Ripening

What spiritual bypassing would have us rise above is precisely what we need to enter, and enter deeply, with as little self-numbing as possible. 
— Robert Augustus Masters, Spiritual Bypassing (2010)

If spiritual bypass is the pattern, what is the antidote? Not abandoning our practice, but allowing it to include what has been left out. Robert Augustus Masters, building on Welwood’s work, suggests the goal is not transcendence but intimacy. What we have tried to rise above is exactly what asks to be met.

Welwood spoke of two tracks in human development: waking up and growing up. Waking up points toward the recognition of our larger nature, an awareness that is not defined by our history, our wounds, or our personality. In contemplative traditions, this is sometimes called Buddha nature or essential self, the part of us that was never broken and does not need to be fixed.

Growing up involves the slower, messier work of emotional maturation, relational healing, and making peace with the parts of ourselves we have rejected. This is where we learn to sit with grief instead of numbing it, to hold anger without acting it out, to be in relationship without losing ourselves or abandoning others. Bypass happens when we pursue one track while neglecting the other. The insight may be genuine, but the person carrying it remains stuck. We are not just humans learning to become buddhas, Welwood wrote, but also buddhas learning to become fully human.

In 12-Step philosophy, we call this integration emotional sobriety. The term comes from a 1958 letter by Bill W., in which he admitted that even after years of physical sobriety, he still struggled with depression and emotional dependency. Recovery, he realized, was not just about not drinking. It required a deeper reckoning with the patterns beneath the behaviour, the fear, the resentment, the unmet need. The Steps themselves point in this direction. Inventory is not transcendence. Amends are not bypass. They are practices of entering, not rising above.

Masters names another hazard: the spiritual superego. This is the harsh inner voice that tells us we should meditate more, practice harder, be less self-centered. It keeps score of every failure to live up to the teachings. In recovery, it might sound like program language turned against ourselves, using slogans to judge rather than to heal. The spiritual superego is not conscience. It is perfectionism dressed in sacred clothes.

Recognizing these hazards is the first step. What does the alternative look like in practice? It might mean noticing when a slogan is being used to shut something down rather than open it up. It might mean staying with a feeling long enough to learn what it has to say, rather than rushing to interpret it. Or asking whether a meditation practice is helping us be present or helping us disappear.

Masters warns against practices that “tranquilize rather than illuminate.” This is the key discernment. Spiritual practice can be a way of numbing or a way of waking. The difference is not in the form but in the orientation. Are we moving toward ourselves or away? Are we building tolerance for discomfort or avoiding it? Are we using the teachings as doors or as walls?

None of this means spiritual insight is unimportant. It means that insight alone is not enough. Awakening asks us to include what we have excluded, to make room for what we hoped to leave behind. The path is not upward only. It also goes down and in. As Welwood would say, this is how we ripen.