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.
Why it works
In the Tricycle interview, Welwood says that trying to practise nonattachment by dismissing one's need for love "only drives the need underground". He also says that to grow into a healthy human being "we need a base of secure attachment", and that the two tracks of development "can mutually enrich each other." His 1984 article calls working with "needs, scripts, hunger for love, fear of love" "psychological, not spiritual work", and names the goal as a self-respect "not overwhelmed or crushed by other people's opinions."
How to do it
- Finish this sentence several times on paper: "Because I am spiritual, I should not need ..."
- For each answer, ask honestly whether the need is gone or only unspoken. Notice which ones bring a feeling.
- Pick one need that is still alive and name one small, ordinary way it could be met by a person in your life this week.
- Notice any voice that calls this "attachment", and ask whether it is wisdom or fear of being let down.
Evidence
The point that dismissing the need for love "drives the need underground", and that a healthy person needs "a base of secure attachment", come from Welwood's Tricycle interview (Spring 2011). The list of needs, and the description of that work as "psychological, not spiritual", come from his 1984 article. These are clinical observations from a psychotherapist and practitioner of a spiritual path, not tested findings. (anecdotal)
Untested as a practice. Needs that go back to early relationships can stir up grief or longing that is better explored with a therapist, especially if it starts to feel overwhelming.
Sources
- Fossella, T. (2011). Human nature, Buddha nature: An interview with John Welwood. Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, Spring 2011.
- Welwood, J. (1984). Principles of inner work: Psychological and spiritual. Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, 16(1), 63-73.
Common mistake
Concluding that every form of simplicity or letting go is avoidance. The question is whether a need was outgrown or only pushed out of sight.
Practice this with IX Coach
More practices for 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.
- Question the "good practitioner" and its shoulds
Notice when being spiritual has become an identity to protect, enforced by an inner list of shoulds.
- 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.
Related concepts
- Shadow Work
Meeting the parts of yourself you have been ignoring
- Radical Acceptance, Made Practical
Ending the second arrow — RAIN and the skills of accepting what is
- The 3-2-1 Shadow Process: Face It, Talk to It, Be It
Turning the person who gets under your skin from an "it" back into a part of "I", in three shifts of perspective
- The Golden Shadow: Reclaiming the Gold You See in Others
Why the people you admire most may be carrying something of yours, and how to take it back
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