The Soul’s Journey – Spirituality vs. Psychology

My Spiritual Journey Begins

In the early nineties my second wife left me and I began an inner journey that continues to this day. As the trauma from this experience receded, I began to consider that perhaps my worldview was too limited. Then an unexpected psychic experience and encounter with a psychotherapist resulted in new perspective. “I was a spiritual being having a human experience” The result was a search for meaning, a commitment to find a spiritual path and to pursue the journey of my soul. Over the next fifteen years I dedicated myself to this exploration. I was guided to join the Unity Church, enrolled in a two year program called The Art of Spiritual Guidance, and even registered at the Vancouver School of Theology. It was intense, engaging and meaningful but there was a major problem. I really did not change. Despite all my efforts I could be the same reactive, hurtful, judgemental person; at times inconsiderate and lacking compassion. It was humbling and frustrating. My quest for enlightenment was failing.

The Spiritual Bypass

It was about 15-years ago over a margarita at happy hour in beautiful Sayulita I was recounting to a friend my curiosity about someone I met while on vacation. Following a relationship break-up, she had become deeply devoted to a spiritual path; which had become a major focus for her life yet I sensed that many deeper personal issues had been sidetracked. “Ah the spiritual bypass” my wise friend observed. Suddenly I saw the relevance not only for my friend, also about me. Was my quest for enlightenment actually another way of resisting my development as a human being? I wondered if I was inadvertently using spirituality as a means of avoiding what I now see as the real work – engaging with spiritual ideas and practices to avoid facing unresolved emotional issues, psychological wounds, and unfinished developmental tasks”. The term Spiritual Bypass was introduced in the mid 1980s by John Welwood, a Buddhist teacher and psychotherapist. It one of the ways we resist focus on the most difficult work.

A Note on Resistance

I have lost count of how many blogs I have written on resistance (mostly my own.) Basically resistance, like a chameleon, has many disguises. – denial, distraction, diversion, food indulgence, procrastination, avoidance, rationalization and of course the spiritual bypass can all be signs. These are all ways we avoid doing that which calls us to a deeper level. Two millennia ago, St. Paul wrote, “For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do — this I keep on doing.” We still unavoidably fall into the same trap.

The Beginning of Change

My first step to change was the awareness that I had not become the person I imagined I would become. I think I believed that through prayer and meditation, contemplation and belief in higher power, the change would occur naturally. My focus was to align with the teachings of the wisdom schools, yet I found love, compassion and forgiveness as elusive targets. When my spiritual enquiry failed to shift my persona, I searched for other possibilities. I remember encountering, Debbie Ford’s book The Dark Side of the Light Chasers, and although the message helped me understand my “dark side”, it didn’t really facilitate much change. (However at least I now knew I wasn’t alone) It was not until I encountered a book “Why Good People do Bad Things” by an author and Jungian analyst named James Hollis on the bargain table at Banyen Books that I began to understand how challenging personal change really was.

Soul Work Must be Both Psychological as well as Spiritual

This was the insight that allowed me the slow process of personal change. The saying goes that when the student is ready, the teacher appears. In my case, the teacher was James Hollis, and from 2009 on he has been the guiding force behind my understanding of the unconscious and its power to shape our day-to-day reality. I learned that many of my conscious reactions were shaped by buried complexes, historic energy centres that rush from their subterranean depths like Jaws and possess us. Carl Jung once commented that once you realize the power of the unconscious, you understand you are no longer master in your own house. It is only by doing the intense work of understanding through dreams, reactions, patterns of behaviour, emotions, signs and synchronicity, that we can begin to comprehend this. I made the commitment to unravel my own psychology and slowly, but surely that is making all the difference. It has been a 15-year long journey that continues to this day!

As I look back I realize that beliefs change, circumstances alter, and at times it is like chasing a moving target but as Hollis says, “there are only answers that make sense you at this moment in your life and they will fail you tomorrow. What is seemingly true today will be outgrown when your life or soul brings you a larger frame through which to view them.” What matters most is to keep on regardless. It isn’t always easy, you don’t see immediate results but it makes for an interesting life.