The Power of Gaps and Silence
For those who have come for the first time, when I speak, there’ll be gaps and pauses and silence in between. And that is by design, because words are important, but also important is the meaning and the silence behind the words. So all of you would have already read thousands of words and listened to endless books. So something has not landed, and that is the reason you are here. So also pay attention to the gaps and the silence in between my words.
The question is, many of you or most of you have dedicated your life or a part of your life to finding answers. You have read, so many of you have gone to retreats, gurus, read books, YouTubes, podcasts, and of course that’s changed you. I can see that wisdom. I can sense that depth in the room, and I can also sense that courage, because most people are just interested in running after the ego, fame, and money. But you all have said no, and you said, “Okay, there’s something more to life.” And in doing so, you have tried to become conscious, which takes a lot of courage, which is not an easy act.
Most people run away throughout their life; they’re running away from difficult emotions or they’re numbing them through drugs or whatever. But there’s a group of people who are trying to understand it—they’re running towards it. And that means something.
Why Triggers and Pain Persist
But even after reading all the books, listening to podcasts, sitting down, meditating, being mindful, being aware of emotions, and fighting your mind, what we have seen and what I saw in my journey is the triggers persist. A lot of the triggers, a lot of the trauma, a lot of the desires, suffering, and pain—it does not go away.
Many of you have had a lot of spiritual experiences. You would have had that opening where you’re one with the universe, or you feel that bliss, that peace, that connectedness, that wholeness. And during those times, you can see through those emotions: the anger, the ego, the pain, the suffering. Everything is so clear, everything makes sense. But once that fades away, you’re put in a situation where the triggers arise. You see you’re getting triggered again; the fear comes back, the pain comes back, the desires come back.
Why is it so? If I had an insight where I could see through that ego or see through that pain or pattern or trigger, why does it come back?
An Exercise in Radical Honesty
Before going into the talk about spiritual bypassing—what it is and how you can recognize it—we’ll do a simple exercise which will make it very apparent and clear to you how it functions. You can close your eyes if you want, or not. It’s a very simple exercise. It’s just completing a sentence in your mind. You don’t have to say it aloud.
In your mind, I want you to complete this sentence: “If I’m being completely honest with myself, even though this sounds unspiritual, I honestly want…”
The question is to be very honest with myself. I really want this. And even though this might be unspiritual or not good, it doesn’t matter. What is it that you really want? What are the things you want which might sound unspiritual to you or to others? It can be money, sex—it doesn’t matter. And whatever you want, stay with it for a few seconds.
The Three Inner Processes
Now, when you have a thought which arises, especially thoughts which you think you should not have for whatever reason, there are three processes which happen inwardly.
First, the thought arises—I want to have sex with 100 people, for example. Then the second part would be, and it’s very, very subtle, it’s very, very immediate: there’s an editor, someone who edits your thoughts inside of you. So first the thought will arise, and second would arise the associated emotions, like, I should not have this thought. Shame, humiliation, whatever—you know, this is not spiritual, I should have been over this by now, why am I thinking this, why am I wanting this? That is the second.
Then the third thing which happens, I call it spiritual rationalization, is you will use some kind of pacification to diffuse that tension inwardly. So the pacification might be, it doesn’t matter, I’m not the body, or the pacification might be, you know, everything is transient, or the pacification might be, you know, I am what I am. This thing happens very quickly inside our minds.
Investigating Envy and Judgment
For another example, we’ll do another small exercise. Now be aware of these three things: the thought, what emotions arise with that thought (is it shame, censure?), and how do you rationalize it?
Let’s take another example where you think of someone who is more successful than you—any one person. It has to be very concrete. Someone who has had more than you money-wise, happiness-wise, success-wise, spirituality-wise—it doesn’t matter. Just bring that person to your mind.
Even bringing that person who’s had more than you, most of you will feel a sensation. Mostly it’s envy or a feeling of I’m not enough, that person is bigger, or I didn’t do anything worthwhile with my life. Shame.
And then there will be another part, an editor-rationalizer, which will say, doesn’t matter, it’s transient, or I am beyond money, I am beyond fame. Or another part would be, why am I thinking like this? Why am I feeling like this even after putting in all the hard work?
Now, first of all, why does this step happen inside of us? This spiritual pacification that’s been going on, where we try to diffuse this thought or we are not in contact with that fear or with that envy, with that pain or with that suffering—it’s part of spiritual bypassing. Why does it happen? Let’s go a little deeper.
