Spiritual Bypassing vs. Real Healing: Self Mastery with Olivia Carli

We sit down with spiritual guide and coach Olivia Carli to get brutally honest about spiritual bypassing and why real self-mastery asks us to face what we would rather avoid. We unpack discomfort as a requirement for growth and leave you with grounded tools like stillness and gratitude that support real healing and alignment.

• spiritual bypassing as a spiritual excuse to avoid responsibility
• why polarity matters and why “light only” thinking blocks wisdom
• discomfort as the mechanism of growth and the “obstacle is the way” mindset
• how toxic positivity keeps weeds in the garden
• real healing as alignment of mind, body, soul and spirit
• why guidance and frameworks matter when you have blind spots
• where to begin with meditation, stillness and not identifying with thoughts
• gratitude as a daily practice that changes your lens without denying reality
• where to find Olivia on Instagram (@iamoliviacarli) and at empowerthyself.ca 

My personal weblink:
https://links.theinnerpurity.com

Where I hangout the most to connect:
https://www.instagram.com/iammarisa.xo/

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https://www.instagram.com/theinnerbeaconpodcast/

Don't forget to spread love like you would nutella. 

xoxo, M

Transcript

Welcome To Inner Beacon

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome to the Inner Beacon. I am your house for Nisa. I'm a Canadian girl of two business owner, flood attendant, and a certified skill of home. You are in the right place if you are ready to lead your life from to reconnect with your intuition, trust yourself deeply, and reclaim your power. My goal and intention here is to inspire and empower you. And for fun, I might even add some flood attendant content and travel to not. And I'm so glad you're here. So let's dive into today's episode. All right, so this feels special to me. Personally having this guest on today, I am joined by Olivia Carly, who is a spiritual guide and coach working in self-mastery and deeper spiritual understandings. She's someone who has influenced my own journey in a meaningful way. I was introduced to the mystery school teachings in my teens, and magic has put it back in my path as an adult. And through this beautiful human who has put on my path, the work Olivia does is needed right now. And it's something I not only deeply respect and resonate with, but truly has been so inspirational. So I feel so honored to have her here today and share and bring more awareness to this level of self-mastery and what it really means to do the deeper work. Today we'll be diving into conversation that I see that I think is very important, like spiritual bypassing versus real self-mastery. So without further ado, welcome Olivia. I'd love for you to introduce yourself and share a bit about a little bit about what you do.

SPEAKER_00 1:43

Hello, hello. Thank you. I'm so happy to be here. And you're just so sweet and so kind. But yeah, my name is Olivia Carly. I'm a spiritual guide, teacher, and healer in the lineage of King Solomon. And yes, the work I do is all about understanding yourself, understanding God, understanding the universe. And that sounds like a huge and big ordeal. But like we've noticed that there's a lot to understand about the self. I'm sure if you're listening in on this podcast. And what I found with the work I do and the path that I walk and the tools that I offer is that with the right framework, the right tools, you can get there and you can get what you need to live a better life and live a life of mastery and truthfully a life of joy and goodness. And then you're able to share that with others. So I think it's more important now than ever to have that inner peace, to have that inner joy, to have that beauty in your life so we can share it.

SPEAKER_01 2:45

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 2:46

Yeah.

What Spiritual Bypassing Really Means

SPEAKER_01 2:47

Yeah. Yeah. And it just helps you connect with your inner beacon, which is what the podcast is. And it's all connected. We're all connected. Yeah. Right. I feel like your work really helped me understand that true spiritual growth isn't about bypassing what's uncomfortable, but becoming strong through having to face things and learning tools to support you in your life. And knowing yourself, knowing thyself, right? In a sport spiritual level. So can you explain what spiritual bypass means and why it is important to bring this up?

