Someone recently sent me a Facebook post by Rosemary Holistic Therapy that has some interesting things to say about spiritual teachers acting badly and the danger of spiritual bypassing — defined as “tendency to use spiritual ideas and practices to sidestep or avoid facing unresolved emotional issues, psychological wounds, and unfinished developmental tasks.”
I’ve shared the post below because I agree with most of it. It’s a bit New Age’y for my taste, and indulges in some psychological talk that doesn’t resonate with me. I also have no idea what the “life-force center” of the body is. But I agree that many spiritual teachers and gurus don’t even act like a decent human being, much less an exemplary human being, notwithstanding their ability to make followers believe that they have reached some sort of higher consciousness.
The mention of Deepak Chopra refers to his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, which continued even after Epstein had been convicted in 2008 of soliciting prostitution from a minor. The above-linked Yahoo story says: “God is a construct,” Chopra wrote to the convicted sex offender in March 2017. “Cute girls are real.“
Here’s the Facebook post by Rosemary Holistic Therapy:
I am writing this in response to the recent conversations circulating about Deepak Chopra.
Like many, I feel deeply disappointed. Disgusted and outraged. And yet, if I am honest, I am not entirely surprised. There has always been something in my intuition that felt slightly out of alignment — a subtle sense that the words and the energy behind them were not fully rooted in the same place.
For me, this is not really about one person.
He is simply the tip of the iceberg of something we are all beginning to see more clearly.
Again and again, we witness spiritual teachers, gurus, leaders, and healers rise into positions of influence, speaking beautiful truths about consciousness, awareness, and awakening… and then, somewhere along the way, lose their way.
When this happens, it shakes people deeply. It can make us question spirituality itself, feel disillusioned, or even betrayed.
But what we are really seeing is not the failure of spirituality.
We are seeing the reality of being human.
Because spiritual awareness does not automatically equal emotional maturity. It does not mean someone has healed their wounds. It does not mean their heart, their power, and their humanity are fully integrated.
A person can be highly evolved in awareness — able to access profound states of consciousness and guide others toward insight — while still carrying unhealed pain, unmet needs, and unconscious patterns within their nervous system.
This is what psychology calls spiritual bypassing.
It happens when someone rises into the mind and “higher” states of awareness but leaves behind the deeper work of feeling, vulnerability, and shadow integration. Instead of healing the human self, they transcend it. And what is left unhealed does not disappear — it simply moves underground.
Over time, those hidden parts seek expression.
This is where we often see a disconnection emerge — especially between the heart and the life-force centre of the body.
In healthy integration, awareness, heart, and life-force energy are connected. Awareness brings clarity. The heart brings empathy and humility. Life-force energy becomes creativity, intimacy, and vitality.
But when the heart is not fully integrated, that same energy can become distorted. It may seek validation instead of connection, power instead of presence, intensity instead of true intimacy. It can become entangled with control, secrecy, or entitlement — especially when combined with admiration and authority.
Power amplifies whatever remains unresolved.
When followers project wisdom, purity, or even divinity onto a teacher, the teacher can slowly lose the mirror of honest human feedback. Without accountability, humility erodes. Without continued inner work, shadow grows quietly in the background.
This pattern is not unique to spiritual communities. It happens in politics, corporations, therapy rooms, and anywhere power meets unintegrated humanity.
And this is why what we are witnessing now feels so important.
It is not exposing that spirituality is false.
It is revealing that awakening does not remove our humanity.
True spiritual maturity is not about rising above being human. It is about including every part of ourselves — mind, heart, body, wounds, desires, fears, and shadow — in the light of awareness.
Real wisdom is not found in perfection.
It is found in humility, emotional honesty, accountability, and the ongoing willingness to keep integrating.
Perhaps this is why the deepest paths today are no longer about transcendence alone, but about embodiment — about learning to feel, to stay present with discomfort, to welcome all sensations rather than escape them.
Because when awareness, heart, and life-force are truly connected, spirituality becomes grounded, compassionate, and safe.
It becomes human.
And that is where true integrity lives.
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Well, for me, this whole Facebook posting seems to be an exercise in justification typified by the paragraph quoted below: –
“A person can be highly evolved in awareness — able to access profound states of consciousness and guide others toward insight — while still carrying unhealed pain, unmet needs, and unconscious patterns within their nervous system.”
