No, it was because I was sooooooooooooooooo sure <\/strong>I was going to be enlightened soon, so why bother with the career\/making money? LOL, I was going to laugh at all these losers working in their cubicle when I became an enlightened Buddha, and they came to me for blessing. “Bitches, you should have been meditating like me instead of whatever you were doing,”<\/em> I would laugh at them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Narrator Voice: <\/em><\/strong>But it did not go as planned for Shantnu… Dum-da-dummmmmmm<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Not only did I not become enlightened, but my career also suffered too. I was stuck in a dead end job where I didn’t get a promotion for 10 years and the bare minimum pay rises. I became “that” guy everyone ignored and moved to dead-end projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But worse: At one point, around 2011, I felt so angry at the Universe\/God I said fuck it! And gave up meditation and became an atheist. For 6 long years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Where had I gone wrong? I had assumed that once I became enlightened all my problems would go away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I was using spirituality to hide from my problems.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n That, in a nutshell, is Spiritual Bypassing. Not only does it harm your spiritual life, but it also harms your material life as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The term was coined by John Welwood<\/a>. He said:<\/p>\n\n\n\n I noticed a widespread tendency to use spiritual ideas and practices to sidestep or avoid facing unresolved emotional issues, psychological wounds, and unfinished developmental tasks. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n 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. And then we tend to use absolute truth to disparage or dismiss relative human needs, feelings, psychological problems, relational difficulties, and developmental deficits.<\/em><\/p>\nhttp:\/\/www.johnwelwood.com\/articles\/TRIC_interview_uncut.doc<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n We start believing that we don’t need to fix our psychological problems because once we become enlightened they will all go away (and to be honest, that’s how traditional Hindu and Buddhist teachers have taught meditation for centuries).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Not only do we ignore our humanness, but we also treat it with contempt, something to get rid of or “transcend”. I call this phenomenon Spiritual Arrogance.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n One thing that used to piss me off about many Westerners when they first discovered Eastern traditions– they would shave their heads, wear an orange robe and call themselves something like Swami Fart-ananda (translation: One who finds bliss in farts).<\/p>\n\n\n\n I could never explain why this irritated me till I read this delightful article<\/a>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Shtick is a Yiddish word that means “bit” or “piece.” In show business it came to refer to a gimmick or routine that is part of a performer’s regular act. A shtick might also be an adopted persona that is maintained across a performer’s career. The personas used by the Marx Brothers in all of their films are great examples. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n It seems to me that spiritual bypassing often begins when people adapt spirituality as a shtick, or a persona, instead of practicing to get to the root of dukkha. They wrap themselves in a Spiritual Person persona and ignore what’s beneath the surface. Then, instead of honestly dealing with their wounds, fears, and issues, John Welwood says, their spiritual practice is taken over by a “spiritual superego.” They go about “making spiritual teachings into prescriptions about what you should do, how you should think, how you should speak, how you should feel.”<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n This is not true spiritual practice; it’s shtick. And when we repress negative emotions and urges instead of working with them honestly, they remain in our subconscious where they continue to jerk us around.<\/em><\/p>\nhttps:\/\/www.learnreligions.com\/spiritual-bypassing-449505<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n And that’s what I see in a lot of spiritual circles– shtick. It’s all “Oooh, look at me, I’m so spiritual, I will speak in this soft voice while eating kale and avocado.”<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n The Spiritual Bypassing Book<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n There is a great book on spiritual bypassing by Robert Masters called Spiritual Bypassing<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I’d had the book for some time sitting on my Kindle but I had never read it as I thought it was stupid. Until one day my bypassing became too much and I read the book, and was like “Wow! This is awesome. Why didn’t I read the book before?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n I guess I hadn’t been ready to receive the message. Robert gives several ways to bypass, not all of which might be obvious.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Aspects of spiritual bypassing include exaggerated detachment, emotional numbing and repression, overemphasis on the positive, anger-phobia, blind or overly tolerant compassion, weak or too porous boundaries, lopsided development (cognitive intelligence often being far ahead of emotional and moral intelligence), debilitating judgment about one\u2019s negativity or shadow elements, devaluation of the personal relative to the spiritual, and delusions of having arrived at a higher level of being.<\/em><\/p>\nhttps:\/\/www.robertmasters.com\/2013\/04\/29\/spiritual-bypassing\/<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Let me go over some of the ways we can bypass what Roberts mentions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Exaggerated Detachment: <\/strong>The whole “The world is an illusion, lah-di-dah” crowd (whom I’ve called the biggest idiots in the spiritual community<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Toxic Positivity \/ Anger Phobia<\/strong>: I’ve written about Toxic Positivity here<\/a>. In bypassing only certain “positive” emotions are allowed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Blind or overly tolerant compassion, weak or too porous boundaries<\/strong>: Leads people to become exploited by cults or abusive\/narcissistic people. This is a really serious issue, one of the most serious in my opinion, as this fake “compassion” opens us to abuse, but no one in the spiritual circles talks about how to escape this abuse, and that it’s okay not to be kind or compassionate to narcissistic assholes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One thing that pisses me off is the whole “Oh you need to forgive” that victims of abuse are given. Along with the Law of Attraction mafia<\/a> it is one of the places where we are shamed and blamed for suffering abuse. I wrote a whole post on it F*ck Forgiveness<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Devaluation of the personal relative to the spiritual<\/strong>: This was me, ignoring my career\/health\/relationships while chasing after some spiritual high. Misquoting Ben:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Those who give up the material world for the spiritual lose both and deserve neither.<\/em><\/p>\nMe, misquoting Benjamin Franklin<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Delusions of Grandeur<\/strong>: No explanation needed. Every fake guru, every abusive teacher, all of these spiritual ascended masters who had one experience and decided they were now enlightened and ready to teach. You can usually spot these as they are very narcissistic and suffer from anger issues. They claim to be oh-so-enlightened but challenge them even a little and they will start belittling you or insulting you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/shant.nu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/image-1.png\")
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