By suffering, I mean the dramatization of pain
Spiritual bypassing—the use of spiritual practices/beliefs to avoid dealing with painful feelings, unresolved wounds, and developmental needs—is so pervasive that it goes largely unnoticed. In the tradition of the landmark book ‘Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism’ by Chögyam Trungpa, Spiritual Bypassing casts a lucidly critical eye on our deeply entrenched misuse of spirituality, furthering the body of psychological/spiritual insight into how we use (and abuse) spirituality.
While other authors have touched on the subject, this is the first book fully devoted to explaining and working through spiritual bypassing, providing an in-depth look at the unresolved or ignored psychological/emotional issues that are often masked or marginalized through what we do with spirituality. “Spiritual bypassing is not something to eradicate, but to outgrow. Let us treat it as such, recognizing that real spirituality is not an escape but an arrival.”
A must-read for anyone seeking increased self-awareness and a deeper, more spiritually sound life, a life of full-blooded integrity and compassion, a life in which the personal, interpersonal, and transpersonal are all honored and lived to the fullest, a life in which we cultivate intimacy with all that we are.
“Uncompromising and truth telling, this book is an antidote to spiritual obesity. What emerges is the call to psychological clarity as essential to the mature spiritual life. Here is soul fuel for those who would enter the road less traveled- the deeply examined life as part of spiritual practice.” – Jean Houston, PhD, author of A Mythic Life
“In Spiritual Bypassing, Robert Augustus Masters offers a wake-up call – more of a shout – to those of us who have unwittingly fallen prey to all manner of promising and seductive antidotes to our pain and suffering in the form of detached spiritual teachings and New Age magical thinking. The book is a sobering and powerful reminder that our present embodiment, in all its flawed, messy humanness, cannot be conveniently sidestepped, and so invites us inward to a face-to-face encounter and embrace with the raw truth of who we really are. Masters’ unique and at times disarming prose style blends a poetic sensibility with a surprising stark clarity that points us to “What-Really-Matters.” – Eliezer Sobel, author of The 99th Monkey: A Spiritual Journalist’s Misadventures with Gurus, Messiahs, Sex, Psychedelics and Other Consciousness-Raising Experiments
Source: http://robertmasters.com