Thank you for the mention and recommendation, Guy. It has some interesting parallels with Nefahotep's research into a race, not necessarily alien but possibly, of a tall, red-headed warring tribe with conical headed leaders who infiltrated Egyptian dynasties and also the Incas in Peru. These were the Hapiru that translates Hebrew. It would make sense that they were Celtic from the coloring.
I think I may have been the person who said the phrase 'spiritual bypassing' seemed vague. Let me repost your definition here: "Spiritual by-pass is for the ego to become attached to some kind of partial or erroneous spiritual ‘truth’ that manages to deny the realities of being physically alive in this moment and/or to deny or to be blind to the metaphysical and/or unconscious shadow elements that have, like a strange attractor, kept us repeating patterns of behaviours of thought, words and/or actions that are, or that become, destructive to ourselves and/or others and that keep us from changing those behaviours. More simply, spiritual by-pass is to abdicate our absolute personal responsibility of choice in all aspects of our somatic lives, our thoughts, words, and actions, and to blame others for the destructive elements we are experiencing."
It seems like what you're saying is that you kept repeating behaviors that, despite your best efforts, didn't cure your pain and therefore must have been spiritually wrong. Each time you made progress you were happy but blamed yourself for 'premature elation' when it came back. Your pain is the 'proof' that other people are wrong in their beliefs or practices, even if they're not feeling pain. The body is your oracle, your portal to spirit, and determines what's real or not real for everyone. I'm not saying you're wrong on the first two but the third is a way that you say everyone else is wrong.
When you write about Michael Stone's " ... observation that the New Age idea around ‘everything is one’ is basically psychotic", it confirms my belief that he's an egotistic asshole. He then ridicules this by employing the anti-Muslim propaganda trope of 'being one with the virgins' (how is that even New-Age?). Who made Stone into someone to tell us what Reality is? Such arrogance!
The beginning of your definition was about ego-attachment and then says your body's pain demonstrates that was only a partial or erroneous 'truth.' The examples you give of abdicating responsibility seem to be still be blaming others--Your OCD ex- for your fear of her anger or disappointment. The food truck worker for you not saying, 'just give me a bagel' in the first place. The landlord with Covid for you not booking another AirBnB, and filing for a refund or not.
It's perfectly valid for you to say, "Here's what's working for me in my journey. I'm experimenting with a total belief in the reality of the body and the ego. Maybe it will work for you too." But you're defining spiritual bypassing as something other people do. It's a label you're using to call them wrong without engaging at the level of ideas. Instead, your body is judge and jury of what's true and not true, whether it's ultimate reality as separate or One, or Jesus as historical or fictional.
It is a tricky subject, whether sickness shows that Oneness is wrong. According to the Course, that's the purpose of sickness--the ego's attempt to prove that you're under its control. Does that mean I never get sick? No. I think that sickness is a way of nudging me into making connections and relationships, like you with your naturopath. I look for meaning in it, as you do. I have no beliefs, for me or others, only theories and suspicions. I don't see them as superior in any way to yours, but I do object when you or Michael Stone see yours as superior to mine.
hola, tereza. thank you for the red head connection to those celtic ideas.
and thank you for your great response! loved it. it has given me more stuff to think about because i think you have misread stone and me! and that of course could be simply me misreading you.
the heat and energy I felt in your reply i'll consider. i certainly do not consider myself to be superior to any one. I align strongly with your averred dogma, even though i think that making it a dogma is problematic, of basic equality at the most profound levels. from my hours of listening to stone i don't have a sense of superiority either. your reaction to the short extract reminds of the ex-woke who apologised to pederson because she had assigned him to the rubbish heap of humanity after a 3 minute outtake.
anyway, i will consider your reaction and look to it having substance in my being. perhaps it is the manner of presentation? if that, a slightly more difficult issue in the sense that if i am being honest without malicious intent, then are my words expressing a shadow? i'll look at that. the other possibility is that the reader is reacting to the writing for other reasons.
It is possible that I'm misreading you and Stone, and I'll be happy for you to show me that. When you write about things that people have done, to which you acquiesced by not standing up for yourself, the same is true here. It would be wrong for me to not challenge ways in which the ideas of others are dismissed or demeaned. It doesn't make us any less friends. Love the person, challenge the ideas, as I say.
There are three rhetorical devices you use in your reply. One is saying that my reply has 'heat and energy' rather than taking it as an objective and rational statement. It makes me 'emotional', aka female. Two you compare me to someone who ends up apologizing because they had jumped to conclusions. Three you are considering that I'm reacting to the writing for other reasons, personal ones and not idealogical ones. None of this is personal to me. These are ideas that are either true or not true, and none of us knows.
