In This Post:
- What Is Spirituality
- The Difference Between Religion and Spirituality
- The Benefits of a Spiritual Life
- Red Flags on the Spiritual Path
- Spiritual Bypassing
- What is Spiritual Bypassing?
- Having a Guru
- Traps of Having a Guru
- Wanting Others to Change or Separating Yourself from Others
- Having a Superiority Complex
- Abandoning Responsibilities for Spirituality
- Unintended Consequences of Abandoning Responsibilities
- Magical Thinking
- Dangers of Magical Thinking
- The Solo Journey of Spirituality
Ah, spirituality. Seems like a buzzword that goes through trendy cultural reels sometimes, does it not? Think of the Spiritualists of the early 1900s. Or, the rise of yoga, New Age philosophies, and meditation in the past 50 years. The word is complimentary to religion but also seems to stand on its own. (For instance, when people say, “I’m not religious, but I’m spiritual.”) There are many paths that can guide one spiritually. However, if you embark on such a journey, beware of the following red flags that can derail you from true spiritual growth, or worse, that may hurt you.
But first, let’s dive into what is and isn’t spirituality.
What Is Spirituality?
Spirituality is an important element of human experience. Regardless if you follow a religion or specific spiritual practice, it is important to know that at it’s core, spirituality is simply the experience of wonder about why we’re here. It’s about a bigger life picture than your little existence. Spirituality is the cultivation of life meaning and moral codes. It refers to being open to transformational experiences that cause you to grow and can be a sense of inner peace and purpose. It is often associated with a quest for meaning. Some people think of spirituality as connecting with nature, the universe, or a higher power.
The Difference Between Religion and Spirituality
Religion and spirituality are related but distinct concepts. Religion often involves a set of organized beliefs, practices, and rituals. These are centered around a deity or deities, a holy text, or a community of believers. Religion provides a framework for understanding the meaning and purpose of life. It offers guidelines for how to live one’s life.
Spirituality, on the other hand, is a more individual and personal experience. It may or may not be tied to a particular religious tradition. It is focused on, as mentioned, one’s own personal connection to something greater than oneself. While religion often involves external rituals and practices, spirituality is often more concerned with an individual’s internal experiences and personal growth.
One can be religious without being spiritual, and one can be spiritual without being religious.
The Benefits of a Spiritual Life
A spiritual life can bring a number of benefits, including:
- Inner peace: Spirituality can help individuals find inner peace and calmness, which can be especially helpful in stressful times.
- Purpose: A spiritual practice can provide individuals with a sense of purpose and meaning in life.
- Connection: Spirituality can foster a connection to something greater than oneself, leading to feelings of unity and interconnectedness with others and the world.
- Personal growth: Engaging in a spiritual practice can facilitate personal growth and self-awareness.
- Compassion: A spiritual life can foster compassion, kindness, and empathy for others.
- Support: A spiritual community can provide support, comfort, and encouragement, which can be especially helpful during difficult times.
- Healing: For some individuals, spirituality can serve as a source of healing and comfort for physical, emotional, or mental health issues.
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Red Flags on the Spiritual Path
There will always be obstacles on any journey worth taking. Without them, without something to struggle with, we would never grow up. Sometimes these obstacles show up in the form of relationship struggles, past emotional issues, or time and energy struggles. It’s common when you’re in a process of change to feel more vulnerable. This, according to sociologist Brene Brown, is a good thing. She says, “Vulnerability is the birthplace of love, belonging, joy, courage, empathy, and creativity.” And it happens as the flip side to shame, fear, and a sense of worthlessness.
And yet, this sense of emotional exposure and sensitivity can lead you to be susceptible to unhealthy mindsets, or even people, preying on your newly opened eyes. What follows are clues to pay attention to for indication of a problem on your spiritual quest. These red flags should wake you up to do more investigating before you continue on your path. They will help you make sure you’re actually benefiting spiritually verses getting trapped in an internal quicksand or damaging yourself or relationships.