Polarity Shadow Work And Real Joy

SPEAKER_00 3:25

So there's a quote or like a saying that a lot of people might be familiar with. And it's the only way out is through. And that's what comes up when I hear this. And you ask, okay, what is spiritual bypassing? And it's like trying to get out, trying to get over, trying to rise above without going through. And when we bypass something, we skip something. And there's something very, very important about growth, about mastery, and even about joy is that there are obstacles, there are challenges, and there is suffering that is absolutely necessary for us to grow into who we're meant to be. And so I'll kind of get into that piece after this, but I first want to say it's like in the spiritual world, I'm kind of one of those spiritual guides and healers that's like anti-new age. Not that it's bad or wrong, but I think it distracts and misdirects. And it takes good people who want to heal and good people that want to serve, and it misdirects them. One of the common themes or characteristics that could come up in those situations is something that is called spiritual bypassing. And spiritual bypassing is essentially giving a spiritual meaning or a spiritual excuse to something so that you don't have to take responsibility for it, or a spiritual excuse so you don't have to look at it, a spiritual excuse so that you don't have to say, I have the power to uh look at this, to examine this and to overcome this. And I think that so many spiritual people all out in the world, and like we're all spiritual, but maybe those that coin themselves in such a way sometimes, it's like it's not an excuse to not be present in the material world, and it's not an excuse to extrapolate yourself from the mundane, and it's not an excuse to say that you don't have to live life and have good relationships and operate within society and contribute to society. I think a lot of that, the culture is I'm gonna leave the world to make it a better place, I'm gonna make excuses and not engage in this uncomfortable thing, because engaging in it is engaging in something negative. And the reality is we live in a world of polarity, dark and light, and all and if we decide to say that I only want to focus on light, that's not spiritual. No, that's ignorant, yeah, and ignorance may be bliss, which is also a little bit of the Kool-Aid that's being sold in that community, is like everything is bliss, and it's like, no, no, no, we came here to have a physical experience and we came here to learn and we came here to grow, and we came here hopefully to become wiser, and to become wiser, there you have to have understanding. Yeah, and you can't have understanding of anything when you're only focusing on a tiny little section of the spectrum. And so when we only focus on what is good and what is light, when there are situations in life that call for us to go through the hard things and be really real about what's going on and maybe look at the shadow, rob ourselves of the very thing that we're seeking. We want joy, but like in bypassing the hard things, we actually don't get joy, we're just like happy for a moment. And and we don't actually get the deeper things that we're seeking. And so in bypassing the thing, it's it's it kind of screws us over. Yeah, it's an illusion.

SPEAKER_01 7:15

Yeah, yeah. No, I've speaking spoken about that too. You like joy and finding what you're trying to achieve sometimes is past the darkness, you have to move through the work, like the shadow work is so, so important because like you can't have stars without darkness.

The Obstacle Is The Way

SPEAKER_00 7:31

Well, and then you don't you don't know one for the other. And the stoic Marcus Relius says the obstacle is the way. If I live my life avoiding discomfort, avoiding hard things, and avoiding obstacles, I will never understand who I am. I will create a comfortable life that placates my ego, that makes me feel good, that leads to misery because the very foundation of a human being is to grow and to progress. And like I really like fitness, and I always use this analogy. What does it take? Do you know what it takes to grow a muscle? Discipline and endurance. Takes discipline and endurance, but the very on a physical physiological level, the way that the muscle grows is you actually tear it. The only way that it can grow bigger than the current state that it's in is if you tear it. Right to literally grow, to refine, to chisel yourself, like chisel yourself from the stone and shape yourself, you literally need to rip rip something open. And like with muscles to grow them, there's this concept of progressive overload, meaning you can lift and you can lift heavy things, but as soon as that heavy thing becomes light to you, as soon as you become comfortable with that weight, you could be like, Well, yeah, I lifted that heavy thing, like I'm good now. I will maintain that. But the reality is then you'll stop growing. So then you need to go to the next level of heavy, you need to add on more weight. And so constantly be creating more pressure, pushing yourself to grow, taking on more responsibility so that you can understand yourself and grow into who you're supposed to be. And if we're not willing to carry weight in our lives, if we're not willing to push ourselves fast past our current state, nothing's gonna grow. And so I think that there is a lot of placation of like the word I just said, responsibility. Yeah, yet as we all know, great power comes with great responsibility.

