This book is filled with biased opinions on other spiritual paths, condemning them as failed tools for self awareness that simply is not true. Instead, this book made the hair raise up on my back and sick to my stomach. Would you ever listen to anything by Robert Augustus Masters, PhD again?Ī friend recommended this book to prove his point of view and felt it would enlighten me. Would you try another book from Robert Augustus Masters, PhD and/or Robert Augustus Masters, PhD? This audiobook will hold particular appeal for those who grew up with an unstructured new-age spirituality now looking for a more mature spiritual practice and for anyone seeking increased self-awareness and a more robust relationship with themselves and others. A longtime psychotherapist with an engaging writing style, Masters furthers the body of psychological insight into how we use (and abuse) religion in often unconscious ways. In the lineage of Chögyam Trungpa's landmark Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism, Spiritual Bypassing provides an in-depth look at the unresolved or ignored psychological issues often masked as spirituality, including self-judgment, excessive niceness, and emotional dissociation.

While other authors have touched on the subject, this is the first book fully devoted to spiritual bypassing. When split off from fundamental psychological needs, such actions often do much more harm than good. The spiritual ideals of any tradition, whether Christian commandments or Buddhist precepts, can provide easy justification for practitioners to duck uncomfortable feelings in favor of more seemingly enlightened activity. Spiritual bypassing - the use of spiritual beliefs to avoid dealing with painful feelings, unresolved wounds, and developmental needs - is so pervasive that it goes largely unnoticed.

To Be a Man by Robert Augustus Masters