Moving Into the Chaos
Also, I want to say, you know, most spiritual meetings and groups are about finding comfort—love, happiness, feel-good. Here, we are doing something a bit different. We are going really deep inside into chaos. And that needs a lot of courage and attention. It’s not an easy job. The easy job is to sing and dance around, which is easy. But again, even after the singing and dancing around, the next day a phone call which you have been dreading rings.
What happens to you? The call that you’ve been dreading comes and then your heart sinks, your hands sweat, and you say, “I don’t want to take this call.” So somehow that singing and dancing has not translated. And that’s what we’re trying to do: you’re translating those insights into your everyday life.
The Retreat vs. The Supermarket
There is a gap, and I call this gap the gap between the spiritual retreat and the supermarket. It’s just a word trying to convey that there is a you, a feeling, a state which you experience on the cushion, and you experience in retreats or with teachers or gurus or dancing or whatnot. And then there is a state in the middle of your everyday life, which is completely different from this state. There’s a gap in between.
Most seekers spend—and I spent—years chasing and trying to close this gap. I felt like this here, but I don’t want to feel what I feel here. And then you start to think, why is there a gap? So we’ll go into understanding why this gap arises and how we can bridge this.
Why this gap? Why does the mind pacify? Why doesn’t the mind want to feel that envy, want to be in it, feel that pain? Because pain is something we all run away from, and pain is something which requires a lot of intimate contact to resolve. The mind will find out ways to avoid pain. Even as you progress on the path, you will start using your spiritual concepts to avoid that contact.
The Spiritual Armor of Avoidance
What is the spiritual armor? Even before I can feel that pain, I can feel that envy, I can feel that suffering, I will rationalize it spiritually: everything is God’s will. You see, you haven’t given enough time for that thought, that feeling, that emotion to come up, to feel it, to integrate and resolve.
If the resolution happened, the next time it would not get triggered. So say next time you are sitting in a gathering with friends and one of the friends says, “Oh, I had such a big breakthrough and I earned a million dollars with this.” Even if you’re smiling, your heart feels something, and at that time you might rationalize it to yourself. That feeling is gone for that second, but it is not completely gone. It’s gone underground. It’s there in the subconscious because you’ve not resolved it, and it is waiting for the next moment to come back again.
Spiritual bypassing is a term that was coined by psychotherapist John Welwood in around 1984. He saw that a lot of sincere seekers who have dedicated their life are using these spiritual rationalizations to bypass, to stop meeting that emotion which needs to be met and dealt with. And how do you know you’ve not resolved it? Because it will show up again. If you would have resolved it, it wouldn’t have come up again.
A person who’s materialistic and thinks about money, they don’t censure themselves, right? They go after it. They go after a career or they go after materialistic pursuits. There is no one saying this is bad, this is shameful, this is guilt, this is not right. And then there is no third layer where they justify or they relieve this feeling by saying, you know, everything is transient or I’m whole or whatever that rationalization might be. It’s not happening in their head; it’s happening in your head.
Layering the Current Reality
Now we need to investigate why this is happening in our heads, and as seekers, we all struggle with it: money, ambition, security, financial obligations.
For example, say you were supposed to receive a check, maybe from a client, maybe from your employer, maybe your salary. And you know it might not arrive. There’s some problem, and it will go back in your head. There’ll be an arithmetic in your head: will it arrive or not? How much will I get? And then you will relieve that thought. Spiritual people will relieve that thought by saying, oh, I’m above money, or I should not worry about this, or there would be shame about thinking about all these materialistic thoughts.
This is bypassing. You are bypassing the current reality of what you’re feeling. That feeling which is arising right now—whatever it might be, it might be for security or fulfillment or being whole—you’re layering it up.
Spirituality in the true sense means to be with it without any kind of stories, without any relief. And that’s where the courage comes in. Everyone looks for a way out of this pain, and that can take many forms. Relief is one: Netflix, or doom scrolling, or gaming, or love, or sex, or drugs. Somehow you want out of that pain, out of that misery, discomfort, unease. And the whole point of being aware, of trying to find the truth, is to be in direct contact with it there where it’s raw, where it hurts.
Digging to the Bottom of Trauma
When you start going deeper, say just into a thought about security or money, when you investigate and go deeper and deeper, you will see so many threads come out of it: childhood traumas, a sense of being unworthy, a sense of not being enough, a sense of uncertainty clouding over you. There’ll be enormous threads which are lying at the bottom which are never explored. And unless you go deeper and explore and have full contact with these emotions completely…
So full contact means: I want money. I accept it. It’s okay. I don’t spiritualize it away. I don’t rationalize it away. I don’t say money is bad or I’m a renunciate. I fully touch it. I feel it. I understand what it brings up in me.