Spiritual Bypassing
When I first heard about spiritual bypassing, I was hit with a big, “Oh no, that’s me!” At the same time that it was embarrassing to see it in myself, I felt liberated because intuitively, I felt I was off the mark in life. You see, in my late teens and early 20s, I got really into New Age ideology. It started with my reading of The Celestine Prophesy and culminated in living at a New Age-y retreat center in California that centered around yoga, hippie lifestyle, and all kinds of Americanized Eastern-religious worldviews.
Being young and impressionable, I went off the deep end (much to my family’s and friends’ chagrin). I was so eager to be grown up and seen as spiritually fitting-in that I tried to go straight to wisdom and being a spiritual know-it-all verses walking through my psychological, emotional, and social issues (which does the real work of growing up!). Thankfully, the world pushed back on my youthful naivety and arrogance and I was forced to grow the long, hard, and right, way.
What is Spiritual Bypassing?
Spiritual bypassing is when a person tries to overlook all their flaws, personal issues, and problems in the name of spirituality. It’s when you use spirituality to escape facing your problems and personality defects. In other words, you avoid reality and pain.
Some examples of spiritual bypassing include:
- Detachment from empathy or compassion for others. For example, you think you’re just being of calm mind, in a spiritual state, when really you’re kind of a douche who refuses to show any emotion
- Ignoring feelings that make you squirm. You use your spiritual tools, such as meditation or yoga, to constantly “stay above” your emotions, thinking you’re in your higher self or something when really you’re just foolishly escaping your own suffering or reality.
- “Weaponizing” your spiritual practice: When you criticize or look down your big higher-than-thou nose at others who don’t think, or have a practice, like you.
- Mistaking spirituality for positive thinking: When you assume that to be spiritual means you always have to be positive and “together”. You can’t be seen having a bad day or losing your shit.
- Being dismissive towards others: Walking over people’s boundaries such as telling them to get over their issues and “keep on the sunny side” or “everything happens for a reason”. You’re really just trying to repress someone’s truth and force your ideology onto them.
- Toxic passivity: Constantly trying to not have a bad mood and to always strive to rise above everything difficult. Refusing to suffer, basically. It’s when you encourage others to rise above and cling to their ‘higher self’, too. In other words, you’re an annoying S.O.B! LOL.
If you notice yourself in any of these mentalities, take heed to slow down, unravel your perspectives, and perhaps seek professional help to assist you with your thinking processes.
Having a Guru
While I never took to a guru, I did see it all around me and tried it on for size at one point (it didn’t fit). There was a spiritual woman named Ammachi, or Amma (mother), who was all the rage in New Age circles at the end of the 20th century. She’s still around today. Some people I lived around acted like they were seeing God when they went to see her. They had her portrait in their homes and would bow and pray in front of it. People spoke her name with folded hands and a weird look of childish worship. They even believed she could spontaneously heal people with a hug or touch. I tried to emulate this, but fortunately, I still had some common sense (and cringe radar), lol.
Once, around 1999, I went to one of Amma’s gatherings. I watched a video of people ‘making her’ lick the puss wounds of a sick man to heal him. F-ing gross. I wondered how Amma felt as a human. Did she really believe herself to be all they said she was? Or was she a victim of her society putting their beliefs onto her? Perhaps it was this moment that popped the spiritual illusion slowly gaining ground in my mind from hanging around all these cooky people.
Ammachi, I’m sure, is a very loving person. But people made her into a guru, into a near-godlike being. They worshipped her by clinging to everything she said and did and making it out to be the wisest, most pure, most spiritually instructive thing ever.
Traps of Following a Guru
Having a leader to look up to is important sometimes for growing spiritually. Cultures throughout time have had spiritual leaders, or gurus, that have guided individuals through great processes of healthy change. There’s nothing wrong with finding a teacher more wise than you to impart knowledge to you. Looking up to someone in this way can help you transcend selfish thinking and start a process of thinking of a bigger picture. However, it becomes dysfunctional when you lose that person’s humanity and perceive them as godlike.
