Spiritual bypassing – the use of spiritual beliefs to avoid painful feelings, unresolved wounds, and developmental needs – is so widespread that it often goes unnoticed. The spiritual ideals of any tradition, whether Christian commandments or Buddhist principles, can provide a simple justification for practitioners to bypass uncomfortable feelings in favor of seemingly more enlightened activities. When such actions are disconnected from fundamental psychological needs, they often cause much more harm than good.

While other authors have touched on the subject, this is the first book dedicated entirely to spiritual bypassing. In the tradition of Chögyam Trungpa's groundbreaking work "Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism," "Spiritual Bypassing" offers deep insights into the unresolved or ignored psychological issues that are often masked as spirituality, including self-judgment, excessive kindness, and emotional dissociation. Masters, a long-time psychotherapist with an engaging writing style, expands the understanding of the psychological insights into how we often unconsciously use and abuse religion. This book will be particularly interesting to those who have grown up with an unstructured New Age spirituality and are now seeking a more mature spiritual practice, as well as to anyone striving for greater self-awareness and a more robust relationship with themselves and others.