#256 How to avoid spiritual bypassing of emotion in Vedanta

A bypass is a road or highway that avoids or “bypasses” a built-up area, town, or village. The bypass allows traffic to flow through without interference from local traffic. It reduces congestion in the built-up area, and helps to improve road safety. Sounds good, right?

Heart bypass surgery is similar. Because of a blocked or partially blocked artery in the heart, a new path is created for blood to flow around the heart. Thus, the new pathway improves blood flow to the heart muscle.

Medically and on the road, a bypass is helpful. On the other hand, spiritual bypassing is not helpful. A term coined by psychologist John Wellwood in 1984, spiritual bypassing refers to the tendency of individuals to use spiritual beliefs and practices as a way to avoid or bypass uncomfortable emotions, unresolved psychological issues, or the challenges of daily living.

All of us have done this and perhaps continue to do so.

Why?  Because we want to avoid pain and suffering.

The orientation to avoid pain is so ingrained that we bring the same orientation to Vedanta too. We can’t help it.

As long as the teachings and the teacher are making me feel good, Vedanta works.

The moment I stop feeling good, we look for different or more teaching or another teacher.

In fact, when people come face to face with the helplessness and limitation of the human condition many think they were better off before they came to Vedanta. It is only that the many filters and distractions are off and one has the courage to look at the reality of the body’s mortality. 

The diagnosis of a problem can be more painful than living with the painful symptoms sometimes.

So then, what does spiritual bypassing of emotion look like?

Emotional numbing and repression – Some people believe that true spiritual progress means being unaffected by emotional ups and downs.

A 45 year old single person also a Vedanta student, who feels lonely was embarrassed to admit so, because admission of loneliness felt like he was not making spiritual progress. He thought that being a Vedantin and a devotee to boot means never feeling lonely. And so, he clearly repressed his feelings of loneliness and diverted it into overworking in the name of Karma Yoga.

Another 40 year old woman who had found that her husband had cheated on her, with tears brimming in her eyes, said that she had accepted the situation. She did not have a choice, she said. When I asked her how she was doing, she said that I don’t feel anything. It was clear to me that she had felt so much pain that her body had gone into emotional shut down. She was numb to all emotion. She could barely smile or even hold a conversation. What would help her is to give herself permission to express all her emotions – including murderous rage, rejection and so on before she prematurely rushed into acceptance of the situation.

While the teaching of Karma Yoga highlights samatvam, being more or less unaffected by emotional yo-yos, this is born of a growing understanding of the laws of karma and Ishvara. One does not have this on day one. 

So, then how to avoid this spiritual bypassing of emotional numbing and repression?

We stop converting Vedanta teaching into a ‘should’.

Having samatvam which is a growing gracious acceptance of our situations is different from a fist-clenched-forced-beatific-smile of I should have samatvam, gracious acceptance in all situations.

Our entire emotional landscape is like a multi-colored, multi-hued painting pervaded by Ishvara.

It is painted with the brushstrokes of anger, fear, excitement, cheerfulness, sadness, enthusiasm, helplessness, motivation, joy and so much more.

The truth is that we did not create any emotion. It was given to us.

We have the ability to feel all emotions many times, intensely and

also be able to be free of the emotion as it passes through us.

Some situations may feel like having heightened emotion as a result of the situation, past samskaras of previous lifetimes as well as our build up of this lifetime.

By labelling emotions as positive and negative we have cornered ourselves and don’t even know it. Popular culture has also added to this issue.

I believe that emotions are not positive or negative.

There are negative things that we do when we go against Dharma because of how we handle our emotions.

Our emotions simply are!!!

Getting angry about the abuse or suffering in a relationship will you to find the motivation and strength needed to either improve the relationship or seek help to address it. Thank God we have been given the gift of anger.

You could meet with death because of your excessive compassion for a terrorist who is seeking to kill people of your religion.

Feeling sad about your inevitable death and the death of loved ones will prompt you to find greater meaning and connection in life.  Thank God we have been given the gift of sadness.

Somehow we have developed a dvesha, a strong dislike of anger, sadness and fear. We dislike us having these emotions.

I am not suggesting that we go looking for it actively. All I am saying is that we need not run away from it nor wallow in it.

If we are spiritually bypassing we believe that being a Vedanta student is all about peace and contentment. There is no room for anguish, dejection and helplessness which is an integral part of the human experience. 

Often what causes us more pain is not the actual pain but the added imposition of ‘ I should not feel pain’.

As it is, I am in pain. I can just allow it to move through me, feel it and see it inevitably pass.

In the name of Vedanta, we react to a reaction.

I am in pain that I am in pain.

I should not be in pain. And we throw in some self judgment for good measure as well to ensure that the pain continues.

After months or years of listening to class, I am still in pain.

We are master artists at building up on any emotion by how we react to it and then we are stuck in an emotional spiral.     

It is good to express our emotion appropriately.

Emotional expression does not mean that we victimise a person because of our intense emotion. Just because I am angry does not give me a license to give some one a earful.

In between the polarities of repressing and holding our anger in and directly expressing our anger is a sweet spot – the possibility of a truly healthy capacity for both the containment and release of anger with clarity.

Many of us are afraid we’ll get stuck or lost in fear if we move closer to it.

Pujya Swamiji would often say – Welcome the fear. So what actually happens when we consciously welcome the fear, is does not grip us so tightly.

If we stay present with fear, allowing ourselves to feel it completely and track its sensations in the body, we will become less fearful of our fear.

The more deeply we move into our fearfulness, the less fearful we become.

When we deny the fear by saying ‘I am learning Vedanta and so I must not feel fear’, we remain trapped in it. But when we actually do get inside it, cultivating intimacy with it, we’re no longer  trapped by it. 

I feel fear. Fear – how it feels, terrifying thoughts and the related sensations in the body is a part of Ishvara’s order. It is okay

I feel lonely. Loneliness – how it feels, related thoughts of having no one and the sensations in the chest and heart are a part of Ishvara’s order. 

We do the same with every other emotion.

I feel angry.  Anger is a part of Ishvara’s order.

I feel sadness. Sadness is a part of Ishvara’s order.

No emotion is worthy of rejection because it is all Ishvara’s order. 

We try to embrace all our emotions as a part of Ishvara’s order.

One can certainly look into the connection between the emotion, the thought and how it manifests in one’s body and see if something needs to be done about it.

Vedanta teaches us that our journey to acceptance begins with accepting that I cannot accept the situation, these emotions and being honest with oneself.  

I accept that I cannot accept.

This itself reduces my resistance to myself, the situation or the other person and I create space for seeing the reality.

True spiritual growth involves allowing oneself to experience all emotions, allowing the emotion to pass through us and finding helpful ways of expressing it.         

Since the flow of all emotions is now restored through one’s heart and mind, there is no need for spiritual bypassing of emotion.

Vedanta does not teach us to deny emotions nor numb emotions so that we reach a state of no emotion.

Vedanta does not deny our full-bodied human experience which means –

I am free enough to experience every emotion and I am free from every emotion.