On spiritual bypassing and psychological underpassing:

Spiritual bypassing is all the rage. It refers to engaging in all kinds of spiritual practices without resolving any more difficult aspects of our identity and without actually getting closer to living an awakened life. It’s the proliferation of the casual use of psychedelics without integration, it’s the hollow hippie attire and burning of incense, it’s the very commercial yoga retreats.

It’s spirituality without grounding.

There is less talk about the psychological underpass, but this appears to be equally common. It refers to an excessive engagement with psychological concepts and “scientific” literature without ever getting closer to transcendence of the conceptual domain.

It’s perfectly understanding your big 5 personality traits, it’s using your love languages to decide how to interact with others, it’s trusting articles that write about “the recipe for being happy at work”.

All of these things have value. But they can never lead to an effortless and authentic engagement with reality.

This type of engagement requires the seeker to take a third path, one of gracefully accepting the inconvenience of grounding while courageously facing the fear of transcending.