This experience is called spiritual bypass. Spiritual bypass is a defense mechanism. Although the defense looks a lot prettier than other defenses, it serves the same purpose. Spiritual bypass shields us from the truth, it disconnects us from our feelings, and helps us avoid the big picture. It is more about checking out than checking in—and the difference is so subtle that we usually don't even know we are doing it.

I had to look up the definition:

There are so many promises out there that this path, or that practice will allow you to live in a perpetual state of bliss, achieving all of your goals, becoming rich and thin in the process. And who doesn't want that?

Over the years, I've become fascinated with the ways in which we try to feel endlessly good. We've gotten progressively more skillful in our methods: turning away from drugs or alcohol to alter our consciousness and turning towards things like self-help books, meditation, yoga, prayer, and special diets. In some ways, we are now spiritually distracting ourselves from our feelings, thinking that we are walking a healthy spiritual path.

I do believe it's possible to get addicted to feeling good.

"If you have found a way to transcend the human condition, my hat is off to you. Truly. But for the rest of you who continue to wrestle with emotional growing pains, I am spreading the news about spiritual bypass as a reminder that we are not supposed to rise above it all. We can't out-run our own feet. We can't out-think our own brains. We can't override this human operating system that we live and breath in every hour of every day, freeing ourselves of pain and problems. Not perpetually anyway."

i liked this article a lot.  i agree that in an effort to be positive we tend to ignore the negative instead of handling it.  reminds me of the yin and yang, which is such a beautiful symbol of dark and light in constant motion, going round and round, with a circle of dark within the light and a circle of light within the dark.  the two coexist.  and that is how it has to be.

we can't live in the light all the time.  that's not what we're here to do.  we're here to grow and experience and feel.  and it isn't easy.  but that's the point!  so we trudge on through the dark times, and celebrate during the light times.  and learn, learn, learn all along the way.

I loved this article.  L O V E D.