The Mask of Spirituality – Rev. Linda Jackson
This video features the Sunday “talk” only. Watch the full service on our Facebook page.
DESCRIPTION
This Sunday, we will reveal patterns of spiritual bypass as a means of avoidance rather than a path to true growth and healing. Join us to set down the mask of spirituality and anchor yourself in an authentic and grounded spiritual practice.
TRANSCRIPTION
This transcription was auto-generated, please excuse typos, errors and omissions.
Rev. Linda Jackson (00:00):
While I fiddle around here… Let’s give it up again for Paige and her original tune. Oh my goodness, how blessed we are. I’m still a little lopsided here, but I think I’ll be all right. How good it is to be in this room today. Everybody feeling great? Yes. And how about our folks online? Everything copacetic? Is that a word that people use anymore? Comfortable? Yeah, comfortable. Okay. Right. Status quo. Oops. Are we unplugged? So the status quo, we are challenging this in our theme this month, right? Saying that too often, this feeling of being comfortable and being okay and having everything copacetic is really not okay at all, where we’re masking something and for transformation and real growth, we can’t bypass it. We have to move through it. We have to go through the discomfort. So we have to teach ourselves to lean in and see what’s there for us. And we’re inviting the un- status quo, which is our theme this month, which y’all will see in a minute, and it comes back up on the screen.
(01:44):
Years ago I went into Whole Foods. Now this is back in the day when Whole Foods had chair massage, probably 20, maybe even longer years ago now. I was just popping in there to pick up some food for lunch, but I was distressed. I had this ongoing conflict in a relationship that was important to me, and I was also working like a maniac, like up to 80 hours a week, and it was affecting me physically. So I had to run in and grab lunch, and I saw the chair massage and I thought, oh, I need this. I need this. It may have had something to do with the handsome massage therapist, (laughs) but anyway, I said I needed it. So I sat down on the chair and he asked me what’s going on as a good massage therapist would do, like, what is going on? Why are you all so tight like this? What are you clenching about? I told him some of the details of the stress of the situation, and I don’t know exactly what he picked up on, but he intuitively used this Robert Frost quote and said, the only way out is through.
(03:12):
And Robert Frost may have meant it a little bit differently, but nonetheless, Brandon, (laughs) yeah, I remember his name. Brandon was right. The stress was compounded by the fact that I was not looking at what was going on within me. I wasn’t looking at what I was doing that was perpetuating, right? I didn’t have boundaries in this challenging relationship. I wasn’t addressing what was going on at home, why I was working 80 hours a week, what made me think I had to work so hard? I was disconnecting from myself,
(03:54):
and I’m not a psychotherapist or a doctor and I don’t make diagnoses. I’m so glad I don’t have to make diagnoses. But over the years of working with folks through some spiritual psychology work that I’ve done and my own dark nights of the soul, it seems to me that depression is in some way a form of disconnection from self and perhaps the result of bypassing in our featured book this month, the Spiritual Bypassing When Spirituality disconnects us from What Really Matters by Robert Augustus Masters.
(04:37):
And I want you to just notice that it says it disconnects us from what really matters. Most of us are using spirituality to recenter us, to bring ourselves back to some sort of sense of wholeness. But we’re talking about the sort of shadow side of spirituality. And y’all probably know we’re three weeks into this theme, but spiritual bypassing is when we use our spiritual practices and our beliefs to avoid our unresolved issues or the uncomfortable aspects of our lives, like our trauma, our grief, our psychological wounds. And I can tell you that even saying this up here, there’s a part of me that’s going like, oh, they’re not going to like hearing this. They want us to talk about nice stuff and uplifting and inspiring stuff, but this is part of our work. If we really want to have the deepened experience, the only way out is through.
(05:40):
We’ve all seen the obvious examples of spiritual bypass in the traditional experience of folks showing up to their specific church or religion, and they have their strict ideals and judgments. And I do want to say it’s important. I am not against any religion. I really believe many rivers. One ocean. I’m talking about the sort of misuse of religion, the misuse of spirituality. Folks who show up pious on Saturday or Sunday and they espouse their dogma about what’s right, wrong, but then during the week, they’re maybe cheating a little at business or maybe cheating on their partner. Or you can talk about the child abuse that happens in school and churches, right? You get the idea they’re unconsciously wearing a mask of spirituality. It’s the spiritual bypass sort of that look how spiritual I am, right? I intellectualize these principles, but I’m not really looking at what’s going on inside. Now, that’s a more extreme example and a pretty obvious one. And I would venture to say that maybe the more subtle, less obvious ones are the ones that we might want to look at in ourselves, right?
(07:13):
And Masters shares some of the ways that we collectively use spirituality to avoid the deeper issues in our spiritual community. This overemphasis on love and light where we are using positive thinking to downplay our accountability for things like racism and poverty and climate change. Detaching from social and political issues, like if we’re too spiritual to talk about politics or politics are beneath us or focusing on our spiritual enlightenment is more important, where the idealization of non-attachment, where we prioritize our serenity over addressing real emotional pain. I mean consider this when we say that people manifest their own reality. That’s a little victim blaming when we’re ignoring social inequities.
