The result is a spiritualised inner critic (SIC), a monster without compare.

Here are some things mine tells me:

• You should be seeing impermanence more.

• Your body feels tense; that must mean you’re still holding on. Why can’t you let go?

• Uh, it looks like you’re feeling bad again; why aren’t you practising equanimity?

• Why are you angry again? Why are you still buying into that?

• Why do other people annoy you so much? Can’t you be more mindful?

• Seriously, why are you shouting at those cars?

• Can you even do jhanas anymore?

• All things are empty; you shouldn’t need jhanas.

• Hm, this person’s experience sounds deeper than yours and you’ve been doing this for years.

• Lost in thought again? You can’t even focus on this blog let alone recognise the ultimate nature of things.

• You’re feeling really selfy today.

• Maybe your energy system is blocked? You should be doing more tai chi.

• You need a better set of pointers to keep the ultimate truths close to hand.

• You only need to surrender. Why aren’t you surrendering more?

• If your deepest nature is effortlessly and always the case, how are you still missing it?

• You have all these incredible teachings available, you have a better chance at this than anyone in history. And yet…

• Why are you still struggling with the basic stuff like loneliness?

• How can you feel lonely if there’s no self?

I visualise my critic as The Rani; the obnoxious, self-proclaimed Spiritual Authority in Aldous Huxley’s Island. The Rani swoons around in white muslin and gaudy jewellery, wafting a sandalwood stench. She is on a Crusade of the Spirit. She appears to be of a Different Order, and that is exactly the message she wishes to convey.

If left unchecked, the SIC can grow from an irritating companion to the biggest hindrance on your quest, reinforcing the very deficiency it promises to heal. From a rational, innocent desire to understand the deepest truths grows an unparalleled source of inner tyranny.

The key to breaking the hold of the SIC is a two-step movement. First, we have to see why spiritualised judgement is unique and secondly, we need to see why it’s not.

Why the spiritualised inner critic is unique

The SIC holds particular sway in our minds for a few reasons:

1. Its concerns are spiritual. It’s not just berating you for looking puffy in your holiday pics or failing to land that joke at the work party. It’s not your average conformity-inducing parental judge. It has in its sights your spiritual evolution and the nature of reality.

2. It’s focused on universal truth, beyond your relative opinions. So its helpful judgements are not only 1) way more important but 2) true in any possible moment. This allows the critic to pipe up in pretty much any situation whereby you are not feeling entirely free of suffering (see: life)

3. Sometimes we are blind to the above points because we think we’re already nailing this spiritual stuff; we’re already knee-deep in teachings of love, acceptance and compassion. There’s no way we could be secretly constructing an even more sophisticated form of self-flagellation, right…?

4. Living with a SIC inevitably leads to resentment and protest. The SIC has a trump card for this: there’s no self, asshole. How can I be hurting you? In playing the victim you’re just reinforcing a sense of self. This rod of punishment is all empty such-ness! Why are you hitting yourself?

Why the spiritualised inner critic is the same old

So the SIC carries a special weight through its lofty goals, universal remit and questionable understanding of shunyata.

But it’s important to see that, despite the ethereal aura of spiritual judgements, they are made of the same black sludge as any other. And like most judgements, they take the essential form of:

You are a shit, unless…

The topic of the judgement is largely irrelevant; if it fits this format, your essential value is (supposedly) under question. Spiritualised judgement is no different.

Ways forward

The SIC had me in its jaws for many years and I still have to chase it down the garden path now and then. But I have managed to transform an unconscious, exhausting struggle into something more manageable. Here’s how:

Make the message explicit. If it feels like your self-worth is dependent on seeing or being something, try to put that imperative into words. An effective judge works in the shadows. You catch sight of a quick flash followed by a gnawing sense of deficiency.

Try to write out the assumed judgement or trace its outline with someone else. In my experience, doubling down on meditation is not effective when judgement has a strong toe-hold. You need to pause and articulate. Make it explicit and the folly of the judgement is revealed.