People who follow a guru tend to put their idol on a pedestal and snub their nose at others who don’t think like them or follow the guru as seriously. They consider themselves almost like in a special club of “knowers” and are not open to other points of view. They believe their spiritual leader has godlike qualities of miracles and omnipotence and use buzzwords and catch phrases with each other with annoyingly ‘knowing’ glances.
Steve Taylor, author of “The Leap”, says that a lot of people who follow gurus have a sincere passion for growth and learning. But this is coupled with “a much more unhealthy impulse: a regression to a childlike of unconditional devotion and irresponsibility.” You give up your thinking power to the guru and become susceptible to them. Sometimes, this can be disastrous, such as the Osho cult in Oregon in the 1980s where Osho had dozens of Rolls Royce’s and Rolex watches and his followers poisoned the town in an attempt to take it over politically.
If you find yourself attracted to a spiritual teacher and getting into a group who feels the same, take caution to consider you may be on the path to guru-worship.
Wanting Others to Change or Separating Yourself from Others
Another red flag on a spiritual journey can be when you want those around you to adopt your newfound identity and knowledge. And if they don’t, or they push back on you, you start to separate yourself from them. Often, you separate yourself from people who have been family or friends of yours for a long time.
At the root of this desire to change those around you is a complicated nest of emotions that in one way is an honest excitement and newfound awareness of something profound you’ve discovered and want to share it with everyone. But on the other hand, the desire can come from fear or arrogance: your wanting to be seen as intelligent or wise or right.
Reasons To Not Try and Change Others
Trying to change others can be seen as bad for several reasons:
- Respecting autonomy: Everyone has the right to live their life as they choose and to make their own decisions. Trying to change someone else’s behavior or beliefs can be seen as a violation of their autonomy and can be deeply disrespectful.
- Can lead to conflict: When someone tries to change another person, it can create tension and conflict between the two individuals. This can damage relationships and create negative feelings that may be difficult to repair.
- May not be effective: People are complex, and changing someone else’s behavior is often difficult, if not impossible. Even if change does occur, it may not be long-lasting, and the person may revert back to their old ways.
- Focuses on external factors: Trying to change others focuses on external factors, such as their behavior, rather than addressing internal ones, such as one’s own thoughts, feelings, and attitudes. This can prevent true growth and development for both individuals.
If you find yourself tempted to push your beliefs onto those around you (coupled with a rather judgmental view that yours’s are correct), you may be in the presence of a huge red flag. Take time to reflect. It is more productive to focus on changing oneself and promoting self-improvement, rather than trying to change others. Lead by example, not force.
Don’t be so open-minded that your brains fall out!
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Having a Superiority Complex
Similar to forcing your beliefs onto those around you, having a grandiose mindset, or a sense of superiority, is a BRF (big red flag!) on the spiritual journey. I did this to my friends in Ohio when I moved to California. Judging my Ohio roots, I internally criticized my friends’ “simple” mindsets and outlooks on life. Because they weren’t into what I was, I secretly looked down on them. I was a naïve 21 year old looking for my identity. Instead of probing deep into my own mindsets and psychological makeup, I escaped responsibility and went right to adopting what I thought made me look sophisticated, enlightened, or mature. What I didn’t know was I was acting out a childish need for affirmation.
At the root of grandiosity and superiority is a need to been seen, a need to be impressive and affirmed. When you have unfulfilled childhood needs such as these, you’re susceptible to adopting negative attitudes when forming a spiritual identity. Not developing a healthy ego as a youth, you adopt spirituality as a way to exult yourself and get attention. Driven by a the desire to feel important or validated, you may use spiritual identity as a way to fulfill that unconscious need.
If you think you may be acting snobbishly or with grandiosity about your spiritual beliefs, think twice and perhaps get some therapy to help you sort out what may be driving this unattractive expression. If you catch yourself in an “I’m enlightened and you’re not” mentality, see the red flag before you.
