I’d like to make a confession.
On Sunday mornings, I sit in church internally spinning out a reactive, biting critique of the service, how hollow and performative it is, how the sermons charge us to do justice and love kindness and walk humbly without ever addressing how, feeling mightily superior about the vibrancy of my prayer life and a tad resentful that other folks in the pews don’t recognize this. Valid as my criticisms may be, this inclination to nurse my wounds with “holier than thou” thoughts is, well, shameful. It’s a form of spiritual bypassing, a trap those of us walking transformational paths tend to stumble into. Flamboyantly. Embarrassingly.
The term “spiritual bypassing” was coined by John Welwood, a Buddhist teacher and psychotherapist, when he noticed clients avoiding painful emotions by seeking refuge in spiritual ideas or practices. Rather than feeling grief that the beloved institution of my faith is faulty and dying, rather than getting angry that the beautiful mystical dimension of Christianity is so misunderstood, rather than experiencing the swelling loneliness of a committed transformational path, I take refuge in superiority. My fantasy keeps me safe, isolated, and stagnant.
To be completely honest, part of the reason I keep going to church is how humiliating these internal reactions are. I don’t like them. Maybe if for an hour each week I face these weaknesses, I can stop bypassing and finally walk the walk.
Creative folks have our own version of bypassing. As soon as pen hits the page, writers’ thoughts leap ahead to publication, with its kudos and condemnation. We imagine the inspiration we’ll bestow upon our readers and the benefits our work will impart to society. If we don’t spin out far-flung fantasies of fame, we console ourselves by assuming others will at least validate our worth. By taking refuge in our beloved image of fulfilled creativity, we skillfully avoid whatever hard work presents itself: the effort of validating our own worth; the arduous process of showing up in our creations; the painful need to face our smallness; the exercise of faith to proceed regardless.
Writing, like spiritual growth, takes time and effort. When we leap over the process to the product, we bypass art. In the meantime, we can be grateful that the process makes us aware of our propensity for bypassing. Once we see it, it can become, as a former therapist often told me, more “grist for the mill.”
—Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew
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Photo by falco from pixabay
Ask what I’m learning in the Living School and I’ll blather incoherently, enthusiastically, and at great length about the Christian mystical tradition, the significance of contemplation, and a complete overhaul of my faith. I was doing just that at Easter dinner a few weeks ago. My father-in-law asked, and all eleven relatives at the table stared at me blankly while I answered. Afterward, my brother-in-law quipped, “You should say you’re studying an ancient wisdom tradition. Calling it ‘Christian’ just throws everybody off.” Well, yes. 
A few years ago, I set off on a journey to the heart of Christian contemplation, both in practice and with studies. I began doing Centering Prayer, a form of meditation rooted in monasticism and the teachings of the mystics, and reading works from the mystical margins of Christian tradition—St. John of the Cross, Meister Eckhart, Theresa of Avila, Bonaventure, the Patristic fathers—and sharing all this with an international contemplative community. It’s been thrilling. The work transforms me from the inside out, and will have a profound on my writing, teaching, and living for years to come.
On a good morning of writing, the words leave my head entirely and reside in my fingers. Writing is a quiet business. Once I tried to explain this to a spiritual director—the way my heart stills and the room pulses with silence—but she didn’t believe me. How can you work with words and be quiet at the same time? Surely it’s impossible. 
Cancer does this: Shake you out of the status quo and drop you into a different realm, one where your everyday priorities are rearranged and suddenly small talk, the cleanliness of the house, even your job ambitions seem ridiculous. Instead you give yourself over to what really matters: Being present to one another. Doing everything possible to tend to health and well-being. Emily and I call this place of intensity Cancerland. Life-threatening illness does a marvelous job of helping you reprioritize.
God makes Adam and Eve, places them in the garden, and tells them not to eat from the tree of knowledge. They screw up. God kicks them out to spend their lives toiling the fields and suffering in childbirth. To this day we bear Adam’s curse—our inclination toward evil.
Your primary job as an artist is to seduce other people into paying attention. You are not creating anything new; you are re-creating what already exists so that people will recognize it and deal with it. You describe activities and name states of being so that the people who witness your work will have a fuller vocabulary for their own life. You help people see what has been in front of them all along. You help them remember what has been buried so deep that they couldn’t find it on their own. You enable them to see themselves a little more clearly. –Vintia Hampton Wright, The Soul Tells a Story