(08:20):
And then there’s cultural appropriation in spiritual practices. I think you all know what that’s about, where we’re using spiritual traditions from other cultures without asking permission, without really understanding, and we use it to create a sense of enlightenment in ourselves. And then there’s spiritual elitism and escapism where we’re going on retreats or meditating and thinking that we’re rising above our issues, but we’re not actually looking at the root causes. Some spiritual communities, a sense of elitism where they believe that they’re better, they’re superior than the folks who aren’t practicing what they practice. And all of these forms of bypass perpetuate the status quo by focusing on temporary relief rather than real transformation. And it will exacerbate social issues. I think that’s an important thing for us to recognize that by staying neutral, we’re allowing injustice.
(09:29):
So I call this talk the mask of spirituality because we’re looking at the avoidance of issues by hiding behind a spiritual mask rather than taking the path to true growth and healing. And if we look at spiritual bypassing for individuals, it’s very much like the list for the collective. I’ll go through it a little more quickly. And overemphasis on positive thinking, anger, phobia, excessive niceness, weak boundaries, blind tolerance, overly compassionate, excessive detachment, which can show up as numbing, ignoring, not caring, a sort of lopsided development where we’re much more cognitively developed than we are emotionally developed. Or we may have a very debilitating judgment about our shadow side where we just can’t even bear to look at it. We may devalue the personal compared to the spiritual or have delusions of having arrived at a higher level of being.
(10:40):
And I’ll share a personal example of what I would call the Messiah complex. So I have a family member who was rather highly evolved at a young age. He was what you might think of it as enlightened. In fact, he was the first one who introduced me to some of these concepts and principles, not in relation to new thought, but just in high consciousness. But he also had complex trauma. It was not addressed by his family and he didn’t address it as an adult. He would share these intellectually enlightened concepts and ideas, but he never addressed his wounds, could not own his shadow. And he suffered and everyone who loved suffered. And in this enlightened idea of himself, he kept seeking spiritual experiences, almost like an addiction to spirituality. And he frequently indulged in psychedelics to a point where he became altered in an unhealthy way. And I’m not against people using plant medicine or anything like that. I’m just sharing what this story was. Ultimately, he moved away from drugs, but he continued with alcohol. And on some level he was really just emotionally, developmentally stunted. And this is an extreme version of bypassing, but I just wanted to share how far it can go when we don’t stop and look at what is happening within us and when we oversize things, when we use spirituality to escape.
(12:46):
And how often in spiritual community do we have someone who gets a diagnosis and then we jump straight to I’m whole, perfect and complete. It’s all God, it’s all good. I better say more affirmations. I better sit in meditation longer. And I just want to clarify, we do teach that it’s all God, that God is all there is. So it is all God, and it is all good, but it is only good in the sense that it is calling us to our awakening. It doesn’t mean we’re not going to feel pain along the way. In fact, I would venture to say that awakening is typically sort of painful.
(13:34):
Everything is for our awakening, but we have to acknowledge when it doesn’t feel good, the pain, the trauma, or else we prolong the status quo. We miss the opportunity to awaken and we just let everything keep going along the way it is. And in this quote, masters touches on the idea that we have to lean into the discomfort to look at our pain. He says, if we really want the light, we can’t afford to flee the heat. The only way out is through. We need to acknowledge it, allow it to be what it is, not catastrophizing it, not denying it, but if we don’t do our healing work, spiritual bypass can lead to that sort of emotional repression, a sort of shallow self-awareness and a disconnection from reality. And that’s how spirituality becomes a form of escape rather than a path to deeper self understanding. So have you ever noticed when many of us are leading meditation, at the end you might hear us say, and I invite you to come back in the room, it always makes me think, well, where did you go? Come back into the room like did somebody leave? Maybe I ought to start meditating with my eyes open so I can see who leaves the roof.
(15:14):
Now, I’m not saying that we won’t have transcendent experiences. I’m saying that we need to stay in our bodies. We need to do the inner work. We need to feel our emotions to address our trauma, our grief, and lean into that discomfort. If we really want the light, we can’t afford to flee the heat. The only way out is through. And he invites us to develop authentic spiritual practice that embraces both the shadow and the light, which is the talk title Amy used a couple of weeks ago. You can go back to that if you missed it. We’re asked to balance both the spiritual and human aspects of our existence. A spirituality that’s grounded in reality with the emotional honesty and a deep self-awareness. To me, that is like where to start? Just start becoming aware of what is happening here all the time. Noticing, noticing, noticing. That’s the thought I’m having. That’s the feeling I’m having. Look how I’m reacting to this. That is the greatest step forward that we can take.
