“Spirituality is one of those realities that we have only so long as we seek it; as soon as we stop seeking, we stop finding; as soon as we think we’ve got it, we’ve most certainly lost it.”
Kurtz, E. & Ketchum, K.

What does the spiritual journey seek? A wise teacher would probably reply with something like, “It is possible that the answer to your question is just over the next rise. Walk with me.” So you and the teacher walk together, you share your stories and experience, and you learn from each other as well as from the road and all that lies along it. When you crest the hill, a new horizon awaits, and you ask the teacher, “What do we seek?” The teacher once again says, “It is possible that the answer to your question is just over the next rise. Walk with me.” Answers arise in the journey and not at any destination. The ‘spiritual’ is beyond our grasp. It is supposed to be; otherwise, it would not be what it is.

Sometimes, our spiritual quest can divert us from facing our pain and the need for its healing. Other times, we might believe we have the answers and cease to ask the necessary questions. After all, spirituality is about knowing of the limits of one’s knowledge.

Just as we can suffer and despair in our spiritual journey, sometimes, in our search for fullness, we can experience a prolonged period of satisfaction. Everything seems to go our way, happy coincidences abound, and the universe seems to want to meet us more than halfway. It’s like all our pain and suffering and hard work has paid-off and we have finally arrived at the point of harvest. The dog days are over!

Alternatively, there are times in life when we stumble upon a source of knowledge and we milk it for all its worth to get to the ‘truth’. It can be a specialization, a book, a teaching, a practise, a teacher or guru, or even a lover (okay, it’s often a lover). It feels like we have arrived at an oasis after a long and winding trek through the desert; we rest next to this well of knowledge and drink deeply of it.

Then there is yet another type of detour: something one of my own teachers called ‘woundology’. We turn inwards to address every shortcoming and become so preoccupied with our own dysfunctional parts that our days and nights consist of endless navel-gazing. This one is tricky because, although we are facing our pain, we’re not taking action to heal. We just know there is a missing piece of wisdom buried in our pain—we only need to look harder! But we’re isolating and depriving ourselves of the healing found through sharing with others.

Lastly, we can use serving others as a diversion. We focus on the pain of another to deflect us from dealing with our own. We have all done this, and very often it can be a helpful action. It is constructive when we share a pain with someone and we find common ground. We no longer feel so alone in our suffering. However, it can become destructive when we ask others to bear the cost of our own denial. If we serve others to avoid our own anguish, we are not healing, and we subconsciously bring our own issues into the mix. Our action in service of others can sometimes be self-serving.

All of the above experiences fall under the category of spiritual bypass. This term was coined by Buddhist teacher and psychotherapist John Welwood in the 1980s. He states that we often

use the goal of awakening or liberation to rationalize what I call premature transcendence: trying to rise above the raw and messy side of our humanness before we have fully faced and made peace with it. And then we tend to use absolute truth to disparage or dismiss relative human needs, feelings, psychological problems, relational difficulties, and developmental deficits.

The spiritual journey has a certain allure, and we become caught-up and get stuck in one aspect of the process at the expense of the mundane. We get fixated on a belief and forget that we are imperfect creatures in process. We soak-up the wonder of the universe but our dirty dishes pile-up in the sink. Engrossed in an arcane tome of spiritual wisdom, we step into a hole and sprain our ankle. We get so mired in the winter of our despair that we never notice that spring has arrived. Or we try so hard to fix others that they recoil when they see us coming.

Spiritual bypass is not just messy and awkward—it can also cause a rift between our humanity and our spirit, as Welwood reminds us:

Absolute truth is favoured over relative truth, the impersonal over the personal, emptiness over form, transcendence over embodiment, and detachment over feeling. One might, for example, try to practice non-attachment by dismissing one’s need for love, but this only drives the need underground, so that it often becomes unconsciously acted out in covert and possibly harmful ways instead.

In speaking of Buddhist practice, Welwood addresses primarily the pitfalls of non-attachment, but as I have shown here, spiritual bypass can take many forms. The common element involves diversion—separation of a part of ourselves in our spiritual practice. The point is that we all are susceptible to spiritual bypass, especially when spirituality occupies a significant aspect of our lives.

So what is the solution? First, we have to notice that it’s happening, that the avoidance of pain is a powerful motivator. Recognizing that we are side-stepping work that we need to do on ourselves is the first step. Like any other problem that arises in our spiritual journey, the answer lies in acceptance and compassion. From there, we can re-engage with shared humanity and healing in the presence of others.

When I reflect on my own life, I observe periods during which I engaged in spiritual bypass, some longer and deeper than others. From my early adulthood, as I have written, I sought spiritual secrets, a master key, that would aid me to fulfill my life purpose. In my mid-thirties, I trained to become a Reiki master and opened a practice. But I failed to take necessary steps to attract clients! So, I sat in an empty studio for a while, felt useless, then went to a pub next door and drank. I was preaching love and light but my actions were to feed my addiction instead of my new vocation. I used spiritual knowledge to divert me from my debilitating alcoholism, but the latter won out.

I found distraction in relationships. How can my conduct in relationships act as spiritual bypass? I’m pretty sure it’s connected to attachment style, fear of abandonment, and—most importantly—how I perceive the act of falling in love as a spiritual experience. When the honeymoon period ends, and the real work of relationship begins, I might experience it as a fall from grace, instead of an opportunity to grow together. Nothing says (pain) avoidance like serial monogamy.

Lastly, I am fairly certain that, during my first thirteen years in recovery, I used the spiritual components of my recovery program to divert myself from healing deeper trauma. Eventually I relapsed and left recovery for nine years. Was this spiritual bypass? I don’t know. We all have blind spots in our healing journey. Sometimes we’re just not ready to look for them. This is one that I’m only starting to work through, so it is difficult for me to articulate at this time.

The spiritual journey is a voyage toward fullness, to wholeness, with the tacit understanding that we never will ‘arrive’. We can’t get there from here—but nevertheless we try.

References

Fossella, Tina & Welwood, John. (2011). “Human nature, Buddha nature: an interview with John Welwood”. Tricycle: The Buddhist Review. Spring 2011, 20 (3). Accessed online 10 Sept 2023. http://www.johnwelwood.com/articles/TRIC_interview_uncut.pdf

Kurtz, Ernest and Ketchum, Katherine (1993) The Spirituality of Imperfection: Storytelling and the Search for Meaning. New York: Bantam.