You might also recognise that, like most dictators, the judge started out with a vaguely sensible wish: wanting to alleviate your suffering. Instead of going to war with it, thank it. Directly opposing a judge can often fuel it, so recognising and thanking the judge for having your back can be a powerful response.

But the most powerful answer I know to judgement is a particular flavour of forgiveness, inspired by A Course in Miracles.

My early associations with forgiveness are of having to pardon someone I didn’t like for something they did which was definitely not ok. But true forgiveness is not a compromise and neither is it a means to an end.

It starts by giving up the fight. Both the fight to be right and the fight against judgement. You do this by forgiving, unconditionally. Forgive all ignorance, all obstacles, all judgements and mis-steps. Be like butter in a pan and feel the lack of opposition as you happily slide around, bubbling away into a clear oil.

You can say “I forgive myself” to lean into it. Forgiving softens all the hard boundaries that “your journey” exists within, revealing that nothing has been done to you, nothing was lost and nothing was missed. It opts out of the entire game of “getting it right.” This recognition is without end and without ground. You are giving up the war to get it right even whilst judgements are still flying around.

Forgiveness is a recognition of innocence. Of course, you want happiness, and of course, you get it wrong, but it can never possibly stain you in the way you imagine. This forgiveness is radical; different at the root. It is not an antidote that must be administered in certain amounts to counteract the poison of judgement. It is to inhabit a mode of being where judgement is nonsensical, along with any idea of fighting it. Its flavour is release from imagined dilemmas. Release from the burden of my journey, my progress and my understanding.

Forgiveness knows you are whole by virtue of being at all. It’s part of the package; no terms and conditions. There is plenty of life that is conditional and amenable to optimisation. But your participation in the totality of undivided reality is not one of those things.

The validity of forgiveness depends on one fact alone: that you are a flawed, fallible and finite human, but that you participate in something that stretches inconceivably beyond that. If that’s you; forgive.

We hunt around the self-help aisles, the YouTube channels, the spiritual teachers, feeling deficient—a question in need of an answer.

But even when we find answers that make sense, they don’t seem to land.

• You want more fulfilling work. You know what you’re drawn towards—and other people seem to agree it’s the right direction for you—but you can’t pull the trigger.

• A YouTube guru offers an answer to optimal health and well-being. But it feels like you’re fighting yourself at every step.

• You read a book offering a comprehensive answer to managing your time and projects. You try it, but it’s gruelling and life feels like a never-ending, project management exercise.

• You are taught a meditation technique that promises to alleviate suffering at its root. There are bursts of release, but you still struggle and feel lost for the other 97% of the day.

Maybe the answers are just not good enough? This is true sometimes, especially when the YouTube guru is involved.

But there’s a more fundamental difficulty that is easier to overlook: you already have answers to all these problems.

Those answers might be “I’m not as good as these people” or “I’m not ready yet” or “I should stay in my lane” or “I don’t deserve this”. They are the outdated scripts we follow. You watched that mind-blowing video last week, but you’ve been answering the problem it addressed since you were a kid. We make small bets every day, and over the years those bets turn into answers that author our lives.

And so the real difficulty is that we are already inundated with answers, yet lacking awareness of them. The flashy, new answers are not whooshing into a featureless, blank space—they are elbowing their way into a bustling metropolis of existing answers, some obvious, some silent and subtle.

You already have a fitness regime, a theory of relationships and a relationship to wisdom. Even if those answers are: “I should eat less”, “gym twice a week is enough”, “people are rational and I just need to make the right argument”, “I should just be happy with what I have”, “hard work is always rewarded” or “I just need to stay afloat.” Cynicism still counts as an answer.

Our answers can be very subtle. When we come to meditation practice, we already think we know what’s going on here: I am a meditator, and if I apply this method, I will realise something about reality/truth. But these seemingly preliminary elements are all answers in disguise. To move deeper, they must all come into question.

We also underestimate the power of our answers. They are not detached responses to an external reality. Our answers are creative: they shape our perception, tell us what to ignore and elevate, and provide the criteria against which we judge ourselves and others. As Iain McGilchrist wrote in The Matter with Things:

The choice we make of how we dispose our consciousness is the ultimate creative act: it renders the world what it is. It is, therefore, a moral act: it has consequences.

