Living at the spiritual retreat center is, to say the least, a very interesting spiritual experience. :p

Talking to a friend here last night we have both noticed how little authenticity there is within the spiritual community in general.

Spiritual retreat centers around the world have an open door policy to hard core denial and spiritual bypassing.

Self proclaimed gurus, spiritual teachers, facilitators of spiritual workshops and practitioners of all sorts often walk around these places importantly, acting spiritually transcendent.

Most of them look like a fraud, desperately trying to hide their big fat bodies behind sack-like clothes and their negative emotions behind eccedentesiast, fake botox smile mask on their miserable faces.

They repress all unpleasant emotions as “non-spiritual”. Instead, they artificially raise “spiritual” emotions and traits such as empathy, compassion and kindness.

I have personally met too many preachers of:

“Getting angry is a No No. How do you want to feel? Do you want to feel miserable or joyous? We are creating our own reality! You are choosing how you feel! We are responsible for our feelings! You don’t want to feel negative! Just be positive! It’s simple. Connect with your Higher Self and Feel the Love. Can you feel it? Yes, yes, I told you it works!”

When confronted with their shadow side, those preachers feel a deep aversion and self-loathing. As being calm, gentle, smiley and in a state of perpetual peace cannot be maintained 24/7, the sad truth is that they struggle to keep up with their own bullshit and deeply suffer from lack of authenticity and a true, deep, raw and vulnerable connection with fellow human beings.

We came to this earth to GROW and CONNECT in an open dialogue between ourselves and the Universe, through struggles and learning, pain and joy, and NOT to create separation between ourselves and others so we can achieve Nirvana and become enlightened.

ALL OUR EMOTIONS ARE ALWAYS VALID AND THERE IS NO REASON TO HIDE ( FROM ) THEM.

There are NO negative emotions, it’s just the term for all the emotions we don’t like to feel. All our emotions are perfectly natural considering the state we are in, and they are all equally beautiful and real.

Suppressing ( denying ) our emotions will ALWAYS create physical, mental or emotional misbalances, disorders and diseases.

I haven’t met any spiritual teacher who BREATHES AUTHENTICITY as my favourite teacher and my mentor Teal Swan.

Teal is a true authenticity kick ass and I am super grateful for all her ‘reminders’ 🙂 in her blogs and videos. Here is what she wrote on the topic:

“Spiritual bypassing (or whitewashing) is the cancer of the spiritual world. It’s the act of using spiritual beliefs to AVOID facing or healing one’s painful feelings, unresolved wounds and unmet needs. It is a state of – RESISTANCE.

When we turn away from our pain or away from “wherever we are”, we ABANDON ourselves.

Authenticity is the highest state of being for the spiritual practitioner. We resist the very thing we are trying to avoid and so, we guarantee that it will come up in our realities again; only it will come back bigger next time. In fact in the years to come, authenticity will become the replacement for enlightenment as the true goal of spiritual practice.

Spiritual bypassing is dangerous because it sets up a major division between the physical self and the higher self. It creates a definable split between where one really is and where one thinks they should be.

It enables us to lie to ourselves and delude ourselves and live our lives through the projection of a false self. We cannot heal unless we are willing to admit to where we are and who we are. Spiritual bypassing is like breaking your leg, but being unwilling to admit to it, putting a band-aid over the compound fracture and trying to continue forward anyway. You can easily see how much harm would come to someone physically if they did that.

In order to avoid the trap of spiritual bypassing, we need to be brave enough to admit to how we feel, what we want and don’t want, what we like and don’t like. We need to be willing to risk admitting to where we are and who we are, even if we think that where we are and who we are isn’t good or ok.

If we are to avoid the trap of bypassing, we need to let go of the idea that something must be terribly, “wrong,” or dysfunctional about us if we have problems of negative beliefs or negative feelings or negative thoughts.

So everyone has personal, “struggles,” to work through. I mean EVERYONE. When we judge our problems or feelings or negative-ness as wrong, we suddenly have a motive for spiritual bypassing. And we make where we are “not ok”. We want to be good and right but we can only achieve that goodness or rightness by being inauthentic. We put on a false façade because of it.

You cannot avoid your pain because you cannot avoid yourself.

If you want to feel better and enjoy your life more, dare to face your pain. Dare to be… AUTHENTIC.”

Conquer your mountain! 😉