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The cure for the pain is in the pain. ~Rumi
Sometimes we are drawn to skip steps, turn the other way, or take another route to avoid the difficulty of pain; this is where the word bypass takes its shape. We want to bypass the hard things because we believe being in difficult situations or difficult conversations is something negative, or so we’ve been taught. It is hard and uncomfortable for sure, but we have been conditioned to associate “hard” and “difficult” with “negative.”
We’ve been indoctrinated to believe and to act as if everything “good” is positive and light and because of this we externally express that we’re “okay” even when we are not, because our value is or has been validated in being “good.” Emotional bypass, physical bypass, spiritual bypass all keep us from the gifts of growth and a deepened connection with self.
Our patriarchal indoctrination has left little room for us to openly express our true emotions, at least not so publicly. Given that, many of us are hardwired to suppress emotion, providing the perfect environment for the toxic element of bypassing to cultivate within. It also has us believing happiness and success, is attained through only the achievement of tasks, or focusing on positivity, when ultimately joy and success lie in the process of attainment - the entirety of it. We cannot be whole having bypassed the uncomfortable parts. When we bypass, we can only achieve surface level fulfillment, that lacks a complexity of depth needed to be sustainable.
As we are in the midst of collective paradigm shift, many are awakening to to our conditioning within old structures that have us believing that the be-all-and-end-all is perfection, achievement... to feel good. For so long we have been chasing that (and then what?). We have chased the feeling rather than understanding that the feeling will arrive on its own if we can open up to the truth that fulfillment comes from truly experiencing the entire journey, even the uncomfortable parts.
Pain is uncomfortable; but if we avoid our pain by skipping over it with distraction, shaping positivity as the ideal, burying our emotion by replacing it with another point of focus... we miss the opportunity that lies with in the discomfort or the pain; that is rooted in the process of becoming, and makes us more whole in our becoming.
Our indoctrination starts early, with instilling a fear of the dark in us as a child, so as much as we are aware when we consciously avoid darkness, we aren’t aware when we subconsciously avoid it. That fear is cultivated through our entire upbringing through various experiences. Fear of the dark translates to what darkness represents for us in our lives: fear of the unknown, and the unknown is not held within our control.
In spite of any fear, wherever we may fall on this spectrum, we in fact need darkness. We need it for the contrast. It’s where our true sustainable growth takes place. Shadow work is the most critical component to our work towards our higher self; our shadow being parts of ourself we don’t identify with, either consciously or unconsciously. Our triggers give us clues as to what needs to be addressed within our shadow side.
Bypassing, or applying bandaid-fix for pain or our triggers, sets the stage for repetitive patterns that keep us stuck experience the same “lessons” over and over. What we ultimately want, is healing that ultimately gifts us growth and a deeper connection to our soul that reverberates our wholeness into every corner of our life. For this, we need to feel our pain.
Our pain is ultimately our medicine and our cure.
