3 Signs You’re Spiritually Bypassing on Social Media
By: Patrick Paul Garlinger
Tags: Mindfulness, Self-awareness, Self Improvement, Social Media, Spirituality

Walking a spiritual path — however you define that — is often difficult. The journey to healing your childhood trauma, releasing your ego’s limiting beliefs, and connecting with your authentic self or a higher power is fraught with pitfalls. Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter can be wonderful vehicles to connect with other spiritual seekers, share your journey, and gain spiritual wisdom. But they can also be a minefield of emotional triggers and distractions that lure us away from our path and into spiritual bypass—that is, using spirituality to avoid emotional pain and protect the ego.

Below are 3 of the most common forms of spiritual bypass to watch for so you don’t end up using social media to sabotage your spiritual growth.

1. You Always Turn to Social Media for “Spiritual Inspiration”

One of our deepest tendencies, as human beings, is to avoid pain and pursue pleasure. We prefer to distract and numb ourselves than deal with discomfort. A spiritual path is meant to teach you to face your pain so that you can heal.

It’s very easy to turn to social media like Facebook and Instagram and scroll away your pain. Perusing inspirational stories or searching for uplifting spiritual memes can easily become a means to numb or distract yourself. Constantly turning to social media for a quick “inspirational” boost becomes spiritual bypass; you’ll just look for another “hit” the next time you start to feel low again.

Another version of this kind of bypass is to spend countless hours in spiritual Facebook groups, posting about your life or commenting on others’ posts. It’s a wonderful impulse to want to connect with others and share what’s happening in your life, but constant chatter and commentary on threads, particularly when helping others to diagnose what’s going on in their lives, is a common way to distract yourself from your own inner work.

2. You’re Using Social Media to Judge Others’ Spiritual Progress

As the previous section suggests, many spiritual seekers aspire to connect with other people on a similar path. Walking a spiritual path can be a lonely prospect — the world feels full of negativity and you’re looking for your “tribe.” You hope to find some soul brothers and sisters, a community of some kind, where you feel that you belong.

Along the way, as you’re finding this new community, it’s easy to fall into the trap of starting to judge other people for how “spiritual” you think they are. Someone may exhibit some negative behavior or act in ways that trigger you emotionally, and you engage in spiritual bypass by displacing your own discomfort in the form of judgmental posts or memes on social media.

You know it’s spiritual bypass because the judgment often gets wrapped in spiritual language—like saying that you’re more “awake,” or “vibrating at a higher frequency,” or more “ascended” than the people you disagree with and now wish to leave behind. You might even dismiss them as still being in “3D” while you’re now in “5D.” Or worse still, you might say that now that you’re “awake,” other people seem so dumb or difficult to deal with.

While it’s true that sometimes you need to let go of toxic people who do real harm to you, most times that person who seems “low” vibe or says something insensitive may just be working through a major issue. (Remember that you were that person once too.) Rather than bypass and write them off as “less spiritual” than you, pause and look at why you’re getting triggered. If you do need to walk away, do it without throwing them under the bus under the guise of being spiritually advanced.

3. You’re Becoming Attached to a “Spiritual Identity”

Discovering your authentic self is a wonderful part of being on a spiritual path, but it can present a tricky pitfall. You start to spiritually bypass when you become attached to an image that conveys how spiritual you are.

One of the key stages on a spiritual path is when you let go of the need for others’ approval to feel good about yourself. If you feel a compulsive need to post pictures of yourself in yoga poses, on meditation cushions or looking “spiritual” in some nature setting, you may want to do some self-reflection and ask yourself about your motives.

There’s no reason not to celebrate your spiritual path, but if you start to crave affirmation for this new spiritual identity — such as obsessing over how many likes or followers you have, or if you follow people just so they can follow you to become an “influencer”— you’re falling into spiritual bypass. You’re now relating to your fellow humans in a transactional manner, devoid of true connection, to fulfill your ego’s need for approval and affirmation.