Rant: Spiritual Bypassing and Toxic Positivity

In this episode, I share a story with you that highlights the issues of spiritual bypassing in the spiritual, holistic, and witchcraft community. Spiritual bypassing, toxic positivity, and love and light are thrown around often, but don't actually create the change they wish to make. Instead, they push real issues into the shadows and lock them away. 

When we do this, let hate off the hook, and refuse to look at personal situations that need reflection. In this episode, I share how I believe that sacred rage, clear boundaries, and grounded tools like tarot can help us face hard truths and act with integrity.

The main issues discussed:

• a story that highlights the problems with spiritual bypassing
• racism, sexism, and more should kill your vibe 
• addressing the hatred of people like Charlie Kirk and the Paradox of Tolerance
• using our spiritual tools to help us address and navigate the shadows of life (personal or collective), instead of suppressing them

Links:

Google Form for Feedback

The Paradox of Tolerance

VeryWell Mind Article

Charlie Kirk Article 1

Charlie Kirk Article 2

Mrs. Degree Article

Elle Article

Background track is Muses by Ballpoint, Cushy

My Links

If you like these episodes, please consider rating me wherever you are listening to me!

Chapters

• 2:18 Intentions, Moon, And A Warning
• 3:06 Reviews, Feedback, And Format Shift
• 4:47 Why This Rant Matters
• 5:20 The Charlie Kirk Post And Fallout
• 7:52 Spiritual Bypassing In The Community
• 11:12 Tarot As A Tool For Shadow Work
• 14:01 Why “Love And Light” Can Harm
• 17:17 Defining Spiritual Bypassing
• 20:42 We All Do It—Now What
• 22:58 Opinions Versus Facts
• 28:04 Compassion Has A Boundary
• 29:29 The Paradox Of Tolerance
• 32:01 Anger As Sacred Fuel
• 34:48 Authenticity Beats Numbness
• 36:58 Practical Ways To Avoid Bypassing
• 40:06 Do Your Work, Find Your Lane
• 42:21 Real Change Requires Discomfort
• 44:02 Closing Thanks And A Blessing