It’s comforting to believe in blank slates and the many tired computer metaphors that have infiltrated modern thought, encouraging us to swap beliefs in and out like memory cards; clean upgrades that only require you to be plugged into a power source overnight.

But there is no neutral. There is no way out. It’s impossible to live without answers and our answers are often forged in difficult times. The idea that we can hover in limbo whilst finding answers is part of what keeps us divorced from life and distant from the answers that are answering on our behalf.

We have to see how we are already living a particular answer before we can try something different. So instead of seeking more answers, try to trace the outlines of your existing answers. See how you think you already know what’s going on.

Instead of finding a better answer, exhaust your current one—wring it of hope, extrapolate it to snapping point. People often arrive in coaching with partially exhausted answers. The inadequacy of an old answer is becoming too much to ignore but they need the space to lay bare what’s left of it.

Your existing answer has to give up ground to create space for something new. It’s not easy work—it’s hard to see an answer when you’re living it. Many of our answers are outdated and embarrassing. But that’s ok: you are much bigger than your answers and if you dare to look them in the eye, you might be met by the freedom to answer differently.

I first encountered the idea of life scripts in my Animas training as a transformational coach. They are key idea in Transactional Analysis (TA)—a psychoanalytical theory that is much more applicable to everyday life than it sounds.

Life scripts are formed early in life, through obvious verbal messages but also non-verbal reinforcement. They do not remain stories: they influence our entire physiology through the way we view and regulate ourselves.

According to the theory of life scripts, we can classify them as injunctions or counter-injunctions. Injunctions are passed on from parents in early childhood and often reflect their own unresolved issues. They begin with "don't", telling us what to avoid—what they were told to avoid. Counter-injunctions are instilled later in childhood and give us a more positive—if not idealistic—target to aim for. When you add these two together, you have a tangled mess of scripts that say “do this, but don’t do that.”

Trying to accommodate these scripts often pulls us in impossible directions. It’s common for those conflicts to arise as people pursue a new aspiration in coaching. They weigh heavy on us as we try to stretch into the unknown.

These tensions were best captured by Adrienne Lee in her illustration of the Drowning Man:

Knowledge of life scripts offers consolation: our conflicts are not often personal failings, but the inevitable result of trying to resolve contradictory messages that were planted long before we had the awareness to dispute them.

The best way to get to know life scripts is to take a quick inner safari of your own. To do this during our coach training, we were asked 4 questions and given a couple of minutes to free-write our answers without over-thinking it. I'm sharing my unedited answers. The last question in particular took me in an interesting direction that I did not expect and has stuck with me since.

1/ What are the rules/scripts you've lived by in your life?

hard work is rewarded, you should try your best, it's important to keep people happy, follow the rules, don't be a nuisance, creativity is for artists, your brain will get you ahead of the group, you can know more than others, i have a special gift, i am sensitive and easily overwhelmed, i can learn anything, don't be boring. it's ok to get it wrong, keep trying. look forward, don't dwell in the past, don't be silly, be rational about it, there's no need to get angry, i have to work hard to help people understand me

you have a responsibility to put your brain to its best use! don't waste it! you have so much ahead of you!

2/ What are the rules/scripts you'd like to live by?

i am resilient and can do almost anything i put my mind to, i don't need to do everything perfectly, people will accept me as i am, i don't need to worry about others not liking me, i don't have to be busy all the time, it's fine to take the time when you need it, it's ok to struggle with difficult experiences from a long time ago, it's ok to be vulnerable, it's ok to not be the knower, it's ok to do your own thing, even when no-one else is doing it. anything i feel is valid, even if it's feeling tired and groggy and pissed off

3/ What if there were no rules/scripts? How would you choose to live then?

wow, that's freeing. i don't have to figure out the right scripts; another project to get right or suffer the consequences. i would be able to rest and discover what i wanted. i wouldn't have to worry about linking together a narrative about myself, who i am and what i do, i wouldn't cater so much to what others might think of me, i wouldn't feel like i needed to impose a structure on my day. i would be able to do what i wanted, when i wanted. voice: "are you sure that's ok?" i guess in some sense there already are no rules or scripts, there are just consequences. it would be nice to retain the ability to be spontaneous and deal with things when they arise. a sense of wonder and immersion and reciprocality. magical. would i actually do anything? yes! i love to create and share things.

