Spiritual Bypassing.
Pretending to be positive, attempting to convince ourselves that our experience is not our experience, attempting to escape how we really feel is bypassing. When I say bypassing I mean that attempt to escape what is. Whether what is, is depression, pain, anxiety, shame or whatever. These are all just labels we give to different sensations in the body, which we attempt to skip over and deny, to move "away from" because they are uncomfortable.
Our human experience is always going to be there, whether we "wake up" to the space of non dual awareness or not. Waking up really just shifts our identity from being trapped within thought and sensation to a vast space and silence that surrounds it. But within that space, our humanness still takes place.
As long as we are denying our human experience, whether its by simply calling it illusory or unreal, even if we have seen through this self we take ourselves to be as not who we are, we will never integrate what we have realised, we will never be able to fully embody what we have woken up to.
Life includes all these sensations in the body that we contract from, and these energies never truly heal if we are still refusing to meet them. Its the same game that we are playing prior to waking up. Only now its a spiritual game, with awareness being the bypass. Still oriented by escape, instead of embrace.
Pretending to love when we feel anger, is not real love. Its manipulation. Pretending or trying to convince ourselves we love ourselves when we are actually full of shame is inauthentic. The raw shame and the anger has to be met, seen and loved.
I encourage you to go in the opposite direction to what you have been conditioned to do, whether you think you have "woken up" or had a shift in identity or not. Usually we move away from whats happening within our body, whether its moving away to a more kind and loving spiritual concept, or moving away into the space of presence/awareness. But we can remain totally present and aware and at the same time move toward these sensations. We can begin to embody authenticity in the moment, and stop lying to ourselves.
If we are to mature spiritually we must give these energies their own liberation, life is not two, we can't continue to deny one half of our experience and expect to grow spiritually. Everything must be included.
Calm your nervous system and just be with whatever is. Your body will tell you where to place attention, let attention flow naturally all through the body, its intelligence will guide you where to look, where your still holding on, and as you allow it, it opens by itself. And as more and more opens, as the nervous system clears the body begins to return to its natural state of presence.
Peace,
Matt Nettleton
Senior NRAM Facilitator and Trainer.
www.mattnettleton.com