Beyond Spiritual Bypassing

While spirituality’s domain is the Absolute nature of Reality, many teachings aim at that realm at the expense of what is here and now—what is human, personal, and practical.

This is how spiritual bypassing arises: the use of spirituality to downplay, deny, or avoid the significance of different dimensions of our lives. These include the physical, the social, the emotional and relational, and the deeply personal—everything that could simply be called “the practical.”

May we all find the integrity and courage (and the support!) to transcend spiritual bypassing.

Certain strands of spirituality are notorious for denying the body, as if our only spiritual reality were some kind of out-of-body existence where we float in bliss and light. It is one thing to be told “You are not the body” in the immediate presence of a qualified teacher and to explore the meaning together. It is something entirely different—and potentially dangerous—to hear it in a talk or read it in a book and make a belief out of it in hopes of escaping suffering.

Advanced and mature realization does not reveal our true nature as something apart from the body, but reveals the true nature of the body as Spirit.

In other words, there is only One Substance. Look at the Heart Sutra in Buddhism for more on this.

I’ve heard speakers and teachers in both Buddhism and Non-duality offer all kinds of absurd reasons why we shouldn’t think about social problems. Such reductionist spirituality tends to say, “The world has always been in turmoil,” or “There is no society.” Don’t you dare speak to some spiritualists about other people’s suffering—especially when that suffering is directly linked to systemic social issues. They will quickly divert you back to their version of Enlightenment.

A deeper vision for awakening—one that includes social action—has not yet matured in these people.

Another major blind spot in much spirituality is emotions and relationships. Most people initially turn toward spirituality because they are suffering from emotional and relational pain. Yet they end up using spirituality to build a belief system in which, if only they were “more awake,” they wouldn’t be angry or scared or sad, or perhaps wouldn’t even need relationships. This short-cut to freedom is not noble but desperate, not mature but gullible, not empowering but heartbreakingly self-dishonoring.

Spirituality is not a solution to everyday human emotional and relational pain. Pain stays, and so do our emotions—all of them. What can dissolve is our habit of making a problem out of our precious humanity. It is our hatred of our humanness that can finally go.

Even saying that emotions “settle” after awakening can be misleading, because for some people emotions become more intense precisely because they are no longer repressing them. Intensity is only a problem for those who imagine Enlightenment must be calm.

The personal is the final dimension non-dualists tend to avoid. From parroting statements like “There is no person” to yelling “You don’t exist!” these dissociated nobodies forget what brought them to spirituality in the first place. If only they could reclaim and begin to heal the wounding and trauma they have been trying to escape from—using awakening as the escape hatch—their teachings would become far more nuanced.

The truth of non-duality is not used but abused by such teachers, who remain blind to the impact of their half-baked teachings.

As we mature through time—and through messy, deeply human life experiences—teachers and students alike can become more nuanced and more skilled at communicating certain truths. Such dialogue and healthy questioning between student and teacher is essential. But we cannot get there unless these ways of teaching are first confronted and challenged, directly and widely, for the sanity and well-being of all.

With that in mind and heart, I wish you true well-being.

Understanding what healthy power is, what mature love can be, and what genuine humility might look like - these have helped me see through spiritual bypassing. Let’s explore power, love, and humility together.

Power, love, and humility are precious capacities we deepen into over a lifetime—each a mystery longing to be honoured and embodied.

What is power? How does my personal will align with the will of Life?

What is humility? Is it the relinquishing of power?

What is love? And how can love itself be abused?

Power, Powerlessness, and Hope

To understand power, we must also explore powerlessness. To feel powerless is to feel depleted, flat, incapable of action. This often arises when we actually are not powerless at all. It’s common during depression: helplessness and powerlessness become fused with our sense of self. There is pain hidden within depression—pain so deep that suppressing it exhausts us.

Such powerlessness is not a spiritual virtue, but often a byproduct of early trauma. It is power collapsed on itself, not acceptance or surrender. It is not going beyond personal will but deadening ourselves to life.

Hopelessness is intimately related. Desperately holding onto hope or collapsing into hopelessness are both very different from going beyond hope.

Letting hope die—and grieving what we do not have—is a way of transcending hope and opening to something far more real, something we already are.

When we are truly empowered, we naturally recognize the limitations of personal will. From here, genuine humility becomes possible. We bow to the natural flow of Life.

Humility: Performative or Authentic

The full embodiment of our power awakens humility—not as meekness, but a vibrant, clear-eyed responsiveness to Life.

Performative humility, by contrast, is a mask. It hides self-centredness and grandiosity behind pseudo-modesty. It is shame disguised as self-effacement, spiritual ambition turned inward, suffocating the self beneath it. It abandons our natural dignity rather than expressing genuine freedom.

This is a tendency we can examine closely and compassionately outgrow.

Love: A Heart Broken Open

Love is as much an aspect of Reality as it is what shines through us—and as us—as we break open to what is.

Empowerment forms the foundation of healthy self-protection. Humility roots and softens us. Love is the flowering—the deepening of our being and the opening of our wings.

Love is the greatest journey and adventure. The freedom beyond freedom.

From the perspective of Love, personal salvation is only the beginning. Love leaps into the fire—not out of performative self-sacrifice or self-betrayal, but because it cannot do otherwise. Love is the profoundly liberating experience of having no choice.

And yet, the imitations of love are everywhere: pity, sympathy, blind compassion.

Pity collapses the heart. We treat others as if they have no will of their own, already condemning them as incapable. Sympathy is similar: too removed from the other’s pain to meet it with our whole heart.

What is missing in all these states is empowerment. If I am crushed under the weight of suffering—my own or another’s—I cannot fully show up. If my cup is empty, there is nothing to give.

Strengthen the foundation of your being. Empower yourself. Learn healthy boundaries. Speak up. Embody your “no.”

Blind compassion allows people to behave harmfully without calling them into accountability. It arises from fear, from the desire to seem “spiritual,” yet it results only in self-betrayal. It weakens our heart’s reach and severs us from self-worth and dignity.

One of the most common forms of blind compassion is premature forgiveness. We imagine we are being spiritual, but we are being self-abusive. Premature forgiveness mocks accountability and bypasses the real work needed for repair.

For me to forgive you and move forward, I must first feel my pain—including any justified anger. And I must witness your genuine remorse so trust can be rebuilt.

When we are in the grip of spiritual bypassing, we try to skip the messy reality of relationships and cling to naïve fantasies of unconditional love, harmony, and bliss. But cutting through blind compassion is essential if we want to open to a love that is truly free.

Spiritual bypassing is natural—and it is equally natural to outgrow it. Keep cutting through this tendency with determination, and remember to be compassionate with the part of you that carries your wounding and conditioning.

Keep deepening, and you will discover a freedom grounded enough to include pain—a true transcendence of suffering.