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 1:32

Hello, and thank you for tuning in to the Wolf Child Magic Podcast. My name is Ashley, your tarot reader, Rocky Mountain Witch, and overall Wolfchild, and I thank you for being here with me today. It is a Scorpio moon today, on the day that I am recording this, and I am also a Scorpio moon, and what five planets are in retrograde. So I think it is a very good time that we do a storytelling and a rant episode. But like all of these episodes, it's gonna lead into a deeper conversation. I'm not just gonna sit behind this microphone and bitch the whole time, although a Scorpio moon would be the time to do it. But I really want to start having some of these conversations more. So why not do it on a Scorpio moon when you are a Scorpio moon? A few things I want to say before we just get into this episode that first and foremost, if you could leave a review, if you like these types of episodes, you like what I'm saying in any episode, please consider rating me wherever you are listening to me. That is the best way for this podcast to grow, and it is so appreciated. The second thing is that in the show notes, I do have a Google form. It is a very quick form. I think overall there are four prompts. Shouldn't even take you five minutes to complete it. But in this form, I just want to pick your brain and see what type of content you want me to bring here or more to YouTube. I've had some responses of people wanting me to share more stuff on YouTube. And if YouTube goes well, I may be done with the podcast, unless you guys really, really want the podcast. But I won't know that if I don't know, um, if I don't pick your brain, right? So if you could fill that out and let me know your thoughts, also again, so appreciated. The last thing that I want to say is that because this is a rant, this is not going to be one of our fun, happy, cheery, you know, tarot deep dive episodes. This is going to open the door to some conversations that might be a little uncomfortable, but they need to be had. So I encourage you to stay. I encourage you to listen and to take what I say and take what works, leave what doesn't. However, there will probably be some cussing in this episode because that's just how I roll. And it's my podcast. So this is your fair warning that this is going to be one of those episodes. Also, while I will be sharing a story from my personal situation, I'm not gonna be sharing any personal details, giving out any names, because one, that is just not okay to do, but two, the details are actually not what's important. What is important is the narrative behind the situation, and that's where this storytelling rant is gonna lead into a deeper conversation. That is the point of this episode. The situation itself is just a catalyst for this topic. Alright, wolflings, girdle loins. No, I'm just kidding. I'm totally kidding. But let's just kind of begin here. I put a TikTok out that shared my feelings around what happened to Charlie Kirk and that I didn't feel bad. However, I also said in the post, and I stand by the fact that what happened to him shouldn't have happened to him. But I'm not gonna feign sympathy for someone who is a neo-Nazi and a white nationalist. That's never gonna happen because these are some of the most hateful people on this planet. These are people who think they are better than other people because they are straight, they are white, they are Christian, and then they are male. So hard fucking pass. So I put this TikTok out there and then I shared it to all of my socials, and I want to be very clear that I fully recognize that when I put anything out on social media, I am fair game just like everyone else is fair game. That is the nature of the internet. And because my social media platform is first and foremost to, you know, promote my business and to find my wolflings, I don't have a private profile. You could totally do that, and that makes it easier to weed out people who are just gonna come in and shit on you, but I don't do that, and also I don't care. You just have to have the thickest skin when engaging with social media because a lot of these people would never say these things to your face. And well, it's never okay to have any sort of violence, whether that's just violence or sexual violence, both of which I have had um said to me, that's never okay. But it also just highlights the fact that if these people get this triggered because you're saying something about a guy that was a hateful bigot, that already kind of speaks for itself. If that's what they're resorting to, points already kind of made, right? So I put this TikTok out there and then again shared it onto all of my socials and was getting, you know, likes and comments, people agreeing with me, people not agreeing with me, people getting, you know, really shitty in the comments and stuff. And one person who I have known in a professional capacity, like I met through a professional circle, commented on this video, and they were saying that I was putting a lot of negative energy into someone who had just, you know, kind of been brutally murdered and passed away, which I don't take that good, bad, or indifferent. That is just their opinion. There were other things that they said that I took issue with, not because they disagreed with me, but because they were putting this spiritual bypassing on me. What they were saying was so antithetical to what having a true spiritual practice is, in my opinion, because having a spiritual practice means that we don't gaslight, that we don't deny the really hard conversations or the really hard things in life, whether that is in a personal situation or in a more collective situation where we're trying to create change in this world. We actually see these things a lot in the spiritual community. We see these things play out where, you know, we will see people that claim to be very spiritual or very energetic, very holistic, witchy, tarot reader, whatever, sorceress, creatrix. And then they'll say things like love and light and good vibes only. And my brain just turns into an absolute dumpster fire. I have even had conversations with other spiritual people who will say things that like, if you are