Spiritual Bypassing: What You Need To Know About It!

Spiritual bypassing is the act of using spiritual beliefs to avoid facing or healing painful feelings, unresolved wounds, and unmet needs.

It is a state of avoidance and resistance. I consider spiritual bypassing to be the shadow side of spirituality.

Spiritual bypassing is rampant in both religious and non-religious circles. It is a form of escapism that allows people to numb themselves to their pain rather than deal with it.

This is not true spiritual healing. True spiritual healing involves facing our pain, working through it, and coming out the other side stronger and wiser. It is not about avoidance or emotionally numbing ourselves with spiritual ideals.

If you are spiritually bypassing, ask yourself why. What negative feelings are you avoiding? What painful truths are you numbing? Spiritual bypassing is often a result of trauma or abuse.

If you have experienced trauma or abuse, it is important to seek professional help through therapy or with a spiritual teacher so you can safely work through your unresolved emotional issues in a healthy and safe environment.

You deserve to heal and be whole. Avoidance will only keep you stuck in suffering. In this article, we will explore this toxic positivity!! Let’s Go!!!

What is Spiritual Bypassing?

Perhaps you’ve heard of the term “spiritual bypassing.” It’s when we use spirituality to avoid dealing with our shadow selves. In other words, it’s a form of denial.

We all have parts of ourselves we’d rather not look at, so we push them aside and pretend they don’t exist.

Spiritual bypassing is the practice of avoiding one’s shadows by utilizing one’s spiritual journey. What we are doing is boosting the spiritual ego.

The problem is that our shadows will never go away on their own. Ignoring them doesn’t make them disappear. It often has the opposite effect.

When we try to push our shadows down, they come back even stronger. The only way to truly heal our shadow selves is to face them head-on.

That means acknowledging the parts of ourselves we’re ashamed of and working through the pain and challenging emotions. It’s not easy, but it’s the only way to become whole.

There’s no avoiding it: we’re in this mess together. Whether we like it or not, we’re all interconnected.

What happens to one of us affects us all. This is especially true when it comes to the big, uncomfortable realities and injustices in our society.

When we ignore these problems, we’re not just turning a blind eye to the suffering of others – we’re also denying our role in creating a healthier, more just world.

Avoidance may seem like the easier path, but it ultimately leads to stagnation and disconnection. Only by facing these issues head-on can we hope to move forward on the collective journey of ego death and spiritual growth.

So let’s roll up our sleeves and get to work – our future depends on it.

The Culprit of Spiritual Bypassing…

It’s easy to see how spiritual bypassing can happen. We live in a world that often demands quick fixes and easy answers.

When we’re faced with pain or difficult emotions, it’s only natural to want to find a way to make them go away as quickly as possible.

And if we find a healing practice or spiritual teachings that seem to offer relief, it’s easy to cling to those teachings like the one true answer to all of our problems.

But the truth is, there is no one-size-fits-all solution to the challenges of life. We all experience pain and difficulties in our unique way, and what works for one person may not work for another.

Furthermore, the world is constantly changing, and what worked yesterday may not work today.

So it’s important to remember that any healing practice or teaching is only one part of the puzzle and that there is always room for growth, change, and evolution in our journey toward wellness.

The pursuit of knowledge is a worthy endeavor, but all too often we find ourselves chasing after mirages. We conflate infinite reality with finite reality and in doing so, we set ourselves up for disappointment.

The truth is that infinite reality is changeless, eternal, and transcendent while finite reality is subject to change, timebound, and dependent.

One refers to the absolute truth of the oneness of all while the other refers to the observable phenomena of worldly existence.

It’s important to keep these two things separate in our minds or else we risk chasing shadows instead of substance.

It’s easy to see why some spiritual seekers might view the infinite as superior to the finite. After all, what could be more appealing than the notion of transcending the limitations of the physical world?

And yet, while there is no denying that the infinite is a reality, it is important to remember that the finite is also true (however) the finite is only true momentarily in this existence.

