Most spiritual and healing modalities have you go “inward”.
Into the emotions or pain, to fully express it so it can be released. Into dialogue with your inner parts, to restore inner harmony. Or into the meditative silence, to connect with your true nature.
These modalities CAN be helpful. They definitely were to me at different points in my past.
But they’re also incomplete.
To spend all your time going inward, trying to heal or clear or connect, so that you can THEN finally live the life you know you’re meant to…is backwards.
That’s actually the real spiritual bypassing.
It’s focusing incessantly on the distraction of your conditioning (which ends up reinforcing it) instead of taking the DIRECT actions that you know deep down are true for you – but keep putting off until you’re “healed enough” to do so.
The true, direct actions that would also FREE you from that conditioning in the first place. And in a fraction of the time.
Again, going inwards to heal/release/connect is not without its benefits. But those benefits are often slowwww to come – with years or decades of practices/sessions/work needed to re-wire lifelong patterns – and even then, never quite getting to the depths you hoped for. And always feeling like an endless work-in-progress.
And even if a session is able to help you catch a glimpse of your true nature – feeling whole, alive, free, at peace – it’s often only that, a glimpse.
Then you leave the session or meditation mat and go right back to following the same dead patterns. Ignoring your authentic internal movements. And within days, hours, or moments, returning to that heaviness and anxiety and confusion once again. Thinking you just need to schedule more sessions, do more practices, go further inwards…
The fact of the matter is – your true Self will only ever be a place you momentarily VISIT until you begin to ACTUALLY follow it in every nook and cranny of your life.
Then, and only then, will you be able to truly LIVE there. Full time.
But this requires you to get off the mat. And actually DO the direct actions in the outer world that are true for you. From moment to moment to moment.
The actions that you’ve been terrified to do. The actions you’ve been putting off until you’re “healed enough” or “ready” (whenever that may be!). The actions that would hurtle you out of the comfortable patterns of the known, straight into the magic aliveness of the unknown.
Everything you’ve ever wanted from going inwards is actually available to you by “going outwards”. By taking the real-world ACTIONS and making the CHOICES that are actually true for you.
(Key distinction being what’s ACTUALLY true for you. Most coaches who espouse “taking massive action” are doing so from conditioning, not truth. Which may lead to nice looking surface results, but not to the deeper, whole being re-orientation we’re talking about here)
And when you begin to LIVE what’s true for you more and more, then even the distinction between “inwards” and “outwards” begins to collapse.
There’s no more discrepancy between what you’re experiencing in your “inner world” and how it’s manifesting in the “outer world”.
No more tending endlessly to the “inner”, hoping it’ll birth the desired results in the “outer”.
All of that just collapses into One. Seamless. Movement.
No more inner. Outer. Processing. Integrating. Practicing. Healing. Releasing. Trying. Pushing. Efforting!
None of that.
Just YOU being you.
Natural. Easeful. Thriving.
The way you were naturally designed to move through this world.
And can return home to. If you choose it.
