one’s need for love, but this only drives the need underground, so that it often becomes unconsciously acted out in covert and possibly harmful ways instead.
TF: Might this account for some of the messiness in our sangha communities?
JW: Definitely. It is easy to use the truth of emptiness in this one-sided way: “Thoughts and feelings are empty, a mere play of samsaric appearances, so pay them no heed. See their nature as emptiness, and simply cut through them on the spot.” In the realm of practice, this could be helpful advice. But in life situations these same words could also be used to suppress or deny feelings or concerns that need our attention. I’ve seen this happen on a number of occasions.
TF: What interests you most about spiritual bypassing these days?
JW: I’m interested in how it plays out in relationships, where spiritual bypassing often wreaks its worst havoc. If you were a yogi in a cave doing years of solo retreat, your psychological wounding might not show up so much because your focus would be entirely on your practice, in an environment that may not aggravate your relational wounds. It’s in relationships that our unresolved psychological issues tend to show up most intensely. That’s because psychological wounds are always relational — they form in and through our relationships with our early caretakers.
The basic human wound, which is prevalent in the modern world, forms around not feeling loved or intrinsically lovable as we are. Inadequate love or attunement is shocking and traumatic for a child’s developing and highly sensitive nervous system. And as we internalize how we were parented, our capacity to value ourselves, which is also the basis for valuing others, becomes damaged. I call this a “relational wound“ or the “wound of the heart.”
TF: Yes, something we are all familiar with.