Actually, the article about spiritual bypassing can apply to any form of spirituality which is used to bypass the substance and emotions of a real life situation.  The author mostly applied the discussion to New Age or Eastern philosophies which stress that the ego is the illusory part of ourselves.

However, some conventional fundamentalists of the great religions (christianity, judaism, islam) make use of this quite nicely.  A fundamentalist will say "the Bible tells me what to think/feel," and so there is no need to explore the painful emotion or feeling.  For some there may be a comfort to be told what to think and feel since the source book is touted as the unalterable truth.  But as the article points out, if we cloak ourselves in the pride of any spiritual philosophy and don't process and absorb the emotions, then we are likely to be disturbed and not progress overall.  We've seen this happen on the board where unhappy people have responded to such discussions with platitudes from a biblical source without true discussion of the issues.

I do agree that we have to go over the issues ourselves, Alan, but I don't think that makes the individual person infallible.  And I don't personally believe that the written texts are, themselves infallible.  So yes, going within for the answer; facing the negative emotions, processing them and integrating them is the key rather than saying that you will ignore them because your religion or philosophy tells you what to think.

Food for thought.

M