Breathwork & Meditation To Understand Spiritual Bypassing

My name is Jay Chodagam.

I'm a meditation teacher and practitioner based in the San Francisco Bay area.

I lived as a monk for 18 years.

Prior to that,

I got two engineering degrees to work for some time in Silicon Valley.

And today what I try to do is meld my curiosity,

My left and right brain,

Which is my analytical intellectual engineering part of me where the science is important,

Whereas also the mysticism,

The right side,

The holistic,

The mysterious part of this journey,

This pursuit of life that we are on and trying to make sense by blending both of these and constantly curious by reading,

Researching,

Listening,

Learning,

Sitting with myself,

Tuning upwards,

Tuning inwards and trying to see how do you make sense of all of this and ultimately what really matters.

I've traveled to 64 countries around the world and my curiosity of traveling is to understand really what makes people tick,

Different cultures,

Different traditions,

Different history,

Different situations that have shaped these cultures.

But you know what's interesting?

There is a foundational commonality.

There is what I call the least common denominator,

Which is across the globe,

Everybody is looking for the same things,

Regardless of what color,

What skin,

What religion,

What sexual orientation.

We're all in the pursuit of love,

Peace,

Happiness,

Personal power,

And joy.

And that's what we're here to discover and deepen and invest in those attributes of our life.

Well,

With that,

I just want to go to lay out the agenda for today.

I'm going to start with some breath work.

I'm going to do some sonic resonance,

Which is going to stand on top of the breath work on pranayama that I have been doing for the last several years.

And so we'll do some sonic resonance,

Some deep breathing,

Heart opening exercises,

And then I'm going to go ahead and do a meditation today on spiritual bypass.

So we're going to see how people use spirituality as a way to avoid what's truly happening and how that can be extremely damaging for one's own journey and for one's own life experience.

With that said,

I ask that you go ahead and please downshift your gaze.

If you feel comfortable,

Close your eyes.

I want to start off with some deep belly breathing.

Inhale into the bottom of your abdomen,

Loving the belly to expand and collapse.

And as you're inhaling,

Watching the rise of the abdomen,

And as you're exhaling,

Can you release it with a hiss?

Exhaling nice and deep through the nostrils and exhaling through the nostrils as well.

I like the analogy of a bagpipe.

Imagine your belly is like a bagpipe.

You allow it to soften and expand,

Take in as much air as you possibly can,

And then squeeze,

Allowing that bagpipe to release every ounce of air.

And now we're going to do something called box breathing.

This is,

Imagine a square like a box with four sides,

Even sides.

Four count inhale,

Four count retention hold,

Four count exhale,

And four count hold.

So I'll do the counting,

You do the breathing.

So let's start inhale,

Two,

Three,

Four,

Hold two,

Three,

Four,

Exhale,

Two,

Three,

Four,

Hold,

Two,

Three,

Four.

Inhale,

Two,

Three,

Four.

Hold,

Two,

Three,

Four.

Exhale,

Two,

Three,

Four.

Hold,

Two,

Three,

Four.

Last one.

Inhale,

Two,

Three,

Four.

Hold,

Two,

Three,

Four.

Exhale,

Two,

Three,

Four.

Hold,

Two,

Three,

Four.

Now,

What we're going to do is inhale for same for a count of four,

Hold for a count of four,

Exhaling twice as long for a count of eight,

And again,

Holding for a count of four.

Together,

Inhale,

Two,

Three,

Four,

Hold,

Two,

Three,

Four,

Exhale,

Two,

Three,

Four,

Five,

Six,

Seven,

Eight.

Hold,

Two,

Three,

Four,

Inhale,

Two,

Three,

Four,

Hold,

Two,

Three,

Four,

Exhale,

Two,

Three,

Four,

Five,

Six,

Seven,

Eight.

Inhale,

2,

3,

4,

Hold,

2,

3,

4,

Exhale,

2,

3,

4,

5,

6,

7,

8 and hold,

2,

3,

4,

Inhale,

2,

3,

4,

Hold,

2,

3,

4,

Exhale,

2,

3,

4,

5,

6,

7,

8 and hold,

2,

3,

4.

Now come back to regular breathing,

Which is a cadence of 5 in and 5 out.

Now in this next few exercises,

I'm going to help you to really heat up,

Warm up your system,

Helping you to ground.

Now as you inhale,

Take a nice deep breath and as you're exhaling,

Can you release it with an MMMM sound?

And when you're releasing with an MMMM,

I want you to feel the resonance in your jaw,

Your teeth and your tongue.

MMMM.

Taking a nice breath in,

Let's do a few more rounds of this.

MMMM.

Any pitch,

Any pitch you want to go.

MMMM.

Sending that sound inward as you're humming out the MMMM.

Sending the sound back towards you,

Towards home,

Allowing it to ground you.

MMMM.

Now can you send the MMMM up,

That resonance up into your words,

Your eyeballs,

Towards your head,

Allowing your tongue to guide it.

MMMM.

And now as we take in another deep breath,

This time let's let out the air,

The bagpipe,

Squeeze it out with an AH.

Any sound of AH that comes out,

Anything that comes out naturally for you.