To denigrate the relative as an illusion is to miss out on the richness and beauty of life. The relative world may be limited, but it is also where we find love, laughter, and all the things that make life worth living.

So while it is certainly worthwhile to pursue glimpses of the infinite, let us not forget that the finite is also real and deserving of our attention and shouldn’t be bypassed.

Signs of Spiritual Bypassing

Hiding behind spirituality, spiritual materialism, or spiritual practice will get us nowhere, here are some of the signs of spiritual bypassing:

Spiritual bypassing is built into every esteemed religious practice.

This is because, at its core, spiritual bypassing is about choosing to ignore or deny the negative aspects of life in favor of a more idealized version.

It’s about seeking escape from the messiness of reality in favor of a peaceful fantasyland. And what’s more spiritual than that? Every religion has its way of spiritual bypassing, and there are as many reasons for doing it as there are people who practice it.

For some on the spiritual journey, it’s a way to avoid facing difficult truths about themselves or the world. For others, it’s a way to find comfort in the face of suffering.

For others, it’s simply a matter of habit or tradition. No matter the reason, spiritual bypassing is an integral part of every religious practice.

If you’re the type of person who tends to bottle up your emotions or push away any discomfort, then you might want to think twice before starting a meditation practice.

While meditation can be incredibly helpful in managing anxiety and promoting calm, it can also reinforce a tendency toward detachment and disengagement from your personal experience.

If you’re not careful, you might find yourself using meditation as a form of spiritual bypassing, rather than seeing clearly what your uncomfortable emotions are showing you.

So, if you’re looking to get in touch with your emotions, it might be better to talk with an Embodiment Coach or work with a meditation teacher at the beginning of your meditation practice.

Frequency Will Show Your Spiritual Bypassing

The goal is authenticity, to be our true selves, warts and all. It is about being honest with ourselves about our flaws and shortcomings, and about acknowledging the darkness within us as well as the light.

It is about coming to terms with the fact that we are not perfect and that we will never be perfect. And it is about accepting ourselves, just as we are.

This doesn’t mean that we should stop striving for self-improvement; rather, it means that we should accept ourselves as we are, while also recognizing that we have the potential to be so much more.

When we are authentic, we are in alignment with our true selves. We are living by our values and beliefs. We can also create deep and meaningful connections with others because we are not hiding anything from them.

We are being real, and they can see us for who we are. Authenticity is the highest state of being for the spiritual practitioner because it is only when we are authentic that we can truly be at peace with ourselves.

And when we are at peace with ourselves, we can also be at peace with the world around us, this is why spiritual bypassing can be so frustrating.

Consequences of Spiritual Bypass

Spiritual bypassing, a term coined by psychologist John Welwood, refers to the use of spiritual practices to avoid confronting unresolved emotional issues and psychological wounds.

While spiritual bypassing might offer temporary relief, its long-term consequences can be detrimental to personal growth and mental health.

1. Stunted Personal and Spiritual Growth By avoiding uncomfortable emotions and difficult life situations, individuals miss out on opportunities for growth and learning.

Spiritual bypassing can create an illusion of enlightenment, while deep-seated issues remain unaddressed. This avoidance can lead to a superficial sense of peace rather than genuine spiritual evolution​.

2. Increased Emotional Distress: Ignoring negative emotions can intensify them over time. Repressed feelings, such as anger, sadness, and anxiety, can resurface with greater intensity, leading to mental health issues like depression and chronic stress.

Emotional repression is often unconscious, making individuals believe they are pursuing spiritual growth while avoiding the messy aspects of human experience​.

3. Damaged Relationships: Spiritual bypassing can negatively impact interpersonal relationships. Avoiding personal issues can lead to misunderstandings and unresolved conflicts, creating tension and distance between individuals.

Moreover, using spirituality as a shield can result in dismissing others’ emotions, which may be perceived as a lack of empathy or understanding.

4. Cognitive Dissonance and Responsibility Avoidance: People engaging in spiritual bypassing may experience cognitive dissonance when their actions do not align with their beliefs.