Your premise is that Stone is not insulting other people and their ability to think when he says, "the New Age idea around ‘everything is one’ is basically psychotic." Explain how that gives others and their ability to perceive reality equal respect? He ends with, "And there’s this current fad, that maybe started in the 50s, to get rid of your ego. And that is a kind of fragmentation and scapegoating, that nowadays we call spiritual by-passing. Where you don’t fully … abide in and embody your whole life."
It's odd that he'd call it fragmentation and scapegoating to question whether there is no place that I end and you begin. How could I scapegoat you? If we're all One, we're the exact opposite of fragmented. But he throws in these labels like 'fad' and 'started in the '50's' to make a concept seem new that goes back to the most ancient spiritual texts.
It seems like what you're saying is more complex than his or your definition of 'spiritual-bypassing.' I think what you're saying (and please correct me if I'm wrong) is that you feel your physical symptoms are things you didn't deal with at the physical level because you thought spirituality would change them?
Or are you saying they're manifestations of beliefs that exist in the mind? They're not simply uric acid that isn't metabolizing but the result of trauma and ingrained psychological habits of submission. If you could 'get your mind right,' the pain would end.
But then, it seems, you ridicule yourself for doing very smart and dedicated health-oriented things. It's not 'spiritual bypassing' to change your diet. Possibly I don't understand what you're saying or why you feel 'spiritual bypassing' defines your past behavior. Were you once what you describe as 'New Age'?
If it weren't for the phrase 'spiritual bypassing' that defines what truth is and isn't, I don't think I'd have any objection to your analysis. It's your experience, why would I? It's only when it becomes an authority on Truth that I object. And if Stone would speak from his own thoughts and experience, and not as an authority, I'd like him better.
Thank you for the mention and recommendation, Guy. It has some interesting parallels with Nefahotep's research into a race, not necessarily alien but possibly, of a tall, red-headed warring tribe with conical headed leaders who infiltrated Egyptian dynasties and also the Incas in Peru. These were the Hapiru that translates Hebrew. It would make sense that they were Celtic from the coloring.
I think I may have been the person who said the phrase 'spiritual bypassing' seemed vague. Let me repost your definition here: "Spiritual by-pass is for the ego to become attached to some kind of partial or erroneous spiritual ‘truth’ that manages to deny the realities of being physically alive in this moment and/or to deny or to be blind to the metaphysical and/or unconscious shadow elements that have, like a strange attractor, kept us repeating patterns of behaviours of thought, words and/or actions that are, or that become, destructive to ourselves and/or others and that keep us from changing those behaviours. More simply, spiritual by-pass is to abdicate our absolute personal responsibility of choice in all aspects of our somatic lives, our thoughts, words, and actions, and to blame others for the destructive elements we are experiencing."
It seems like what you're saying is that you kept repeating behaviors that, despite your best efforts, didn't cure your pain and therefore must have been spiritually wrong. Each time you made progress you were happy but blamed yourself for 'premature elation' when it came back. Your pain is the 'proof' that other people are wrong in their beliefs or practices, even if they're not feeling pain. The body is your oracle, your portal to spirit, and determines what's real or not real for everyone. I'm not saying you're wrong on the first two but the third is a way that you say everyone else is wrong.
When you write about Michael Stone's " ... observation that the New Age idea around ‘everything is one’ is basically psychotic", it confirms my belief that he's an egotistic asshole. He then ridicules this by employing the anti-Muslim propaganda trope of 'being one with the virgins' (how is that even New-Age?). Who made Stone into someone to tell us what Reality is? Such arrogance!
The beginning of your definition was about ego-attachment and then says your body's pain demonstrates that was only a partial or erroneous 'truth.' The examples you give of abdicating responsibility seem to be still be blaming others--Your OCD ex- for your fear of her anger or disappointment. The food truck worker for you not saying, 'just give me a bagel' in the first place. The landlord with Covid for you not booking another AirBnB, and filing for a refund or not.
It's perfectly valid for you to say, "Here's what's working for me in my journey. I'm experimenting with a total belief in the reality of the body and the ego. Maybe it will work for you too." But you're defining spiritual bypassing as something other people do. It's a label you're using to call them wrong without engaging at the level of ideas. Instead, your body is judge and jury of what's true and not true, whether it's ultimate reality as separate or One, or Jesus as historical or fictional.
