says they should. So surely, YOU must be the problem.
Have you ever found yourself in this situation? You’re doing the spiritual practices, but perhaps feel numb? Or maybe even feel guilt and shame that you’re not getting the results you think you should be? You aren’t magically happy again? You aren’t feeling peace and spiritually connected even though you’re being so disciplined?
I’m hear to tell you that it’s not your fault. Nothing is wrong with you. You’re not defective. Instead, perhaps ask yourself what you are not allowing yourself to feel right now and visit the Land of Observation.
Unfortunately, we don’t just spiritually bypass as individuals, we can also encourage other people to participate in spiritual bypassing as well. Maybe as a parent, or friend, or co-worker, or coach, we are speaking with someone who has a challenge and with well meaning intentions we encourage them to skip ahead to a different reality that looks and feels better.
Have you ever said any of these things to another person?
– “Everything happens for a reason.”
– “You create your own happiness.”
– “It was for the best.”
– “It was a blessing in disguise.”
– “It’s just a thought. Pick a new thought!
– Tell a new story!”
– “Find the silver lining!”
There is nothing wrong with these phrases if they come in the right order. But if they come out of order they can make another person feel unseen and unheard.
MICHELLE’S STORY
Recently I was listening to a podcast where the woman shared her experience of losing two young children only a year and a half apart. She relayed how deep her grief was. She was so distraught and many well meaning family and friends said these phrases to her.
“Well, they’re in a better place now.”
“Isn’t it great to know you’ll see them again someday?”
“All things happen for a reason. This is an opportunity to grow.”
I’ll never forget her observation. She said, “They were trying to comfort me. But it did not feel comforting. What I needed was for them to mourn with me. Jesus teaches us that we need to mourn with those that mourn and comfort those that stand in need of comfort.” and then she said these important words, “AND IT MUST HAPPEN IN THAT ORDER.”
Wow! There’s the importance of order again! Mourn with those that mourn and THEN comfort those that stand in need of comfort. Jesus did not say, “comfort those who mourn.” He said, “mourn with those that mourn. Comfort those who stand in need of comfort.” Give people what they need and do it in the right order.
FALLING FLAT
If we haven’t taken the time to first mourn, then the comforting falls flat. The spiritual tools fall flat. The thought work falls flat. Just say an affirmation, meditate on the good, it all falls flat. We’re trying to change our emotional state to something better by spiritually bypassing the land of observation. It doesn’t work long term. You’re not going to get very far.
John Welwood taught a little more about this by saying,
“When we are spiritually bypassing, we often use the goal of awakening or liberation to rationalize what I call premature transcendence: trying to rise above the raw and messy side of our humanness before we have fully faced and made peace with it,” Welwood
John Welwood understands the order. He also understands the purpose of the Land of Observation:
1. Awareness
2. Acceptance
To insure that we don’t spiritually bypass, let’s review again what we learned in the previous episode about the Land of Observation. What do we do there?
1. We practice awareness.
2. Acceptance.
What is one easy and practical way to do this?
—
NAME YOUR EMOTIONS
Remember, the difference between feelings and emotions. We use the two words interchangeably. They are related, but they are also different.
Feelings are sensations you feel in your body. A tightness in your chest, a sinking sensation in your gut, flushing of your face, a whoosh that brings goosebumps and many other possible sensations.
Emotions are the story your mind is telling about the sensation. The tightness in the chest matches up with the story of anxiety, or the flushing in the face matches with the story of embarrassment, or the sinking sensation in the gut matches up with the story of fear.
Feelings and emotions are important data to help us understand our stories and the influence these stories have in our life. Often I have had no idea what emotions I feel, I just know my body feels comfortable or uncomfortable sensations.
The act of naming the sensations or specific emotion is helpful in understanding what my story is, and who the story is coming from.
I mentioned in the part 1 of this series that part of my reclamation of feeling journey comes from a lifetime of being taught that emotions are coming from outside of me.