4/ Try writing yourself a permission slip to create the change you want

Dear Headmaster,

Daniel has decided to take matters into his own hands. he is no longer subject to social expectations around being productive and upstanding and "nice". he might not be nice at all. it's not that he doesn't value these things, it's just that he doesn't need some whiney repetitive voice in his head lambasting him for doing this or not doing that. Daniel actually has a pretty clear idea of what he wants and who he wants to share it with. Daniel might seem unsure or in limbo for a while but we trust that he'll find his way. he always has. Daniel has never really learned in the same way others do so don't expect him in 50% of the classes and please give him the space to assimilate things in his own way. Daniel occasionally needs a dark room to recharge and it is not advisable to disturb him during this process.

Kind Regards, Daniel

It was exhilarating to see all of that spew out in about 8 minutes. Life scripts work powerfully just beneath the surface. But like any part of our inner world, they can be made explicit through writing. Writing is the cure.

Writing them down doesn’t guarantee that anything changes. But after doing so, you might suddenly find yourself coming to, mid-script, like a dumbfounded actor on stage.

Will you continue reeling off your lines? Or do you want to try something different?

💡 Are you feeling stuck in well-worn narratives?

If you want support in rewriting your own scripts—and the accountability to chart a more courageous and creative way forward—I have capacity to work with 3 more people this June. Book your free, no-obligation call today and I can explain how coaching will help.

For decades, I was a proud note-taker; capturing ideas, making connections and carefully pruning my ever-expanding web of words. But over the last few weeks, I've come to resent those reams of notes. They've become the biggest hindrance to actually writing.

It would be easy to pretend I don't have a problem. Note-taking bros, with their pasty complexions and neat haircuts (ouch, self-burn) bust a nut over bidirectional linking and superior organisational schemas.

I could say I'm accelerating my learning, backing up my brain and supercharging my productivity. If I squint hard enough, it looks viable.

Except last week, I ended up journalling a familiar sentiment:

it feels like 70% of the stress is just having to manage all these fucking notes

what would happen if i just deleted all my notes...?

I felt a tingling rush at the thought of it.

At a guess, I'd say I have 200,000-300,000 words spread across a graveyard of note-taking apps: Evernote, Ulysses and finally Obsidian. I wouldn't be surprised if it's nearer half a million.

It started maybe 20 years ago. Writing was my default way to connect ideas and record insights in all the fields I loved exploring: evolution, consciousness, awakening, history and anthropology. It was how I made sense of things and remembered what was important.

My notes mean a lot to me. But they also feel like a digital abscess that I quietly lug around and whisper to when no one’s looking. I worry that other people live very adequate lives without their own computerised cankers.

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My current crisis in note-taking was brought on by publishing new essays each week on Substack.

Each time I sat down to write, there was such an overwhelming mess of existing notes that I felt immediately deflated. The spontaneity of the writing impulse was flattened into yet another organisational safari through Obsidian.

In note-taking videos, reviewing existing notes is presented as a joyous process of discovering your own buried treasure. This does happen, but more often than not a new idea is crowded out by 30 other reflections on the same topic. It doesn't have to be that way, but the ethos of note-taking is connection, and so old ideas are quick to elbow their way into your fresh insights.

Of course, I could have ignored the previous notes. But then, what have I been doing all this time? And what if I miss that insight in 2022-03-11 omg the golden thread? I'm always scared of missing some key point. I sometimes think back to when I first started blogging. I had no notes. I must have just written about what was going on.

Over time, you develop a love of your abscess, and it's hard to cut it down to size, even when it's stopping you from walking through new doorways.

wrote that "getting lost in your knowledge management system is a fantastic way to avoid creating things."1 I loathed the sentiment at first, but I can no longer avoid it.

