Spiritual bypassing and shadow integration

Written By Freya Astrella

Despite our best efforts to ascend to the lofty heights of enlightenment, we spiritual folk can – and do – fall into several traps. However, all is not lost! The spiritual path is a beautiful one, offering sweeping vistas into one’s own psyche, and precious glimpses into our multi-dimensional cosmos. 

In this blog, I will dive into two of the common spiritual concepts. What are they? How do they map onto 21st century Western sensibilities? And what can you learn from my failings along my own treacherous journey? 

Got your snorkel and flippers on? Let’s take a deep dive into the concepts of spiritual bypassing and shadow integration... 

Spiritual bypassing

The first pothole along the spiritual path for many is Spiritual Bypassing – a term coined by psychotherapist John Welwood to describe a “tendency to use spiritual ideas and practices to...avoid facing unresolved emotional issues, psychological wounds, and unfinished developmental tasks”.   

When you’re all bushy-tailed about healing, it can be alluring to think that staring at the pure light of God will blind you (and therefore heal you) of your traumas and neuroses. And before you know it, you’ll be flouncing around in all-white attire, reciting the mantra “Good vibes only”. 

But you’ll probably just make your demons even more determined to cause trouble. They won’t give up and move on. They will rattle your cage until you listen to them.  

If you think about it, spiritual bypassing could he considered a psy-op (a psychological operation co-ordinated by people in power). If you don’t journey through the dark corners of your psyche, you will never be able to ascend. And maybe that’s what the global leaders want - to keep us distracted, satiated, and terrified of discomfort.

The life-changing book, Existential Kink by Carolyn Elliott, contains the following client testimonial: “When you only focus on the light and positive thinking…it’s like you’re staring up at the sun without looking down to notice that you were standing in a pile of faeces”.  

That pile of shit isn’t going anywhere unless you clear it up. So, grab a mop and do ‘the work’.  

Ah...hold up!!!

Doing ‘the work’ is not a guaranteed way to escape spiritual bypassing.  

As we all know, spiritual life is packed with tools to do ‘the work’, such as breathwork, sound healing, plant medicines etc. And yes, these are all powerful tools for genuine healing, but they can also be used like badges on a Scout uniform.  

These Scout badges can then serve as a public notice board of how much ‘work’ you’ve put into yourself. Before you know it, you’ve turned ‘the work’ into a virtue signal and you’ve seriously fuelled your ego.  

Beware of thinking you are Jesus. Especially if you’re not willing to get nailed to a cross. 

In other words, you could easily end up talking the talk but not walking the walk. Furthermore, this avoidance of walking the walk could then manifest as shadow projection.  

More of that in just a second but first, let me tell you a little story about how I’ve been ensnared by spiritual bypassing. 

As you may already know, I’ve been imbibing plant medicines for nearly a decade now. And sometimes I come home from retreats feeling ‘top heavy’. Meaning that my third eye and crown chakras are on FIRE, but my root, sacral, solar and heart are mere ashy embers. In other words, a spiritual awakening built on foundations of sand. 

Much like a freshman university student, I had the keys to the library, so I thought I knew everything. I gained an elevated opinion of myself and denigrated everyone else’s destructive habits while resolving absolutely none of my own.  

Needless to say, this top-heavy strategy was unsustainable as fuck. Time after time, I came crashing down like a house of cards. Because I was what? Spiritual bypassing.   

How does spiritual bypassing link with our shadow? Well, the former serves the latter. In my aforementioned anecdote, instead of turning inwards and focussing on my journey, I would judge and patronise others. 

The shadow

I have to confess – I recently wrote a mammoth blog about the importance of individual and collective shadow integration. I thought it was my magnum opus, but days later I realised it was a huge exercise in projecting my own shadow on others. Oh, the cosmic irony.  

But what is the shadow anyway? The shadow is: “an unconscious aspect of the personality that does not correspond with the ego ideal, leading the ego to resist and project the shadow.” 

Basically, if you don’t accept your own darkness, you will dislike it in others. A clear-as-day example of shadow projection is the homophobe who is a closet homosexual.

But don’t think you’re immune – we’re all composed of light and shade. 

A perfect existence of opposites:

  • Light, dark. 

  • Up, down. 

  • Order, chaos.  

  • Masculine, feminine.   

Everything has its opposite, including the best of our intentions. And this is exactly how it should be. 

