The term "spiritual bypassing" gets a bad wrap among spiritual people. There are two camps in spirituality: the camp that works with shadows, and the Law of Attraction camp that teaches there is no value in delving into our shadows. In the LOA camp it's taught that when we go in to a shadow, trauma, negative thought that we only entrench it deeper and make it bigger.
As a person who has studied Law of Attraction extensively, I've been a bit at odds with my own spiritual journey which has been to transform those shadows and traumas and negative emotions. The healing/awakening path that I have taken is with Kundalini yoga, and with my Healer/Chiropractor who practices Network Spinal Analysis. Both work with Kundalini energy.
Healing and awakening are one. In my experience, as I awaken, parts of my personality are illuminated. This process has been going on for a long time, but when I started Kundalini yoga and Network care, I jumped onto a roller coaster ride. The light of awareness would shine on dark places in my personality and ego and past experiences. And they felt so real. As time has gone on and one by one I experience these shadows or traumas or negative emotions, I have experienced that they are not me. They come to my attention, and my God they overtook me and sent me into a world of pain. The pain was my whole world. A few things I remember are when a friend triggered me by treating me in a way that was common for me to be treated in my past and caused me a whole world of hurt and pain and why and feelings of powerlessness. I lie in my bed for an afternoon as I felt all the pain from all the times that happened deep in my chest. I cried my eyes out. One morning I woke up and was the fifteen-year-old girl who was moved to Florida in the middle of my Sophomore year and was in utter despair and was experiencing a great death and the beginnings of a spiritual awakening.
Since I studied Law of Attraction, I had a lot of resistance to these experiences because I should be strong enough and powerful enough to overcome them and feel joy. These what I call shadow experiences did indeed drag me down into a world of their own, a deep cavern, and then I would have to climb my way out. And I used Abraham-Hicks' Law of Attraction teachings to climb my way out. I would get alllll the way into the shadow or trauma or wound until it overtook my entire being and entire world and then there was nowhere else to go but out. I would fight it, and then finally I would surrender. And then once I surrendered I started slowly and very carefully climbing my way up the emotional scale.
)Once I was all the way up at the very top of the emotional scale and my God has anyone ever felt as good as this, I would inevitably be hurled back down again. I say I was hurled instead of that I hurled because in a Kundalini awakening, Infinite Intelligence takes you on the journey of your own awakening, and in many senses you're a passenger along for the ride. According to Kundalini lore, the Kundalini is awakened and it makes its way up through your chakras, cleansing and healing as it moves up.
I was really in a very good situation for awakening because I had The Twelve Stages of Healing by Donny Epstein as my bible, my very experienced Chiropractor to work with twice a week, Kundalini yoga as a personal tool to help me with whatever I'm going through, and Abraham-Hick's work to help me through it.
I use the past tense, but the truth is I'm still gong through the awakening. I'm not sure our healing is ever done when we're in these bodies. Maybe there's this state of complete spiritual awakening where the former self is dead and all that exists is the awakened state such as Eckhart Tolle and Byron Katie claim to have experienced. I'm not sure I'm interested in that. I chose this human experience, and I think I'll take my ego with me. In the cases of Byron Katie and Eckhart Tolle, they were both in such immense pain that they broke through instantaneously and were "awake," or enlightened. That has not been my experience. In their cases it indeed seems to have been a "done to them" experience and not one that they chose to undergo necessarily. Theirs was a case of bypassing. They seem to have been able to bypass all their pain and go straight to awakening. To me, the healing and awakening process is the greatest adventure I could possibly go on in this life, and I wouldn't choose instant enlightenment. My healing journey teaches me about what it is to be human, and that's what I came here for.
I'm no longer scared of pain or shadows because I'm so much bigger than them. I no longer identify emotions, pain, traumas, or shadows as myself. Through the many, many roller coaster rides I've gone on through each shadow, I just learn that I am not that. Each time in order to transform the shadow I have to be the higher self, the infinite self that is far beyond that pain in order to experience it and let it pass. That's precisely the path of transformation. The pain becomes SO big that all that's left for it to do is just fizzle away. It grows and grows and grows until it bursts.
I constantly discover aspects of my personality that I wouldn't choose. I guess you could still say I'm on the shadow journey. Because I still get to the tippity tippity top of the emotional scale - higher and higher each time. And then I inevitably do fall back down again. But I've healed the hard stuff. I'm left with much more minor stuff. I also have enough experience to deal with it like a pro. "Oh, I feel this pain in my body that I've never felt before. 'What are you trying to tell me, tension or pain?' Oooh wow. That's an uncomfortable feeling. I recognize it. It's been lurking under the surface all along. It's ok. Come forward, feeling. You can come all the way forward." It overtakes me and then fizzles. I may have to revisit it again. And maybe again and again.
This is the Path of Transformation. I don't think either of us walk the path of EITHER transformation or Bypassing. A good healer knows how to use both teachings. What is bypassing? Bypassing is identifying not with your personality or ego, but working from the space of your Higher Self. Because we are not ultimately our personalities. But I've not known anyone (and my world is spirituality) who successfully walks the path of bypassing only. To be what I consider a successful human, one must know how to walk the Path of Transformation. The people who I've witnessed walk the path of bypassing are not in fact equipped to do so. They're afraid of negative emotion; they're afraid of shadows; their work never gets done. They're shells of humans, not deep and great. When you meet someone who has delved into the depths, you know. That person is wise and deep.
I think bypassing is a relevant concept. It says that you are not your shadows or your traumas or wounds. Never in a million years. Those are teeny tiny in relation to the infinity that you are. From that place it's pretty silly to feel pain from experiences. But you don't just get there magically. You get there through experience. There's a process for the ego to take its rightful place. And that process is the Path of Transformation.