Live online teaching with Andrew Cohen No images? Click here Dear Friend, The term “spiritual bypassing” was coined by Buddhist teacher and psychotherapist John Welwood in the early 1980s. Welwood describes it as the “tendency to use spiritual ideas and practices to sidestep or avoid facing unresolved emotional issues, psychological wounds, and unfinished developmental tasks”. In recent years, the idea has gained widespread traction. It has taken root and propagated in spiritual circles, and has quickly become part of the vernacular of postmodern spiritual practice. It’s seen as one of the many pitfalls of embarking on a serious path. There’s no doubt that spiritual bypassing is real, and can have negative consequences when it becomes just another avoidance behaviour. However, some therapists have made the observation that it is not necessarily always unhealthy. It is thought that spiritual bypassing can simply be a temporary coping mechanism in response to intense “spiritual emergency” – the disorientation that can occur when an individual experiences a profound challenge to their normal self-sense, often because of a spontaneous spiritual experience. Some research even suggests that behaviour characterised as spiritual bypassing is actually a normal and inevitable stage of spiritual evolution and development – a refutation of the widely accepted narrative that all spiritual bypassing is by definition negative. But there is yet another, more radical, way to look at spiritual bypassing. Enlightenment in the traditional sense is the total and final escape from the suffering of Samsara, so from this perspective spiritual bypassing is actually the whole point. In deep meditation, parts of our everyday functional perception seem to literally go offline, bypassing our thoughts and emotions and freeing us from neurotic self-concern – if only temporarily. From a certain perspective, the whole point of enlightenment is to undergo a permanent shift of attention, in which the ceaseless preoccupation with the content of the mind – thoughts, emotions and experiences – is replaced with an ecstatic gnosis. In this talk, Andrew Cohen explores the phenomenon of spiritual bypassing, and the challenges, contradictions and paradoxes of working with a serious spiritual path. We are very excited to bring you our new online venue Manifest Nirvana, and with it a new way of attending events with Andrew Cohen. If you prefer to continue booking per event, just click the button below. When you've completed the booking process, you'll automatically be given a free Guest membership. If you are a regular attendee, our $25.00 per month Friend Membership gives you access to all live weekly talks with Andrew Cohen, as well as a library of recordings and many other benefits. Please note, you no longer need a Zoom link to access events. Just log in to Manifest Nirvana to enter the Teaching Hall at the time of the event. The hall will automatically open for booked Guests, and for Friend or Resident members. Spiritual BypassingLive Zoom teaching with Andrew Cohen Saturday 26th September 8am PDT • 11am EDT • 4pm UK • 5pm CEST • 8.30pm ISTDoors open 15 minutes before |