I was reminded of this term, Spiritual Bypass, and when I first heard it, it seemed confusing to me. Spiritual Bypass was first introduced by a psychotherapist named John Welwood in the 80’s. He defined Spiritual Bypass as using “spiritual ideas and practices to sidestep personal, emotional ‘unfinished business,’ to shore up a shaky sense of self, or to belittle basic needs, feelings, and developmental tasks,” from his book Toward a Psychology of Awakening.
I’ve always been intrigued by this statement as I hang around many spiritually-based people. I used to attend Mile Hi Church and I would attend the business group on Thursday mornings. Sometimes I would run into some really “out there” people, in my opinion, of course. One man was always overly happy and ALWAYS raved about life or others. He didn’t seem authentic in his happiness and enthusiasm, so I wondered about it. Would this be a good example of Spiritual Bypass, someone who may be going through a divorce but show people that he or she is extremely happy and excited about life? Who knows, maybe in that instance, the person is super happy to be rid of their mate, but I think we instinctively know when we meet people who are overly enthusiastic.
In the Spiritual community, it is touted to be authentic and truthful about how you feel and what is going on with you. I tend to be honest about how I’m feeling to people close to me. If I’m depressed, I say so. If they ask me how I’m doing and I’m feeling discouraged, I say so. I do know people who are not an open book so it is always a guessing game as to how they are really doing. It does come down to trust. Do we trust this person to share how we are doing? I think we instinctively know. Truth is part of Spiritual Bypass, being truthful to ourselves about what is going on with us, not masking it with a Spiritual response.
Currently, truth is a misnomer. We are always questioning if what we hear is true. I was always a person in the past that if someone said something to me, I believed it. Another word for that is being gullible. Yep, that would be me. But now, in this political and media-driven environment, we have to question everything. I don’t believe everything I hear anymore and maybe that is a good thing. But going back to Spiritual Bypass, we may think we know the truth and we use spirituality or religion to explain it away, would this be Spiritual Bypass? I don’t know but all I know is I’m going to keep an eye out when I may be using Spiritual Bypass. My mom used to call it “holier than thou”. Is that Spiritual Bypass? What do you think?