What Is Spirituality Without Spiritual Bypassing?

An Excerpt from LOVE BIGGER: An Exploration of Spirituality Without Spiritual Bypassing

In the installment from LOVE BIGGER: An Exploration of Spirituality Without Spiritual Bypassing, How Do You Define A “Spiritual” Person, I shared the crowd sourced answers my Facebook community shared with me, along with a story about a couple who both judged each other as the lesser spiritual being.

But what about me, some of you have asked? How do I define a “spiritual” person? What is spirituality without spiritual bypassing to me?

I used to think a spiritual person was someone who took responsibility for all the bad things that happened to them, who “got out of their victim story,” who meditated on world peace instead of participating in “polarizing” angry protest, who focused on Oneness and unity rather than division, who was non-judgmental and accepting. I thought a spiritual person had calm, dispassionate equanimity in the face of loss, disagreements, or conflict, who practiced unconditional love- truly loving with zero conditions. I glorified a guru who sat up on the stage on the day after his father died and shed zero tears. I thought that made him strong. I yearned to be that zen. How cool it would be if I was that unperturbable, if nothing got under my skin and activated my ego, if I could be pure Spirit, no matter what someone else was doing to me and no matter what loss or injustice might befall me one day.

I thought a spiritual person was someone who practiced non-violence in every way, even if it meant failing to protect oneself in self-defense or failing to protest when someone is perpetrating abuse. I studied Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. and wrong-headedly used their teachings to justify not calling the police when I was criminally assaulted. I thought it was spiritual to let someone hit me and just stand there, loving them, to let someone assault me and then maybe experience a heart-opening when I didn’t fight back, to have a contradictory experience that might help someone who expected me to engage in reciprocal violence have a change of heart. I thought social justice activists should meditate more and didn’t understand why they carried picket signs that said things like “No justice, no peace.” Why wouldn’t they want peace?

In other words, I spiritualized my conflict avoidance, which was a protector part that kept me from feeling flooded by the emotions of parts that were so scared of conflict that I’d do anything to avoid confronting someone and demanding justice, even if it made no rational sense to do so. My Christian upbringing supported this idea of what a spiritual person is. After all, the Bible discourages self defense, teaching that if someone slaps you on one side of your face, you’re supposed to “turn the other cheek.” It judges holding perpetrators of abuse accountable by instructing followers to forgive seventy times seven, and has no caveat for whether or not the perpetrator is remorseful or continuing to perpetrate abuse. The Bible also has multiple verses promoting loving without conditions, loving others more than yourself, without acknowledging that letting someone sleep in your bed or live in your house should absolutely be conditional upon whether or not they are safe to have that close.

And then I got into therapy and realized that what I thought was a spiritual practice was actually conflict avoidance in holy drag, a fawning people-pleasing fake niceness covering up a primal terror of confrontation or letting other people down. I was the poster child for what Buddhist psychologist John Welwood, PhD labelled “spiritual bypassing.” (To learn more about spirituality bypassing, you’re invited to sign up for Spiritual Bypassing 101 here.)

I still have a deeply abiding spiritual aspect of my being and practice, but now, I think very differently about what it means to be a spiritual person. What do I mean by that? So what would a non-bypassing spiritual person be like? What are my thoughts and ideas about spirituality now, after a decade of trauma therapy? Take it with a grain of salt, but let me dare to express how differently I think about such things now…

I think each of us have to answer the question of “What is spirituality without spiritual bypassing?” in our own ways, so all I can do is speak for myself. But here’s what I now believe.

I am a mystic, an animist, an Internal Family Systems (IFS) practitioner and teacher, and a devoted lover of Mystery. I believe in the Divine spark within all matter, whether you call that spark God or Goddess or energy or the Universe or Santa Claus or whatever. The spirituality that most resonates with me is the spirituality most Indigenous people I've met believe in, nature-based animism that acknowledges that all matter has consciousness and is deserving of respect, devotion, compassion, and kindness. 

My most beloved "God" lives inside of me and connects me to that spark in all beings. I call it my Inner Pilot Light, IFS calls it “Self,” and every mystical religion, psychotherapy, and philosophy has its own name for this unquestionable and universal imminent divinity.  In IFS, Self is distinguished by its qualities, the 8 C’s of Self- curiosity, compassion, clarity, connectedness, creativity, courage, confidence, and calmness. It’s important to point out that compassion and courage ride shotgun with each other in this framework. Compassion is not the neurotically tolerant, limp, weak justification for avoiding confrontation when necessary. It’s both kind and gentle but also fiery, fierce, and courageous when appropriate.

