Jeff Foster On the Shadow Side of Spiritual Teachers Who Claim Transcendence While Modeling Spiritual Bypassing

This is such a vital 100% spot on  piece! Thank you, Jeff Foster.

As someone with a history of deep trauma, I’d been very disassociated — which is something that served me through my childhood and helped me to survive. In sobriety and once on a healing journey, my ongoing untouched and unhealed deeper trauma also made me vulnerable to faux spiritual teachers like Eckhart Tolle, David Hawkins, Bryon Kate, and others who reinforced spiritual bypassing — with harmful consequences to myself and those around me, including my children. This has been among the painful and yet also empowering lessons that I have learned and have come to be deeply grateful for today. 

As others have said, in far too many nonduality spiritual circles it is the inner work that is bypassed. In these cases, what can appear like transcendence is actually disassociation from our fullness as embodied human beings.

It’s my belief that it is deeply important to shine bright light on the shadow side of what we experience and witness as human beings — and this includes many revered spiritual teachers. We need to name them, expose the harm that is caused through spiritual bypassing, and illuminate the devastating abuse by those such as Deepak Chopra and so many others. For me personally, this has included a therapist who abused and traumatized me, and also the former leading teacher of our spiritual community who had an affair with a sangha member who then committed suicide. As I have engaged in healing my injured instincts, what I have come to realize today is how pervasive those who offer teachings, therapy, spiritual guidance, and more actually can often cause more harm than healing and empowerment to their patients, clients, and followers. 

For years into my sobriety, in addition to the abuse I had experienced by a therapist, I had unknowingly also remained vulnerable to illness (fibromyalgia, which I’ve now been completely symptom free of for 20+ years), other non substance addictions, impaired parenting, unhealthy relationships, and more because of my unprocessed trauma. Even with years of sobriety and counseling, there had unknowingly remained abandoned exiled parts of myself. And these old untouched wounds continued to serve as obstacles to a strong connection with my heart and the experience of being a fully embodied human being.

Today I recognize that I am far from being alone. Which is why pieces like this one by Jeff Foster and others are so important. It is my belief that there is a duty to warn, a responsibility to shine light on the shadow side of those whose teachings can both sometimes be helpful but also cause harm, and to hold accountable those whose spiritual bypassing and/or abuse further traumatizes already traumatized people.

I appreciate Jeff Foster, Lissa Rankin, and others for empowering us through speaking the truth and sharing and inspiring us with their wisdom, insights, compassion, and deep caring. May we all connect with those resources which are truly helpful to us on our sacred human journeys. 🙏 Molly

When Disassociation Masquerades

as Awakening

“You don’t have to take six months to get over this. Just step out of it now.”

The spiritual teacher Rupert Spira responded this way to someone who vulnerably shared in a group about their heartbreak over a recent breakup. I have heard similar responses from Rupert in other contexts.

(The following is not an attack on Rupert personally, or on this particular quote, but a challenge and a critique of a more general philosophical position of which Rupert is a well known representative. It is said with love and respect. Being loving does NOT always mean agreeing with someone. Sometimes it means discernment, pushing back, asking robust and honest questions, speaking up when we feel someone has missed the mark.)

When I first encountered Rupert’s teaching many years ago, and Advaita more generally as shared by many teachers, I resonated deeply with much of it. The clarity around Awareness. The relief of recognising that we are not limited to thought, feeling, or the body. That understanding genuinely helped me at a certain stage of my spiritual path. Rupert was never my teacher, but like many, I was influenced by that general perspective.

Today, as a husband and father, having travelled to the mountaintops of spiritual awakening and walked back down into the marketplace of ordinary life, having been brought kicking and screaming to death’s door with Lyme disease and burned clean and reborn in that sacred fire, I stand somewhere else now.

When someone says they have just been through a rupture in their reality and it has hit them hard, suggesting they can simply “step out of it” and return to a “non suffering” Awareness may sound appealing. It may even be metaphysically correct within a very strict non dual framework.

But psychologically, it can easily land as bypassing.

Heartbreak is not a philosophical error. It is attachment rupture. It is sacred grief moving through the nervous system. It is shock, loss, disorientation. From a trauma informed perspective, these responses are not illusions or mental mistakes to transcend. They are embodied processes that demand presence. The body needs time. Safety. Witnessing. Integration. We are beginning to understand this more clearly as a collective.

Telling someone to “step out” of heartbreak can subtly teach them to step out of themselves. Of their own hearts. Of their own bodies.

And that is not liberation, that is dissociation.