Abandoning Everyday Responsibilities for Spirituality
When I was starting a spiritual path in my early 20s, as I said, I went rather off the deep end. Meaning, I took it so seriously that it became the fundamental part of my life. It encompassed my thoughts. Everything I read was related to finding God (though back then I was apt to call it Great Spirit or The Universe). I had a measly job cleaning the rooms at a retreat center and in my spare time did yoga, participated in personal growth workshops, explored the mountains, and thought not once about my future.
Unfortunately, this caught up to me years later and bit me in the ass, so-to-speak. Despite the freedom of not having many responsibilities, I felt aimless and lost. I was engulfed in thinking that finding God was the meaning of life. I brushed off anything else as unimportant. What’s worse, I saw anything else as “temptations” of the material world trying to distract me from what truly mattered. What a delusion!
Unintended Consequences of Abandoning Responsibilities
All those years, about 5-7, of prioritizing how I felt and thought about spirituality, caused me to avoid planning and building a future for myself. In short, it ruined my life for a time. Yes, ruined my life. I’m still playing catch up for that near decade lost drifting around. By the time I was 27, I wasn’t college educated. I got accidentally pregnant. I spent the next 7 years struggling to put myself through college (racking up insane debt which I’m still paying off) while raising a child.
Looking back, I would’ve spend my 20s SO differently. Yes, have a spiritual life, if that’s a calling for you. But hell-to-the-no don’t let it fool you into thinking planning and developing a financial, career, and family life isn’t important. It is incredibly important. And your youth is so full of vigor and energy- don’t waste it getting lost on a spiritual path!
Magical Thinking
Ok, the last of my red flag picks is magical thinking. Magical thinking is when someone believes that their thoughts, desires, or beliefs can directly influence events in the real world. They think it is independent of any physical laws or cause-and-effect relationships. It is having superstitions and magical or religious rituals, such as wearing an amulet for “protection” against bad spirits. It can also be repeating a phrase over and over again in expectation that doing so will cause something to happen or not. Because spirituality is a very inward process, magical thinking can take hold. It’s important to know the risks of magical thinking and to be able to spot whether you’re doing it. Here are some pitfalls of it to be aware of:
Dangers of Magical Thinking:
- Reality distortion: Believing in magical thinking can lead to a distorted view of reality. Individuals can overlook or dismiss logical and evidence-based explanations for events.
- Ineffective problem solving: Relying on magical thinking can prevent individuals from taking practical steps to solve problems and improve their lives. Instead, they may believe that their thoughts or beliefs alone can bring about change.
- Delayed treatment: If individuals believe in magical thinking to the extent that they avoid seeking medical treatment for serious health conditions, this can lead to serious health consequences and potentially life-threatening situations.
- Missed opportunities: Magical thinking can prevent individuals from taking advantage of opportunities and resources that could help them achieve their goals. They may believe that their thoughts or beliefs are enough to bring about success.
Overall, relying on magical thinking can prevent individuals from engaging in effective problem solving. They may not take advantage of opportunities or make positive changes in their lives. If you notice yourself engaging in it, take it as a red flag that something is off about your spiritual journey. Take some time to read more or get therapy to sort out your thinking.
The Solo Journey of Spirituality
Developing a spiritual life is one of the best things we can do for ourselves. It can help us find inner peace, connects us to a larger sense of meaning in life, and helps guide us morally, emotionally, and socially. As Buddhists say, life is suffering. Having an internal contemplative method, so-to-speak, that helps put things into a richer perspective helps alleviate that suffering and gives us meaning.
Exploring philosophy, religion, yoga, and other paths of spirituality is a good way to find out what resonates for us spiritually. Joining groups or churches can also be a part of your discovery process. But ultimately, the spiritual journey is a solo one. Tuning into your intuition, your inner voice, your own quiet connection with God, The Universe, or inner peace, is spirituality. Trust your own judgment along the way as no doubt you will see some red flags on your path. I hope this helps in some small way to point you in a positive direction.