‘Highly evolved in awareness.’ ‘…able to access profound states of consciousness.’ Such statements assume (or like to think) that we know what awareness and consciousness are. No one really knows how consciousness arises – or what it is for that matter. Some say it’s the product of brain processes, while others think that everything, the whole universe, is consciousness and that what we experience is this consciousness filtering down through our brains.
I don’t see spirituality as being different from our everyday material lives. The term ‘spiritual’ usually aims to make us into something special or ‘higher’ than the messy natural life. Also, as the Facebook post states, humans are capable of “…speaking beautiful truths about consciousness, awareness, and awakening…” What are these ‘beautiful truths’ of consciousness? What if that which we perceive as altered consciousness is, in reality, chemical and electrical processes within the brain? Perhaps consciousness is never actually altered but simply the brain’s awareness of its altered state.
One can be conscious or unconscious, or partially conscious. All creatures are aware or conscious to some degree or another. It could well be that the greater (or higher) experience of consciousness is down to the brain’s ability to process more complex information, and therefore has more sophisticated contents. In other words, is it awareness of the contents that are being described as exhibiting different states of consciousness, while the state of being conscious always remains the same?
>> This is what psychology calls spiritual bypassing.<<
Of course if you are focused on meditation as an tool for mental welfare.
These days, not much is said anymore about the different ways one could make use of ZA-zen. but years ago there was a clear understanding that the purpose of doing Za-zen ranged from absolutely worldly interests to the most sophisticated spiritual endeavours.
It should be clear that the difference in motivation has an impact on the practice.
All the things Tara Brach writes about are related to mental well being, not surprising for a Psychotherapist but these are collateral byproducts of spiritual meditation and not a goal….. clearing karma, attaining the state of nirvana, the emptiness as advocated by Tibetan dzogchen are not aiming at the mental states she writes about.
Previous teachers, not only those in the sant mat branch at Beas, have divided the motivations of people that practice in five sometimes eight categories with the exception of the last, they all have selfish interest that have nothing to do with, the practice itself … simple many go to school and work because they HAVE TO without having little natural interest in learning or working ..the faces of the people in your local underground / metro / train / bus will tell the truth. The involvement with meditation is not an exemption on the rule.
That said … reading the biographies of those that are renowned for their spiritual achievements ultimate had all to deal with their me3ntal conditioning, they had to and most of them did ..and yes … some were bringing heavier loads than others
Many, many years ago, I received an letter from a american satsangi and professional Psychotherapist, explaining me how he in his approach made a difference between those on a spiritual path and others.
An some Psychiatrists and people like Roberto Assagioli
the founder of psychosynthesis wrote that some mental symptoms can be caused by mental illness or be an byproduct of mental growth ..and … understanding that makes quite a difference for both the therapist as the client. A wise one would say ..sorry I cannot help you as you are facing a spiritual problem
Anyway .. better to have some coffee and not dabble to much in these muddy mental waters.
This makes me want to ask the dalai lama to lick my solar plexus.
https://www.tarabrach.com/
P.S.:
I am okay, you are okay.
There are not only snake oil sellers on the market but these days also “chocolate, suggar and honey” the sweet sellers ..the modern variation of the ones of the 20st century … How to become better … etc.
In the bible it is said .. that you will earn your daily bread etc etc
where there is light there is shadow, where there is good there is bad ..nobody and nothing can escape that law of nature.
Everybody, has the capacity to be a Nero, or any tyran etc you name it …it depends on the soil where the seed happens to fall
Do not focus on the trumps, the epsteins etc of this world ..what is to be seen in their eyes is in your own eye too, maybe smaller matbe greater ..but even it what is in your own eye smaller it is still there and it does not go away by looking at the enormity of what is to be seen in the eyes of the trumps and the epsteins….but …it can be usefull to be not aware of it and feel its pain.
I feel the same way about bloggers who say they’re for “gender affirming” medical interventions for underage teens, and even for children.
https://churchofthechurchless.com/2023/03/religious-bigotry-behind-hatred-of-transgender-people/
A very solid article. People can use all sorts of ways to avoid dealing with themselves. That can include psychology, work, play, even therapy, even taking on a noble cause of one sort or another. We can talk ourselves into avoidance even attempting to be entirely candid.
