The Spiritual Bypass
Ways We Sabotage Our Spiritual Growth
by Sandra Michaelson

A commercial industry has sprung up to assist us in improving ourselves and developing our spiritual nature. Such commercialization, along with other influences, often foster what we call the spiritual bypass, whereby we fail to discriminate between pseudo-spirituality and true inner transformation.

We have become adept at playing a game of personal growth. We assume that inner transformation will flower from reading books, attending workshops, doing repetitive practices, reciting magical incantations, and expressing the appropriate platitudes. Are we really transforming ourselves or are we merely creating a new fiction about who we are?

I remember as a child going to church and trying very hard to feel something appropriate to the occasion, such as deeper understanding, joy, or love. On these occasions, it seemed to me that others were easily experiencing such feelings. All I felt was boredom. Church attendance was required, my parents warned, to avoid damnation. And I was supposed to feel something appropriate--maybe it was gratitude that God was sparing me. All I knew was that my actual feelings--doubt, confusion, boredom--were wrong or not good enough.

Though I didn't know it at the time, my true spiritual experiences consisted of hanging out in trees, admiring and picking flowers, enjoying nature walks, and collecting rocks and stones. I kept this intimate relationship with nature a secret from my family--feeling sure they would not understand, perhaps even disapprove. I kept my real feelings private, separate from others. Thus, I separated myself into two parts, one the outer person who conformed with what was expected of her, and the other a secretive, reticent, yet more spontaneous and feeling person who I kept hidden.

I wasn't the only person divided against herself. Most of us lose touch with that spontaneous, curious child we once were and immerse ourselves in performance and compliance to others' expectations. Certainly, that's what wins the most approval. It is this pattern of performance and compliance that reinforces our existing defenses and represents one of the biggest impediments to the attainment of true spiritual qualities.

An aspect of the spiritual bypass is compulsive goodness. This form of goodness is a learned, conditioned habit of parroting perfection to white-wash our passive compliance to the words, attitudes, and expectations of others, and to compensate for inner feelings of worthlessness. As compulsively good people, we act good because we have difficulty standing up for ourselves and respecting our own intuitive knowing and feeling. We are good because we cannot express anger, ask for what we want, refuse what is requested of us, speak up for ourselves, know what it is we want, trust in our own perceptions, or express any other form of self-interest.

Our goodness is motivated by a fear that we will be criticized and disliked. It covers up an unconscious inclination for self-rejection, self-neglect, and represents a fear of connecting to ourselves and a resistance to being ourselves.

We also attempt the spiritual bypass when we overlook or spurn the need to work out our negative attitudes, beliefs, and feelings. Many of us associate spirituality with the repression all that is wrong or negative in us, in the hope of developing what is positive and right. Hate, anger, and selfishness are denied in favor of love and compassion. We embark on a program to cultivate the appropriate positive behaviors. If negative emotions do come up, we feel contaminated by them. We try frantically to fix them, banish them, or pretend they are non-existent and not a real problem.

When we censor our negative emotions and try to act good, our underlying negativity does not go away. We feel anxious that these "bad" feelings or thoughts will resurface, and consequently we live in fear of our feelings. We create a greater division within ourselves, a division between the "right" part and the "wrong" part that, despite our efforts, are perpetually in conflict with each other.

When we act and sound spiritual according to someone else's specifications, we hand over our power to others in the same manner we adopted our parents' conditioning as our own. We thereby squelch the truth of our feelings and abort the prospect of becoming more aware. For the negative elements inside us represent our growing edge, the underworld through which we must journey to get to our True Self. Rather than running from our feelings and self-defeating behaviors, we need to acknowledge them, discover where they come from, and learn the meaning behind them.

Often, the more we accomplish in life, including spiritual practice, the more validation we feel. Many of us attempt to manipulate the external experience to defend our self-image, increasing our dependency on something outside to orient or know ourself, rather than facing the internal issues that run our emotional lives. It is the path of greatest resistance to face who we are, know what we are feeling, and understand why we react the way we do.

What is the intention behind our quest for spiritual growth? Do we unconsciously desire the recognition, the power, the security that we are unable to give ourselves? Many of us seek bliss or spiritual powers to enhance our egocentricity, not to overcome it. We regard spiritual attainment as a way to fill an emotional vacuum, escape from our internal conflicts, and avoid the challenges and realities of everyday life such as building a career, establishing a relationship, or raising a family.