How does spiritual bypassing show up in obvious and subtle ways to undermine our understanding of and response to racial and gender injustice?  Do our pursuits of a solid spiritual ground ever keep us from accessing honest emotional or behavioral responses to oppression, our own and others? Emotions like rage, actions that might push the boundaries of non-violence? How can we cultivate spiritual practices that support our deepest values and sense of social accountability, instead of practices that persuade us to avoid the painful, the despairing, and even the fury? Let’s gather to share struggles, questions, personal practices and some yummy insights.

Optional Readings:

• Spiritual Bypass Bypassing Justice: Can we make Buddhist Communities more Authentic? – Marisela Gomez
• Converting Hidden Spiritual Racism into Sacred Activism: An Open Letter to Spiritual White Folks – Virgina Rosenberg
• Awakening Together with Integrity – Larry Yang

Dialogue Notes:

These are rough, uncut, unfiltered, and anonymous notes taken at the dialogue. We get that these may not be very readable to those who were not in attendance at the dialogue, and, honestly, sometimes even to those of us who were. We still feel it is important to keep them available as part of our accountability process and for archiving and reference purposes.  Some of these notes have been digested/transformed into blogs.

 

• Spiritually as political this past couple, curious to talk more.
• Common forms – sending light and love. Made how spiritual bypass works against RJ very concrete
• Beyond naming it, clear that its happening, berate myself so much to access it, that I am not able to connect to spiritual community Being there is
• Meditation – then POC do some level of spiritual bypass, we are all one here. And that is hard to be with
• Healing Justice podcast, talk and a practice. Self-care as individualism.
• Some of the most healing things are being in collective action, reframing self-care. Vs. what actually buoys me.
• Don’t have a strong spiritual practice, coming into spirituality came out of racial justice, as a decolonizing process. Are there ways that Im enacting problematic things
• Creating homogenous communities, Reclaiming, so you aren’t appropriately others
• Deep attempt for RJ perspectives, and diverse experiences, but people couldn’t do it without causing harm
• Want to respect rich POC spaces in the bay and wanting to respect that.
• Emotional numbing but not connected to spirituality I don’t thin
• Common patterns that I experience at the school that I teach, a lot so students come for that. A lot of time engaging with a lot on the list. Transpersonal phycology. Why aren’t there POC in the group, literally said to me “thank you for your work about feminism and racism” But you need to get up here.
• POC are told that it’s a lower consciousness and its divisive.
• Mapping some of the disconnects, mindfulness, why not include this in the frame of mindfulness. How hard it is to engage the love and light and oneness
• Practice is about being present, shine light on myself and ways that I’m bypassing
• Feeling bad and sad not in a present way. Haven’t contended with spiritual bypass in conversations. Experienced my own flavors in the bay. Jewish social justice group, that draws from a lot of very real earth based jewish traditions. Beautiful ceremony recently, sing and chant, violence of not naming the Zionist funding. WE got to have this beautiful collective experience accessing our various lineages and then simultaneously felt really shady. Context of bay area displacement, all this money going to bay area jews.
• Dealing with anger. How to be with anger.
• Product of spiritual bypassing, mother is very much someone who does that.
• Deeply angering and triggering, convince my 7-year old niece. Interesting coupling with narcisism
• Want to map out this stuff that is so fully in me.
• Growing up in this hippy new age Jewish home, we were marginalized by the white Baptist community. I was labeled a devil worshiper. All the kids in my school was trying to savor my soul, got cornered by 200 people trying to get me to accept Jesus. So much taught by my mom about resisting that and contradictions there. Then older was organizing for RJ with people in mostly black Baptist church, and I understood then why people want to be Christians
• Grew up Jewish, but confused because the orthodox form was there, and the lessons of being taught to turn away from certain parts of the world. Fueled a lot of rage/confusion about my religious identity. Never had faith even as a child. Are people in synagogue and “being Jewish” but then not doing social justice
• With my meditation center now for almost 10 years. Living in the bay, we are surrounded, we are marinating in this. This seems authentic to me and this not, but am I the arbiter.
