Understanding Spiritual Bypassing

Growing up in a Christian family, community, and schools was when I first encountered some people who used scripture and spiritual ideals as shields against vulnerability, genuine connection, and personal responsibility—instead of as tools for healing. Spiritual bypassing isn’t unique to the wellness world often associated with us yogis, modern mystics, lightworkers, or the ‘conscious community.’ It exists across all spiritual traditions. It even shows up in those regarded as devout pillars of faith, matriarchs or patriarchs in families and communities, those fluent in scripture, those ever-present at Sunday services, and hosts of spiritual gatherings. Despite visible devotion, without a strong personal self-awareness practice, beliefs can become walls instead of bridges—used to exclude, judge, or dismiss, rather than to unite and uplift.

Spiritual bypassing refers to the tendency to use spiritual beliefs, practices, or identities as a way to avoid facing unresolved emotional pain, psychological wounds, trauma, or the often uncomfortable work of personal and relational growth. Coined by transpersonal psychotherapist and Buddhist teacher John Welwood in the 1980s, the term describes how spiritual frameworks—whether religious, metaphysical, or New Age—can be misused as tools of avoidance rather than transformation.

This bypass can take many forms: quoting scripture instead of living its message, meditating instead of feeling grief, preaching love while avoiding accountability, or wearing sacred symbols as fashion statements while embodying superiority or entitlement.

While genuine spirituality fosters reverence, empathy, and self-awareness, spiritual bypassing often masks emotional immaturity with performative piety or aesthetic spirituality. It can show up in:

  • Religious circles, where spiritual authority is used to shame, exclude, or maintain control.
  • Wellness communities, where high-vibration rhetoric is used to dismiss real-world suffering or social inequality.
  • Ego-driven personas, where spiritual attire, language, or rituals are adopted to signal moral or energetic superiority rather than engage in meaningful self-inquiry and genuine spiritual maturity embodiment.

Two particularly damaging forms of spiritual bypassing often go unnoticed:

1. Deferring to Spiritual Authority to Avoid Responsibility

Many people avoid critical thinking or emotional engagement by saying things like, “My pastor or guru said we shouldn't question God's will,” “God doesn’t give you more than you can handle, so you just need to stay strong," or "It’s not up to me to intervene—everything happens in divine timing.”

In my family, this translated into a refusal to acknowledge the emotional needs of a child from a “broken” home. An unexamined "puritan" mentality became a reason not to put things into context, reflect or connect.

2. Bypassing Social and Cultural Realities

Phrases like “We are all one,” or “Everything is just an illusion,” can be used to ignore social inequalities like racism, classism, or family stigma.

For some, it's easier to keep their family image “pure” and distanced than to engage with the uncomfortable realities of divorce in families, financial struggle, or difference. The illusion of unity mask real, painful division.

Whether in religious or spiritual circles, this kind of bypassing causes deep relational harm. It allows people to:

  • Dismiss others’ pain as a lack of faith or “low vibration.”
  • Avoid uncomfortable conversations about privilege, family dynamics, or injustice.
  • Maintain emotional distance while still appearing morally or spiritually superior.
  • Deflect personal responsibility for everyday actions—like the reactive behavior of a child who's been neglected, parking illegally, speeding, or making poor decisions—by blaming external forces such as “spiritual attack,” “negative energy,” or “the devil,” rather than owning their mistakes and choices.

True spiritual maturity is tested in our relationships, specially when facing what’s uncomfortable. It’s about expanding compassion, empathy, love, and connection—about unifying. Spirituality is not escapism. That means:

  • Acknowledging our own biases and limitations.
  • Choosing connection over image.
  • Allowing our beliefs to deepen empathy, love, and union—not restrict it.
  • Taking responsibility for our actions—even in the small, everyday moments. Labeling a child “difficult,” "problematic," or "possessed" blaming or claiming the devil might feel easier than admitting carelessness or neglect, but growth happens when we stop outsourcing accountability.
  • Recognizing that spirituality doesn’t exempt us from consequences—it invites us to meet them with integrity.

Spiritual bypassing doesn’t only happen in places of worship, religious or spiritual communities, far-off and spiritual retreats. It happens at dinner tables, in family group chats, in moments of judgment masked as righteousness, and in the quiet decisions to include or exclude others.

It happens when we use spiritual language to avoid apologizing, when we say things like “they attracted that energy into their life” instead of offering empathy, or when we deflect responsibility for our actions by blaming external energies, karma, or the devil.

Emotional and spiritual growth requires the willingness to confront the ways we use belief to exclude, avoid, or hide. It asks us to bring awareness not only to our rituals and practices, but to our tone in conversation, our behavior under stress, and our presence in community.

If we claim to walk a spiritual path, we must remember: spirit doesn’t bypass—it bridges. True spirituality meets the mess and learns the alignment it calls for, not escapes it. It softens the ego, not inflates it. And it calls us, again and again, to show up—not just in sacred spaces, but in the everyday sacredness of how we relate, take responsibility, and expand our capacity to love.