Autobiography of a Bhogi — Part 2: Spiritual Bypass, Social Justice, and Globalist Yoga (original) (raw)

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Spiritual bypassing ‘is the use of spiritual practices and beliefs to avoid dealing with our painful feelings, unresolved wounds, and developmental needs’. Even though there is a consistent rhetoric about ‘transformational growth’ and ‘finding one’s authentic self’, there is an inherent tendency within yogaland to dismiss anything that is perceived as negative, challenging, perverse, or otherwise transgressive or contradictory, in any way, to the promoted ideal of an ‘authentic yogic identity’, and categorise it as essentially unyogic. In other words, the impurities of the self need to be expunged…quietly.

The narrative is that one should simply focus on the supposed good side of nature, while any form of expressive emotions such as anger, should be controlled. A representation of this attitude is found in the popular new age interpretation of namaste, which is a trendy way to end a yoga class. The folk etymology of this phrase is something like, ‘the light within me honours the light within you’. However, a closer linguistic analysis demonstrates the falsity of this translation, as it more or less means, ‘hello’. There is simply no mention of ‘light’. Instead, this noun phrase is: namah (bend) + te (to you). The point, however, is that there is an overwhelming preference to not explore the darker side of the soul by many global yogis; which is…