And that is how the mind works.
Spirit, being pure, is a very attractive way to get around who we are. And time in Spirit can give us strength to carry on our duties here through these very flawed creations of karma, our body, emotions and mind.
Many great leaders who did very good things and said many noble things were themselves substantially flawed. They are on a journey, at their stage that is all.
Alan Watts is a great example. His writings are pure and innocent, but he himself struggled with his addictions. Yet today you can still be inspired by the poetry and truthfulness of what he wrote.
The fact that he had shortcomings makes these writings all the more sacred. Human beings struggle for the light. They can see it, like a light from a distant shore. But to get there they must put in the work. And writing and teaching what they see, even from a distance is worthy. A hypocrite who seriously desires progress will get there and is much mote valuable that someone who honestly gives up, overwhelmed by their own shortcomings. But that happens to sincere people also.
Personally, I am more impressed with anyone who holds an ideal, no matter the difficulties of facing themselvez, that is higher than themselves. If they are in love with that Ideal, that love will in time strip away all the false coverings.
Their devotion to that ideal will bring them time and again to that place where they must choose: Truth, honesty, or Addiction? The very fact that they are even aware of an ideal is the promise they will get there in time, though that may take a while.
And when you see people who claim such ideals are false, because humans are flawed, they demonstrate they are still in the illusion. The illusion that any human flaw discredits the existence of a higher reality. The human condition does not actually define the full parameters of reality at all.
Along the way at some point the individual can no longer turn their back on the Spirit that gave them so much happiness. And that is where their true purification begins.
It begins with acceptance of their condition and their willingness to take full responsibility for their actions and thoughts. And seeing that addiction, they submit to a higher power, and frustrated and worn out in their failures, they surrender to the Spirit within.
They can’t teach that place of surrender until their ego has been entirely worn out. So it’s not a bowl of your mother’s pudding.
That is the first real moment of Spirituality, and humanity. All that came before, whether cruel or kind was in some ways avoidance.
Just to point out, Unlike Chopra and the RSSB gurus, Alan Watts was not a great example of such people. He only referred to himself as a spiritual philosopher not a guru who claimed elevated status. He revelled to a great extent in his addictions and irreverent attitude.
Unlike the ‘fallen’ types bemoaned in the Facebook blog. Watts never tried to be anything other than the controversial character he presented to the world.
Hi Ron
And yet, because of the beauty of his writing and his eloquent presentation in talks, Mr.Watts earned the respect of many. If someone holds up a truthful picture that resonates within us as truth, we tend to feel affection for the messenger, though what matters most is the message. Love is natural to humans, though duty is just as important. Where you have both, you get the most focused performance and results. So we ought to take a look at what we love now and then to be sure it is worthy of our time and attention. Vivek is very important. Does this idea, this person’s teachings or this scientific result help us, guide us, inspire us? It doesn’t have to be all of the above. All the stop lights in Portland don’t need to be green for us to drive one more block towards our destination. And it may be avoidance to insist on it.
Socrates also spoke about this. He commented that he did not like poets because they shared a flawed vision of a perfection they had not yet achieved.
But I say bravo to the poets. Good Work dear artists and writers, scientists and statesmen, philosophers and mechanics.
They are moved by forces greater than they know to offer up something better than themselves. They put themselves aside for work. Bravo.
When you fall, as we all must along the way, as creatures of karma mixed with spirit, flawed as we are, do not be paralyzed. Remember your own vision, make good your promise of decency with all your life, and lose yourself once again in what you once celebrated.
“Bring me your failures!”
Huzur Sawan Singh
@ Spence
>> Socrates also spoke about this. He commented that he did not like poets because they shared a flawed vision of a perfection they had not yet achieved.<<
This is like getting a cookie, what? ..two .. to enjoy with my coffee.
Condolences to Martin Short
Moral: talking the talk is one thing, walking the walk is another.
Tldr: Master basic humanity before claiming to be a spiritual master – got it thx
Most of these so called gurus claiming to be better than everyone – how many of them are chubby? Get to the gym and work on yourself first LOLL