Spiritual bypassing is using spiritual practices and beliefs to avoid painful feelings and unresolved psychological wounds, a term coined by the psychologist John Welwood. It costs us our groundedness, our feelings and our honesty, and it turns us away from the suffering of the world. Psychotherapy helps prevent it by giving us the right tools for healing the everyday self, whilst shamanism adds that we need to rise rooted, reconnecting with our Soul and the living world.
What is spiritual bypassing? #
A way of using spirituality to avoid our pain. The feelings and wounds we bypass do not go away. The term was coined by the psychologist John Welwood in 1984 “to describe the way in which some people use “spiritual” practices and beliefs to avoid dealing with painful feelings and unresolved psychological wounds.”12
Why do people bypass? #
Because facing pain is hard, and transcending it sounds easier. “Generally, we have little desire or tolerance for facing our pain, much less for entering it to engage with it and work with it.” So when a teacher or religion says we can simply transcend our pain, “then we jump at it.” “So, we swallow the spiritual pain-killer instead.”3
Much contemporary spirituality is also very me-centred, focused on personal development and personal spiritual development, in a culture that is me-centred on the whole. That was never the point for original shamans, whose whole reason for doing the work was to be of service to the community. And the pull towards transcendence is itself a sign of how lost and in pain most people are, wandering without purpose or meaning.
What are the common signs of spiritual bypassing? #
Its personal costs double as signs, and there are social costs too. They include “An unhealthy degree of ungroundedness and detachment”; emotional numbing and being cut off from feelings; “Delusions of spiritual superiority; a ‘holier-than-thou’ attitude”; “Overemphasis on the ‘positive’, and an avoidance of facing things as they really are”; a fear of anger; “Poor personal boundaries, and problems with being assertive when needed”; and “Difficulty functioning in day-to-day life and society.”4
Why is spiritual bypassing a problem? #
It harms us, and it harms the world. Turning our backs on the world to concentrate on being ‘spiritual’ means “playing no actual, real, part in helping alleviate the suffering in this world.” “It is not compassionate (however it is dressed up), but a bypassing of compassion. It is the essence of the FallThe Fall. The catastrophe at the root of the whole diagnosis: the shift from animist, egalitarian hunter-gatherer life to owning, agricultural Taker culture. In domesticating other species we domesticated ourselves, cutting ourselves off from Mother Earth (Power-loss) and from parts of our own nature (soul-loss). When dated precisely, the Fall begins with the first city-state cultures, around 4000 BCE (Domestication begins earlier, with the Neolithic). A sickness, not our true nature. ‘Fallen culture’ is used interchangeably with Taker culture; the Great Rupture is a looser alternate name. Read the full answer.”5 And it does not work: all of the many deeply spiritual people Paul Francis has worked with as a therapist have needed good psychotherapy too.6
And the harm goes beyond humans: “the cost of our spiritual bypassing has been (and still is) utterly devastating to far more than just us humans.”7
How can psychotherapy help prevent it? #
By healing the everyday self rather than trying to escape it. The practices of the sky-religionsSky-religion. The vertical, hierarchical reordering of the sacred that the Fall installed, governed by the spell ‘up is good, down is bad’: transcend the body, escape matter, purify upward. The conditioning Therapeutic Shamanism works to undo. More about this have their place, but “when it comes to developing the healthy ego that we need for the middle-worldMiddle-world. Ordinary physical reality together with its energetic layers: the realm of individuality, separation and mixed intentions, and the only realm where harm is possible. “If there is a hell, then it is the middle-world.” Read the full answer, they are usually not the best set of tools for that job. Psychotherapy, on the other hand, has precisely and exactly the right set of tools for that job.”8
Psychotherapy alone is not the whole answer, though. Welwood’s analysis holds “on a psychological level”, but bypassing “can never be properly healed by addressing it only on a psychological level”, because the underlying cause is “our disconnection from nature.”9 So Therapeutic Shamanism brings psychotherapy and shamanism together. See Why does Therapeutic Shamanism bring shamanism and psychotherapy together?
What does spiritual bypassing have to do with the ego? #
It tries to get rid of the ego rather than putting it in its place. “The ego does need to be reined in, as an ego out of control is indeed a monster.” But focusing only on Spirit to do it “can result in a top-heavy, disembodied and ungrounded spirituality”. Instead, “shamanism shows us that we need to rise, but rise rooted.”10 See What is the Adult and what does healthy inner leadership look like?