SPEAKER_01 9:46

Another thing, like I see a lot of is like, oh, like I'm more spiritual than you. Like, there's nobody who's more spiritual than anybody else.

SPEAKER_00 9:54

No, we're all spiritual beings having a physical experience. Exactly. Maybe, maybe, maybe one could say, I have peeled away the layers that have distracted me more. That awareness, I have put the efforts in to understand that aspect of myself. It's like we all have potential, like we're all spiritual beings in a physical this experience, but like our efforts will reflect with the potentials that we fulfill in this life, and so is anyone more spiritual than the other? No, but some might not have the understanding of who they are, and that's kind of the whole purpose of the mystery school and the work I do is like I want it's like shaking all of us and being like, guys, like we're not as different, we have more alike than we have different, and we have more than we realize, and there's more to us than we realize. And if we peel away all this stuff and actually understand who we are, our lives will change, our relationships will change the work we do and how we choose to show up in the world will change because as soon as we understand this aspect of we are spirit and physical.

SPEAKER_01 11:08

Okay, so we had a little malfunction with the technology, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:15

Where were we? Do you remember? We were talking about bypassing, we were talking about growing a muscle, we were talking about oh, like responsibility and how great power comes from responsibility, and how knowing ourselves and who we are, these powerful beings, is likely gonna come with some sort of responsibility. Yes, and pushback just like this internet stuff, but like we said, resistance training, life is resistant training for real.

SPEAKER_01 11:51

Yeah, um, okay, so I think we talked about this a little bit, but maybe uh we can go more in depth. But why is facing discomfort necessary for growth?

SPEAKER_00 12:00

Yeah, absolutely. This is this resistance thing, okay. No, no, no, let me take this back if you are not uncomfortable, you are not growing, and so we can say it's necessary, or we can just say that growth and discomfort are almost interchangeable words, and so it's not even that it's necessary, it's almost like they can be the same thing. Now, not all discomfort is growth, but all growth requires discomfort, and that's because for something to grow, it has to change from its current state, and anytime we shift from our current state, we're literally moving into a space we're not aware of. So, how would that ever be comfortable? We are only ever comfortable with what we know, and to grow, we have to go where we don't know. Yeah, and so if you want to grow, it's like you've got to get ready to be uncomfortable and then get comfortable with the discomfort. And as soon as you're like, I'm good with being in this kind of place that is uncomfortable, all of a sudden the discomfort isn't bad. Because sometimes I would ask, is the discomfort bad? Is or is our emotional reaction or our attachments that we place on it the actual thing that's bad? It's like, oh my god, this is changing. Or oh my god, this is changing. And I think it's a lot to do with perspective. Yeah. But like if the the reality is discomfort is gonna come because even if you create a nice little box that's very comfortable, you're going to be called to change. But if we don't like discomfort and we're not willing to push past or go through, what ends up happening is we actually peel back so we make ourselves smaller. So every time discomfort comes knocking on our door, we have a choice to confront it, to grow beyond it, and to grow bigger. Our other option becomes to make ourselves smaller, but there is no option to stay exactly where we are.

SPEAKER_01 14:35

Yeah. And how does bypassing block self-mastery?

SPEAKER_00 14:41

Well, you could even look at bypassing with that very thing. It it's so aloof because when the challenge comes, when the discomfort comes knocking, you've created a reason and excuse and a flowery, beautiful way to excuse yourself from growing, to excuse yourself from responsibility, to excuse yourself from dealing with the monsters and the hard things and the challenges that need to be dealt with. And I think it's kind of like you know, I'm not like overly familiar with these terms in this world, but it's like toxic positivity in a way. It's like if I'm positive all of the time and I put a positive spin on everything all of the time, then life is just always good.