sick, it's because you are not manifesting your higher energy enough, and I just want to fucking puke. This is such a problem because often we come to a spiritual witchcraft, tarot, holistic lifestyle and practice in our lives because of hardships, because of you know, pain and trauma or things that have happened. You know, I have shared my story multiple times that when I first found tarot, it was not this wonderful, beautiful moment in my life. I was in real pain, I was struggling, I was burned out, almost lost my relationship with Grizzly. Thank the goddess that I didn't. I was not in a good place. And I found the tarot because I was searching for anything to help me get out of it. And the tarot didn't do that, it helped me get through it, and that is exactly what I needed. I needed to shift the way I was dealing with things because I was spiritually bypassing, because I was just like on the surface, like I'm fine, I'm fine. And deep down, I was absolutely falling apart. And that is what is the catalyst for us finding these tools, is us going through really hard times in our lives. So to then turn around and then either continue to spiritually bypass in a personal setting or to create a space, especially as a professional where there's spiritual bypassing for others, like kind of putting that narrative out there that if they're not doing this, then they're wrong. That is just so deeply problematic. This is also problematic because as spiritual people, we should be leaning into these tools to create true positive change. And I'm not talking about just, you know, toxic positivity, which we will get into. I'm talking about as a tarot reader, as a witch, especially as a witch, I would argue, as a holistic person, as a spiritual person, we should be leaning into the shadow of this life even more. Because if we want to see real change where these injustices don't happen, where these hardships aren't there, we have to lean into some really, really ugly shit. And we bring all these tools, all this knowledge, all these resources, all of our community to help us stand up and say, This is wrong, or I will not continue to act this way. No matter whether it's personal or it's collective, but I would argue, especially since it's collective, we should be bringing our tools to the task of creating this change because we have this in our armor to help us be guided through the hardest parts of our life. And we don't turn away from it, we don't deny it, we don't say no, it's not happening. We say this is happening, and here is where I can be of service and create real change. And finally, one of the other reasons why this is so wrong, and it's just it needs to be addressed. And I'm not sitting here trying to create any sort of shame because again, I've done this. We've all done this in some capacity, and sometimes we do just need to put on the face or create a little bit of detachment and denial from a situation in order to just maybe get through a moment or get through a day, you know. Sometimes we do just need a checkout of even our own bullshit, but it's not there to be the pattern, it's not there to be the norm, it's there to be uh something we use or something that we do for the moment until we can come back and address it in a helpful way. The reason why this is a problem, other than what I've just said already, is because some of these things that we're dealing with are not high vibe. Okay, so things like racism, sexism, genocide, atrocities against children that we're seeing in the world, that is not high vibe, and that is not supposed to be high vibe, but these are real. This is happening, and if we just want to keep shining a light in already light places, in places that are already beautiful and sunshine and fucking rainbows, that is not bringing the light where it needs to be shown, which is in the darkness, which is in these places or in these situations that don't have the light because it's horrific, it's hard, it's not easy to see these things that are happening in the world. And even looking that in a personal setting, like just to, you know, use myself as the um the kind of target here, that is exactly what I was doing. I was just constantly like trying to shine the light in my life on all this external stuff because I didn't want to deal with my bullshit that was deep and internal and shadowed and hard, and was really a call-out on a lot of things I was doing that were not helping my relationships, it wasn't helping my decision making, it wasn't helping my coping mechanisms. So that's where these types of mentalities just keep like an onion peeling back the layers. The more we start to do this, the more that we start to just continuously see at how the problem just gets deeper and more complex, and we just need to keep coming back to the task of addressing it. That is what being spiritual and a witch and uh using any sort of these modalities or holistic lifestyle practices, that is what this is for. It's not there so we can just always stay in the light and never look into the darkness. It is there so that we are armored and ready to face hardships with tools and with things that will help us create the change or at least draw our line in the sand and say this is where my boundary is. I'm not going to not talk about this, I'm not gonna not speak up for this or whatever it is. So we shouldn't be spiritually bypassing for so many reasons, but the real reason at the heart of it is because spiritual bypassing isn't doing a damn thing. It's not addressing anything, it's not changing anything, and it sure as shit isn't helping anything. And just to kind of give you a definition here of spiritual bypassing and toxic positivity. So this article will be listed in the show notes, but it says that in relation to spiritual bypassing, the term was first coined during the early 1980s by a transpersonal psychotherapist named John Wellwood in his book Toward a Psychology of Awakening. According to Wellwood, spiritual bypassing can be defined as a tendency to use spiritual ideas and practices to sidestep or avoid facing unresolved emotional issues, psychological wounds, and unfinished developmental tasks. As a therapist and Buddhist teacher, Wellwood began to notice that