The Importance of Staying Rooted
This past Summer brought me some wonderful time to work outdoors and tend to the land I live on. It feeds my soul to get my hands in the soil! I come away with a sense of grounded embodiment while connecting with the compassionate spirits around me in nature. This Autumn, I have had the pleasure of transplanting some plants around my home, and what I noticed most about these plants was the extensive root systems they create. When a plant is well-rooted, it is difficult to knock it off-balance, displace it, and to take it out of the environment that sustains and nourishes it. We are a lot like our plant kin as we are also strengthened when we are grounded, nourished, centered, and in our body. Developing a closer relationship to the body is being more in touch with the body and oneself, while opening up the the felt sense. It’s a practice that supports our physical, mental, emotional and spiritual health. When we are grounded, we are more available to others and the world in a more authentic way. When we have a close relationship with our body, we are more aware of boundaries, we are better at discerning what is right and not right for us, and we are more available to take better care of ourselves. Our experiences from moment to moment become more intensely present, so we feel more alive.
But when we are not rooted well, our energy body becomes vulnerable. When we are in our head or in the Spirit World all the time, we are not really in touch with this reality. We are not really “here,” fully engaged in our lives. When we live in our heads all the time, we start to believe and identify with thoughts. When we live in the world of Spirit all the time, we become vulnerable to spiritual bypassing.
What is spiritual bypassing?
John Welwood, a psychologist in the 1980’s, described the spiritual bypassing phenomena as: “The tendency to use spiritual ideas and practices to sidestep or avoid facing unresolved emotional issues, psychological wounds, and unfinished developmental tasks.” When a spiritual practice is used to compensate for challenging traits such as low self-esteem, low self-worth, social isolation, or other deep emotional issues, they corrupt the actual use of the spiritual practice. In essence, spiritual bypassing is the opposite of being authentically embodied and awakened.
This is not to diminish the power of the Spirits. Shamanic healing has the capacity to shift one’s life where a person might have been spinning their wheels for years. I have been honored to witness miraculous shifts in people’s lives as a result of this ancient healing practice. At the same time, I often encourage clients who are doing deep work to also employ other supports that address mental, emotional and physical healing for the best results. Taking the angle that a spiritual approach alone will “cure” us is one of the many forms of spiritual bypassing. Spiritual bypassing prevents us from acknowledging our experience through our felt sense and therefore distances us from ourselves. When this occurs, we essentially abandon ourselves.
Spiritual bypassing can cause a repression of our emotions which need healthy expression in order to be processed and healed. Avoiding, escaping, denying or repressing feelings of anger, grief, anguish, and other difficult emotions can actually fester into what are called spiritual intrusions in shamanism. When we are not fully here, we are vulnerable to the phenomenon of soul loss as well as spiritual attachments from harmful spirits.
Socially, spiritual bypassing can cause extreme alienation and feelings of disconnection within relationships and group settings because we miss the opportunity to be fully present with each other. When we are not embodied, we are not truly ourselves. Further, when we are not grounded and rooted, we can be targeted and taken advantage of by anyone who calls themselves a “healer.”
In order to navigate our lives in a sovereign way, we must be rebellious and be as embodied as possible! So, it’s important to recognize how spiritual bypassing can appear in our daily lives.
Spiritual bypassing happens when we overemphasize the positive and avoid the negative. It’s when we become overly detached from situations that would normally result in an emotional response. Another way to spiritual bypass is to engage in cognitive dissonance (when we resist grasping the reality of a situation). It is also when we feed the belief that “rising above” emotions is a sign of spiritual maturity. In actuality, being present with emotions, no matter how complicated and difficult, is a sign of emotional and spiritual maturity.
Spiritual bypassing can occur when we support the belief that anger is a sign that one hasn’t done their inner work. Rather than holding space for another’s authentic emotions, we judge. This is most likely because we are uncomfortable with our own anger. In truth, anger is an indication that our boundaries have been violated and our needs have not been met. So, feeling anger rise is can be used as an inner meter about our boundaries. There are many spiritual beliefs that demonize anger, but really, what matters most is what we do with our anger. If we send it out to others, we can cause intrusions for them (and also traumatize them!), but if we hold onto it and repress it, we can cause intrusions for ourselves. So, finding ways to express anger in a healthy way is important to avoid either of these occurrences. Additionally, there is a phenomenon called Sacred Rage.