• A lot of feelings having grown up in the Bay my whole life, in North Bay ,where it’s even worse. About all the patterns of using… not even spirituality, New Ageism. Dirty label hold in my grasp. Arbitrer in my mind of no/yes, where is the authenticity? Whole scheme in my mind of where I don’t like it and where it feels in contradiction to values and ethics I hold dear. I grapple with how much am I grasping. Where is ego in that, where is there othering in that, where is that useful for movements or not? On other end of seeing very harmful and now on opposite side of things where people only have spirituality if have strong radical politics and that doesn’t feel quite right. When I do use spiritual practices to… cope, basically. Personal or societal. What about anger? What about stress? See people in life where let emotions flow, whether seem totally in others’ control or not, want to map intense emotional response and experience that on the day to day. Spin out of control and that’s when I really want my meditation practice / reconnect with beauty of the world and feelings that the world is larger than me. Play with those as tools and curious about where is the pressure valve and what would happen…. Always curious about third option – have experienced what I think a very engaged spiritualism feels like… one that is collective, and feels both people and planet as all real and happening and I feel in it. Hard and painful, and something beautiful. Curious how people walk their line.
• Last three months, liberation spring. Educator used to teach but left, and feral visions.
• Our spirits and ourselves, and self care industry and economy. The arbiter voice that comes out. Pulling weeds so you can plant seeds, pulling out individualism. Individualism is about picking what you want, and leaving the actual people of that religion or culture.
• Grew up Christian, intellectual endeavor, curious almost like anthropologically. Then introduced to yoga and Buddhism, felt very resonant, but also very uncertain what is ok and what is not.
• Yoga program for a semester, feeling the integrity that people were doing their work and also the disconnect. Some people who I see who are white who practice yoga who have a 40 year lineage, and it is cultural appropriation, but hard to deal with.
• Confused
• Coping question- world is on fire and everything is going to burn, then these spiritual traditions are like the aloe but who is putting out the fire. Where is spiritual practice a bolster.
• Lately processing grief of a friend who died, how much it bugs me that people said it was meant to be. Do other people need to hear that to be comfortable with my grief. All types of spiritual traditions that are supposed to help with rupture.
• Horrible when people said it was meant to be about history. People doing some much work of unearthing and reading, and challenging and grappling and then spiritual ream is just a place a peace. What is a spiritual practice that helps us say fuck no this is not supposed to be how it is.
• Acceptance, injustice was meant to be in some time of that spiritual tradition.
• That feels different for me depending who said it.
• We think we have to do everything alone in this culture, if we are going to do relationships we have to be in community.
• Work to accept things as they are, accept and then what.
• “You attract what you sow”. So decontextualized and so frustrating.
• I’m angry and anxious cause the world is ending.
• It is so comforting that there is good that comes out of every situation. That we can accept things as they are. Raised that way and it is so shattering. That comfort is so needed for people. I have heard it all. The world is burning, trump is elected for a reason.
• So much rage for the attitude, and also go into the retreat and I want to believe this so bad
• We are agents in our own lives, we resist it cause we can. It doesn’t just inherently work itself out.
• How things are created. Create something through prayer. The Secret or Karma. If you are good, good things happen to you
• So complicated, there are hundreds of factors that contribute towards outcomes. History and economy and then there are other
• Is it more comforting that there is meaning or purpose or it is random.
• Accepting things as they are, and that is not justifying, it is you acknowledging your place within the things happening. Recognizing your impact.
• The social, sangha, group, collective and how in groups that are as hyper individualistic, there is the accountability built in. Relationship built in already.
• Contradiction that you are perfect and you need to change things all the time. Expanding it out to the world.
• Once had an older man tell me, we once had slavery but now we have jazz and blues. Other people have to learn the lessons.
• Seems that this is in relationship to suffering. Cushioning that helps us protect against.
• Grew up in the upper mid west, and it actually wasn’t like the bay. Thinking about the white, cis yoga women, have been struck how those people who don’t have their own traditions have distinct relationships to death and the body. A mitigating of the reality of a body based trauma, and an entitlement to taking care of themselves, and the privilege,. For myself a non disposability, to care for myself more and that I am not apart, and also the reality of people’s physical trauma through oppressed realities. As a yoga teacher I have learned a lot to support people who have really experienced pain and trauma through their bodies, humbled.