If I feel good, I have God’s favor.
If I feel bad I am being influenced by Satan.
In this scenario, emotions are acting upon me as rewards or punishment. This is a toxic and disempowering belief. Emotions are neutral and they are part of being human. You are not your emotions and they have nothing to do with your worthiness. Ever.
The weather patterns are always changing, sometimes it’s sunny, sometimes it’s overcast, sometimes it’s stormy and gloomy….so it is with our human emotions. The weather has nothing to do with the worthiness of the Earth. It doesn’t mean the earth is being punished or rewarded when it’s raining or sunny. This is just a natural occurring phenomenon that serves a purpose. We have our own internal weather as well. And it’s neutral.
That being said, we amplify the sensations we feel in our body through telling our emotional stories. While I don’t believe emotions are rewards or punishments from God, there is still a storyteller…
It’s important for me to ask myself,
Is the story coming from my ego?
Or is the story coming from my true divine self?
Stories from the ego always spark some fear.
Stories from your true self invite love.
STORY: ASKING TO BE RELEASED FROM MY CALLING
During my faith expansion journey, one of the first steps I took in claiming my own spiritual sovereignty was to choose to no longer commit to the volunteer job I had been doing as a Sunday School teacher. I was experiencing so much discord in being expected to teach doctrine I was questioning. In that church culture, opting out of your volunteer job is seen as being unfaithful. There’s a lot of guilt and shame baked into choosing to not participate in church that way, but I knew it was the right decision for me and felt peace about it.
I notified my Pastor, and felt sure of my decision. However, when I got a text back from him questioning my choice, my entire body felt a whoosh of intense emotion. Because of my conditioning to interpret emotions as rewards or punishment from God, I immediately assumed I wasn’t doing the right thing. I immediately panicked that this whoosh of emotion was a sign from heaven that I was making a terrible choice. I didn’t know what I was feeling but it was INTENSE and it was BIG. Must mean I didn’t make the right choice, right?
Thankfully, I have been practicing naming my emotions, so that’s exactly what I did.
I know I feel intense sensations right now, but WHAT IS THE ACTUAL EMOTION?
What is this great whoosh of sensation?
Guilt.
Shame.
Fear.
Guilt for not soldiering on.
Shame for saying no.
Fear I was making the wrong decision.
Fear about what other people will think.
Fear that I was now going to hell.
I reminded myself that emotions are neutral, but naming them can help me find the story and who the storyteller is. Was the story coming from my ego or if it was from my true self?
Guilt, shame, and fear are always–100% of the time–stories from the ego. Because I was aware of the actual emotions and what the story was and who was telling the story, I had the confidence to hold firm to my original decision.
This small moment was a turning point in my reclamation of feeling. I was immediately struck wondering how many times in my life I had felt a dramatic sensation in my body and allowed myself to be swayed into a different decision, because I didn’t actually know what the emotions were. I just felt something big and made assumptions that whatever I had chosen as my decision must not be right, because now I was feeling resistance. I had been a victim to my emotions rather than an investigator of them. And worse yet, how many times had I confused fear for faith simply because I never investigated what I was actually feeling?
Spiritual bypassing can also be moments like this, where I make assumptions about sensations in my body and let my conditioning talk me out of heart based decisions. I end up trusting the conditioning of the patriarchy instead of taking an important pause to discern what is actually going on inside my body, my mind, and my heart right now.
So many of my decisions in life have been influenced by fear without me even realizing it, because I spiritually bypassed my own feelings. In this situation, it’s not me bypassing with a spiritual tool, rather it’s me bypassing with the spiritual conditioning. I hear the voices of the cultural beliefs that….
A good person doesn’t say no to service.
A good person doesn’t quit.
A good person doesn’t ask questions about doctrine.
A good person doesn’t question the men in charge.
A spiritual woman doesn’t blaze her own path. She’s supposed to be a follower.