AH.

And open your face as you're releasing with an AH,

Allowing all of the chambers within your sinuses to be resonating.

AH.

And let it just flow,

Let all the tension,

All the weakness fall out.

Let all that you're feeling inside be expressed.

AH.

Just allowing the feeling,

Following that,

Just to come through without any inhibition.

If there's tears coming through,

Let them come.

Continue this practice.

AH.

And this time as you're breathing in,

Raise your shoulders,

And as you drop them,

Release them with a sigh of an AH.

With a low AH.

Next,

As we inhale,

I want you to sing,

I am home.

I am home.

Just inviting yourself to be home as you repeat this a few more times.

I am home.

And I feel fat and happy.

I'm loving this bagpipe to fill.

And just exhaling out slowly as you squeeze with your abdominal muscles.

Allowing yourself to know that you are okay.

You are worth it.

You've explored yourself in this process.

And be willing and open for whatever needs to unfold.

Whatever's hidden away in this deep crevices to reveal itself.

To be okay and to be intimate with looking inside and being comfortable with who you are.

Noticing just in these few minutes of this musical healing breath work.

How has that transformed you?

How do you feel right now?

Notice the ease of your breath.

The slower pace of thoughts in your mind.

And the lightness that you may be feeling in your entire body.

My name is Jay Chodagam.

And we are embarking on a journey to understand spiritual bypassing.

I invite you to close your eyes.

Be comfortable.

Either you're laying down or sitting up.

And in both cases,

I want you to keep your spine as straight as possible.

Where you are alert,

Yet relaxed.

I want you to ask yourself a few questions.

Do you use spiritual beliefs to avoid your pain or problems?

Do you feel like the spiritual you is different from the embodied you?

Do you use spirituality to justify an insecurity within yourself?

Do you use spirituality to avoid looking at things in your reality that you would rather think did not exist?

Are you avoiding the fact that you feel like you are deficient and not enough or bad by creating a persona of spirituality and feeling it is important to be transcendent?

Truth be told,

Most of us alive today struggle with spiritual bypassing.

Do you want to know how to know if you struggle with spiritual bypassing?

You know you're struggling with it if your response is,

If you think in the terms of I create my own reality,

And then you worry.

You're struggling with spiritual bypassing if you espouse unconditional love and feel emotional resistance to someone.

You're struggling with spiritual bypassing if you espouse the idea that the universe is benevolent and good,

But then demonstrate distrust for others or the world at large.

You're struggling with spiritual bypassing if you espouse loving-kindness and then berate yourself.

If there is any kind of split within you between your spiritual principles and the actuality of how you feel or act,

Then you're struggling with spiritual bypassing.

And if you struggle with spiritual bypassing,

The real work is in authenticity.

We're not just physical beings waking up to our spiritual essence.

We're also spiritual beings waking up to our physicality.

Physical life is not clean,

It's messy.

Physical life is a life of contrast.

It is an experience that involves both what is wanted and what is unwanted.

Spirituality is not an excuse to run away from physical life.

The soul is not a justification to deny the human side of ourselves.

Spiritual principles are not an excuse to avoid the unhealed aspects of your psyche and your pain.

Spiritual principles are not meant to serve as a justification to support your defenses.

In order to avoid the trap of spiritual bypassing,

We need to be brave,

Brave enough to admit how we feel,

What we want,

What we don't want,

What we like,

And what we don't like.

We need to be willing to risk admitting to where we are and who we are,

Even if we think that we are or who we are or what we are isn't good or enough.

If we want to avoid the pitfall of spiritual bypassing,

We must express in our love our emotions,

Our wounds,

Our traumas and pains to surface healthily and hold them with compassion.

Make a conscious effort to allow instead of suppressing your emotions and not judge them when they arise.

We often turn to bypassing to cope with our internal pain and suffering.

Very common bypassing includes addiction to food,

Alcohol,

Drugs,

Shopping,

Sex,

Work,

Focusing on others,

And diverting attention away from yourself.

Make peace with being uncomfortable.

And if you're numbing yourself inside out,

This energy lingers and creates a breeding ground for other issues to arise and manifest.

So get down to the root of your problems.

The journey through life is not always one of bliss,

And you haven't gotten life wrong if you're not in perfect bliss.

Sometimes the path through life leads you to breakdowns where you're curled up on the floor in tears.

In order to avoid the trap of spiritual bypassing,

We need to apply what we learn to our life.

Spiritual and self-help information is relatively abstract.

Attending workshops,

Talks,

Reading books,

Going to yoga and meditation classes,

Etc.

Are good tools.

However,

Tools are of no use if they aren't used.

Take action by applying what you're learning from these modalities consistently.

Integrate.

Integrate them into your daily life.

If these ideas remain abstract and merely intellectualized,

They aren't going to help you to create long-lasting and permanent change.

If we are to avoid the trap of bypassing,

We need to let go of the idea that something must be terribly wrong or dysfunctional about us if we have problems of negative beliefs or negative feelings or negative thoughts.

Everyone has personal struggles to work through.

I mean everyone.