people, including himself, often wielded spirituality as a shield or type of defense mechanism. Rather than working through hard emotions or confronting unresolved issues, people would simply dismiss them with spiritual explanations. While it can be a way to protect the self from harm or to promote harmony between people, it doesn't actually resolve the issue. Instead, it merely glosses over a problem, leaving it to fuster without any true resolution. The article goes on to say some signs of spiritual bypassing are avoiding feelings of anger, believing in your own spiritual superiority as a way to hide from insecurities. This is so key because as we'll get back to my personal situation, we also see that this spiritual superiority translates into gatekeeping, it translates into gaslighting, it translates into a sense of like because you're calling this out and I don't like that you're calling this out, I'm better than you because I'm just gonna sit here and love and light and thoughts and prayers and good vibes only. Some more, believing that trauma that traumatic events must serve as learning experiences or that there are silver linings behind every negative experience, believing that spiritual practices such as meditation or prayer should always be positive, extremely high, often unattainable idealism, feelings of detachment, focusing only on spirituality and ignoring the present or reality, only focusing on the positive or being overly optimistic, projecting your own negative feelings onto others, pretending that things are fine when they are clearly not, thinking that people can just overcome their problems through positive thinking, or thinking you must rise above your emotions and using defense mechanisms such as denial or repression. Now, one of the reasons why I wanted to share those is because I want to highlight that we all do this. Okay, this is normal. This is very, very normal that ever even the Buddhist psychotherapist person was doing it. We all do this to some extent because again, sometimes we just need to put the mask on and just kind of detach and create distance. However, what we need to be doing is recognizing where we are doing it and why, and then sit with this understanding of oh, I'm just saying I'm fine because I don't want to have that conversation with that person. I'm just I don't have the energy for it right now, or I don't feel like I'm worthy of sharing my pain with someone, or I don't feel like this person would listen. Those are very different things. And so we need to start unpacking our spiritual bypassing, toxic positivity, and all of this stuff because the more that we unpack it, the more we can start to put in place better practices that create more vulnerability, that encourage authenticity in our life, that we don't have to hide parts of ourselves or what we're feeling, and that lead us to creating real train, real change, like real and true positive change. That is the whole point of using meditation, prayer, tarot, walks in nature, whatever your modality is, or how or however you are showing up to your practice or your life, that is the point of these things, that we actually lean in and create a more sustainable, authentic, vulnerable, and therefore well life instead of just denying because we don't want to deal with the hard conversations. So getting back to my personal situation that I was talking about, you know, this person said that they felt I was putting a lot of negative emotions out there for a situation like this, which again, they're it they're allowed to have that opinion, but then they went on to say, I'm not going to debate you or I disagree with who you think Charlie Kirk was. Okay, we need to pause here. Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, okay. Even if your opinion is that you think Charlie Kirk was right on everything, and me over here as a woke feminist liberal witch is wrong on everything, you are entitled to that opinion. What no one is entitled to are their own facts. Facts are facts, and the fact is, is he said a lot of racist shit. So let's just take a look at some of the things he said. If I see a black pilot, I'm gonna be like, oh boy, I hope he's qualified. Happening all the time in urban America, prowling blacks go around for fun to go target white people. That's a fact. It's happening more and more. If I'm dealing with someone in customer service who's a moronic black woman, I wonder is she there because of her excellence, or is she there because of affirmative action? If we would have said that Joy Reid and Michelle Obama and Sheila Jackson Lee and Katanji Brown Jackson were affirmative action picks, we would have been called racist. Now they're coming out and they're saying it for us. You do not have the brain processing power to otherwise be taken really seriously. You had to go and steal a white person's slot to be taken somewhat seriously. Okay. I mean, someone tell me that's not racist, because that's exactly what it is. But if that wasn't gross enough, let's look at some of his thoughts around women. So this article is also listed in the show notes, and this was a person who went to one of his events, and this is what they wrote, but Kirk's messaging went well beyond glorifying marriage and motherhood. It resoundingly discouraged women from entering the workforce or pursuing education. At one point, Kirk professed that husbands should do everything he can to not force his wife into the workforce. But when he received an earnest question from a woman asking what federal policies he would back to make it possible for single-income households to survive financially, he predictably did not have an answer. In one of the two QA sessions Kirk led, as teenage girls lined up to ask for his wisdom on navigating school or balancing a career life with motherhood, Kirk stressed that women should not attend college and that high school girls should prioritize marriage and children above all else. Kirk trumpeted that grades do not matter and that a true patriot should not care about them, suggesting that Christians get bad grades because they do not succumb to the woke teachings of the U.S. education system and the left. If girls do want to attend college, their end goal should not be a