Reaching for the Spirit while Ignoring the Psyche

Have you ever caught yourself feeling guilty after snapping at someone despite years of being on a spiritual path?

You may feel more joy, peace and tranquillity in your daily life. You may become more patient and forgiving with a more resilient nervous system. Not everything feels like a personal attack anymore. Some things that made you react before no longer trigger you or at least not as intensely or for as long. Your heart feels lighter.

Yet you notice certain people or situations still trigger unpleasant emotions. Perhaps you hadn’t felt it in a while, and it may leave you confused. Didn’t I already process that? Why am I still getting triggered over this?

When you suddenly shout at someone or feel jealous, you may quietly scold yourself for reacting in ‘unspiritual’ ways. It clashes with the image of your ideal spiritual self.

Then you notice you are judging yourself instead of feeling self-compassion and judge yourself for that. This leads to feeling like you have failed at spiritual development. This is because spiritual principles can become another superego imposed set of rules. Thus layer upon layer of self-judgment deepens this spiral of self-blame and shame.

You may even start to doubt the validity of your practices. Am I doing something wrong or is this not the path for me?

That is not to say the spiritual connection you feel is not real.

Sometimes we are in such a rush to become enlightened, that we unconsciously project our ego based ambition onto our spiritual development. We fast track our spiritual journey to the detriment of our psychological work. Sometimes we focus only on our spiritual development to avoid the emotional issues that need our attention because it’s an uncomfortable process. This is called ‘spiritual bypassing’ in transpersonal psychotherapy, as coined by John Welwood. It refers to bypassing the psyche in order to reach the spirit.

When the wounds resurface, the temptation is to ignore them; to relegate them once more to the unconscious where they become shadow material (in Jungian terms).

When this happens, we risk becoming disconnected from our whole self and over-identify with the outer persona as the spiritually aware person, whilst the hidden wounds keep generating discontent or any pain that has not fully integrated.

If we stay at the level of simply deciding whether our chosen path is right, we risk not addressing the deeper levels of our wounds. We may have been in such a rush to feel better but what happens when we ignore the deeper layers? We can ignore them for a while. However, rejected parts of us do not disappear. When old wounds remain unprocessed, they will resurface. It is a call for attention and a necessary step towards wholeness.

I like to receive it as a gracious invitation to attend to those parts. It is precisely these parts that help us towards integration of our whole selves. Integrating all aspects and embracing who we are in our totality: Our spiritual nature, our psychological makeup and physical bodies. We cannot separate them out.

How do you move towards that? Not through striving harder or pushing ourselves. Instead, by attending to our innermost self with an open heart. It does not mean we don’t develop any further. On the contrary: pausing, welcoming and attending to those wounded parts allows us to grow.

Self-acceptance and self-compassion cannot be forced, but when our emotions and judgments are acknowledged without further judgement, they can flow naturally from our hearts. Not from the mind, such as telling ourselves not to judge; although sometimes that is one place to start. Rather allowing it to emerge from the deepest part of our heart. Those elusive qualities can arise when the clutter of our minds and psyche clears. I believe we each have that within us, this light, our very essence, which ultimately is Unconditional Love.

So this piece is not about fixing yourself. It is not a set of instructions or a list of tips to improve yourself. This is an invitation to notice the self-judgement and your standards of spirituality. It is an invitation to recognise your true nature along with the shadow. And when we stop reaching, who knows what may emerge…

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