Dissociation can feel spacious at first, of course! It can masquerade as awakening, and I have written at length about this very thing. When grief is not met and integrated and metabolised, it does not simply disappear. It goes underground. Hardens. Shape-shifts. Eventually resurfaces as anxiety, depression, numbness, relational volatility, even abuse directed at self or others.

What we do not fully face comes back to haunt us in our personal lives.

This matters.

Please understand, I am not rejecting non dual insight. There is real depth there. I have written several books from that understanding myself. It still forms the bedrock of everything I do.

What I am challenging is the automatic reflex to prioritise transcendence over integration. To reach directly for the Absolute when the human nervous system is crying out for tenderness, care, emotional validation, deep human honesty.

*To offer the sky when someone actually needs far more ground.*

(Rupert, I’m not attacking you. I recognise this reflex. I have been very guilty of it myself in the past!)

For me now, spiritual maturity is not about floating above experience and chasing Pure Awareness. It is about inhabiting life. Fully. In the body. Messily. Tenderly. With curiosity, playfulness, and profound presence. It is about staying with difficulty instead of fleeing to the seeming cleanliness of the infinite.

Yes, we are Awareness. Now.

And… heartbreak hurts like hell and can take lots of time to heal.

Lots of time.

Both perspectives can be true. Both are absolutely essential.

It takes real maturity to hold these two perspectives AT ONCE. To hold this stunning paradox as you would hold a most beloved newborn.

If Advaita is to mature, it MUST include the nervous system. It MUST honour and include attachment, trauma, embodiment. Otherwise it remains metaphysically elegant, but psychologically naïve.

For me, spirituality must be LIVED. In the body. In relationship. In fierce honesty. In responsibility to our kids and partners. In integrity. In the raw, wild, sensual, erotic, agonising, glorious shaking vulnerability of being fully human.

It is saying sorry. It is vulnerably sharing your doubts. It is telling the truth. It is sharing your pain and your joy. It is standing with your partner, looking into her eyes, trembling, speaking your deepest truth and receiving hers without escaping into transcendence. No bypassing. No hiding in the Absolute. Just two nervous systems meeting in honesty. THAT is fucking Advaita. It’s not concepts, it’s not just pretty words on paper, it’s visceral and tangible and noisy and imperfect and real.

Heartbreak is not a mistake in consciousness, or a shameful remnant of the “separate self” to be extinguished somehow. As I wrote several years ago, upon waking up to the shadow side of Advaita:

“…I vowed to bow to that fucking broken heart as if it were God Herself. Until the end of time.”

I still mean that.

Anything less no longer moves me, and no longer feels true.

— Jeff Foster

https://www.lifewithoutacentre.com/

 

EXCELLENT — AUTOPSY: HOW DEMOCRATS LOST THE WHITE HOUSE

Over and over again I am called to do posts which are rooted in shadow work, individual and collective, that is often tragically long overdue. 

When I was first engaged in my own personal shadow work in the early 1980s regarding the trauma I'd experienced in my family of origin, I was told that many turn away from this process of healing because they believe that is is about "blaming the parents." Now, many turn away from reading the autopsy report regarding the Democratic Party because of the belief that there is blame being laid on the political party that is seen as 100% better than the devastating fascism embraced by today's Republican Party.

This is where it is vital to clarify that shadow work is NOT about blame. This is true related to addressing and healing the abuse or neglect that we may have experienced as children at the hands of our parents. This is true about the systems of power like those exposed in the Epstein files and the misogyny that has dehumanized and victimized girls and women for millennia. This is true for every single system that has its roots in imperialist white-supremacist misogynistic capitalist patriarchy. And this includes both of the major political parties in the United States.

What is essential in shadow work is shining bright light on places of darkness, places where deep harm has been perpetrated, places where humans and humanity have lost our way. This is the ground where truth, accountability, and radical change and transformation become possible. Denial serves no one and only preserves a toxic status quo. 

It is my belief that there is an urgent need for us as human beings to evolve. And revealing and understanding, healing and unburdening, and courageously dismantling old systems and beliefs which have been at the root of so much suffering, death, and destruction gives way to the birthing of the new systems that honor and protect and experience life as interconnected and sacred. 

May we all remember that there can be no solution for a problem that is denied. And may we courageously embody a profound commitment to truth, justice, compassion, and fierce love. — Molly

WHAT WE FOUND

The Democratic Party In Crisis

Our report’s purpose is two-fold: to illuminate why the Democrats lost and to help propel the party toward a different approach and result in the future. Without a full and honest accounting of the Harris campaign and the Democratic Party’s myriad failures, there can be little realistic hope of defeating Trumpist authoritarianism in the future.