It is a tricky subject, whether sickness shows that Oneness is wrong. According to the Course, that's the purpose of sickness--the ego's attempt to prove that you're under its control. Does that mean I never get sick? No. I think that sickness is a way of nudging me into making connections and relationships, like you with your naturopath. I look for meaning in it, as you do. I have no beliefs, for me or others, only theories and suspicions. I don't see them as superior in any way to yours, but I do object when you or Michael Stone see yours as superior to mine.
hola, tereza. thank you for the red head connection to those celtic ideas.
and thank you for your great response! loved it. it has given me more stuff to think about because i think you have misread stone and me! and that of course could be simply me misreading you.
the heat and energy I felt in your reply i'll consider. i certainly do not consider myself to be superior to any one. I align strongly with your averred dogma, even though i think that making it a dogma is problematic, of basic equality at the most profound levels. from my hours of listening to stone i don't have a sense of superiority either. your reaction to the short extract reminds of the ex-woke who apologised to pederson because she had assigned him to the rubbish heap of humanity after a 3 minute outtake.
anyway, i will consider your reaction and look to it having substance in my being. perhaps it is the manner of presentation? if that, a slightly more difficult issue in the sense that if i am being honest without malicious intent, then are my words expressing a shadow? i'll look at that. the other possibility is that the reader is reacting to the writing for other reasons.
thank you. great food for thought as usual.
and thank you for the restack.
It is possible that I'm misreading you and Stone, and I'll be happy for you to show me that. When you write about things that people have done, to which you acquiesced by not standing up for yourself, the same is true here. It would be wrong for me to not challenge ways in which the ideas of others are dismissed or demeaned. It doesn't make us any less friends. Love the person, challenge the ideas, as I say.
There are three rhetorical devices you use in your reply. One is saying that my reply has 'heat and energy' rather than taking it as an objective and rational statement. It makes me 'emotional', aka female. Two you compare me to someone who ends up apologizing because they had jumped to conclusions. Three you are considering that I'm reacting to the writing for other reasons, personal ones and not idealogical ones. None of this is personal to me. These are ideas that are either true or not true, and none of us knows.
Your premise is that Stone is not insulting other people and their ability to think when he says, "the New Age idea around ‘everything is one’ is basically psychotic." Explain how that gives others and their ability to perceive reality equal respect? He ends with, "And there’s this current fad, that maybe started in the 50s, to get rid of your ego. And that is a kind of fragmentation and scapegoating, that nowadays we call spiritual by-passing. Where you don’t fully … abide in and embody your whole life."
It's odd that he'd call it fragmentation and scapegoating to question whether there is no place that I end and you begin. How could I scapegoat you? If we're all One, we're the exact opposite of fragmented. But he throws in these labels like 'fad' and 'started in the '50's' to make a concept seem new that goes back to the most ancient spiritual texts.
It seems like what you're saying is more complex than his or your definition of 'spiritual-bypassing.' I think what you're saying (and please correct me if I'm wrong) is that you feel your physical symptoms are things you didn't deal with at the physical level because you thought spirituality would change them?
Or are you saying they're manifestations of beliefs that exist in the mind? They're not simply uric acid that isn't metabolizing but the result of trauma and ingrained psychological habits of submission. If you could 'get your mind right,' the pain would end.
But then, it seems, you ridicule yourself for doing very smart and dedicated health-oriented things. It's not 'spiritual bypassing' to change your diet. Possibly I don't understand what you're saying or why you feel 'spiritual bypassing' defines your past behavior. Were you once what you describe as 'New Age'?
If it weren't for the phrase 'spiritual bypassing' that defines what truth is and isn't, I don't think I'd have any objection to your analysis. It's your experience, why would I? It's only when it becomes an authority on Truth that I object. And if Stone would speak from his own thoughts and experience, and not as an authority, I'd like him better.
hola, y gracias.
much to consider here and consider i am doing. i'll respond more fully in the next day or so as i do that consideration.
Great essay Guy, thank you. So helpful for me to read this stage of your journey. Just what I 'needed' to reflect on. I feel soothed somehow ❤️🙏
hola, april. 🙏
i'm so grateful that my writing is helping you! that is wonderful. and i haven't got to the punch line yet! 😂🙌🤣
hmmm is there even a punch line?! 🤣 😂🙌🙌🤣 😂
Perhaps I am soothed by the understanding that I am not suffering alone 😂😂 therefore thanks for the honesty ha ha