SPEAKER_01 15:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:36

So there's like a little bit of a key in that. Like there's a key of gratitude, like for sure, we want to be grateful. And gratitude in the face of evil, in the face of challenge, in the face of sorrow, in the face of grief is a beautiful thing.

SPEAKER_01 15:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:52

But it does not negate the fact that there is grief, that there is sorrow, that there is fear, that there is something. And where the bypassing comes in is pretending like everything is good and light and beautiful, and it's like and happy. And if we just put rose-colored glasses on, then that makes things better. And it's like no, we only make things better when we're in reality, and if we bypass reality and pretend like everything's good, we have no effectual power to make anything better. We just sustain a state that's not good, and so we want love and light, we want good things, but it's like, okay, if there's a garden and there's weeds in the garden and we just say, look at all the beautiful flowers, and we ignore the weeds, and we just are like, Yeah, yeah, yeah, those weeds don't exist. It's like, no, no, no, they are here in reality, they are taking the nutrients from the flowers, they will eventually overtake the garden and overtake the beautiful flowers, taking all of their nutrients away. So, what do we have to do? We have to, in reality, take action to get rid of the thing that's not working, that's not serving, that's taking the nutrients. And if we bypass it, yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 17:22

Well, and then what I find too is when you're when you're in that space, you're gonna eventually have to face it. It's just gonna keep coming, it's gonna, it's gonna keep being in the way. Yeah, it's and and it yeah, it'll keep come knocking until you eventually face it. Have to face it exactly. Okay, so what what real healing, what does real healing look like in a balanced perspective, I guess?

SPEAKER_00 17:50

So I think true healing at its core is actually just becoming who you truly are, like who you can be and who you are as spirit. And I think what we're healing is any layer of amnesia or forgetfulness or experiences and pains that we've accrued through this life that are getting in the way of us fully understanding ourselves and showing up in a clear way. And so I think healing is essentially clearing off the junk of this reality that we've picked up that's just not true and real. And that can look like healing from fears, traumas, different things that sit in our subconscious, different beliefs, programs. When we get back to who we are, like love and joy is our natural state, but we have a lot of operation systems within us that have been formed from the world and what we're consuming and what we've experienced that intercept. And so we need to know how to peel that away to get into alignment. And I think when we heal, you know, as we've already said, we're more than just a physical being, you know, we have a mind, we have a spirit, we have a soul, we have an aura, and we have all different energy structures. And I would say the fruit of healing is living a good life, creating peace in your life and in the lives of others. But to get there, it comes from alignment of all these bodies: mind, body, soul, spirit. Yes. And our issues come because they're all out of whack, they're all misaligned. We have we're we're mentally sick and misaligned, we're physically sick and misaligned, we're spiritually sick and misaligned, and then we're trying to solve problems from these places of misalignments when we as individuals need to get in alignment, and then it will be far less about solving problems and more about how we can grow bigger and better. I think the state is then evolution is solving these things. Yeah. You know, and like it's like we're trying to we're trying to figure out why the fruits of our world are sick and we're not going to the like roots of the tree, you know. And it's like, oh, we have so many bad fruits, we need to just pluck the fruits, or why is the fruit bad? And we're just studying the fruit over here, but it's like, no, there's a root problem, and I think true healing is going to the root, and our roots are non-physical, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:22

Or and at least in my journey, what I found is like the deeper we go, the more we find. The work never ends, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:30

And I mean, it's kind of a beautiful thing, but it doesn't have to be like, oh my gosh, the work never ends. It's like there is no end in understanding yourself, yeah. There is no end in understanding God, and that's a beautiful thing because it just keeps expanding. It's not that it's work that it's like once I get to a finish line, it's like every level I hit expands my life more.

SPEAKER_01 20:56

That's great, it doesn't make it no, and that's the perspective that we have to come through is that we are expanding, we are growing. If I've always said, like, if I'm not growing, I'm dying. Like, that's what that's the purpose. That's the purpose.

