A Therapist's Take on Spiritual Bypassing in Non-Duality

[00:00:00]I think that spiritual bypassing in non-duality can be a real thing. Like I've seen it happen with people.

[00:00:09]And it's a very easy trap uh to have because the non-dual message can get tricky if it's not lived directly and in a mature and integrated way.

[00:00:26]So, it's very easy to fall into traps like there's no one here, so I don't have to deal with my emotional or relational problems, for example.

[00:00:41]Uh you know, you take a message that is inherently experiential, and when it is seen directly, it is understood in one way, but if you understand it only intellectually and conceptually, then you're going to turn it into an ideology.

[00:01:00]And it's not the point of of what we're looking at here.

[00:01:05]So, I've seen even spiritual teachers fall into that trap.

[00:01:12]Um and using the message as a way to uh not take emotional responsibility and to just plainly have bad behaviors, you know, with their students or or anything else.

[00:01:28]And I consider myself super lucky to have had the awakening while in the midst of a career as a psychotherapist in London.

[00:01:39]I feel very lucky about this because the whole point of psychotherapy is not to bypass.

[00:01:48]>> [laughter] >> That's what therapy is.

[00:01:51]You're there not to try not to bypass your emotional life, your relational issues, your life challenges, and to meet them and look at them honestly and directly.

[00:02:06]So, because that was my job, >> [laughter] >> and on a daily basis, I didn't have the luxury to to bypass my own stuff, because that was the only way how I could serve my clients in the best way.

[00:02:21]And also, I was showing my clients how to not bypass their stuff.

[00:02:27]So, if you're doing this on a daily basis, um the concept of spiritual bypassing doesn't even like what is it? What are you talking about? That's not how we live here.

[00:02:40]>> [laughter] >> You know? And so, for me, it was always and it is always a little bit strange to see when when that happens, although I understand how it could happen.

[00:02:52]Because I also feel that it is a a real misunderstanding at the heart of it of what non-duality and a mature non-dual realization is is about.

[00:03:06]Because if you think about it, and actually don't think about it, see it directly, >> [snorts] >> awareness is the ultimate permission to feel whatever there is to feel.

[00:03:23]And it is seen to be that which makes everything possible, that which allows what appears to appear, whatever it is, and it is inherently known not to be judgmental, and to just be like this big open, boundless yes to whatever emotion arises, to whatever pain arises, to whatever difficult dynamic arrives with someone else.

[00:04:01]So, awareness, when it is known directly and recognized to be the nature of what you are, then that is finally the permission to feel what there is to feel and not to to start bypassing life, but to include it, to welcome it.

[00:04:28]Not because I have to welcome life, but just because awareness itself is the welcoming of what appears, and it is seen that what appears will eventually disappear in this awareness, in this beingness that you are.

[00:04:49]And so, when you know yourself as that directly, where is where is it that I can go and hide from life?

[00:04:59]It doesn't It doesn't even make sense.

[00:05:02]I'm sorry, I'm getting a little bit heated here.

[00:05:05]>> [snorts and laughter] >> Because it is frustrating when you hear people say that non-duality is an escape of of our emotional life and our difficulties.

[00:05:21]It can be if you don't understand it with the heart, if you don't understand it directly and experientially.

[00:05:31]And if you are not willing to live this understanding in a mature way, where everything is included, everything is welcome, even resistance.

[00:05:46]Why, you think no resistance arrives here? Of course, there is resistance to what is uncomfortable or to what seems unfair or to what feels challenging. Resistance will appear.

[00:06:01]But what I have noticed after awakening is that there isn't any more a resistance to my resistance.

[00:06:10]>> [laughter] >> So everything is included, even resistance. And when resistance is welcomed, uh it it cannot stay um there for long, usually.

[00:06:26]So these are my two cents on spiritual bypassing and on how lucky I feel in some ways to have been a therapist because that, you know, bypassing was not an option here. And it doesn't even seem possible.

[00:06:49]And I see that it is possible for other people. I've seen it in spiritual teachers as well.

[00:06:56]And it's unfortunate.

[00:06:58]It's unfortunate because it is such a distortion of of the original possibility and invitation here.