Spiritual Bypassing: When Practice Becomes Escape

Dr. Miles Neale, Nalanda Institute for Contemplative Science Sponsored by Go Yoga, Brooklyn April 29, 2012

Definition of Spiritual Bypassing

a widespread tendency to use spiritual ideas and practices to sidestep or avoid facing unresolved emotional issues, psychological wounds, and unfinished developmental tasks. John Welwood using spirituality to avoid shame and pain.

Implication
We can use spiritual transcendence 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. - JW

Creating a Split - The Divided Self

Trying to move beyond our psychological and emotional issues by sidestepping them is dangerous. It sets up a debilitating split between the Buddha and the human within us. And it leads to a conceptual, one-sided kind of spirituality where one pole of life is elevated at the expense of its opposite: Absolute truth is favored over relative truth, the impersonal over the personal, emptiness over form, transcendence over embodiment, and detachment over feeling. - JW

Relationship as Crucible
# # # # Most of our present wounding is caused by breaches and trauma in the context of past relationship. Meditating yogis in the Himalayas might not come up against these wounds because there is no-one to aggravate/evoke them. But modern western lay practitioners, who choose to practice in the context of life, intimate and work relationships, come up against these dynamics and wounds all the time. Thus relationships is a crucible for observing the tendency to bypass, as well as the opportunity for real psycho-spiritual work and development.

Dr. Miles Neale - 2012

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Origins of Psychological Wounding Trauma and Narrative # Most of our psychological wounding comes from empathic failures # #
experienced in childhood with our care-givers. As children we are so vulnerable and dependent and require consistent, reliable, and unconditional care. When we dont get this kind of care, we experience a kind of trauma, that is stored in memory. Most of these early traumatic experiences were benign in nature, that is unintentional, when for example, our parents did not validate or reassure us enough, or at the required moment, because they were preoccupied, stressed, or had learned behaviors from their own traumatic childhoods. In these cases, we not only store the lack of attention, care or validation as a mere unpleasant event, but we place these failures in the context of an internal, self-referential narrative such as I am inadequate, I am unworthy, I am hopeless, the world is terrifying, others are unreliable.

Attachment Research
# Modern attachment theory (Bowlby) and interpersonal neurobiology (Seigle and Shore) demonstrate how mind-brain-relationships forms an interdependent triad in a childs development that affects their health, wellbeing, capacity to function effectively in the world, brain development, endocrine and immune system functioning, emotional regulation, predisposition to depression, anxiety, addictions and schizophrenia, stress-tolerance, adult relationships. Modern western child rearing practices, in contrast, to indigenous and preindustrial practices of Asia show far more fragmentation in the extended family, more stress and pressure placed on single parents, more alienation, less physical contact and less reliable, emotional attunement. Children are therefore being raise with an insecure attachment style and present with greater: self-hatred, disembodiment, lack of grounding, chronic insecurity and anxiety, overactive minds, lack of basic trust, deep sense of inner deficiency, and existential alienation.

Key Points for Recovery: Making Space For Full Range of Experience
The hallmark of successful psychological and spiritual work is how we can gain access to, recognize, compassionately accept, and skillfully integrate, a full range of our own and others experience. That means all of our unwanted, shadow material, thoughts, feelings, memories etc. that we normally wish to avoid, bury, judge, defend against or deny.

Trauma is Stored and Doesnt Disappear It must be Worked Through Using the tools of Meditation and Psychotherapy
Dr. Miles Neale - 2012

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Common Examples of Spiritual Bypassing

1. Conflict Avoidance in the guise of being easy going - leads to repressed anger - makes excuses for others behavior - does not acknowledge that others are being negligible or even hurtful - doesnt value ones one experience of being hurt, disappointed - isnt helpful for others who are negligible, doesnt mirror reality back to them - using patience and tolerance to bypass our human hurt or anger. 2. Co-dependence in the guise of compassion - helping or caring for others out of fear, guilt, shame, obligation. - focusing on others to the exclusion of one self/needs - passive communication, by focusing on you I secretly hope youll focus on me, but I wont ever say anything. - 80-20 relationship, whos being left out? - using concepts of selflessness and compassion to bypass our human need. - caring for others because we want to feel good about ourselves, when underneath we think we are bad. 3. Who's your Daddy? Acting out with the Guru - pleasing the guru to feel special, validated, important, loved - competitive feelings with other members of the sangha - recreating childhood dynamics in the sangha gain love or act-out aggression - thinking the guru has something to give, that I dont already have. - give a man a fish, feed him for a day; teach a man to fish, feed him for life. 4. Detachment as a suppression of needs for love, connection

