Spiritual bypassing and cognitive dissonance

Anyone who is on a spiritual journey needs to be aware of spiritual bypassing. Have to admit, i wasn’t always aware of this and it is also something that i have seen happening a lot in new age circles.

Spiritual bypassing is a term coined in the early 1980s by psychologist John Welwood. It refers to the use of spiritual practices and beliefs to avoid dealing with uncomfortable feelings, unresolved wounds, and fundamental emotional and psychological needs. Or as psychologist Ingrid Mathieu aptly put its “checking out, rather than checking in”.

Examples include using spirituality as a justification for failing to take responsibility for one’s actions, using spirituality to feel superior to other people, disease to be nice, emotional numbing and repression, overemphasis on the positive, blind or overly tolerant compassion, weak boundaries etc.

In the FiT Programme too we were asked to look at spiritual bypass and even research this topic together with cognitive dissonance to reflect on where we were practising spiritual bypass.

Reflection and introspection were an important part of the FiT Programme because if you want to rise above your small self, you have to look within (see also this blog about inner enemies).

Looking back, i can see how the white ass and new age mentality says: “we have got the guru inside us, we look ourselves”. Because i was fed these concepts, was practising this bypass too. But when it came to actually looking within, there was no guru inside me that would show me the way.

If it was not for the tireless guidance from my Mentor whom i humbly take as my Guru, beloved Sree Maa Shri Ji, would not have been able to look at the grey shades & blind spots within, let alone begin to air those things out. Some of my unhelpful swabhaav (nature) included people pleasing, disease to be nice where i don’t speak up when it is needed, blindly trusting because of a faulty believe in a world of love and oneness instead of understanding that there is different gradations of incarnated souls and using discernment, and putting others above me in my head – coming from comparison instead of seeing the divinity in all and also a subtle way to remain in my comfort zone and shirk responsibility.

In hindsight, these were also my character flaws that made me enable the covert narcissists that had snuck into the FiT Programme pretending they wanted to serve the mission of Kosmic Fusion but who came with hidden malicious agendas. In that way spiritual bypass cannot only hamper one’s own growth but also have an impact on group dynamics and result in affecting innocent parties.
 
The interesting thing is, the two narcissists Joy Kuo/Joy Vottus and Iphigenie Amoutzias/Malana B. Taresi who were asked to leave after their true face came out, only briefly reflected but then fell back into victim mode.  

Still remember how even at the Reunion in July 2017, Joy Kuo/Joy Vottus tried to wiggle out of going through the questionnaires we ourselves had put together to help us reflect. In fact, at some point she had pulled me aside and while trying to fill my ears about another FiT, she said this person told her she has a dark side that she needs to look at. And she said it with such disbelief like she couldn’t believe this was true… In her head, she must have felt perfect and this is the grandiosity typical of people with NPD.

My Kalyan Mitra Tara has written a great blog on how these two pretend volunteers, Joy and Iphigenie were both into Buddhism before and how they failed to look at the false self/ego self then and continued to do the same when they joined Kosmic Fusion and the FiT Programme.

Because of Sree Maa's supreme empathy and support, the voice of conscience was awakened in Joy and she did eventually reflect on her actions for a while, but then fell back into playing the victim game big time. Perhaps the attempt to reflect was only to try and reel back in the one person, Clarito, whom she had groomed and been obsessed with for years. In September 2017 she was kindly asked to resign.

Iphigenie had been voted out by the other FiT in May 2017 as we felt unsafe around her and couldn’t trust her after all the covert games that she had played for almost 5 years like only a sociopath with malignant narcissism knows how to play. She too was able to reflect on her actions because of the Grace and super nova empathy of Sree Maa and shared some of her narcissistic games and motives (though she would have never revealed everything). But when she didn’t get back into the group which she wanted, she fell back and joined hands with Joy to ran a smear campaign slandering the name of Sree Maa Shri Ji and Kosmic Fusion. Needless to say, they now completely deny the few reflections and admittances they have done.

One’s their true face is exposed the shame narcissists feel leads to narcissistic injury and the cognitive dissonance is so great that narcissists resort to slandering and maligning the ones who can see behind their carefully crafted masks in order to protect their own fake image and face, even if this is their Ultimate Well-wisher. Sadly, they end up cutting the branch they are sitting on.
 
Have to admit, they played their games well and when the truth came out for a while i was shocked, couldn’t believe had trusted these two individuals. Initially it is very easy to just put all the blame on them and their abuse but i think this too would be a form of bypassing, if i wouldn’t reflect and take responsibility for playing into their hands, missing essential red flags and the wounds, ignorance and unawareness i was and am still carrying. This is discussed quite well in these 2 videos by Melanie Tonia Evans about how to thrive after narcissistic abuse and what you can learn from it.
How i exposed the narcissistic smear campaign: https://youtu.be/k0ojZn13p0w 

& Why narcissists go after lightworkers:  https://youtu.be/XTAZhjnxa7k

Forever grateful to my beloved Sarvopari Paratpar Akshar Mitra Sree Maa Shri Ji for awakening my Atma, for helping me look within and taking off my blinkers, always shining the light of Absolute Truth, for graciously guiding me and showing the supersonic shortcut Home and for the unfathomable Grace of the Quantum Vortex Scalar WavePhoton Pulse, the Swaminarayan Mahamantra. 

P.S.
Please also read the insightful blog by my Kalyan Mitra Jeeya about narcissists doing spiritual bypassing