When you can have that contact with difficult emotions—money is one of the emotions you all would carry—your own emotions, your own traumas, your own fears… For some it might be the fear of death, for some loneliness, for some, as Pooja said, it might be a difficult breakup. We all are carrying that within us. And we do dress up things in spiritual language, but ultimately, you see, we’re looking for relief on some level psychologically from this weight that we are carrying inside.
Bypassing as Sophisticated Avoidance
What if relief was not an option? Just as a thought experiment, what if relief was not an option? What would you do?
Some people say if for whatever reason you were not able to achieve what you want, maybe monetarily or a life that you wanted, you will spiritualize it away and say, “These people, they’re just running after money and career and fame. You know, they’re unconscious, but I am conscious.” But underneath, that pain is still there. There is a wound. If the wound wasn’t there, if it was resolved, everything would be fine. And you would know if that wound is still there or not, if it has resolved or not.
That fear, that pain or suffering or whatever you call it, that longing—if it is not resolved, then instead of spiritualizing it away or avoiding it… Spiritual bypassing is a sophisticated way of avoidance. It is avoidance, but now it’s dressed up in a lot of spiritual language.
Another very simple bypassing, very, very, very simple, which I did when I was seeking, was I wanted to become a monk and leave everything. Why? Because the world was too much. Relationships are too much, family is too much, earning a livelihood is too much, paying taxes is too much. But if I become a monk, well, I don’t have to think of any of these things. It is bypassing. On some level it is noble, on some level it is spiritual. But then, is it really spiritual or am I avoiding and running away? And this is a question for you to answer.
How do you know you are? It’s if the trigger comes back again and again. That means it’s not resolved, even though you might have censured it or spiritualized it, and at that moment it’s gone. It is still lurking in your subconscious mind.
The Illusion of the Unruffled Image
Another form of spiritual bypassing which I’ve seen a lot has to do with anger—anger, rage. We are afraid of this emotion when it comes up; it’s very intense. And once it comes, once we are off that cliff, we think, why did I get angry? You know, after meditating for 30 years or reading the Bhagavad Gita or the Buddha or J. Krishnamurti for years, why did I get triggered?
And there is shame to it. You get unsettled because in your mind there is an image of you which should not behave like this, which should not be rattled, which should not be disturbed or get angry because of whatever you have read and whatever wisdom you have accumulated. But this anger is here, it’s there, right? It’s a fact. That wisdom is also a fact. As I said, you know, the gap between the spiritual retreat and the supermarket—both are real and you’re stuck in between.
What is the solution to this? Any solution to this gap, to this in-between person who is trying to bridge these two states of clarity and confusion and pain and happiness? What if the gap was not real?
We say there is a gap between this thought and this thought, and this state and this state, and this life and spiritual life, and material life or whatever, whatever. What if that gap is not real? What if that gap itself is created by the mind? Is that a possibility? It is so. This gap is created by what we are identifying with, with the conditioning that we have.
Meeting What Is
The courage we need is to meet “what is.” By “what is,” I mean whatever arises in the moment, completely and totally without a story, without rationalizing it away, without any spiritual belief system. Be in complete contact with it, even though part of you wants to run away from it or part of you feels that this thought, this emotion might consume me.
Especially with fear and anxiety, you’ll have that feeling that, you know, this emotion or thought will kill me. It’s too intense. I just can’t bear it, I can’t be with it. And then you look for a relief; you look for a way out.
Now the courage is, can you sit with it? Can you be with it completely without bypassing it, without the avoidance, without a story? Because until you do it, it’s not resolved—it will come back again in a different form.
And freedom means what? We all are looking for freedom. All of you are here because there is something in you which wants to understand the truth, wants to understand the truth of your being, wants to understand reality. And that can be had only when you develop this capacity of meeting “what is” as it is.
I’m feeling envious about this person’s wealth and beauty and success. I’m not going to spiritualize it away. I’m not saying it’s a good thing, I’m neither saying it’s a bad thing. I’m not building any stories around it. I let it pass through me. I let it be. I let it take me to wherever it wants to take me, knowing I’m not the thought.
This is a very important thing on the back of the mind: you’ll have to understand you’re none of these thoughts that are arising. You’re none of the states of mind that are arising. You’re none of this conditioning. So knowing that, knowing that it’s just a thought, can I let it express itself completely?
Accepting the Triggered Self
Another issue that seekers go through is, you know, sex and physical desires for love or wanting or intimacy. But when it arises, instead of having all those stories and shame around it, can I accept that yes, this is what I am—not the person in the retreat.
