Beyond Spiritual Bypassing

Is returning to being a form of spiritual bypassing? A woman wants to know why going back to her true self during meditation feels like an escape – as if she is rejecting the world.

Rupert says: ‘It’s not a rejection, but it is a temporary escape. But that’s a good thing – you are bypassing your thoughts and feelings, and going directly to your true nature. If you never turned around again and addressed your thoughts and feelings, then this could legitimately be called an escape or a spiritual bypass in the pejorative sense.

‘But it’s just a temporary turning away from the content of experience in order to see clearly who we are. And when you truly know that, those aspects of your experience that previously arose on behalf of a separate self dissipate. So your thoughts and feelings arise on behalf of the self that you truly are (with its innate qualities of peace, quiet joy and love) instead of the ego (with its anxiety, fear and sorrow).’

*This video is from one of Rupert’s in-person retreats at The Vedanta, 15–22 November 2024. For more information on upcoming retreats (many of which can be attended online via livestream) go to:

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