degree, but rather a husband, he clarified. At one point, he even touted the idea that American society should bring back the missus degree, a concept dating back to the mid-19th century, in which women attended college with the intention of finding a husband. So then when you click on that, it's like highlighted, and then it says the miss's degree. In the 1950s, women felt tremendous societal pressure to focus their aspirations on a wedding ring. The U.S. marriage rate was at an all-time high, and couples were tying the knot, an average younger than ever before. Getting married right out of high school or while in college was considered the norm. A common stereotype was that women went to a college to get a quote-unquote misses degree, meaning a husband. Although women had other aspirations in life, the dominant theme promoted in the culture and media at that time was that a husband was far more important for a young woman than a college degree. Despite the fact that employment rates also rose for women during this period, the women the media tended to focus on a woman's role in the home. If a woman wasn't engaged or married by her early 20s, good gravy, she was in danger of becoming an old maid. Okay, we're gonna stop. So that is not my opinion of Charlie Kirk. Okay, let's let's kind of rewind and come back to this situation. That is not my opinion. That is what he said. That is who he was. Again, you are more than welcome to agree with that. This person or any person is more than welcome to say that they agree with everything that he said, from saying that he hopes the black pilot is qualified to the fact that women should not even pursue college. You have every right to agree with that. What I find interesting is a lot of people who really do agree with him, with what he said and with his beliefs, will not say it though. Like they'll package it like this person did to me and be like, Well, I don't agree with who you think he was. Like, again, that's who he was. I just quickly did a Google search and all these articles started coming up and quotes and videos. I mean, this guy was prolific. He went out there and said these things. That is not me making this up over here. Again, you're entitled to your own opinions, but you're not entitled to your own facts. So I responded to this person after they left this comment because just as I put myself out there for comments or criticisms or disagreements when I post something on social media, so does anyone who comment. That means that you now have opened the door for me to respond. And I definitely tried in this situation to keep it um just honest and straightforward to not mince words, but also to not be overly rude or insulting. But I also was just gonna keep it straight and say that I stand by what I said, and also that the way that they were kind of packaging that to me was gaslighting. I don't think Charlie Kirk or anyone, Nick Fuentes, Alex Jones, Megan Kelly, like any any of these people and so many more, like I'm just listing a few off the top of my head, but I don't think any of these people are this way. That's not my thoughts. That's what they put out there. The person goes on to say that we just all need to have all of this compassion for everyone. And while I do agree that we need to have compassion, we need to find common ground with people, we need to have forgiveness for people to a point. To a point. My compassion, my empathy, my sympathy, my anything stops when someone brings in talking points like the great replacement theory, which is straight out of a white nationalist playbook. No, my compassion, sympathy, anything like that at all stops when someone is telling me or any woman that we are just simply not as good as men. Okay, no. My empathy, my sympathy, my love, and my compassion are gonna be reserved for people who are targets of hatred like that. So this is the gay and trans community, this is the immigrant community, this is nature, this is science, doesn't even have to be people. When we spiritually bypass like this, and we say, oh, everything's fine, it's just a difference in opinion, and we just all need to have compassion and come together. What that does is it favors the people who are the hateful bigots because it lets them off the hook. Which brings me to another concept that I want to bring into this discussion. And this article listed again in the show notes is by Nicola Griffith, who is a writer, a queer cripple with a PhD, Seattle and Leeds, and it's around the paradox of tolerance. So it says the philosopher Carl Popper in The Open Society and Its Enemies, 1945, first articulated the paradox of tolerance. If a society extends tolerance to those who are intolerant, it risks enabling the eventual dominance of intolerance, thereby undermining the very principle of tolerance. If intolerant ideologies are allowed unchecked expression, they could exploit open society values to erode or destroy tolerance itself through authoritarian or oppressive practices. It's a bit like the paradox of freedom, in that it's necessary to limit both unchecked freedom and intolerance in order to prevent despotic rule. This philosophical concept, basically in a nutshell, is saying that if we give overwhelming tolerance to intolerant people or to intolerant beliefs or ideologies, the intolerant will eventually exploit, capitalize, and use that tolerant to create dominance and then harm those communities that they do not tolerate. This comes back to spiritual bypassing because when someone says, Oh, we just need to have compassion and forgiveness for everyone, in a perfect world, yes. But in reality, no, because when we just have this overwhelming compassion for incredibly hateful people or ideologies, that lets the person who is hateful off the hook. And it puts the onus of doing that work back on people who were already targeted, marginalized, or harmed by the intolerant person, by the hateful bigot. There's so many reasons why this type of spiritual bypassing pisses me off. Spiritual bypassing that leads into like superiority and into gaslighting, because then like the person goes on to say that I'm just as bad as Charlie Kirk and I was like, um, no, I'm actually not, because I don't hate people because