I've always wanted to write a book. For years, I thought I would just re-arrange and refine notes until a book spontaneously leapt forth. Needless to say, I am not a published author.

It is too easy to get lost in organising and editing. And it feels really good. It's one of my favourite things to do. This is not unique to note-taking: the temptation to edit instead of writing fresh words is a perennial challenge for writers.

But modern note-taking software makes this a uniquely seductive proposition. Man, look at that interconnected knowledge graph. It looks impressive, it feels productive. And it will happily eat up thousands of hours of your life, with very little to show for it.

This can get compounded if, like me, you have an obsession with The Big Picture. It can function as a protective barrier in the same way note-taking does: by creating something so vast and many-faceted, there's almost no way anyone can critique it. It's so nuanced! Look at all the connections! It's a great way to avoid sticking your neck out.

Another problem: notes quickly become stale. No one keeps their notes fresh because they would have no time to eat. What happens for me is that a new insight bubbles up, I open a relevant note—the titles are burned into my head—and add a drive-by conclusion to the bottom. After a while, something initially exciting is just the same idea battered from 20 angles, without ever going deeper.

Some people might refute my complaints as a failure to go far enough with my organisation. But there is no end to organising; no limit to the new ways you can connect and categorise. I don’t care about that plugin. And it's never as neat as those cute demo videos make out; each templated note dropping into neat buckets with sensical titles. My Obsidian vault is a zoo. There are weird sounds, unwelcome smells and a feral sense of organisation barely holding it together.

I should say some nice things about note-taking. I do have a poor memory and note-taking helps there. I do often find gems in old notes, once I strip 80% of the fluff away. My personal journals have been particularly useful in revisiting the past. I wouldn't have been able to add so much detail to Three Years without them.

I've also found that recording most of what I'm thinking makes it quite obvious when a theme is important to me, because it resurfaces every few months. I’m nearly always surprised to discover this and I don’t think it would happen without note-taking.

Note-taking gurus do address some of these issues, and my own neuroticism can assist you in dismissing the rest.

Lip service is paid to framing note-taking in terms of your "desired outcomes," to remember that it’s only a means to a greater end. But realistically, it always seems to come back to creating, connecting and organising an endless pool of notes. The infallible goodness of stored knowledge, the indisputable value of connected notes. Why would you want to lose anything? Don't you want to be organised?

To date, I've not seen any of my favourite authors, teachers or poets acknowledge the pivotal role that their note-taking systems played in their best works. Considering all of the hyperbole, I would expect the next generation of second-brained experts to be taking over the world any second now.

Having everything at your fingertips sounds appealing. But we can only give voice to one or two things at any time. And those things need space and zest to be articulated well.

You need to convert your private intuitions into a discrete, logical sequence of words that other people can understand. You have to step out of the house and express yourself without the supporting evidence of your other 759,213 notes. Your words need to grow up and hold their own.

I still love my notes. I will continue to cradle my digital abscess and pretend it isn't really there. But I am much more wary of note-taking as anything other than a reservoir of old ideas that might be useful when I sit down to do the hard work of writing. I am a writer, not a note-taker.

It wasn’t a conscious decision. Before then, the birds had blended into the background. Now, their colour and movement popped into relief with a strange urgency.

The first bird was a chaffinch. Its colour was probably what caught my eye. It was patrolling the sheep field across from my Airbnb, on the lookout for worms after rainfall. I got to work watching and identifying other birds around me using some antiquated binoculars left for guests.

Once I got the hang of it, I realised there was an entire world of sound and community around me, wherever I went. I got obsessed.

When I got home, I set up bird feeders in my garden. They’re the first thing I look at in the morning. And whenever my laptop demands I take a break—every 20 minutes—I step to the side of my desk and look down at them.

It's a reminder that a bigger, chirpier world exists beyond this glowing screen.

Here are some notes on frequent visitors.