Our report identifies five main reasons for Harris’s failure:

Voter Disenchantment: Losing a whopping 6.8 million voters who supported Biden in 2020 proved pivotal in this extremely close election. Harris’s inability to mobilize these pro-Biden voters may have been the campaign’s biggest failure.

Biden’s Betrayal: Former President Joe Biden’s disastrous decision to run for reelection, and his stubborn refusal to step aside until very late in the process, robbed voters of a Democratic primary process, created confusion and chaos, and severely hindered Democrats’ chances.

Abandoning the Working-Class Base: With millions of Americans already disenchanted and desperate due to inflation, the Harris campaign lost this essential Democratic base by focusing on courting Republicans, kowtowing to corporate donors’ interests, and failing to confront the role of corporate greed in escalating inflation.

The Gaza Effect: There is ample evidence that Harris lost many voters, especially young voters, Arab-Americans, and critical support in Michigan and elsewhere, due to the campaign’s failure to shift or even signal a potential shift in policy on Israel and Palestine.

Losing Young Voters: Extensive evidence shows a huge drop-off in both turnout and Democratic support among young voters aged 18-29.

Please go here for the full autopsy report: https://democraticautopsy.org/

Jackson Katz: Missing Voices in Media Commentary about the Epstein Files

Such an excellent piece from Jackson Katz. Deep gratitude for Jackson and for all who help empower us to connect the dots and see essential larger pictures of the systems that have long been at the root of profound suffering, oppression, trauma, and the many faces of violence. This is where deep shadow work and radical change and transformation must happen. It is my belief that it is incredibly important that we be informed of these many layered truths, inspired to address, heal, and transform ourselves individually and collectively, and embody a growing commitment to being part of the universal struggle to create a world where justice, truth, equity, compassion, generosity, and peace prevail. — Molly

Focus on entitled "elites" obfuscates the widespread nature of men's sexual violence against women and girls

By Jackson Katz

The Epstein Files scandal has all the elements of a gigantic media spectacle. It encompasses everything from true crime to political intrigue, and offers a peak behind closed doors into the lifestyles of the rich and famous. It has more than a little sex and violence.

It’s a conspiracy theory come to life.

Naturally, it has attracted an immense amount of media coverage, dating back many years. The volume of coverage – already high -- has increased exponentially since the recent release by the Justice Department of millions of emails, photos, and other documents.

The public appetite for more salacious information isn’t close to being satisfied.

For media outlets, the scandal has delivered an endless supply of marketable storylines. Likewise for content creators. The scandal has been a boon for the chattering classes, especially for political pundits, for whom the Files are a fertile source of material for speculations on everything from what this means for Donald Trump’s approval rating, to the viability of the MAGA coalition, to the ramifications in this cynical era of even greater public distrust of institutions, and the people who lead them.

Media commentary has explored seemingly every angle. Or has it?

On closer examination, something has been missing. In fact, the commentariat has largely overlooked, if not consciously ignored, one of the central dimensions of the case: the ways in which the sordid behavior of an elite subculture is a product of the more widespread societal phenomenon of men’s sexual objectification and exploitation of women and girls.

There is no doubt that membership in the oligarchy has its privileges; in this case, that included presumed impunity for sexual crimes. For many social critics and political analysts, the Epstein Files scandal mainly indicts an unaccountable transnational elite, who, as Molly Jong-Fast wrote in The New York Times, were convinced that “the rules didn’t apply to them.”

Anand Giridharadas, also in The New York Times, put it like this: “a highly private merito-aristocracy at the intersection of government and business, lobbying, philanthropy, start-ups, academia, science, high finance and media… all too often takes care of its own more than the common good.”

Each new revelation in the Epstein Files saga provides a fresh opportunity to throw fuel on the populist fire and heap scorn on the misogyny of rich and powerful men (and a handful of women). The guilty ones deserve this scorn – perpetrators, enablers, and bystanders.

But men’s violence against women is not an elitist crime! It’s a pervasive societal problem that transcends the categories of socioeconomics, ethnicity, race, and region. It’s a problem in red states and blue, in big urban centers and small rural towns. It happens in the private sphere of relationships and the family, as well as out in public: on the streets, public transportation, the workplace.

It’s a huge problem in online spaces, where open expressions of misogyny are so normalized that few people in virtual communities are ever held even minimally accountable for them.

And of course the ubiquitous porn culture – once relegated to the shadows, but now available 24-7 at the touch of a button -- provides a steady stream of misogynous sexual scripts, available at the touch of a button, that depict men’s casual sexual degradation of women as part of the natural heterosexual order.