• Dialectic, there is another podcast called fortification. Jews of racial and economic justice. Two slips of paper =- I am but dust and ashes, and on the other this world was meant for me.
• There is so much good there in these traditions, my tradition. Always optional for jews to take out gods.
• Raised pretty jewish, jewish day school. Trying to be inclusive of orthodox. Wanted to be a rabbi, but turns out I could be a nerdy English teacher. What I loved was the connection to history. The connection to history is spiritual. People who are turning to religion.
• History of religion has been one to get people through suffering and oppression to get the people through with emotional, social, phycology intact. But what now to relate to religion from an oppressor position, as a group, as a collective. Has that ever been done before. Never seen an example of a collective of people who are oppressors who have done religion well.
• Brittany cooper, racial politics of time. Conception that black people belong to the past. Time belongs to white people. Black people as stuck in past, not being able to move forward in history, and then getting robbed in the present.
• A historical, is truly spiritual. Vietnam war protestors, and then x got killed, heartbroken, and it didn’t work. That is not where change happens. Mom was active, and she was getting pushed down upon by male activists. So the spiritual realm is a more female centered space where she felt safer.
• White People who came to California, were trying to leave all the fucked up world behind, and wanting to run from political past and create this new things. Running from the past. Wanting a transcendental life.
• Americana, the best and worst thing about America is that no one gives a shit about you.
• Escaping history is liberatory and oppressive.
• Dad bought a Persian rug from an Iranian man, if we were in the old country, they wouldn’t interact. But here they will. Money is the new bond in America. The new god. I don’t want to say that starting something new is horrible.
• Part of the question is who is starting the new thing. The century of the self. Freud influence on individualism, marketing. Lets give them a new world, and sell them to them. This is how you get your desire. Collective energy is being put into capitalism
• Dialetic is so profound. Feel rooted in the unsettledness of the dialetic. The search of the way out. To try to feel in your identity, your body, etc. It leads us to be susceptible to psychological manipulations, and it is also the way.
• Being on the path of trying to get out is
• Spiritual bypassing is one response to the dialetic.
• You are perfect as you are and you need to change and the world needs to change. Very hard to hold both, not stable equilibrium. Constant back and forth. If you can sit in the unstable equilibrium, what does that life lead to.
• What does it mean to be the arbiter. Nope you aren’t working hard enough, you are not good enough, not pushing hard enough, but if I turn it towards myself, it is the same voice. And I don’t want to be on the fulcrum.
• Depends on who it is questions? Also challenging when a practitioners of color does a harmful thing, but people of identity they are not hold accountable. Feels related. It is possible to have some sort of judgement on enough-ness.
• Wrote a spiritual manifesto for myself, and it was so critical to be the arbiter for myself.
• Active resistance to faith in my home. Have become spiritual as a political process.
• 5 things that I believe or that you made up to believe.
• Grew up in a household that went through many religions, so it felt arbitrary.
• Accepting is acknowledging things as they are
• Powerful to not be in denial. Once I can acknowledge how it is then I can make a strategy.
• Veiled awareness as a survival strategy for certain populations.
• If we would all to see clearly than the revolution would come, but there is actually a more mudlines. All bodies are whole, thanks disability justice, and also people have experienced toxins and poisoning.
• Judgements and we feel. Language only evolved to put words to gut feelings. We talk about community and social acceptance. People going to church in the south and then going to a lynching. Real present fear is in community and what it would take for someone to actually think about it and acknowledge it.
• How different groups along the spectrum of politics claim righteousness.
• Suffering from depression and how people react to me talking to the about it. Nahira Waheed poem, some people upon hearing your story contract, and others expand and this is how you know.
• There was a way that it was clear to me how it was about them. That they needed me to help affirm their world view. I just need to find the people that work for me and that’s it.
• Collective is
• White new ageism, perfect manifestation of white supremacy, bulwark against white fragility, individualism, in name of collective healing, very effective. Self centered.
• So hard to make people want to come with you to the dark place!