Pigeon. In a perpetual state of wide-eyed surprise. Which is strange, considering nothing interesting has ever happened to it. Enjoys perching on the narrowest edge and waiting for other birds to do the hard work, before sweeping the ground. Permanently horny and not afraid to act on it, to the dismay of all birds and humans. Sounds like a flustered old lady when relocating from one fence to another.

Ring-necked dove. The cute cousin of the tubby pigeon, wearing an understated grey one-piece with a black choker. Nearly always seen in pairs. Largely a ground feeder; doesn't care to ruffle feathers. Seemingly oblivious to the world. Has a very popular subreddit dedicated to its abysmal nest-building choices.

Sparrow. Upbeat, optimistic and always happy to tell you what's going on. Shows off its British credentials by queueing on the fence before hitting the feeder. Has an answer to everything, and that answer is cheep. Fledglings look like a furry grey ball with a head growing out the top. Will eat anything but particularly fond of fat balls.

Starling. Groups of starlings are called murmurations when twisting and twirling in unison. But when arriving at the feeder, horde is more appropriate. They come and go with the subtlety of a blizzard and seem incapable of eating without trying to peck each other’s eyes out. The starling form is squished—except for the oversized, straight beak which is very handy for getting at suet blocks. Males have iridescent green and blue coats; petrol in a puddle, flecked with spots. Females are less noteworthy, a familiar injustice in the bird kingdom. When not screaming at each other, Starlings can produce an unbelievable variety of sounds—from human voices to R2D2.

Blackbird. The cultured romantic. Males wear rich black with an orange eye ring. Sings the most beautiful songs. Fond of hopping, head down, tail bopping. Usually seen rummaging with a partner. Pretends to be above the birdfeeder but will occasionally give it a go. Often makes a hash of it, on account of being made for hopping, not hanging. Most often found on the ground as the Starlings make it rain seed. A fine ally in the battle against garden snails.

Goldfinch. A fussy customer, requiring expensive, black seeds. Has migrated from sunnier climes and its vibrant plumage ensures you know it. Often heard warbling in the distance, and bobbing up and down on the wind, to the tune of said warbling. As soon as it lands on the perch, it is a quiet, content feeder.

Robin. Rarely uses the feeder, but is happy to skim the ground for falling crumbs. Usually appears alone, on account of having extreme personal space issues. The only garden bird to rival the blackbird’s song.

Blue tit. A small, frantic feeder, trying to look in every direction at once whilst cramming its beak full of suet.

Great tit. Often heard before it’s seen and easily identified by its see-saw, tea-cher call. Has more self-assurance than the smaller blue tit, undoubtedly due to everyone referring to it as "great". The stylish black cap doesn't hurt matters either.

Magpie. Large, striking and subject to an inordinate amount of song and rhyme. Will attempt to use the feeder, but is too large, resulting in a flapping cacophony. That said, it is smart. Sometimes waits on the ground, eyes up the suet block, and then launches itself, beak first, to knock off a chunk. Its Latin name is pica pica, but sadly it doesn't sound anything like a Pikachu. Enemy of nesting blackbirds, and now, me.

Carrion crow. Not invited to the party, and frequently reminds everyone of it by dive-bombing the proceedings.

Honourable mentions

Rat. Technically not a bird, but has been known to scale tall bird feeders to dine on suet and seed. This can be prevented by installing a baffle or, if you happen to have one, an inverted cone of shame as usually worn by your…

Cockerpoo. Only seems to care about the size of the bird. Historically charged down pigeons but is becoming more tolerant with age. Primarily on the lookout for the rat or, better still...

Grey squirrel. Birdfeeder vandal. Enjoys lifting feeders and dropping them on the floor, eating it’s fill and then fleeing the scene. The reason most feeders are now tied to the main pole by twine. Hasn't yet been caught in the act.

Sparrowhawk. Only sighted once—it took a bird in the air with such a noise that I heard it over a running circular saw. I peeked over the garden fence to see the predator on the floor, savage yellow eyes pinning me in place before it flew off.

