Spiritual Bypassing with "Both Sides"

How to Navigate One of the Common Pitfalls

Last night, I was introduced to a filmmaker from South Africa who had a goddess-y headband, Burning Man outfit, and a commitment to protecting the Earth and advancing a new paradigm. At first I enjoyed talking with her.

But when the conversation turned to our current politics, she voiced what is an increasingly common form of spiritual bypassing, which is saying about both Republicans and Democrats, “I feel like they are all the same, none are better than others. It’s just theater.”

While she had not grown up in our country, had done close to no study of U.S. politics, and was not curious about my perspective as someone who has developed deep knowledge, she was very, very sure that she was right. “It’s what my intuition tells me.” In the conversation, she started to show a rigidity of belief and defensiveness that emerges when viewpoints become shields rather than a jumping off point for true inquiry.

We ended the conversation and I walked away thinking more about the the belief system that she had taken on that gave her comforting illusions about what is happening and prevented her from playing a meaningful role.

Her form of spiritual both sides-ism provided a number of things for her, from what I could tell. First, it allowed her to dissociate from the suffering now being caused by the Trump administration and not have to feel the cruelty, the callousness, and the degradation of morals, values, and democracy underway. She would gloss over each mention of such things and say something like “Well there are positive things happening as well.” She confessed she originally thought Trump was going to be a positive leader, a common belief in MAHA circles. From my perspective the spiritual both sides-ism allowed her to be insulated from the pain of others. It allowed her to skim over things she found uncomfortable to face. It allowed her to stay in a protected bubble

Second, it elevated her ego. Even with little knowledge, she could claim a kind of “higher ground,” with her only evidence to support her position being her personal intuition and most likely the validation of countercultural community members. She could feel superior to the “mainstream” and thus feel that her work - showcasing the voices of countercultural change agents that she believed in - was the real, valid and important work. The rest was “theater.”

Third, it made her life simpler by giving her a self-validating belief that didn’t require rigor, discernment, or any intellectual effort. She didn’t have to wrestle with integrating different points of view, open her heart to different stories, delve into history or strategy, face the truly destructive aspects of what is going on, or forge a pathway that could transform the traumas behind the cruelty. She didn’t have to understand the psychological dynamics playing out or invest in the humanity of the people holding different views. She could kind of float above it and feel superior to it without the work.

To use slightly more charged terms, her ostensibly spiritual perspective allowed her to feel superior to others and mask a viewpoint that was, at its essence, ignorant (based on little research, study, or inquiry), escapist (no effort to positively engage with those impacted), and self-important (the only thing that is real is what her intuition says is real).

Her rock-solid confidence in her assessments represented a version of grandiosity because it lacked in-depth knowledge, real compassion for the lives impacted, and real curiosity for learning more.

Now she certainly wasn’t a bad person and she was sincerely committed to championing the work of some good and interesting leaders. But because she was settling for a lighter weight version of spirituality - lofty, escapist, and lacking rigor or moral depth - I suspect her other work was not going to bear as much fruit.

What’s tricky is that there were elements of genuine spiritual insight mixed in with the spiritual bypassing, making it easier for her to self-validate and have her friends validate the opinion. She could take an insight that they all the actors are divine beings and use that to gloss over the horrors underway, whether that is a brutal ICE raid, attacks on the free press, or blowing up boats in the Caribbean without cause.

Ironically, while she was making a film about earth protectors, she was rationalizing the behaviors of the people who are doing more to destroy the Earth than anyone else. Even one of her heroines, Jane Goodall, acknowledged in a posthumous video that if given a chance she would put people like Trump, Musk, and Putin on a rocket to Mars because they were doing so much damage to our planet’s systems of life. The spiritual both sides-ism inoculated the South African from making such a statement. Jane Goodall saw the situation differently, with more moral clarity in my opinion.

The reason I bring this up is that you probably run into versions of this yourself. The impulse to self-protect one’s energy, attention, or sanity leads to a rationalization of “both sides” being co-equal degrading forces for our culture right now.

Which is precisely wrong.

The pathway forward is to embrace the full initiation of the moment, which means that we have to bear witness fully to what is happening, summon our strength to be a voice and advocate for positive change, and stay fully engaged. We have to go through the alchemical fire, not hover above it.