I believe that the single mission of God (AKA, the universe, source, spirit) is to express and experience itself completely. In accordance with this belief, “Good vibes only” is literally impossible. 

However, I do believe that pure love and light exist at the core of existence and that we are aiming towards that. But we will only be able to break through to that single source of pure love and light when God has experienced every single possible version of reality. But is that even possible?! 

If God is forever expanding into endless other dimensions – through space and time – seeking ever more niche novelties, drilling deeper and deeper into the fabric of reality, this is surely an endless mission. However, if Terence Mckenna is correct with his Novelty Theory, time is speeding up and everything will eventually interconnect, bringing in a cosmic ‘end time’. 

Maybe AI will bring this event horizon to our doorstep tomorrow. Or maybe we’ll be gazing into the distant future until the very last human walks the Earth. 

We are space holders for God’s divine expression

While we wait for the ‘end times’, I believe it is our mission, as autonomous miniature gods, to consciously hold space for God’s divine expression.  

Furthermore, I believe that the game of each incarnation is to awaken our own free will, so we don’t simply become regurgitated non-player characters of our prescribed culture. We must use our incarnations wisely, to “know thyself” as our good friend Socrates tried to tell us (before we, y’know, killed him for triggering our unintegrated shadows). 

I believe that each thought, word, and action is an expression of God – but for the most part, we are entirely blind to this process. Carl Jung quite rightly said “People don't have ideas. Ideas have people”.  

Moreover, I believe that if you don’t acknowledge, accept, and alchemise your ideas (or thought-forms), they will simply trot along to the next human vehicle and knock on their door instead.  

It’s your job to acknowledge, accept – and most importantly, to alchemise – even the most terrible of thought-forms. For some, this might mean martial arts or mosh pits. For others, this might mean violence or abuse. The former are clear examples of integrated shadows, the latter are definitely not.   

Think about the ramifications of this. If you don’t integrate your shadow, your dark thought-forms may land in the lap of someone whose intentions are not as conscious as yours.  

The end logic to my argument is savage as fuck. I’m suggesting that all of our unintegrated shadows are the basis for all the atrocities in the world. If you deny your dark thoughts, they either seep through the cracks unconsciously or manifest through someone else. 

Let’s pause to reflect on the teachings of Hoʻoponopono: “I am sorry, please forgive me, I thank you and I love you”. 

The power of collective shadow integration

Each of us has the power to heal the collective shadow by integrating our own. We should all make it our urgent priority to develop the strength to recognise and accept our own inner darkness.  

But it do take WORK! Don Miguel Ruiz outlines the default position of the adult human mind in The Mastery of Love: 

“To protect our emotional wounds…humans create…a big denial system. In that denial system we become the perfect liars. We lie so perfectly that we lie to ourselves and we even believe our own lies.” 

I invite you to peel the plaster off your wounds, to release the shadows of your soul, and to cultivate the constitution to handle it. Shadow work ain’t pretty, but this is why it’s called ‘the work’. 

You can start gently. Next time you hear a dark thought knocking on the door of your mind, open the door, invite the dark thought in, brew a cuppa, sit down, and see what it wants to tell you.  

Then it’s up to you as a spark of God to alchemise that dark thought – by meditating, speaking to a therapist, or screaming on top of a mountain. Personally, if I didn’t sing, I would kill people.  

We are all channels of God’s divine expression, and we have a choice: we can be unconscious weapons of mass destruction, or we can pick up a torch and shine it into our darkest corners. 

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how we create world peace. Now, where’s my Miss World sash? 

I will sign off with a deep bow of gratitude that you are still reading, and with my favourite alchemical phrase from the Middle Ages: “In sterquiliniis invenitur” – “In filth it will be found” 

This blog was written by Freya Astrella, an expert vocal coach in East Sussex, UK.

Freya is a bonafide vocal technique expert and is one of the only teachers in the region to have gained Estill Voice certification. Freya holds a First Class BA(hons) in Professional Musicianship, VocalTech diploma, and a Master of Music Degree in Vocal Performance. She is currently undertaking the Vocal Process teacher training course.

Freya has taught all ages and abilities at BIMM, Access To Music, The Academy of Music And Sound, TheatreTrain, Stagecoach, and The Rock Project. She currently coaches at Rhapsody Artist Development in Seaford. Furthermore, Freya was a lead writer for VoiceCouncil.com, which was the biggest online resource for singers.

Freya Astrella
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