resistance

The Dangers of Spiritual By-Pass

/ Lauri Ann Lumby / Leave a comment

Spiritual bypass can best be described as: “the tendency to use spiritual ideas and practices to sidestep or avoid facing unresolved emotional issues, psychological wounds, and unfinished developmental tasks”(Welwood, J. (2000) [1984]. “Between heaven and earth: principles of inner work”. Toward a psychology of awakening: Buddhism, psychotherapy, and the path of personal and spiritual transformation. Boston: Shambhala Publications. pp. 11–21.).

In spiritual bypass, we avoid, ignore, deny, suppress and repress the challenges, difficulties, disappointments, and suffering that are inherent within the human condition.  Spiritual bypass also includes avoidance and denial of the shadow.  The shadow is made up of our unhealed wounds, unacknowledged fears and includes all the aspects of ourselves that we have rejected because we have deemed them unacceptable. 

Spiritual bypass takes many forms, but in essence the action is the same – hoping, believing, acting as if we can simply meditate, pray, chant, or positively affirmation our struggles away.  The universal outcome of spiritual bypass is always the same and is best articulated in the Buddhist saying, “What we resist will persist.”  Through spiritual bypass, we are not dealing with, confronting, healing or transforming anything; we are simply sweeping it under the rug. As is true of everything we avoid, deny, ignore, the rug can only hold so much.  The rug will eventually explode and everything we have shoved under it will come out to haunt us.  Even if we are successful in keeping it all under the rug, what we have resisted and ignored will find its way out sideways – usually in non-loving behaviors toward ourselves or others. Often these behaviors become compulsive (ie: addictions), are disproportionate or uncharacteristic of our true nature.   

Some very clear examples of spiritual bypass and the negative consequence of this pattern of behavior includes: the clergy sex abuse crisis, narcissistic behaviors, abuse, co-dependency, homophobia, violence against children, school shootings and other forms of terrorism.  What we resist will persist and what we suppress will find its way out whether we want it to or not.  I would further suggest that we are currently living in a world seriously caught up in its own bypass – ignoring, denying, projecting away the darkness and pretending that it is all ok when in fact it is not!  Societal bypass is exhibited in our divisive culture where many refuse to see the truth that is staring them in the face because it makes them feel uncomfortable (triggering their own unacknowledged anxiety or unhealed fears), or who instead of acknowledging their role in darkness that exists in our society, either ignore it or project the blame onto someone else.  The bottom line is that we cannot meditate, mantra, pray,“beam love,” think good thoughts, repeat positive affirmations, “La La” the darkness away. Until we learn to face our darkness (individually and collectively) we are guilty of bypass and the darkness will not only persist, it will become worse. 

Now, I will wholeheartedly admit that I am not innocent as it relates to spiritual bypass.   I too have ventured down its path.  I will admit that it felt good there – for awhile – but eventually it kicked my ass! I have since learned that the only way out is through.  If we want to be free of our inner fears, unhealed wounds, and perceived imperfections, we have to go deep into them, feel them, wallow in them, and THEN through our spiritual practices, find our way through them.  In this, we are not covering the darkness with the light; neither are we turning the darkness into the light.  Instead, we are finding the light that is already present within the darkness – if only we have the courage to go there.

The work of dealing with our shadow and confronting all that is broken within us is hard!  It requires personal accountability, self-knowledge, courageous honesty, humility, vulnerability, and discipline.  It also requires the understanding and belief that in the overall scheme of things, what we are tempted to call “darkness” is in fact our light.  Within the struggle, suffering, struggles, challenges and all the things we want to deny or reject about our human experience is there to serve the light.  It is within these perceived challenges where we find our greatest gifts. 

Beyond Ascension

Live, Online Course

Wednesdays, March 6,13,20, 2024

6:30 – 8:30 pm central time

Learn more and enroll here

What You Resist Will Persist

/ Lauri Ann Lumby / Leave a comment

There is a quote that has been attributed to Buddhism that I have found to be uncompromisingly true:

“What you resist will persist.”

In my own journey of self-actualization and in the 25 years I have accompanied and guided others through theirs, I have witnessed the proof of this. To this statement, I would further add:

“What you resist, avoid, ignore, suppress, repress, deny, try to escape, etc. will persist.”

As much as we might try, we cannot run from our demons.  That which we do not acknowledge and work on healing will find its way out sideways in non-loving and compulsive behaviors either toward ourselves or others.  That which we do not heal as a culture/world is doomed to repeat itself. In this repetition, the oppressed becomes the oppressor; the abused becomes the abuser; and we end up marrying our unhealed wounds. We cannot escape this truth and we don’t need to look very far to see the proof of it. Most often, the proof is as close as looking in the mirror.