We have to see, clearly, that the Trump-led Republican party needs to be stopped and hit a brick wall created by we the people, not out of hatred but out of moral clarity. We need to see that they are destroying the foundations of our democracy and the line will have to be drawn or we will keep going further down the road to becoming a dark and oppressive dictatorship.

The spiritual bypass approach doesn’t allow people to see the extremely low expression of consciousness that the Trump administration is enacting. The truth is that it is a criminal enterprise motivated by cruelty, greed, and power rather than principle or higher purpose. It has taken a wrecking ball to the rule of law and the moral principles that undergird this country. It is an embodiment of our collective shadow - shallow, self-interested, and arrogant.

Yes, it is true that this also has its divine purpose and that the souls involved are also divine beings. We do have to see, understand, and integrate those aspects of our collective psyche. We need to understand the root systems of their behaviors in trauma, hopelessness, and fear. We need to hold a pathway of redemption for every soul who is engaging in the destruction underway.

But, and this is a big but, part of the initiation is also seeing the destructive, regressive behaviors clearly and saying a firm, “No. That is not who we are.” We need to be the adults in relationship to the badly behaving young souls and set a boundary.

The villain in any story does have a higher purpose. The villain drives the plot of a story forward by forcing the heroic characters to summon higher qualities, deeper strength, and transcendent courage to surmount challenges. If we say, “Well, the villain is just an illusion or not such a bad person” the villain is not going to go away. The villain is going to destroy the heroic characters. It becomes a much more painful initiation.

This South African woman embodied a view that can make the initiation far worse and more damaging for the earth and her ecosystems. By putting her fingers in her ears and a blindfold over her eyes, she became part of the faction that hasn’t yet understood that the divine purpose of the villain - in this case Trump and his people - is to force our collective evolution into greater moral clarity and purpose. It’s to summon our greatness not fuel our escapism.

Growing up in South Africa, I would have thought she got that lesson in her bones. Nelson Mandela and F.W. DeClerk were not operating on the same moral playing field. Apartheid was a form of societal darkness and its higher purpose, I believe, was to summon the Mandelas and Archbishop Tutus into carrying a blazing torch of societal evolution, which ultimately led to a more evolved country. To put them all dismissively in the same box as “theatrical politicians” would have been to prolong the misery rather than support the birth of an integrated South Africa. We have to put our energy, support, and blessing behind truly evolutionary leaders and stand firm against those who call for regression and delusion.

Trump and his coterie of authoritarians are hell bent on taking over the United States and turning this into a private fiefdom for their gratification. It is clear he and many around him want to become a full-fledged dictator and they are making big moves, every week, to advance that goal. They want to erase the separation of church and state, degrade the pluralism that is our strength, jail ideological opponents, and punish those who disobey. They are clearly working on setting the conditions for invoking the Insurrection Act in order to mobilize the U.S. military against opponents.

This situation is not going away by ignoring it or wishing it away. We have to summon a deeper courage, a more powerful voice, and a more open heart. We have to meet the moment, not escape it. It is helpful to find a space of love all the players, for that is how we help heal the underpinning dynamics. But we also have to set boundaries, say no, protect the institutions, norms, and laws that have made us a great nation. We have to engage our representatives fully and stand with moral clarity. That is what a Gandhi, an MLK or a Mandela would do. Not escape but engage with higher spiritual principles at the forefront.

Pseudo-spiritual escapism is not helping. It’s a form of immaturity that is posing as enlightenment. Yes, let’s elevate the vibe. Yes, let’s hold a nobler vision. Yes, let’s see the situation with the eyes of compassion. But we also need to protect people from harm, protect institutions from degradation, and protect culture from regression. We need to clearly name the lies, expose the illusions, and engage the people who are filled with hatred with all the moral clarity we can muster.

That’s the work. It’s rigorous. It’s hard. It’s less self-validating.

But it’s real in a way that spiritual bypassing simply is not. And real, lasting evolution can only build upon what is real.

Spiritual bypassing is a form of evolutionary procrastination, a refusal to meet the challenge of the moment. And we do need to go beyond it to meet the current moment, end the journey into dark authoritarianism, and support the arising of a new dawn.