SPEAKER_00 21:09

The default, entropy is the default of this physical reality. So, like, if you're not actually actively working to improve the state in any sort of way, you can even look at it like again, physical fitness, muscle, we start losing muscle mass after 30. So if you're not actively working to build it, entropy and decay is the default. Go into a forest. If it's not tended, entropy and decay is the default. Like, these are realities that if we just kind of come to grips with, it's like, why would we be any different? Why would our spiritual growth, why would our growth in life, why would our understanding of ourselves, why would our relationships be any different? Why would they not require care and effort and attention? Yes, exactly. It requires attention and we need to know how to tend to it and put effort into how to tend to it, we will become sick and misaligned. And like you can just look at the fruits of our society. We are sick and misaligned. We know that if we don't focus on our health, first it's a tap, then it's a knock, then it's a bang, and then we have to deal with the fact that we ignored what was going on physically. So same with our connection to ourselves, same with our spiritual connection, same with our connection to God.

Why You Need Guidance And Tools

SPEAKER_01 22:36

Yeah. And so, in your opinion, how do we balance awareness, action, feeling, and what does grounded embodiment of that healing look like?

SPEAKER_00 22:50

Ultimately, we have to know ourselves. No, ultimately, like and none of this comes from like a place of the mind. This comes from like a much deeper part of ourselves. So understanding who you are as spirit and getting in alignment and finding a way to get there, finding a path, finding a system to help you clear away the noise is super essential. Because if we were gonna figure it out on our own as individuals, we would. And like that's just not how nobody's done it alone. Yeah. But we need to be able to have something that is able to show us that which we can't see. See everything about myself. If I could, I'd be the perfected human. There, there's there's corners I can't see or access that maybe someone else can shine a light on and say, hey, look over there. And so I think one of the things is we definitely can't do it alone.

SPEAKER_01 23:50

No, and I always say that like when people come in and out of your life, there's purpose behind some of the experiences that we have for that reason. And where does one start in this journey if they are seeking to do this work?

SPEAKER_00 24:04

So this work in in which way do you mean? Like in beginning to get to know themselves and this work with me, in this work from like a very beginner level.

SPEAKER_01 24:15

This work with you.

Where To Start With Stillness

Gratitude As A Daily Practice

SPEAKER_00 24:17

Okay. So for me, I'm a guide in the lineage of King Solomon in the mystery school tradition. So we actually have a path and a system and a way in which to do things. And this system is like when you go to a trainer, they tell you how to eat, you get the system of how to work out, and you get this like system to start understanding your body and understanding yourself so you can get a desired result, right? Well, in the lineage, for over 3,000 years, there's a system that was created to accelerate spiritual growth. And so we have a very clear system to get results, to ascend, to understand yourself, and take the guesswork out to put you in the alchemical process to purify and understand yourself. And we would call that the path. And there's many tools within the path and many systems within the path that are proven to give you the results to understand who you are. Now, the first step with that is a life activation. It's always a life activation. And a life activation is to spiritual activation of the DNA, and it essentially reconnects us to our God self. And it allows us, there's a balancing in it, there's an activation that just allows us to connect back to our higher self and re reconnect to that god self so we can start operating from there. But even on a foundational level, like the path has everything someone could need for any sort of spiritual problem. Like this is just true, and I I truly believe it's like there's just nothing else like it. But but if you're beginning, there's ways to just check in with yourself. Move into your breath, move into meditation, start becoming aware of your mind and how it's operating and calm the busyness. Like notice your thoughts and stop identifying with them. That's a big thing. Slow down, stillness, silence. Healing comes from stillness and listening. So it and and receiving, right? And if you don't know how to be still, good luck healing. Seriously, because you keep yourself so busy and so wound up that you can never receive what it is you need to receive. And on the other side, another thing, so stillness is huge, but then on the other side, stillness is almost like the receptive state. And then I'd say the giving state would be that of gratitude. And like if you're beginning a process of being like, I want to start to understand myself and my life better, and I want to start improving things. One of the easiest ways you can do that is beginning to work with gratitude. Because without gratitude, nothing is ever enough. And when you don't have gratitude, you're like a living grain in the universe. Like you're just sucking everything dry, and nothing is ever, ever good enough. But when you have gratitude, you you kind of become like a fountain. And so you begin to fill yourself up with recognizing all the blessings and all that is good and all that is great within life. And that greatness and good and appreciation for this experience begins to flow out of you. And so, as the stillness allows you to receive, the gratitude actually gives you the capacity to give and flow goodness in your life. And like we all have the capacity to have that. And the more you practice gratitude, the more you will realize that even the worst things in life, the biggest challenges you're going to be grateful for because they made you who you are. And so if you really want to understand yourself and accelerate that spiritual progression and growth, and you know that there's more, there's the path available. And there's like a million tools that can connect you to that. But there's so many things that you can just do right now and that you can practice every day, and they will change things. And I think that's important for snow, is like we have a lot more capabilities and available to us than we realize. And it's so much than we think.