of the pronouns that they use or the language they speak or the color of their skin. Okay. I dislike people if they have a really bad, shitty fucking character. Like that that's when I don't like people. Um, I'm not a hateful bigot, essentially. So yeah, that's nonsense. I think one of the reasons why this just pisses me off so badly is because um in real, authentic, vulnerable and intimate situations, absolutely, compassion and forgiveness and recognizing where something has been done that is really wrong or really hard or something has happened, you know, and it's really hard, and then you find a way through it that is monumental, that moves mountains, that changes people for the better. But that is not spiritual bypassing because you're actually leaning into the shadow, you're leaning into the pain, however singular and isolated or however collective and consequential the situation is when you lean into a situation honestly and authentically, and you don't try to just put on a smile and a happy face, you actually look at the shadow, you look at your pain, you look at what's going on that's hard and hurtful or you know hateful, and it creates um a target on people's backs. When we actually engage in real conversations with our loved ones, with ourselves, with community, we need to be willing to address things honestly. In a personal situation like for myself, I had to be willing to look at my own shadow and to what I was doing. The harm that I was putting out there for my relationships, the harm that I was throwing back on myself. We have to do the same thing for our communities. We have to do the same thing for Mother Earth, we have to do the same thing when we show up in a bigger way. This last article. Article by L lists this so well and it says it in such a beautiful way. Um in relation to toxic positivity and spiritual bypassing in relation to societal issues, it says where this starts to intersect with racism and gaslighting is how it's weaponized in the world of wellness and posity, albeit with a smile and a peace sign, of course. It goes on to say, let me scroll down here, that the affer the aphorisms above while offering a beige sort of self-comforting fail people, especially when they're leveled at marginalized people as a sort of you can pull yourself up, don't let it get to you. Toxic positivity is one of the most common modern forms of spiritual bypassing. Sure, there's something to be said for trying to emotionally rise above adversity or reclaim your own narrative, but statements that claim only peace and positivity will solve things or that anger is misplaced or unproductive ain't it. And that last sentence is exactly why I wanted to bring this situation and this storytelling in today, because anger absolutely is productive. Anger channeled in the right way is absolutely productive. And someone can feel that my TikTok or anything that I put out is not channeled the right way. But where I disagree is because I believe that my rage is sacred. I am not gonna sit here and have just oh, positivity, all the vibes, love and light. No, no, boo. My rage is a channel for change. My rage and everyone's rage is sacred. And when channeled, it is used to create change. It is used to stand up and be a defense, a line drawn in the sand that says, I don't agree with this. I will stand up for these people, or I will stand up for Mother Earth. I will stand up for science, I will stand up for nature, I will stand up for this community or this cause or this belief or this idea. And again, I just find it ironic and kind of funny that we're being told, or as in this situation, I was being told, oh, just have compassion for this person. But there was no compassion from that person to anyone who lived a lifestyle out of what he believed with. You know, again, I just listed all that stuff before, but it's like I don't care that Charlie Kirk was a Christian or that anyone is a Christian. That doesn't affect me or my life. Why does it bother these people that I'm not? If someone wants to get married and have, you know, the two and a half children and the black lab and the white picket fence, I support that. I support choice. I support anyone doing what they want to do with their life. And if that's the life you choose, I fullheartedly say go for it. But why does it bother these people that I don't want children? And that's, you know, again, where the problem of spiritual bypassing and toxic positivity comes back in. It's like, oh, well, it's fine that they're putting this type of hate out there. We should be tolerant of that. But it's not fine that you're angry about it. Like what? It's just really ironic that we are told to have compassion, to have sympathy, and to not look at the things that again he actually said or the things that are wrong in this world, the injustices that are happening, the harms, the wounds, the pains. We're not supposed to look at that and just have a sense of, you know, compassion around it. But once we do look at it and we're angry about it, then we're the ones that are perpetuating anger and hatred and negative emotions. Like it, I mean, it just falls apart on the face of it. It really does. And that's another problem with spiritual bypassing is that the minute that you start to take a look at it, it actually kind of becomes like the Wizard of Oz. On the surface, it looks powerful and formidable and transcendent. But when you start to peel those layers back, you realize that it's a lot of denial and refusal and shame and guilt or numbness. And I personally don't believe anyone should be living that way. I don't believe we should obviously be putting that out into our society. I believe that people should be allowed to be authentic. And with that authenticity comes messiness. It comes hard emotions, hard situations, complex situations. It comes with nuance. And we need to be willing to address those nuances, those complexities, and those hardships in our own lives, but also in a collective sense, because again, that's how we create real change. I highly recommend looking at the very well-minded um article on spiritual bypassing because it does highlight some of the contradictions. Like it says that sometimes it's not always a bad thing. Like