I received an email a few weeks ago from a listener in Western Australia asking if I would address the topic of spiritual bypassing. I responded that I had never heard the term. So this listener replied with a definition from Wikipedia: Spiritual bypassing is a "tendency to use spiritual ideas and practices to sidestep or avoid facing unresolved emotional issues, psychological wounds, and unfinished developmental tasks."
The email went on to explain “It occurs when one is unconscious of the ego having "shapeshifted" itself to take on a spiritual identity of sorts. For e.g. "I am not addicted to gambling because there is no self who is addicted. I am not the doer, I am not the gambler. Gambling is happening!" Of course, there are much subtler examples of this type of bypassing where people use spirituality to live in denial of mental, emotional or physical issues. Using God as a crutch or a scapegoat so to speak.”
I came across the term again recently. I was reading a 2020 book by Matthew Fox about the medieval mystic Julian of Norwich. In the Preface Mirabai Starr describes spiritual bypass as a term from contemporary Buddhist psychology and says it is “the impulse to check out of painful experiences by means of religious platitudes and practices.”
So that gives me – and hopefully you - a basic understanding of what spiritual bypassing is. I know that people use religion or spirituality as a way to avoid issues, but I did not know it had its own term! People want to feel good and not feel bad. Avoid the negative and focus on the positive. Life is hard, and people are looking for a way to make it less hard. So they look to spiritual teachers who promise that there is such a way to stop the bad feelings.
Unfortunately in the process people only succeed in temporarily fooling themselves. I imagine such spiritual bypassing is more common than many people think. There is an element of it in all of us. It is natural for humans to avoid pain and seek pleasure. It is in our genes, so to speak. It is part of our conditioning. This is just a religious expression of this tendency. Our minds play all sorts of tricks on us to protect us from pain. That is the source of all kinds of psychological disorders.
This is also the impetus for many persons’ spiritual search. People often begin a spiritual search or start spiritual practices to address hardship or difficulty in their lives, some physical pain or psychological suffering that is disrupting their lives. They want it to stop.
Nondual teachings can be misused by this desire to be free from suffering. It can lend itself to escapism. Nonduality says that the self is not real. That the only reality is the one whole. So people can use that idea as a way to play mental games to avoid feelings. But ignoring problems is never the way to solve them.
The problem is that the desire to be free of suffering is itself also the cause of suffering. The Buddha taught that: the cause of dukkha is tanha. The cause of suffering is desire. So it is a Catch-22. The reason many people begin spiritual seeking is itself the cause of the suffering they seek to be free of. This is usually not acknowledged, so people get entangled in deeper and deeper complicated psychological schemes.
It leads to a life of endless seeking and frustration. Going from teacher to teacher. Seeking and never finding. Or some convince themselves that they have found it, whereas they are simply in denial. They have moved the suffering to an unseen level, from where it will eventually emerge in more clever forms.
Christianity has historically had some unhealthy approaches to suffering, including punishing the flesh. Instead of seeking to be free of suffering, some sought out suffering, thinking that in suffering is salvation from this world. Christianity has sometimes gone too far – seeking martyrdom. But at its best Christians have a healthy approach to suffering.
The original message of Jesus held a healthy approach suffering. In Jesus’ approach there is neither escape from suffering nor seeking suffering. Suffering simply is. And our natural emotional reactions to suffering or future suffering are to be accepted as well, not denied or suppressed.
As Jesus approached the prospect of a painful death on the cross, he was afraid and he voiced it openly in the Garden of Gethsemane. Jesus prayed fervently that there might be some other way. But in the end he knew there was no other way, and he accepted it and surrendered to the Divine will.
Likewise on the cross he did not seek escape from the pain. He did not drink from the drug that was offered to him to dull the pain. On the cross he experienced intense spiritual anguish, and he let that come and go as well. In that was salvation.
Jesus experienced extreme physical, psychological and spiritual suffering. The spiritual culmination of his crucifixion was when Jesus cried out, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” People have tried to explain this away by saying he was just quoting a psalm. It is true he was quoting Psalm 22. But he was quoting it because he was experiencing it! He was accepting what he was experiencing.
Jesus’ approach to suffering was to not fight against it. Not deny it. Not suppress it. Not find a way around it. No spiritual bypassing, consciously or unconsciously. The spiritual genius of Jesus was to acknowledge that there is no escape from suffering. That is the counterintuitive solution to suffering! It is a paradox, which is what the cross symbolizes.
Jesus taught nonresistance to suffering. Jesus said on the Sermon on the Mount, “resist not evil.” And by evil Jesus meant all that harms us – physical and psychological suffering, which is clear in the context. He talks about turning the other cheek to one’s enemies.
You let it come and let it go. You do not hold onto it nor fight against it. You let it be. You don’t bypass suffering. You let it go through you. You see that the Kingdom of God is in the midst of it, as it is in all experiences. And in so doing, one becomes a conduit of compassion for all who are suffering.
This is the love that Jesus taught. Unconditional love. Jesus said from the cross, “Father, forgive them, so they know not what they do.” That is what Christians see in the Cross. We see Jesus’ approach to suffering as redemptive.
As I said in a previous episode, suffering is innate to the human condition. As long as there is a body there is pain. A long as there is a self, there is suffering. That was true of Jesus and is true of us. If you are hoping to bypass physical or emotional pain or even spiritual angst, you will be disappointed. You may convince yourself you have done that. But what you have really done is succeeded in deceiving yourself.
Any spiritual system or philosophy of religion that promises an escape from all pain and suffering in this human lifetime is bogus. Don’t believe it. I am sure people can find ways to reduce the severity of suffering through physical, psychological and spiritual disciplines. I imagine that Hindu ascetics achieve such control over the body to a great degree. I am also sure that Greek Stoics achieved it also, as well as medieval Christian ascetics. But that was not the way of Jesus. He was not an ascetic. In fact he was accused of being just the opposite.
Jesus taught victory over pain and suffering and death by not resisting them. Nonresistance. Turn the other cheek. Let possessions come and go. Let insults come and go. From that spiritual practice flows unconditional love patterned on God’s unconditional love, who – Jesus says – “makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.”
Jesus summed up this teaching on suffering in the Sermon on the Mount by saying, “Therefore be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” That word perfect means full, complete, whole, one. It means nondual. The Tao. This is what Jesus was pointing to. The Tao of Christ. This is Christian nonduality.