• Mindfulness, white lady boss person. Live in a swamp of toxins, historical process that created swamp. If you are benefiting from historical oppression that you are getting a massage, if not maybe choked. Be mindful of the swamp speaking through me. And mindfulness practice clicked for her. In a place of defensiveness, accused of racism, yet was a spiritual being so how could it be possible. Swamp, we are all in it. De-individuating her.
• Mindful of something, and what are we being mindful of.
• Untraining- DNA. Points of cross over and points of separation. Sometime you see stuff and sometime you don’t. Speaking from a place of crossover. From an oppressor group how do you connect. Connectivity being a way out. Idea that there is no culture, and culture alienates you…
• People going to new ageism cause Christianity has oppressed.
• Not Spiritualism as a way to collectivism, but collectivism as a way to spirituality.
• Give myself over to my community. The true belief that I belong, and what spiritual practice comes out of that place.
• Really going to transform society, must make justice the most enjoyable experience.
• Churches have figured out a powerful formula cause they provide community. You get to show up even if you don’t believe a damn thing. They take care of you when sick.
• Who has time mutual aid. The groups I keep showing up to is the one with friends
• Interdependence is a set of small repetitive acts.
• The pain of being rejected more fully, taking more risks, that feeling possible because of belonging.
• Insight women of color against violence, there is no away. WE are here.
• One of the biggest delusion of whiteness-is that there is an away. There is not connectedness. Hard to see it cause we have been marinating.
• Our imaginations are so constrained cause we cant even envision something fully different. Decolonizing our mind for what is possible.
• We are collective, we are collaborative, we wouldn’t survive otherwise.
• Read amazing research. Indidivualism and societies. Rated 100 to 0 on a scale of individualsm. US at the most, and Guatemala at the lowest. Israel in the middle. Degree to which a colonized country was high on the list was the degree to how much it is white.
• Connecting to intuition as a spiritual practice. Not so much individual vs. collective. Very extroverted, when I am engaging we were co-constructing something, but then I reflect on who I am, what I was feeling. What is the point of where and how can I connect with a deeper sense of self, presence. Where am I and how I show up even as I have a big community. Sense of my life has been giving up my life to community, and how I tune into my intuition. Want to get clearer on that in my sense of community. Self as a source, even as I have collectivity as a source.
• Generative somatics, how to practice how to be in my own awareness, even as I have been conditioned through identities to be hyper vigilent. I am tracking how I am doing, while I am also tracking how other people are doing. How to use body based tools, support of other people
• Michel Foucault- history to things that are not considered to have history, madness, sexuality. Everything is dangerous, one thing that looks like liberation today can be slavery tomorrow. Thinking about that when it comes to truths. Mindfulness being used in tech, corporations, military.
• Mindfulness in the swamp is a way to turn towards the world, to have agency. Mindfulness is being used in corporations, to turn inward and bring individualism. To just smooth things out for money.
• Living in the tension- towards a spiritual racial justice.- book
• Really enjoyed the laughter
• Do believe in magic, time is not linear, come from a queer, Jewish lineage
• Spirituality is ecology based, cosmos based.
• So long the not knowing, the tension felt like turmoil and angst and despair. Lot of negative overtones, really unpleasant. Now experiencing it as discomfort and not knowing, but it feels more like what is. Its messy, its not quite. For a long time I was thinking I was the only one. If I don’t look at the murkiness as wrong, but just as what is happening. Feels more like paradox, tension, words that are not as loaded.
• Warm circle holds a lot of generativity.
• Separate judgement and critique. Not hold people as wrong, but hold history and structures as harmful. The limiting nature of being taught to see everything is right and wrong.
• Looking for more communities and these type of discussions.
• Really glad to listen, really pertinent topic. Vulnerable topic, touches on deep stuff.
• Depth of thought, show up to a dialogue that I don’t have a lot of thoughts about and so much generativity.
• Touchstone, the truth is we are all one, and the reality is that we are all not. Separateness is an illusion, and other traditions that help us look at our separateness in inequity.
• Daily Afflictions, the agony of being connected to everything in the universe
• Everything happens for a reasons that I make up.