This is the larger societal context within which Jeffrey Epstein, his collaborators, and his network operated. It’s impossible to understand the scandal fully without taking into account this bigger picture.

And yet very little attention has been paid, in Epstein Files coverage, to the role of deeper cultural misogyny -- and the entire patriarchal system in which it is rooted.

The pervasive sexual exploitation of girls as backdrop to Epstein’s crimes

One measure of that failure has been the relative dearth of feminist experts on sexual assault and exploitation that have appeared as guests on major outlets in new and old media.

The feminist-led movement against sexual violence has been theorizing and organizing since the 1970s. Advocates, writers, and researchers can thus draw on more than half a century of both lived experience and intensive study of this topic, and help connect the dots between the depraved acts of Epstein and company, and the misogynous insults and violations that so many girls and women routinely endure.

Feminists have warned about the dangers of sexualizing young girls for decades. In fact, in 2008, the same year that Jeffrey Epstein pleaded guilty in Florida to procuring a child for prostitution, two mainstream books were published on this very topic: So Sexy, So Soon: The New Sexualized Childhood and What Parents Can Do to Protect Their Kids, by Diane E. Levin and Jean Kilbourne, and The Lolita Effect: The Media Sexualization of Young Girls and What We Can do About it, by M. Gigi Durham.

So why have so few of these and other experts been part of mainstream discussions about Epstein’s crimes, and the culture that made them possible?

It’s true that many media personalities have vocally supported the courageous Epstein survivors who chose to go public, and the many more who remain anonymous. They’ve mused aloud what all this means for them, what barriers they’ve overcome to speak their truth, what risks they continue to face. It has become di rigueur for talk show hosts and other commentators to praise the survivors, and to remind people that their bravery is what has forced some measure of accountability for the abusers.

But there’s a big difference between appropriate expressions of compassion, empathy, and gratitude for survivors, and a clear-eyed analysis of the ways in which cultural misogyny is the necessary backdrop to the nefarious behavior committed or tolerated by the numerous men named in the Files. It’s the latter analysis that largely has been missing.

It’s not as if feminist – and profeminist -- critiques of this cultural misogyny don’t exist. Writers like Rebecca Solnit and Rebecca Traister have published brilliant essays on this topic. Soraya Chemaly and Liz Plank continue to churn out deeply insightful takes on their Substacks. (I’ve written about it here as well.)

The author and journalist Nina Burleigh, who has written extensively about Trump’s misogyny, has an indispensable Substack newsletter called American Freak Show that showcases her investigative journalism on the extensive interplay between Epstein, Trump, and MAGA world.

Women like these have platforms in parts of the online universe, but their work isn’t featured nearly enough in mainstream venues.

Why don’t media outlets feature the perspectives of sexual assault prevention educators?

The same holds true with regard to the voices of people who do sexual assault prevention education. The field consists of thousands of educators and practitioners, many of whom have decades of experience working with men around issues related to sexual entitlement, coercion, and consent.

These educators – women, non-binary people, and men -- have worked extensively with men in a variety of sub-cultures: athletic teams, college fraternities, military units, and workplaces large and small – from C-Suites to the shop floor. They possess a tremendous amount of insight into the dynamics of male peer cultures, and the ways in which shared misogynous rituals and practices often facilitate relationships between and among men.

Why are their voices not a central part of media commentary about the Epstein Files, especially when somber journalists step back from commenting on the latest news developments in order to explore underlying causes, broader themes, and other implications?

When was the last time, for example, that you heard a sexual assault prevention educator interviewed in the media, and asked to comment about similarities and differences in the dynamic between men in the groups with whom they work, and those in Epstein’s social network?

Do some of the email interchanges between Epstein and others mirror the language they’ve heard from men in other subcultures? If so, how? What are some common threads? What other aspects of the peer culture around Epstein look similar to other elite and non-elite male peer cultures?

In the bystander trainings that I’ve developed and taught since the 1990s, my colleagues and I discuss and debate these sorts of questions all the time: Could some of the men (and women) who knew about Epstein’s sexual exploitation of girls and young women, but did not take part, have broken with him in a way that mattered? What options did they have besides walking away? Did they even know they had options? What specific cost-benefit analysis did they apply before choosing to remain silent? If some of those men had acted, would their actions have made a difference? Would it have prevented further abuse? We’ll never know.

We do know, however, that if we fail to take advantage of the knowledge and expertise of the educators and activists who grapple with these issues every day, we’re not really serious about getting to the root causes of the problem, or preventing similar outrages in the future.

Please go here for the original article: https://jacksonkatz.substack.com/p/missing-voices-in-media-commentary