Fierce compassion shows up in my impulse towards taking a firm stand when my integrity requires me to do so, as in my social justice and anti-racist work. I can also be fiercely compassionate in my personal relationships when someone is violating my boundaries and being abusive, or when I’m not being adequately compassionate to my own parts or to parts of someone else I care about that may be acting out. If I am not standing up for myself or others who are vulnerable, if I am fawning and accommodating when confrontation would be self-protective or protective of someone who struggles to protect themselves, I am not being compassionate; I’m being conflict avoidant.

I can’t prove this to be true, other than through personal anecdotes and the stories others tell me (which is totally unscientific!) But I believe there is a kind of universal conductor that works through my Inner Pilot Light to guide me towards some kind of Divine Will, a sort of organizing intelligence that’s not entirely random. But I also don't believe in some fixed destiny or a God outside me that picks what happens to me or punishes me if I exercise free will and stray off the intended course.

As much as it scares me, I do actually believe in meaningless randomness. I think some people are just bystanders who get caught in the crossfire of human violence or natural disasters or someone else’s out of control sociopathy. I don’t know which horrible outcomes are random and which have some sort of meaning, but I don’t pretend I do know.

I no longer believe in karma as it's commonly understood (as a kind of punishment for sin or wrongdoing). But I do believe in natural consequences, and when we step away from what is loving (to our own parts and to other beings), things can get wonky. That's why spirituality must also be political. I see the climate crisis, patriarchy, systemic racism, homophobia, and any violation of human rights as spiritual and moral issues. I believe people who consider themselves spiritual must not turn a blind eye to these kinds of oppressive injustices. Spiritualizing conflict avoidance to justify not getting involved politically is just another form of conflict avoidance, one rooted in privilege, a way to side with the oppressor by failing to side with the oppressed- and then rationalizing why it’s okay to do so. I don’t think that’s spiritual anymore; I think it’s a trauma response.

I don't know why bad things happen to good and innocent people, but I certainly am not going to pretend I do. I no longer believe your soul chose your traumas or that everything happens for a reason or that your painful life experiences are happening FOR you rather than TO you. I believe we can exercise our spirituality in how we cope with traumatic events, how we choose to make meaning out of them, and how we treat ourselves and other people as a result of them. But I do not believe we’ve “manifested” our traumas or caused them from past karma because of negative thinking or misdeeds from past lives. I’m much more likely to trust someone who says “I have no idea why suffering exists” than anyone who claims to have a pat answer.

I believe spiritual guidance does exist and that we can trust it. I believe it comes from what I call our four "Whole Health Intelligences"- not just mental intelligence, but also intuitive intelligence, emotional intelligence, and somatic intelligence. Some people may experience this guidance coming from spirit guides, animal spirits, angelic beings, or other "outside" forces. But for me, at this point in my journey, it comes from my own Self (heart, body, mind, emotions, and wisdom) as my Self connects me to the Great Self of all embodied, incarnate beings, Earth, and the cosmos.

When I attune to, trust, and have the courage to follow these intelligences and the guidance of Self, I feel a sense of "being in the flow," or the Tao, or whatever you want to call this state of serendipitously unfolding synchronicity, which can feel magical. I also get that some of what I'm calling ease or flow may be the result of my many privileges, so I'm really questioning all that. I certainly don’t think that when I’m in the flow, I’m better than someone who isn’t or that when I’m not in the flow, I’ve done something terribly wrong.

IFS has become the closest thing to a religion that I follow, trust, and practice, and it has served as an antidote to spiritual bypassing for me. And yes, it was created by a white male, so it may have inherent biases I cannot see because of my whiteness and because of my patriarchal conditioning. Critics of IFS have pointed out that, because the unburdening process is so similar to shamanic soul retrieval processes, it may be guilty of cultural appropriation. I can see their point and don’t consider myself an IFS evangelist.

