The challenge we have with a lot of modern spirituality and modern meditation is all the spiritual bypass and nonsense that goes with it. It becomes not about Self, (alignment to higher self and purpose and being kind and loving) but all about Me. It can quite quickly become another ego hijacked self serving activity. More hierarchy and acquisition. I think meditation is incredibly powerful, I’ve dedicated my time in teaching it, but I continue to see a huge amount of people use it as a method to bypass action, compassion, expansion and the helping of others. I think the energy shared in a group meditation is powerful, but I’m honestly still undecided whether a group of people meditating together for a few hours is more powerful than those people volunteering at their local charity for a few hours. Or getting boots on the ground in any matter.
I keep seeing these ‘calls to action’ for people to meditate in large groups, with the aim to help with racism, or poverty, or even Covid…and whilst I definitely think that stabilising your nervous system and being more compassionate helps create change, and can be the platform for pivotal personal change, I really don’t want to see meditation as a bypass to doing actual work on that change. It can’t be enough that a bunch of people leap onto Zoom or in a room and close their eyes together, and then call it a day as they’re contributing to the greater good…can it? Do I want to help raise consciousness? Absolutely. AND I want to see more people seeing clearly what spiritual bypass looks like. What spiritual entitlement looks like, and begin to actively avoid it. So I want to ask you to keep this in mind – just because a group of people you know are involved in something, or a teacher is spruiking it – ask yourself, what is the desired outcome and does this action best support that? It’s okay to ask questions and push back and find your own answers. If it’s not received well, you’re likely in the wrong group of people. And ultimately, if you need a group of people to validate your experiences, you might want to look away from them and deeper inside.
With love and compassion, because I personally spent too long spiritually bypassing myself,
Jac x