Spiritual Bypassing

The strategy of using spiritual beliefs to avoid facing one's unresolved wounds or unmet needs. A form of avoidance and resistance, the shadow side of spirituality, and the opposite of authenticity. Spiritual Bypassing teaches us to run away from our problems.

Examples:
1) Just Be Positive (renders shadow work impossible)
2) Blind Compassion (confrontation-phobic attempt at caring)
3) Pathologizing the Ego (the ego as an obstruction, something to be eliminated)
4) Non-Duality (removing everything uncomfortable to avoid in-depth psychological work)
5) Transcendence (escapism)
6) Magical Thinking (giving unwarranted weight to coincidence. Ex: "everything happens for a reason", over-reliance on "signs")
7) Blame Game (the opposite of self-empowerment)
8) You're Just Projecting (say this to avoid responsibility for your own behaviors)
9) Avoidance of Anger (a tendency to shun or repress the healthy expression of anger in the guise of spiritual correctness)
10) Wishful Thinking (the persistent avoidance of professional clinical attention in favor of spiritual solutions that do little to address core wounding)
11) Karmic Contract Bypass (a tendency to attribute every single event on the planet to universal or soulular intentionality)
12) Short-Cutting (disguised as permanent solutions to circumvent necessary arduous and time-consuming inner-work)
13) All is One (remaining perpetually focused on unity in an effort to avoid one's particular issues and challenges.

Jill: "Sarah is going to another Love and Light workshop next week."
Beth: "Again? Isn't that the tenth time this year?"
Jill: "Yeah, she said it makes her feel good."
Beth: "If it's so good, then why does she need to keep going back?"
Jill: "It's spiritual bypassing. She's not ready to do the deep inner work yet, so she avoids it by doing all those Love and Light trainings all over the world."

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