The Spiritual Bypass

What is “The Spiritual Bypass”? This is a new age phenomenon. New agers have a tendency to want to take a shortcut to their own enlightenment. The shortcut consists of denying any feelings other than joy, peace, happiness, serenity, calm, etc. Feelings of anger, regret, sorrow, disharmony and fear (the “negative” feelings) are pushed aside and ignored by “replacing” them with the “positive” feelings.

Attempting to push aside or replace feelings that we judge as “negative” is essentially denying part of ourselves. We are denying ourselves the opportunity to embrace our wholeness. ALL of our feelings count and are worth our attention and they will be there no matter how hard we try to ignore them. And the more we ignore that part of ourselves, the more it will demand our attention. This demanded attention can be manifested in many ways, from physical ailments to emotional outbursts to mental anguish. All of this seems completely out of our control. If this stuff doesn’t eventually get out of us, it will eat us up inside. This stuff is not out of our control. We have only chosen to perceive it that way.

We refer to all of this unrecognized stuff as our “dark side”. It’s not our dark side, it’s a part of us that contains a lot of wisdom. It’s a part of us that makes us who we are. It’s a part of us that came about as a result of our life experiences and how we chose to perceive them at the time. We can choose to change our perception of this “emotional baggage”. We can perceive it as a newly discovered richness that will bring us to a place of wholeness and inner strength.