Question the "good practitioner" and its shoulds
Notice when being spiritual has become an identity to protect, enforced by an inner list of shoulds.
Perché funziona
Welwood describes being a "good" spiritual practitioner as something that can become a compensatory identity, one that "covers up and defends against an underlying deficient identity". He calls a practice taken over by shoulds a "spiritual superego", "the voice that whispers 'shoulds' in our ear." Masters' book has a chapter titled "Let's stop being negative about our negativity". When anger, need or sadness feels like evidence of spiritual failure, it tends to get hidden, and the hiding is the bypass.
Come farlo
- List the rules you hold for yourself as a spiritual person ("I should always be calm", "I should not judge", "I should be grateful").
- Beside each, write what you feel when you break it. If the answer is shame, mark it.
- For one marked rule, ask: what would I have to feel if I stopped enforcing this? Write it down.
- Replace the rule with a plain note of what you felt when you broke it and what that feeling was asking for, instead of a verdict on yourself.
Prove scientifiche
The compensatory identity and the "spiritual superego" are terms from Welwood's Tricycle interview (Spring 2011). Masters' book has chapters titled "Let's stop being negative about our negativity" and "Do not overlook shame". Picciotto, Fox and Neto (2017) interviewed eight people in semi-structured interviews to explore the causes and consequences of spiritual bypass as they experienced it. The practice itself is untested. (anecdotal)
Untested as a practice. If looking at shame becomes crushing rather than clarifying, slow down and work with a therapist.
Fonti
- Fossella, T. (2011). Human nature, Buddha nature: An interview with John Welwood. Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, Spring 2011.
- Masters, R. A. (2010). Spiritual Bypassing: When Spirituality Disconnects Us from What Really Matters. North Atlantic Books.
- Picciotto, G., Fox, J., & Neto, F. (2017). A phenomenology of spiritual bypass: Causes, consequences, and implications. Journal of Spirituality in Mental Health, 20(4), 333-354.
Errore comune
Building a new should out of this one ("I should not spiritually bypass"). That is the same superego with a new rule; the shift is toward allowing what you feel, not toward a better standard.
Metti in pratica questo con IX Coach
Altre pratiche per Spiritual Bypassing: When Practice Becomes a Way Around Your Feelings
- Catch the spiritual phrase that arrives before the feeling
Notice when a true-sounding spiritual idea shows up the instant something hurts, and pause before using it.
- Feel it, acknowledge it, then let it go
Let a painful feeling fully arrive and be acknowledged before practising letting go of it.
- Come down from the head into the body
Bring attention down to the physical felt sense of what is happening, instead of staying with ideas about it.
- Let anger show you where your no is
Treat anger as information about a limit being crossed, rather than as a spiritual failure to hide.
- Name the human need you decided you were above
Find the ordinary need for love, closeness or recognition that your practice has been used to deny.
- Notice when you rush someone else past their pain
Catch yourself offering a spiritual reframe to someone who is still hurting, and stay with them instead.
- Keep your practice and bring in psychological work too
Let spiritual practice and psychological work each do their own job, instead of asking one to do both.
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