sometimes, again, in those moments where we just need to separate, it's there for that. However, it can lead to some negative effects like anxiety, blind allegiances to leaders. Hello, codependency, control problems, disregard for personal responsibility, emotional confusion, excessive tolerance of unacceptable or inappropriate behavior, feelings of shame, or spiritual narcissism, which involves using spiritual practices as a way to increase self-importance. It often it often involves using spirituality to build the individual up while also wielding it as a weapon to tear others down. This also includes denying difficult emotions, dismissing other people's emotions, avoiding responsibility, judging others, justifying suffering, and much more. So please go and take a look at that article because it was so good. It had such good information. And again, that is the very well mined, but all of these articles were good. And to end with how we can avoid some of this, you know, stepping into spiritual bypassing or toxic positivity. Again, the same article says that one of the things we can do is avoid labeling emotions as good as bad. Um, while some emotions may be negative or unpleasant, they serve a purpose. Emotional experiences are not wrong or taboo, and feeling these emotions does not make you a bad person. Try viewing your emotions with acceptance and remember that all emotional states are only temporary. Remember that negative thoughts and feelings serve a purpose. The goal is not to avoid having such thoughts, it is to use those thoughts to propel positive actions. Simply put, putting on rose-colored glasses and ignoring a problem does not solve it. And then remember that uncomfortable feelings are often a sign that there's something wrong and that something needs to change. If you are always trying to reduce discomfort by simply avoiding it, the situations that are causing you distress will stay the same. Look at these uncomfortable emotions as an opportunity for transformation rather than a burden to avoid. The L article also includes some ways that we can show up and do this work for the societal issues, for the injustices in a bigger picture, like we talked about. And before I close out, I just want to say one thing or a couple things. But the first thing I want to say is that I am not here saying that you listening have to do the work and then show up and solve all the problems in this world. That is so not realistic. One, there is no one issue in this world that a person can tackle or challenge or face alone. We have to be a community, we have to do it together. And that's where true compassion, true connection needs to be forged. We need to find that in the places that we can, but again, up to a point. I am also not saying that um we have to be so concerned with societal issues that we place our own on the back burner. Obviously, we need to take time to look at the things that are going on in our own life, and then we have to remind ourselves that we are a part of our a bigger ecosystem, a bigger network of living things. And as we start to do that work in the internal, we start to see where that beautiful and precious space within us can show up in these bigger issues. So for me, that would obviously be more attuned to working with animals and nature. That's just where I thrive. So for me, showing up in that capacity means that I can be more of service. So it's it's about recognizing where these things reside, but then seeing where we can place our beautiful spirits into that to create true positivity and not create toxic positivity or perpetuate toxic positivity. More than anything, what I really want to say is that there are so many issues in this world, and we can't have just a spiritual practice to approach them. We can't have just um an emotional practice. You know, we have to have a multi-layered approach, and it's gonna kind of take all of us, it's gonna take people in power, it's gonna take so many things to address these issues on a systemic level that actually creates change. And one of the reasons why spiritual bypassing frustrates me so much is because it just kind of reveals, like I was saying before, about how it's like the wizard of Oz behind the curtain, it just reveals it how people who maybe have the best of intentions or who maybe really believe in what they're saying, but it just falls flat on the face of it because in order to have conversations and to make the changes that need to be made, we have to step into uncomfortable places, we have to step into spaces that challenge us, we have to step into spaces that call us out on some of our bullshit. And we're not gonna get there if we're just like everything's fine and everything is perfect and love and light. That's not going to be the way that we get out of this. And these people wrap it up as I'm more spiritual, or we just all need to have compassion. And it's like, yeah, again, in a perfect world, we would all have compassion, but in the real world, we need to step into the uncomfortable, and that does mean creating divisions, and that does mean creating lines in the sand that say this is where we need to be, and we're not going to get here if we keep holding to this mentality of just love and lighting everyone, which allows things like this to continue. So, more than anything, we need a spiritual practice so that we can step into the uncomfortable, we can step into places of unlearning, and we can step into places of really recognizing where hurt and pain and trauma and the shadow reside. That's what it's for. It's there so that we can look into the face of the monster of racism or sexism and call it out and say that's what it is. Thank you for listening to this episode. I hope it was helpful. I know that episodes like this aren't the most fun or the most taroty or anything like that, but they're needed and they are witchy and they are spiritual. I would like to thank my patrons, Deb Guy, Bobby McDermott, Lisa Zimmerman, Nicole Smith, Tracy Lanham, Kim Hardnett, Chris Ree, Miranda Snow, Colleen Dewey, Charlie Ruggles, Shannon Konendike, and Danica Favorite. Thank you all so much for your support in me and in Wolf Child Magic. It means the world. And to you, dear listener, take care.