The person in the retreat is more of a curated you. It’s a fact. If you see that, it’s a curated you because you’re kind of sealed away from the troubles, from the challenges of your everyday life. There’s no taxman there, there’s no neighbor disturbing you, your family is not calling you, your parents are not triggering you. So of course you are a different person. It’s so easy.
But what about this person who is getting triggered all the time? That’s also you. And you have to have the courage to accept it and not hanker after this person who you were or are in the retreat, because that’s gone. That was in the retreat. You are here. And here is what is, with all the complications of life.
And I accept that’s a problem with seekers. You can’t go back. You can’t go back even if you want to. You know there is a life of hedonistic pleasures and whatnot, but on some level you have seen the truth and it might be painful, it might be different. And being conscious, being awakened requires a lot of attention, energy, and the capacity to go through all these things. It’s not an easy path. It’s not all roses.
I call it the brochure of enlightenment. The brochure of enlightenment has all this beautiful marketing jargon—it’s enlightenment, the awakened, and everything is roses. But the path goes through all these complications and everyday questions.
Dissolving the Labels of Life
So your question was first: is there two parts to life, material and spiritual? I’ll start with that. Okay, let me unpack this.
First, what you are saying is very true, and I realized this later in my life and I’ve written a book around it. There is no spiritual life, no material life. There is just life. These are labels created by the mind and they are very destructive labels. Mind my words. Material people don’t have that separation; for them, that’s just life. You know, there’s no question of separating it and they’re fine. Spiritual people suffer because you have separated things into two parts: there’s the spiritual, there’s the not spiritual. This action is spiritual, a pub is not spiritual, a retreat is spiritual. You know, all those conceptions in your mind. Or street love is not spiritual, just to be provocative.
So we are dividing things up, and that division is here. Life is not coming up and saying, “I’m spiritual.” This glass doesn’t come up and say, “I’m spiritual or material.” It’s just a glass. Your conception of it is in your mind and you’re dividing up things.
Of course, that’s one of the teachings I’m trying to bring to all the seekers because I made that mistake for a long time. Now, what that did was it made me suffer a lot. Also, it created a division between my work, money, my financial responsibility, and the spiritual aspiration. So once I get rid of that distinction, either everything is a label… If you can’t do that, another approach is everything is spiritual.
If you see the devotional path, what they do is they say everything is spiritual, everything is God. But then we come, people who are intellectual like us, and we say that is also a label. And we go one step beyond and we see things as labels. So the easier path is instead of dividing both, I have one concept which says everything is X, everything is spiritual or consciousness. And then when you want to go even deeper and go to the root of it, you see even spirituality is a concept, it’s a label. It’s not that. And that’s a true way of seeing this. But if you can’t go there, even taking everything as spiritual is far better than dividing it into two parts. So that answers your first query.
Simplifying the Intellectual Mind
The second thing that Ravi raised up is: is this all required, or is this itself stopping you from seeing things as they are?
You see, spiritual people who think a lot, they’re tortured on some level because they do think a lot. That’s one of the traits of seekers, or of people who are intellectual and philosophical. They try to find answers, and sometimes the intellect itself creates more problems than it solves. Too much reading, too much understanding, too many questions.
How can we simplify all of that? Is there a way of simplifying that confusion, that endless chatter in the mind? Is there a simple way to resolve that?
I think one of the issues which we all have is: I should not be perturbed. I should not feel X or Y, I should be calm and peaceful or spiritual or whatever. That thought itself stops you from meeting the waters as they are on some level. My constant want for happiness, balance, peace, and calm is a denial of what is happening right now. Because right now, what is happening is happening. It might be something which I do not want or do not like. And can I develop this capacity of, instead of avoiding it or bypassing it through different ways, can I develop the capacity to be with it? Because without being with it, there’s no question of transformation.
Welcoming the Suffering
So one question that you raised, Pooja, in the beginning was: can I get more insights into the suffering, the pain? And my advice to you—because you probably do not have the entire background of searching and seeking and reading, which is good in a way, because you see this, Ravi has done all that and he regrets it on some level and says maybe I was better off without it—so you’re not in a bad place.
If you want to make sure that you don’t go through it again, you’ll have to learn to welcome this suffering. You don’t want to end it. On some level, everyone wants to end that suffering and discomfort, right? And that’s why we go into spirituality and meditation and reading and whatnot.
I’m saying something different. I’m saying, can I go into that suffering without the thought of wanting to end it? Because then I can meet it as it is, not with the filter of avoiding it or running away from it or ending it. Even when I go with that thought, I cannot meet it because I’ve already decided that this is not good, I don’t want it, I want it to end, I want it to go away—and that’s why I’m meeting it.