Spiritual bypassing might also be pressuring someone (even our ourselves) to forgive before deep, difficult inner work has been completely processed. Recent research shows that forgiveness isn’t necessary in order let go of an experience or person(s) that caused us suffering. When family members, mentors, close friends, or spiritual leaders insist that it is in only reaching forgiveness that you will be healed, many come away feeling gaslit, shamed, and forced to betray themselves by placing the needs of their perpetrator above their own. Additionally, forgiveness might be encouraged in order to be the “better person,” or might come from within to prove that we have “ascended.” This has more to do with our ego than forgiveness itself. Authentic healing requires a focus on ourselves - not on the needs of another. When we stand by the belief that forgiveness is necessary for healing, we are telling ourselves that we cannot be whole again unless we extend forgiveness even to those who have committed the most physically and psychologically (and sometimes spiritually!) violent acts imaginable.An unwillingness to forgive does not directly translate to anger, aggression, seeking revenge, or a refusal to move on, nor does it necessarily equate to a dysfunctional response to a traumatic event. When we focus on authentic healing, we work hard to create and enforce healthy boundaries; we refuse to hold toxic secrets; and we learn to prioritize one’s own physical and emotional needs. We take responsibility for healing the parts of ourselves that still feel stuck in the trauma of the past. This doesn’t mean that something is wrong if forgiveness isn’t part of someone’s healing journey. It can take as long as it takes to arrive at forgiveness, and it is often not a straight line there nor is it always a conscious arrival. The journey to forgiveness can ebb and flow into moments of sadness, anguish or anger, and then - finally - to moments of acceptance and letting go. I personally find that if someone has reached acceptance, they are able to move on. So, declaring forgiveness, without taking the painstaking steps to move through our pain is not authentic forgiveness, nor is it truly healing at all.
Another way we can participate in spiritual bypassing is believing that we are 100% responsible for our own circumstances. In truth, we are interconnected, yet we cannot control everything. Even if we “chose” to be born into our current lives, every other being has sovereignty and free will, and we cannot control the choices they make at any given time. So, once we are here in a body, we cannot take responsibility for anything other than ourselves and our responses to others.
Spiritual bypassing includes demonizing the ego and believing that it that needs to be eliminated. It is my belief that the ego is a part of each of us that is necessary to interface in this reality. The trick is to keep it in check as much as possible and to metabolize a healthy ego. This can take a lot of inner work to make friends with our Shadow. In the words of author Jeff Brown, “The idea that the ego must dissolve as we ‘mature’ is yet another way that we pit ourselves against our humanity. In fact, the ego gets healthier as we awaken and it becomes indistinguishable from all that we are. We don’t lose parts as we grow - we integrate them into a holy, wholly weave.”
The phenomena of toxic positivity involves dismissing challenging emotions and responding to distress with false reassurances rather than empathy. Toxic positivity stems from feeling uncomfortable with unprocessed emotions within the self, so space cannot be held for another’s process. Collectively, there are uncomfortable realities and injustices to acknowledge, so when we avoid facing these problematic issues in our external reality, we invalidate the lived experiences of others while shirking our own accountability in creating healthier systems that support everyone. The underlying unspoken message might be that if you do not agree with a community belief, no matter how unaligned it is with your personal truth, you are judged as not being as “ascended” or “woke” as other members. This is incredibly gaslighting and is built on the patriarchal constructs of “less” and “better than.” My helping spirits have shown me in shamanic journeys that this phenomenon is a purely human patriarchal construct reverberating in many forms throughout our world - and usually without our awareness on a moment to moment basis.
We all have parts of ourselves that make us uncomfortable, so we might deny them or push them aside. But when we bury aspects of ourselves into the subconscious rather than resolving and integrating them, these shadow parts of us can take on dysfunctional roles and behaviors that prevent authentic healing and cause detrimental harm in our lives - as well as others’ lives. Offering up only the positive is an approach that circumvents the root of the issues at hand and can even re-traumatize others who might be already reeling from a traumatic experience.
So, why not become deeply, strongly rooted in Earth (and in our bodies) while reach for the stars?
“All embodied beings have Light and Shadow. When the Shadow is overlooked or not even acknowledged, the opportunity for organic growth is missed. The collective is already out of balance due to either the Shadow or Light not being fully acknowledged within. When human darkness is repressed, they create spiritual intrusions which create all kinds of vulnerabilities and blocks within the energetic body. This is not living an embodied life that has been fully realized. The growth that occurs by being present is processed within the mind, body and spirit and is then encoded to the soul, which is then the catalyst for organic awakening and growth. Learn from your tree friends, and be rooted in reaching for the sky.” - the helping spirits