Choosing what is best for you is selfish. There’s only a one size fits all path and you are pushing the boundaries too far.
When I hear the conditioning loud and clear I can bypass the guidance from my true self in favor of the status quo. Just ignore my true self. Don’t investigate what those emotions really are. Bypass. Bypass. Bypass.
Have you ever done this? Bypassed your own feelings because it didn’t align with the cultural beliefs?
I have done this my entire life.
I was taught that women should only get an education as a backup plan for if they are widowed or divorced. Yet I longed to get a PhD. Did I? No. Because I got married and I bypassed my feelings in favor of the expectations.
I was taught women should be stay at home mothers. But my heart longed to do something more. I have worked from home, but spent many years feeling guilty for honoring my own dreams.
I was taught that as a woman I should have many children. Yet I didn’t actually want tons of kids. The universe intervened and only gave me two before I nearly died in the process, but again, I still felt guilt for years afterwards that I didn’t want more children.
I’ve bypassed my own feelings from big things like education all the way down to small things like where to go out to eat…Doesn’t matter what I want, just go along with what everyone else wants instead.
Do you want a PhD or do you want to stay at home and raise children for the next 20 years?
Do you want pizza or do you want Mexican food?
The thing is, it doesn’t mean that I have to bulldoze my desires and feelings onto everyone else so I can get what I want all the time, there are compromises to be made in life, but if we never allow ourselves to even feel what those desires and feelings are, and we just bypass them in effort to be more spiritual or more conforming to our conditioning, then we are training ourselves to ignore our own needs. We are training ourselves to ignore the voice inside. We are training ourselves to abandon part of who we are.
Another common form of spiritual bypassing happens in relationship to gratitude or comparison.
When my husband was traveling overseas for weeks at a time when I had small children I felt so overwhelmed and abandoned. I remember telling myself, “Military spouses have to single parent for way longer than two weeks. You shouldn’t feel the way you’re feeling because others have it worse. I should be grateful.”
This is spiritual bypassing.
How much relief I would have felt if instead I said to myself,
“I feel lonely. I feel overburdened. I feel jealous of his time to travel and be by himself. I feel depleted having to do all the work by myself right now. This feels hard. It’s okay that this is hard. It’s okay to feel this way. It’s okay that this is difficult for me.” This is validating what I feel. My circumstance doesn’t change, but simply acknowledging the feelings lightens the load.
A friend of mine was living with her family of six in the cramped basement of her parents house while their own home was being built. She was so stressed out and felt displaced and like there was no order in their life because they were living in someone else’s space and living out of suitcases. I remember her saying to me,
“I should be grateful. I literally have a new beautiful home being built for our family right now! I have the opportunity to live with my parents during this short window of time and my kids can know their grandparents in an intimate way.”
Spiritual bypassing.
What if she was able to say, “I feel chaotic. I feel stressed out. I feel pressure to keep my kids quiet and in line so they don’t disturb my aging parents. I long for my own space. I long for my house to be done. This feels hard. It’s okay to feel this way. Of course I feel this way. My homeostasis has just been disrupted. Our lives our in transition. It’s okay to feel this way…
She could validate her feelings. And then… magically, after mourning with those that mourn, –which yes, you can mourn with yourself–she can then move into comforting those that need comfort. “It’s only for a little longer. This is a unique opportunity for our family.” It feels totally different when you can first acknowledge what is boiling under the surface.
When we don’t acknowledge what is under the surface and bypass instead, it creates disease in the body.
You can only do this for so long before you have to confront the collateral damage.
For me, the collateral damage has been mourning the years I spent feeling guilty for actually honoring my desires and not being able to fully enjoy my choices to work because I was judging myself.
It’s been mourning all the decisions I have made out of fear and not knowing how to actually listen to my own internal voice.
It’s been taking an honest look at all the times I whipped out a spiritual tool like affirmations or meditation to fix myself instead of being compassionate for my own feelings of sadness and anger.