When I asked IFS founder Richard Schwartz to respond to this accusation, he said, “I had developed IFS and was working with a small group for several years when Michi Rose joined us and pointed out the similarity to shamanic soul retrieval work that she had been studying. I looked at that work and agreed that there were similarities- we enter a similar inner world- but also many important differences. At that point I had been using light to unburden parts but was finding that some didn’t like the light. Michi suggested that we broaden the offering to include the other elements which is where the menu of the elements as ways to unburden came from. That is the only aspect of shamanism that might be considered borrowed or appropriated.”

I have yet to find any existing spiritual system that doesn’t have its potential biases and problem areas.  But IFS is still the closest thing I can find to an explanation of the truth of my genuine spiritual and mystical experiences.

My personal spirituality mostly centers around how to be a loving citizen of Planet Earth and how to be a loving parent and mature leader for my inner children, which definitely requires healthy confrontation from time to time. Nature is my church, so environmental activism has to be part of my spiritual life. Earth's inhabitants are my congregation, so social justice has to be part of my spirituality. None of us are free until we are all free. All species of life and all forms of matter deserve our worship and devotion. 

I do not support any human-centric religion because there is a spark of God in everything, not just humans. One need only study the Fibonacci sequence in nature to realize what a miracle the heaven we live in is. Earth offerings are part of my spiritual practice, as is walking in nature several times a day and becoming intimate with my "parts" via IFS every morning and sometimes several other times each day, in addition to my weekly therapy sessions and daily parts processing with my processing partner Emma.

Science is also part of my spirituality, and modern medicine can be a miracle- although we need to update the evidence-based medicine model to resolve the false assumptions upon which this model is based. We also need to resist making science a religious dogma that cannot be mended when we discover it has flaws and is imperfect.

I don't believe in dogma and don't trust anyone in the world of spirituality or science who does. Science can be every bit as much of a dogmatic religion and fundamentalism can! People with dogmatic beliefs think they're certain, they're not open, curious, and humble, they're not willing to be challenged or admit when they're wrong, and this makes them dangerous. My beliefs change all of the time, which humbles me because I keep thinking I've hit the limit of the numbers of thinking errors people can make in one lifetime and then I outdo myself- again. I've played with the idea of believing nothing, and that doesn't feel right either. So beliefs are like waves in the ocean for me, something my mind likes to roll with, but as changing as the tides.

I believe in Mystery, and if Mystery could be demystified by science (so we could control the Mystery, of course), I'm not sure It would want to be. Which kind of makes me chuckle, because my curious scientist parts sure do want to understand the mysteries of things like spontaneous healing and miracle cures. Yet a decade of study, direct experience and research has failed to demystify that mystery. Which is kind of cute. I think the Mystery has a sense of humor and likes to play hide and seek.

I'm reluctant to claim to "know" anything, which is why I'm calling these beliefs and not truths, but if I know anything, it's that when our hearts take the lead and we have the courage to follow our hearts (or Inner Pilot Lights or "center" or "Self"), our spirituality becomes natural and doesn't require belief, which is cognitive (attaching to beliefs means we're in our heads, not our hearts.) When we're in our hearts, compassionate action and being a benevolent presence in the world is the only thing that makes sense any more. Sometimes compassionate action looks passionate and fierce, but if it's coming from the heart, it's the fierce love of the Mama Bear standing up for those more vulnerable. Any science, medicine, or spirituality that doesn't protect the vulnerable needs to get heave-hoed onto the garbage bin.

I also believe that spirituality is an embodied experience, something that connects us to the divinity of the life force in the body,  not something that supports us to leave the body. So any healthy spirituality should help us stay in the body, heal the parts that want to get out of the body or can’t handle the emotional or physical pain of staying in the body, and support healing and integration for parts that experienced trauma so young that the soul never actually incarnated fully in the body. While it may feel temporarily ecstatic to leave the body and travel in nether regions, my spirituality asks me to be here on Earth, in my body, politically and socially engaged and active with others, and being a good steward of this opportunity to be human at this point in time.

My spiritual teacher Rachel Naomi Remen, MD, whose grandfather was a Kabbalah rabbi, wrote a children’s book about a Kabbalah story whose message is part of my spirituality. In the introduction, she writes, “In the beginning, there was only darkness, and then a great ray of light ended the darkness, and the world was born, the world of a thousand thousand things. It was filled with light. Then something unexpected happened, and the light of the world broke into millions of sparks of light. These sparks fell everywhere. They fell into everyone and everything. This is why you were born and I was born and everyone was born- to find the light and change the world.”