At the center of the process of human development is the healing of our wounds.  By no effort of our own, that which is unhealed within us will make itself known for the purpose of being acknowledged and healed.  When we ignore those wounds, or refuse to do the work of healing them, they don’t go away.  Instead, they become magnified and compounded, making our journey even more difficult.  Our compulsions become addictions. Our guilt-driven conditioning becomes a cycle of self-loathing which we feed through a wide variety of means.  The places where we have felt rejected become a co-dependent drive to find someone (usually unhealthy) to love. 

Ignoring, suppressing, repressing, denying our wounds only causes further harm.  As long as we are bypassing our pain, we are its prisoner.  We will never be free as human beings until we heal our wounds.

One of the great challenges to healing these wounds, however, are all the systems/programs/self-proclaimed teachers/conditioning that encourage distractions or denial over the gritty work of transformation.  “Get over it and move on.”  “Let it go.”  “Offer it up.” “Just keep busy:” “Think positive thoughts.” “Just be grateful.”  “It could be worse.” are all platitudes driven into us by systems that have failed to do their own healing and who are then projecting their unhealed wounds onto their followers.  Anything or anyone that tells us to ignore/deny/suppress/avoid our pain is detrimental to our emotional, mental, psychological, and spiritual wellbeing; and is thwarting our path to true freedom.

While complete freedom can never be fully attained, our Soul compels us to continually seek it out.  Confronting and transforming our wounds, and the conditioning that created them in the first place, is the only sure path to that freedom.  Anything that tells us otherwise is a lie.

Moving Beyond Resistance

Ascension is not the goal, neither is it the purpose of the human journey. Instead, ascension is recognized as the midpoint of the human experience, and a danger for those who would seek to remain there. As was well-attested by the ancients, we are not meant to escape the human condition, but are meant to immerse ourselves fully within it. In this, we move beyond ascension (unity consciousness) and toward full Divine embodiment – the true purpose of the human experience. 

Live, Online, Course

Wednesdays, March 6, 13, 20, 2024

6:30 – 8:30 pm central time

Learn more and enroll here.

Don’t Get Stuck at Ascension

/ Lauri Ann Lumby / Leave a comment

For the past number of years, we have been experiencing the great awakening of human consciousness.  This awakening has been given many names and equally as many faces.  Some call it the “New Age Movement” (for the record, there is nothing “New” about New Age. It is simply a rediscovery and reclaiming of what Mystics and Prophets have known all along).  Others call it Ascension.  I’m sure there are other names, but we’ll leave it at that.  While there have been many positive aspects to this awakening, there is one ENORMOUS DANGER and pitfall which very few acknowledge and even more fall into:

The Danger of getting stuck at Ascension.

Ascension is NOT the path to our wholeness.  Ascension is not the goal.  Ascension is not the final outcome.  In fact, our human journey toward wholeness – where we are one with our Divine and Human selves – is not complete until we have moved past ascension and are willing to descend into the depths of our own, as well as the world’s darkness.  Descending is the profoundly challenging (and yet deeply liberating and rewarding) part of our journey toward wholeness where we come face to face with:

  • Our unhealed wounds.
  • Our unacknowledged anxiety.
  • Our egoic attachments.
  • Our societal conditioning.
  • The inner demons that have hindered us from fulfilling our mission and purpose on this plane.
  • Death.

After we ascend and discover the ecstasy of our Union with the Divine (our higher and truest self), we have to bring that Union into embodiment.  The only way to embody our true and Divine Self is to let it come through us, bringing us face to face with all of who and what we are that is not in alignment with Love.  This is the work of the Shadow Worker and where our true gifts come to light.

The truth about Descending is that we cannot “LaLa” the darkness away.  Neither can we avoid it by escaping into reverie.  We don’t change things by thinking the right thoughts, raising our vibration, eating “more highly vibrational foods,” or through thoughts and prayers. We have to do the messy, dirty, sometimes terrifying work of turning away from the light and toward the darkness.  This is the DEEP DIVE that has nothing to do with “Dark Night of the Soul” and everything to do with the BIRTH of our Soul.  Here, the fragmented and broken parts of our humanness are acknowledged, transformed, and then released so that only Love remains.  I will make no bones about this part:  the LOVE that we are is not some glittery, flowy, rainbow filled unicorn of light.  This is the LOVE that can withstand all that we are, all the world is, and everything life will hand us, without turning tail and running away.  This is the Love made up of fierce courage.  It is the Love of Mother Kali who cuts away all that is not supportive of our mission and purpose on this plane.  On a collective level, it is the Love of the Destroyer that burns down whatever stands in the way of our human evolution – even the Brazilian Rainforest if that is what it takes to

WAKE US UP

But again, here is the trick:  We do not arrive at our wholeness through “love and light.”  We get there by burning the f’cker down.  And the work starts and ends with ourselves!

