Emotions are like little children. Spontaneous, frivolous, disarming. And just like children, they sometimes want to put on a costume, whether eccentric, flamboyant or mismatching, bring on a performance, and have our full attention. Instinctively, we draw back and try to suppress feeling into unpleasant emotions and states—pain, boredom, loneliness, shame, guilt, fear, anxiety, hopelessness. We think of this as of a self-protection mechanism. But in fact, avoiding the difficult feelings puts us under their thumb and hence makes us more not less vulnerable and susceptible to them. Anything we don’t fully experience and deal with, remains stuck within us—there for us to hide from and navigate our way around over and over again. The tendency to avoid, diminish or sidestep difficult feelings, so we don’t have to deal with them is known as spiritual bypassing. Often meditative practices that put people “above such things”, or superhero attitudes of the “I’m stronger than that” type are expressions of spiritual bypassing.
In contrast, when we make space for the unpleasant feelings, when we let them put on their performance, and give them our presence, welcome them even, and feel into them, they pass through us rather than remain stuck within. And as a result, we feel freer and lighter.