Oh how I have judged myself. I missed so many opportunities to feel, to hold space for me or someone else by just skipping ahead into being more optimistic and positive. It didn’t solve the problem.
I have missed so many opportunities to learn what my emotions have to teach me… How many “third way’s” have I not even known about because I only saw in black and white and judged myself as wrong or bad when I felt differently than how the conditioning told me I should feel?
Our emotions hold wisdom.
All the emotions do.
There is wisdom in the anger.
There is wisdom in the disappointment.
There is wisdom in desire.
There is wisdom in pleasure.
There is wisdom in joy.
There is wisdom in devastation.
There is no good or bad feelings. There are certainly feelings that are more comfortable or uncomfortable to feel, but there are no good or bad feelings. They are simply messengers.
Let us not ignore the message.
Let us not bypass the wisdom that can be found when we are willing to listen and feel every flavor of emotion.
It’s my belief that this is the only way to live with one heart.
We drop the judgement of emotions, and let ourselves feel again. The joy and the sadness. The pleasure AND the pain. The desires and the repulsions.
We stop bypassing and acknowledge that every emotion is valid, our own, as well as others, especially when those emotions are triggered by not conforming. What is the message to be found here?
How much emotion has been spiritually bypassed throughout time in order to uphold hierarchies and divisions in our world?
We only grow and expand individually and as a collective when we have the courage to look at what brings suffering to people even if our own lived experience is different. When any person has the courage to feel and to voice what has felt painful, it gives us all an opportunity to expand and modify our beliefs and actions to be more loving and inclusive.
AND
When any person has the courage to feel and to voice what their dreams and desires are, and take action, it gives us all an opportunity to expand and live with more joy.
We don’t just bypass the pain, we bypass the dreams and desires.
There’s so much wisdom in each emotion.
Growth happens when we are willing to feel.
There’s something quite liberating about taking the time to go to the Land of Observation.
What do we do here?
Awareness and Acceptance.
Name your feelings.
And accept that it is okay to feel what you feel.
Remember to mourn with those that mourn.
and THEN…..AFTERWARDS…
Comfort those that stand in need of comfort.
Whether that is for yourself of those around you. We must learn to do things in the proper order to be effective.
Honor the experience.
Find the wisdom in the emotion.
This is a reclamation of feeling.
The Light in Me Honors the Light in You.
Namaste.
If this series has been helpful for you, I want to invite you into an even deeper experience. I have a beautiful meditation on the Co create app called The Land of Observation that gently guides you through this process. I’m turning this series into a new course on the Co Create app, complete with guided meditations to help you integrate these principles we are learning about. I believe so strongly that the most transformative way to learn is by experience, not just by consuming information. As much as I love to write my podcast lessons, its so easy for it to just be information that I listen to and forget. When you can integrate meditation into the learning, it gives you the opportunity to embody the principles and experience them for yourself. While you can listen to the lessons here on the podcast, the meditations and the opportunity to submit questions and get feedback is exclusive to the app. If you’re curious to try out the app, I’d love to invite you to a free one month trial. Simply use the code oneheart30, for 30 days free. I’ll link that code in the shownotes of this episode and would love to invite you to be part of the experiential version of this course along with me on the app.
In the meantime, dear one, I invite you the Land of observation. Practice awareness and acceptance. This is a reclamation of feeling.
The light in me honors the light in you.
Namaste.
SHOWNOTES:
Gain access to the meditations that go along with course on the Co Create app.
Use code ONEHEART30 for a free 30 days on the app.
Find the Co Cocreate app in the Apple App Store
Find the Co Create app in the Google App Store
The Co Create App gives you access to over 100+ Guided Meditations, new Yoga Classes, Inspirational Audio Courses, and community Challenges to support you in living into your true identity as the creator of your life. In the free section you’ll also find my signature “I love and accept you” meditation which I would love for you to try. To learn more visit brookesnow.com/app.