When we judge our problems of feelings or negativity as wrong,

We suddenly have a motive for spiritual bypassing.

We put on a facade where we are not okay.

We want to be good and right,

But we can only achieve that goodness or rightness by being inauthentic.

You cannot avoid your pain because you cannot avoid yourself.

Anything you try to avoid will haunt you.

It will return again and again until it is so large that you cannot avoid it.

The thing about spiritual practice is that we turn to it because we are in pain and we want to feel better.

Then all too often we wind up using spiritual practice as a substitute for facing our psychological issues.

When we do this,

Our spiritual progression is halted.

We cannot move forward on our path of spirituality by lying to ourselves anymore that we can reach our destination on a map if we are unwilling to admit to where we are at first.

For this reason,

True spirituality must incorporate the practice of shadow work.

And if we want to progress,

We must face our psychological wounds.

If you want to feel better and enjoy your life more,

Dare to face your pain.

Dare to be authentic.

Authenticity is the highest state of being for the spiritual practitioner.

In the years to come,

Authenticity will become the replacement for enlightenment as the true goal of spiritual practice.

When we use spirituality to whitewash over our issues and try to avoid them,

We use the goal of spiritual transcendence to try to rise above the raw and messy and the real side of human life before we have fully faced and made peace with it.

This can be seen as premature and false spiritual transcendence.

It is one of the major pitfalls or occupational hazards of walking the path of spirituality.

Spiritual bypassing isn't just an annoying facet of spirituality.

In fact,

It's very dangerous.

Why is it dangerous?

It's dangerous because it sets up a major division between the physical self and the spiritual or the higher self,

Creating a definable split between where one really is and where one thinks they should be.

It enables us to lie to ourselves and delude ourselves and live our lives through a projection of the false self.

We cannot heal unless we are willing to admit to where we are and who we are.

Spiritual bypassing is like breaking your leg but being unwilling to admit it,

Putting on a band-aid over the compound fracture and trying to continue forward anyway.

You can see how much harm would come to someone physically if they did that.

That's exactly the same amount of emotional damage we can do to ourselves when we use spirituality to bypass the truth of our emotional self.

We need to take time,

Take time to face and move through and heal our emotional pain in the same way that we need to take time to face the fact that our leg is broken,

Reset the bone and spend time healing the leg before we're able to truly move forward.

Spiritual bypassing also leads to a one-sided form of spirituality where one aspect of life is elevated at the expense of its opposite.

For example,

Objective truth is used to invalidate subjective truth.

Non-physical may be valued over form.

Transcendence is valued over physical embodiment and detachment is valued over feeling.

This behavior of valuing one side of polarity over the other gives rise to extremely damaging experiences.

For example,

One might try to practice emotional detachment from others by suppressing one's need for love and becoming independently self-loving.

This only drives the need to be loved by others underground so that it often becomes unconsciously acted out in covert and manipulative ways.

Being a good spiritual person can become a substitute identity that covers up and defends against an underlying deficient identity.

The spiritual idea we have of our self is used to whitewash over the truth of our true concept of ourselves,

Which is that we feel badly about our self.

We feel that we're not good enough.

We feel that we're innately bad.

Then although we may be practicing diligently,

Our spiritual practice can be used in the service of denial and defense.

And when spiritual practice is used to bypass our real life human issues,

Our spirituality becomes compartmentalized.

Our spiritual life and practice remain separate and unintegrated with our day-to-day life.

There's no integrity in our overall functioning.

We feel like we have a split personality disorder.

We can never truly become the embodiment of the higher self because we're still thinking of our lower self as our lower self or as our unwanted self.

Our spiritual practice cannot ever fully penetrate our life and make us feel good if we are using spiritual principles to avoid ourselves or avoid our pain.

There's a big difference between being authentically positive and forcing positivity in order to try to avoid negativity.

In today's world,

We have little tolerance for working through our pain.

We much rather instantaneously find solutions that involve numbing our pain.

Lo and behold,

Spirituality itself has become its own avoidance strategy.

When we turn away from our pain or away from wherever we are,

We are abandoning ourselves.

We resist the very thing we are trying to avoid.

And so we guarantee that it'll come up in our realities again,

Only this time bigger.

So try to avoid the spiritual bypassing.

Be okay to express and allow your emotions to surface healthily.

And when they do so,

Hold them with love.

Make peace with being uncomfortable.

Get down to the root of your problems.

And let go of the idea that something is wrong with you if you're thinking negative thoughts of being negative.

Authenticity is being true to how you feel.

And healing cannot come from a place of inauthenticity.

I want you to put your palms together in prayer position at your heart center.

Then ask yourself,

How do you feel right now?

And what,

If anything,

Is waiting to bubble up from deep within inside your being?

I want you to rub your palms against each other,

Kindling some chi,

Invigorating prana.

Nice brisk rub.

And when you feel a nice warm ball of energy kindled up between your palms,

I want you to go ahead and cup both your eyes,

One with each palm.

And bless yourself.

I am okay.

I will be okay.

I am safe.

I am light.

I am.

Bringing your palms back together at heart center.

I would like for you to share how you're feeling right now in one word.

Please go and drop that one word in the comments.