A term introduced in the 1980’s by a Buddhist teacher and physchotherapist John Welwood which describes the use of spiritual practices and ideas to side-step, or “bypass” un-resolved emotional issues or wounds.
If we use meditation, yoga, plant medicines, crystals or other forms of a spiritual journey to avoid uncomfortable feelings or unresolved situations, this could be a bypass. This move away from pain, or conflict avoidance (“maintenance” of a particular mind state), is a common saboteur, but ultimately can take us off the court of life and action as a human as we seek non-attachment.
Welwood describes this common over identification as a spiritual practitioner as a way of avoiding a depth of personal engagement with others, which “might stir up old wounds and longings for love.”
Effectively, what Welwood has described is one form of hiding – we are uncannily good at tricking ourselves and interestingly, we see this hiding occur all over the place to avoid conflict.
Other bypasses might include:
-
Overwork causing fatigue as a pattern to then avoid producing our work for days or weeks at a time
-
Over-”learning” or over analysing as a tool to avoid implementing and taking action
-
Overexercising/over-training as a way to avoid dealing with relationship or personal issues
-
Professionally overemphasising the “image” – logo design, social media grooming, website development, a heightened concern over a “representation” rather than actual work or contribution
-
Addictions and looping as distraction mechanisms to avoid the task at hand
Of course, many that I’ve experienced multiple times myself!
And in the same breath, Welwood was obviously not saying that any of the spiritual practices themselves are the problem (similarly to “exercise” is not the problem), but rather a nice reminder of the importance of context.