How is spiritual bypassing connected with the Upper-World? #
Through treating the Upper-WorldUpper-World. The realm of Father Sky and of Spirit: spacious, rarefied and clear, layered in tiers, offering not escape but perspective. Not better than the Lower-World: we ascend rooted, and bring the gifts back down. Read the full answer as better than the rest. “Contrary to what sky-religions say, the Upper-World is not ‘better’ than the Lower-WorldLower-World. The realm of Mother Earth: pure, unspoilt, wild nature, with no technology and no agriculture. Home of the Peoples and of our own Soul, and completely safe: feeling threatened in a journey is a reliable sign of not having reached it. Read the full answer. To overemphasise or inflate the Upper-World just leads to a top-heavy, imbalanced and ungrounded spirituality.”11 The Upper-World has real gifts, including “ethics, spiritual perspective, and a healthy detachment”, but they are meant to be brought back. We rise not to leave the world behind, but to return to it refreshed, with clearer eyes. See What is the Upper-World?
How is spiritual bypassing connected with Soul and the Lower-World? #
It cuts us off from our roots. The Plant People are teachers here: “If a plant bought into “up is good and down is bad” then it would die. It would have shallow roots and instead pour all its energy into reaching upwards and growing taller.”12 To rein in the ego healthily, “as well as needing to ascend, we need to descend and cultivate our connection with our Lower-World Soul.”13 As the Plant People teach, we need to ascend rooted. Some six thousand years of spirituality have taken that road, and look where it has led; the answer is “not more ascent”, but to descend again, “to remember the roots”.
How is spiritual bypassing connected with the body, and why is disembodied spirituality a problem? #
Because bypassing leaves the body, and the feelings in it, behind. Its costs include “Emotional numbing and repression. Becoming cut off from feelings (and a resultant numbness and lack of aliveness).”14 FocusingFocusing. Eugene Gendlin’s method of turning towards the felt sense, the body’s whole sense of an issue, with curiosity and no agenda, and asking whether anything needs to happen. In this approach it is valued because, like journeying, it means going beyond the wants of the self and listening to something wiser and deeper. Read the full answer on the Upper-World in an unbalanced way, “and becoming disembodied and dissociated as a result, is something that pre-Fallen people had never done.”15 See How do embodiment, grounding and the nervous system support healing?
What is the difference between healthy detachment and spiritual bypassing? #
The books name both, without setting them side by side. Both involve stepping back, but only one brings us back again. Amongst the gifts of the Upper-World is “a healthy detachment”,16 and amongst the costs of bypassing is “An unhealthy degree of ungroundedness and detachment”.17 We rise in order to return.
What is the relationship between spiritual bypassing and non-duality? #
The books do not discuss non-duality as such, and how animism sees it is explored with students. What is clear is that using the claim that the world is an illusion to avoid it is a problem. There are “life-avoiding spiritually-bypassed people, who say that none of this matters because the world is just an illusion”, and “Such views are the antithesis of shamanism.”18 Dismissing the middle-world in this way “is a symptom of spiritual bypassing which, as we looked at earlier, is itself a symptom of distress, a neurotic response to unresolved psychological wounds.”19
What does spiritual bypassing have to do with anger? #
Anger is one of the feelings people most often try to bypass: “A phobia of anger. Dis-owning one’s own anger and instead projecting it onto others.”20 There is “the anger-bypassing that can be prevalent in some New-Age thinking and practice”, where anger is replaced too soon with forgiveness, yet “there are no ‘good’ or ‘bad’ feelings. Feelings are just feelings.”21 The same move is what the author Jeff Brown calls ‘forgiveness bypassing’.22
Can spiritual bypassing happen in shamanism? #
Yes. In one shamanic healing a grieving woman’s grief was ‘extracted’ and her anger replaced with forgiveness, which is “bypassing emotions”.23 But true shamanism is the opposite: “True shamanism is not spiritual bypassing, or emotional numbing, or avoiding being in the world. It means being in and of the world.”24
Can journey interpretation become spiritual bypassing? #
The books do not discuss this, but they are clear that “the real and deepest meaning of the journey is what it means to the person whose journey it is.”25 When a practitioner imposes feelings and advice on a client, the result is “bypassing emotions”, and it does harm. See How do I unpack and interpret a shamanic journey?
What is the antidote, and why name it at all? #
The antidote is to rise rooted, and to face and feel things as they are. The path of true shamanism “means seeing things as they are, and feeling things as they are.”26 Naming bypassing helps us notice it, and Welwood’s term is “such an important and useful concept”.27