This discomfort can lead to shifting blame onto others and avoiding personal responsibility. For instance, phrases like “everything happens for a reason” can serve as a way to deflect accountability and avoid confronting the underlying issues​.

5. Emotional Confusion and Narcissism: Spiritual bypassing can result in emotional confusion, as individuals struggle to process their true feelings. This can manifest as spiritual narcissism, where spiritual practices are used to enhance self-importance rather than genuine self-improvement.

This behavior often involves using spirituality to elevate oneself while undermining others.

6. Exaggerated Tolerance and Codependency: An exaggerated tolerance of inappropriate behavior and codependency are also potential outcomes.

By constantly trying to maintain a facade of positivity and spiritual superiority, individuals might tolerate harmful behavior or become overly reliant on others for emotional stability​.

Addressing Spiritual Bypass

To overcome spiritual bypassing, it is crucial to integrate emotional honesty with spiritual practices. This involves:

Recognizing and addressing spiritual bypassing is a step towards holistic well-being, allowing for genuine spiritual and personal development.

Spiritual Escape

Spiritual bypassing is a form of escapism where spiritual concepts are used to avoid dealing with difficult life situations. It’s often used as a form of denial, where someone pretends that their problems don’t exist or that they’re not responsible for them.

This can lead to a one-sided form of spirituality where one aspect of life is elevated at the expense of its opposite.

For example, objective truth (being valued more) is employed to negate subjective truth. 5d is preferred and 3d is devalued in terms of non-physicality.

Transcendence is preferred to bodily presence, and detachment is preferred to emotional experience. This practice of putting a premium on one pole over the other results in severe trauma.

Not only does it prevent us from seeing the world in its fullness, but it also leads to spiritual bypassing where we avoid dealing with our pain and problems.

If we want to create true healing and balance in our lives, we need to embrace all aspects of our experience, both the light and the dark.

Being a positive spiritual being may become a substitute personality that masks and protects against an underlying inadequate one. (The Ego takes on a new persona).

The spiritual idea we have of ourselves is used to whitewash over the truth of our true concept of ourselves, which is that we feel bad about ourselves.

We feel that we are insufficient or unworthy. We believe that we are inherently evil. Then, even if we are working hard, our spiritual practice may be used to support denial and defense.

And when spiritual practices are used in this way, they impede our growth and prevent us from waking up and coming into fuller consciousness.

So, if you find yourself attracted to a particular spiritual path or teaching, it might be helpful to inquire: is this something I am using to defend myself against my badness?

Is this something I am using to prop up an unsatisfactory self-image? If so, then no matter how excellent the teaching or how great the teacher is, it might be best to let go of it and move on.

Sometimes it’s like we have split personality disorder. There’s our spiritual side, which is focused on becoming our highest selves, and then there’s our day-to-day self, which is constantly falling short.

We can never truly become the embodiment of the higher self because we are still bypassing our lower self, as our unwanted self.

Our spiritual practice cannot ever fully penetrate our life and make us feel good if we are using spiritual principles to avoid negative emotions or to avoid pain.

If we want to become truly integrated beings, we need to learn to accept all parts of ourselves – the light and the dark, the good and the bad. Only then can we start to live our lives from a place of wholeness.

A word from Create Higher Vibrations

If you’re still not sure what spiritual bypassing vs authentic healing is, it’s using spiritual concepts to avoid dealing with your authentic self, your humanness.

It’s a way of saying “I create my reality” while worry festers in the back of your mind. It’s thinking you should just unconditionally love someone while being in complete resistance to this person.

It’s telling yourself the universe is benevolent and good, while also being afraid to leave your house because bad things could happen.

You are in a spiritual bypass when you’re kind to others, but you are not kind to yourself – even when you mess up.

If any of this sounds familiar, then chances are you struggle with spiritual bypassing.

But don’t worry, there’s hope for us all! We can return from the land of Spiritual Bypassing to the embrace of reality with a little self-awareness and effort.

If you find yourself struggling with spiritual bypassing and would like to schedule a session with me, please reach out!

Namaste 🙂