SPEAKER_01 28:30

Yeah. And what happens too is when you start focusing on gratitude and you start like making that a priority, you start to actually find things that you wouldn't think about before. Like it's just like when you're looking for opportunity or when you're open to opportunity, things start to pop up. It just flows, it just comes.

SPEAKER_00 28:47

Yeah, because you start to get in the flow and the frequency and the vibrational state you're at. And it's like it's like the lens that you look at life through. Like when someone is complaining all the time, what lens, what state do you think they're experiencing reality through? They're like down here. Nothing, and like what you focus on grows, and everything is bad and everything is crap and everything is negative all the time, then that is going to begin to be the only perspective from which you see life. And like you're seeing that in the world right now. Look at what's happening, read the news, ingest, ingest, ingest, take in, take in, take in, reflect back, reflect back, reflect back, negative, negative, negative. But then if you shift into gratitude, it doesn't mean that those things are eradicated from reality, but your perspective of them and your ability to overcome them or contribute or still create good despite amplifies. And so, like sometimes when you begin to practice gratitude, it's like, I'm grateful it's a sunny day out. I'm grateful for, say, my family, my children. I'm grateful, but then it starts. I'm grateful I woke up today. I'm grateful I have this challenge to open up. I have, I'm grateful I have a life that I get to clean up. And I'm grateful that I have a life that I get to design. And I'm grateful that this thing happened and taught me about this and this that like it just starts overpouring, and you realize that everything is a part of this experience that's helping you understand who you are.

Where To Find Olivia And Closing

SPEAKER_01 30:31

Yeah. Absolutely. All right. Um, I think that sums up the oh wait, yeah. The questions I had, Olivia. I just want to say thank you. Not only for this conversation, but for the work that you do and how you show up in the world.

SPEAKER_00 30:49

Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 30:50

It's inspiring, and I'm really grateful to have you in my life and in sharing with my audience. Grateful for you as a guide and lighten my life. And for anyone who's listening, where can they find you?

SPEAKER_00 31:03

One of the best ways to look me up is on Instagram, I am Olivia Carly. And then you can also check out and contact me through empower thyself.ca.

SPEAKER_01 31:14

Amazing. And if this conversation opened up something up for you, just know that you don't have to rush the process. Growth doesn't come from avoiding what's hard, and it comes from learning how to move through it.

SPEAKER_00 31:28

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 31:30

Thank you again. Thanks for spending this time with us. You're welcome. Thank you for spending this time with me here on the Interbeg. If you're not already following me, you can find me on Instagram at immarisa.xo. And if this episode resonates, spread the love like you wouldn't come up by sharing this podcast and tagging me so that I can personally thank you. And if you are feeling exloving, leaving a review helps light up another beautiful school and supports the growth of this place. I am so glad you're here. I'll be on the next episode.