If we are not willing to do the challenging work of facing and being with our darkness and our greatest fears, then we cannot be a source of Love and support for our dying world.  If we do not do this critically important work, choosing instead to escape into Ascension, then we will suffer the consequences.

While Ascending past the illusion of separation and finding our Union with Self is an important first step, avoiding the Descent will paralyze us with this one critical truth:

What we resist will persist!

As a friend of mine once observed, “God is a nag!”  I would translate that by saying that our True Self, our Soul is a heartless bitch!  She will hound us until our work is done.  The harder we work against Her, the more vicious She becomes. Choosing only Ascension, imprisons us in our darkness which then comes out sideways in:

  • Blaming.
  • Shaming.
  • Manipulating.
  • Passive Aggressive and .Bullying Behaviors.
  • And the king of all demons:  DENIAL. 

When we are stuck in ascension, we are blind to our darkness (oh, we might see it, but we will do everything we can to “La La” it away).  We pretend it isn’t there.  We avoid anything that might have to do with death, disappointment, failure or inner conflict.  We pretend we know ourselves, when we really do not.  Our unhealed wounds come out sideways as we spin round and round in the drain of our inability to be completely and wholly accountable to and responsible for ourselves. 

The journey if descent is excruciating, but staying in ascension is even worse!  How would you like to spend an eternity in the game of pretend?  Pretty soon you can no longer remember the lies you have told yourself to stay in the light as your darkness overtakes you.

Sigh.

Here’s the really funny thing about this truth……Jesus knew it, and so did the Kabbalists who were likely his teachers. 

Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him and said of him,
“Here is a true child of Israel.
There is no duplicity in him.”
Nathanael said to him, “How do you know me?”
Jesus answered and said to him,
“Before Philip called you, I saw you under the fig tree.”
Nathanael answered him,
“Rabbi, you are the Son of God; you are the King of Israel.”
Jesus answered and said to him,
“Do you believe
because I told you that I saw you under the fig tree?
You will see greater things than this.”
And he said to him, “Amen, amen, I say to you,
you will see heaven opened and the angels of God
ascending and descending on the Son of Man.”

JN 1: 47-51

“Amen, amen, I say to you,
you will see heaven opened and the angels of God
ascending and descending on the Son of Man.”

In the cryptic statement above, Jesus is describing the initiatory process that he was inviting Nathaniel into.  Jesus is describing the ascending and descending process of coming into our wholeness as human beings.  Before the institutional Church designated Jesus “the only Son of Man,”  this was a common phrase which simply meant all of human kind.  Here Jesus is saying, “Nathaniel, if you come with me, I will show you how to become a fully integrated human being – Divine and Human, balanced in your masculine and feminine, and living out the fullness of your mission and purpose on this plane.”  In short, Jesus was inviting Nathaniel to join him in the knowledge of “the kingdom of God,” the word Jesus used to describe the fulfillment of our human spiritual journey:

To know Oneness with –

  • The Divine
  • Ourselves
  • Each other
  • All of creation.

The kingdom of God.  Enlightenment.  Wholeness.  Peace.  Contentment and Joy.

But as the Tree of Life demonstrates, the journey of Oneness that Jesus promised did not end in our meeting with God.  Instead, we have to bring our Union with the Divine fully into our human experience where we can live it out. 

Learn more and enroll here.

Live, Online Course

March 6, 13, 20, 2024

  • Discover the distinction between ascension and embodiment and their proper roles in your journey.
  • Understand the temptations to remaining in ascension.
  • Identify the symptoms of resistance to embodiment.
  • Explore the ancient map of the human spiritual journey as it was articulate through the Kabbalah. 
  • Learn the predictable stages of depth work required for embodiment. 
  • Join in this exploration through sharing and discussion in the company of like-minded individuals. 

Featured Course: Welcoming the Adversary

/ Lauri Ann Lumby / Leave a comment

Only $28.00

Join Lauri Ann Lumby as she breaks open the ancient mysteries related to the adversary – the natural inner force that has been corrupted into an external demon that should be feared. Even the ancient names given to this helpful and benevolent force have been appropriated by those who seek to manipulate others through fear, intimidation, and threats of eternal damnation.

  • Discover the ancient names given to the adversary and their true meanings.
  • Understand the natural cycle of spiritual growth including necessary times of resistance characterized by temptation, doubt, confusion, and difficulty.
  • Learn to approach the adversary as advocate.
  • Release resistance through practices of welcome.

Through this two-hour workshop, you will be empowered to set aside the “devil” you know and find power in working with the natural inner force that ensures our growth.

Learn more and enroll HERE