(16:30):
Everything is for you, but you have to be willing to do the inquiry in order to find the gift, right? So we’re being invited to set down the mask of spirituality to be our authentic selves and anchor in grounded spiritual practice where true transformation can occur. Awakening requires the integration of spirituality and shadow work. Not just transcending difficulties but fully embodying and working through them. We have to accept the invitation to process the shadows, to process the triggers, to look at the wounds as they arise. Then we can sit in meditation, then we can use affirmations, then we can use affirmative prayer, not as avoidance of what is, but to get our minds right, to develop that deeper awareness to look within and address the wounded part in hypnotherapy and the psychodrama work that I’ve done, we create a corrective experience of whatever it was that happened that is running in our background. We create that corrective experience and we establish new and new behaviors, and from there we can really focus on creating something new. Otherwise, that thing in the background’s just going to keep showing up and reminding you it’s still there.
(18:05):
And you’ve heard it said that you don’t know what you don’t know. And with the shadow running in the background, according to Carl Young, until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life. And some of us might even call it fate. Most of us probably know that there’s a belief running in the background. So it’s natural for us to avoid the uncomfortable things, right? It’s natural to want to get up here and talk about things that are going to make you happy. I think you’re going to like me better. But just because we ignore or avoid them doesn’t mean they go away. They live in our subconscious. Shadow work brings the suppressed parts of our personality back into our conscious mind. We shine the light on it, and it teaches us to give those parts of ourselves the love and the acceptance that they are longing for. That’s the corrective experience. And the invitation is to develop curiosity for your inner emotional world. And instead of overly identifying with those emotions, see them as information, what might they have to tell you?
(19:26):
And there are countless options for how to do shadow work and how you pursue it might depend on the level of trauma or grief or other life experiences you’ve had. I’m not going to go through the list, but it goes from very structured professional guidance to doing your own work, your own versions of it. And there are many more options that I haven’t listed, but however you choose to do it, just understand that facing ourselves this way can be scary and uncomfortable. But every shadow part holds a gift for us. It actually makes us uniquely who we are.
(20:18):
And this is not a one and done check it off the list. Okay, I found my shadow part. It’s a lifelong journey and we’re not trying to get rid of our shadows. We’re trying to bring them into the light to teach us and to support our healing. You owe it to yourself to integrate the shadow. And I’m going to take us into some practice. So we’re going to do some emotional inquiry practice. And this is something you can do on your own, but sometimes it’s nice to be guided. So I just invite you in whatever way is comfortable for you to center yourself, feel yourself anchored in your seat. If you’re comfortable closing your eyes and turning within, or just taking a downward gaze, if that’s better for you, take a few nice inhalations and exhalations at your own pace. And again, feeling the weight of your body in your chair, feeling yourself, your physical self, fully present. We are not trying to leave and go somewhere. We are bringing ourselves fully in the room and continue your nice deep breathing at your own pace and begin by making an agreement with yourself that this will be supportive of your healing.
(22:02):
You are able to keep yourself safe. And all that happens here is for your good. Just continuing to breathe and noticing if there’s any places or spaces in the body that want attention. And you can direct the breath there. Becoming more aware of what the body feels like. Now allow a recent situation to rise up something that triggered you. Whatever it is. Doesn’t matter how big or little, just whatever rises up get related to this experience. And in this emotional inquiry, the question to ask yourself is, what am I feeling? Is the emotion? Is there a story connected to this emotion? What do I make it mean about myself or about the world? And does this feeling or situation remind me of anything in the past or from my childhood? And take a minute to notice where does this emotion live in your body? Does it have any more information for you? How can this information support your growth? And if you can allow yourself to connect fully to this emotion and allow it to complete its cycle. Emotions run for 30, 60, 90 seconds typically, unless they are incomplete. See if you can breathe or move or make a sound to support the completion of that emotion. Maybe even shaking it off.
(25:09):
Allow that emotion to complete. Too often we cut them off. Make an agreement with yourself for how you can support yourself in moving through this in healthy ways going forward. What you might need to address with yourself, anything else you need to do for yourself. And thank this experience, thank this experience and this person, this situation, this trigger for supporting your awakening. And I’m going to take us into prayer as I close the service. And right here, right now, I know that there is only one thing happening. It is the life of God expressing in As and through me, expressing in as and through every living being, each one of us, an individual expression of the divine, each one of us, all that God is. We are the freedom, the love, the peace, the joy,
(26:40):
All that God is. We are each being called to be the full expression of the divine. That only we can express our unique expression of the divine that only we can express. And I just affirm that any triggers, any shadows, any of these things that are not like the high idea of God, are simply pointing us back to the high idea of God, that we are being called to do our work, to move through any pain, any grief, any trauma, to free ourselves from it, to release it, to let it be the gift that we bring to the world, to let it inform who we are, how we move and have our being to step fully into the freedom, not the disguised version of freedom, true freedom, true love, true peace, all that God is expressing uniquely as you. I’m so, so grateful for the opportunity to explore this work together. I’m so grateful for the yes to being here today and to hearing this message and applying it in whatever way supports your emancipation, your growth, your expression of the divine. So with so much gratitude for all that is, I just let it go and I call it good
(28:11):
And join me by saying, and so it is.
(28:15):
Thank you.