and desire
- avoidance of love, intimacy and relationships in general out misunderstanding the meaning and relevance of detachment. - because of pain of disappointments and failed relationship people become emotionally detached, hallow, un-empathic, aloof, self-centered. - uninterested in life, no passion, no desire because of the teaching desire is the root of all attachment. Unhealthy desire, devoid of understanding, is the root of suffering. - being seen as needy is death so dont have any needs! - Western Buddhists are practicing in the relational area is not nonattachment, but avoidance of attachment. Avoidance of attachment, however, is not freedom from attachment. Its still a form of clinging clinging to the denial of your human attachment needs, out of distrust that love can be reliable.""#"Welwood

Dr. Miles Neale - 2012

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The avoidant attachment style develops in children whose parents are consistently unavailable emotionally. So these children learn to take care of themselves and not need anything from others. Thats their adaptive strategy, and its an intelligent and useful one. Obviously if your needs arent going to be met, its too painful to keep feeling them. Its better to turn away from them and develop a do-it-yourself, detached compensatory identity. Welwood Many Avoidant personalities are attracted to Buddhist teachings on nonattachment. But in the sangha, Avoidant types tend to be dismissive of other peoples needs because, guess what, theyre dismissive of their own needs. Welwood 5. The Spiritual Super Ego - the tyranny of the should do this!dont do that!.blind or strict adherence to the doctrines or protocols (ie. yamas and niyamas) without critical understanding or emotional flexibility. - perfection is a standard for ones aspiration, but when it is taken as a fixed goal we always fall short and feel inadequate. - Swami Prajnanpad said that idealism is an act of violence. - Using renunciation as a justification for self-denial and emotional anorexia. - Encouraging pain and harsh discipline and rejecting the needs of the body ie self mortification out of masochism. - not listening to your body in yoga, but just being hard on yourself, always pushing, denies the reality, awareness and love of the self/body in the moment in favor for some imagined construct or mental image. 6. Using Absolute Truth to Deny the Relative Truth - Mistake: Emptiness means nothing conventional is important. - Mistake: There is no self so I shouldnt pay undo attention to my feelings nor should I have any needs or wants. - Mistake: Desire is the problem, so just dont have any desires. - Mistake: Your feelings are empty, so just observe them and let them go.. What if feelings have important information to tell us, then we miss the opportunity to discover. - Mistake: Believing that Emptiness or ultimate truth somehow denies the importance of the relative truth of feelings and interactions this is lopsided and forgets the interdependence between form and emptiness. 7. Over-compensatory Identity # I feel inadequate in my ordinary life, so I will work towards being a perfect practitioner in my spiritual life. # We use spiritual practice to suppress unwanted feelings of inadequacy, unlovability and mascaraed in a spiritual persona.

Dr. Miles Neale - 2012

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8. Spiritual Goodies that feed our Narcissism # Gaining experience or insights inflates the sense of self as important or better than others. # By contrast we can then pity others or disparage them for being worldly or not as spiritually evolved. # closeted narcissism as opposed to inflated or grandiose narcissism, is when we are self-absorbed or pre-occupied about our failures and deficits. This is common in depression, and then we can use teachings on selflessness to feel even more ashamed and inadequate in a double layer of self-punishment. - Recent scandals with gurus who self-importance, self-inflation denial of real human needs, denial of their limits or shadow, caused widespread pain in their communities.

Closing Remarks
The cost of not considering how we are hiding out in our spiritual practice can be great in terms of years wasted and in terms of unknowing hurting others. Remember the 1st noble truth encourages us to get closer to our suffering in order to understand it. Identify and get close to and learn from trauma. There is no transcendence without transformation. The only way out is through. We have to work thorough trauma with meditation and therapy. Flip it: Mindfulness can be used for psychological growth and how psychotherapy can be used for spiritual growth. Spiritual work and psychological work go hand in hand. They are interdependent. We can aspire to great heights while accepting our limits. From is Emptiness and visa versa. Mindfulness can help us become more attuned to our pain, develop selfcare, emotional flexibility, affect tolerance, stress-resilience if we have the courage to face things as they are. Psychotherapy can offer a mindful attunement and acceptance between two conscious minds. It can form a positive neural circuitry that can rehabilitate all the defective interpersonal patterns we learned in childhood. Working closely and honestly with someone else provides a check and balance, covers our blind spots, and offers additional support. How do we develop an honest, accepting and loving relationship with ourselves as we are, in the moment, with all aspects of ourselves. This will then inform how we relate to others.

Dr. Miles Neale - 2012

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