For The Birthday Of The World

By Rachel Naomi Remen, MD

The following excerpt is from the author’s note of the children’s book The Birthday of the World.

At this time in the history of things, it would be easy to be overwhelmed by despair and blinded by judgment, so paralyzed by fear that we feel powerless to make a difference. But we are all each enough, just as we are, to make a difference. You are enough, just as you are, to heal the world. The Birthday of the World is about healing the world one heart at a time. It is about seeing with your heart. If you see with your heart, you can heal the world.

How do you see with your heart? Seeing with the heart is not something that we are taught. It is a capacity that we are born with. It is something we remember. But sometimes we forget how to see with our hearts as we get older.

Like your eyes, your heart is an organ of vision, a way of seeing. When you look at everyone and everything with your heart, you see things that you would not see if you only looked with your eyes. It’s like the difference between seeing things in black and white and seeing things in color. When you remember and begin to see with your heart again, the world fills with color. You see the light that is hidden in everyone and everything.

When you see with your heart, you notice things you have never noticed before. You can see below the surface of things, the appearance of things, and discover extraordinary things in ordinary people. When you see with your heart, you see what is hidden; you see the beginnings of things: the seeds that will one day become a mighty forest.

When you see an acorn with your heart, you know that you are holding not a little woody thing but a great tree in the palm of your hand. To see with the heart is to see the future. I see the light in you, dear reader. You are enough, just as you are, to heal the world.

Like my teacher, I believe we all have gifts and it is our job- and the job of our communities- to find and develop those gifts and then give them away. Giving our gifts away is part of our spiritual purpose on this planet at this time. Everyone’s gifts matter, and nobody’s gifts matter any more or less than anyone else’s gifts. Giving our gifts away allows us to die spent, on purpose, and with the fulfillment of knowing our being is enough and our doing was enough to matter and deserve dignity and feel fulfilled in having lived out our life’s purpose.

I don’t know what happens after we die, although I’ve been at the bedside of enough dying patients and witnessed enough deaths, both in my personal life and as a doctor, to believe our being does not end when our incarnations in bodies do. What happens after that is a Mystery, and as I said before, I’m not sure the Mystery wants to reveal itself until we get to that point.

I stand for peace. Period. Peace is at the core of my spirituality. Non-violence, non-dehumanization, and social justice are the roots upon which my desire to extend compassion to all beings rises. AND my desire for peace and social justice will not prevent me from taking a firm stand, naming what is morally wrong, creating a firm boundary against hatred in order to protect the marginalized and vulnerable, and non-violently refusing to just look the other way and participate in tolerating those who do not stand for human rights for all beings. Silence is violence, if you hold certain privileges, like being white. I now understand and agree with activists who say “No justice, no peace.”

As part of my spirituality,  I am committed to doing my work and putting in the emotional and physical labor to try my best to be a white ally who actively practices anti-racism and wishes to be sensitive to the heart, bodies, souls, and livelihoods of BIPOC. That said, I will not dehumanize white people either, even the ones who behave badly because of their own trauma symptoms.  Our spirituality has to be big enough and trauma-informed enough to expand our hearts enough to hold within the wholeness of humanity the potential for healing- for everyone, with no exclusions. Yes, we need clear boundaries, protection of the vulnerable from people with narcissistic and sociopathic parts, and we need to hold perpetrators accountable, ideally with restorative justice, rather than criminal justice. It’s fine to have our feelings about people who do things we don’t like. But unless we can resist making anyone a monster and dehumanizing them, we cannot call whatever we’re doing “spiritual.”

So what else can we trust in the realm of spirituality? Are there guiding principles we might take into consideration as we question any indoctrination we might have been subjected to,, inquire within, and imagine a deeper, richer, more trauma-informed, intimate, embodied kind of spirituality? What arises to take the place of old beliefs and practices that may help some people, some times, but may not be universally true or helpful at all times to all people? What kind of spirituality might feel true to anyone, including Black Indigenous People of Color, LGBTQIA+, disabled people, and others who have felt oppressed by many religious or New Age beliefs that have been used to silence them, judge them as inferior, blame them for their misfortune, or otherwise justify not taking actions towards social justice? 

More importantly, what is YOUR belief and opinion about what non-bypassing spirituality means for YOU? I’d love to hear your feedback.