Seagull. A seagull once extracted the entire BLT filling from my sandwich, outside of a train station, leaving me with two slices of bare, brown bread in my hand. Despite this skill, it shows no interest in the free buffet at the feeder. It is however happy to heckle other feeding birds from nearby rooftops.

These meditation or spiritual teachers point out a truth already present in experience, right here, right now. They will often emphasise that this is it—ultimate reality is already in full swing and that an unconditional wholeness is not only noticeable but, in fact, inescapable.

Some teachers who lean into a direct path approach: , , Suzanne Chang, Jeff Foster. Some teachers—Angelo Dillulo & Adyashanti come to mind—will use direct pointers but nestled alongside other approaches.

Many of these teachers recommend bringing attention to the fact of awareness itself, as opposed to the content of what’s arising.

There are many different forms of this: non-doing, resting-as-awareness practices (”everything is a cloud; you are the vast sky”) or practices that tune into the mysterious or unresolvable nature of reality—a personal favourite. Outside of the direct path, many developmental approaches like Vipassana also shun the content in favour of attention to the “underlying” characteristics of reality.

The Monk’s Defence

These are powerful perspectives. Their power lies in inviting us to attune to the fabric of our experience, rather than getting hooked in the endless stories we tell about it.

But seeing exclusively through this perspective creates its own problems.

Rather than an invitation to a fuller embodiment, it turns into a convenient way of avoiding a difficult feeling. Rather than sitting with discomfort, we can turn towards something more soothing and universal.

So begins the process of spiritual bypassing, the “tendency to use spiritual ideas and practices to sidestep or avoid facing unresolved emotional issues.”1

Bypassing is a kind of defence mechanism. It functions to protect us from experiencing pain, through avoidance, detachment and dissociation.

When Jack Kornfield came off retreat and struggled in a relationship, he met a therapist who told him “You have the monk’s defense. You can be aware of anything, but you’re afraid to actually express it.”2

Richard Schwartz, the creator of Internal Family Systems (IFS) likewise noted that he found “the use of spiritual practices to transcend one’s exiles to be rampant in the communities I treat.”3

The inevitable bypass

The problem starts at the beginning: people often come to spirituality because they want to feel better. To be less stressed and more happy. To feel less pain.

The allure of spirituality is clear; finding something outside the chaos—untouchable, permanent and free from suffering.

Any spiritual teaching can lead to bypassing, but direct path or non-dual teachings carry a higher risk factor. As there is often an encouragement to step back from the content of your experience, it is easy to look away whilst believing you’re tuning into something deeper.

Something else that can arise is the interpretation of feeling bad as a failure to practice well. You’re angry because you’re not seeing things clearly. You’re sad because you’ve not recognised the nature of awareness.

How did you miss it? Why are you choosing to suffer? It’s so simple!

I fell into this trap for years and it fed a sense of shame that rivalled anything I’d experienced outside of meditation practice.

Redressing the balance

What would it look like to address this upfront?

It would mean admitting that bypassing is not a strange side effect, but an inevitability of practice. In other words, we should expect it. It’s a when, not an if: a question of how many flavours of it show up for you and in what frequency.

We could also remove the stigma from it: what we call bypassing is an innocent response to pain. The more we neglect to discuss it, the less we are able to develop an intimacy with what makes it so seductive and how it sells us short.

I think teachings that are more liable to bypassing should spend more time with these topics. This isn’t personal criticism: many teachers do address this… and many students go on to wildly misinterpret their meanings.

Finally, we can balance out awareness with articulation.

The art of articulation

What helped me was to develop fluency in both awareness and articulation: in working with pointers to an already-present awareness and, when appropriate, working with particular emotions: connecting, expressing and articulating.

This means giving voice to “the content”, not trying to reach beyond it.

Here’s where to start: tune into the uncomfortable feeling as it arises in your body. Where is it arising? How big is it? What texture does it have? Stay with the particulars of it. For once, give the feeling free reign. Give it space by holding space. Let it show you what it is. Don’t second guess it, don’t try to fix or resolve it. There’s no need to make sense of it.

Just stay with the feeling. The temptation can be to pop up into a narrative about why she said that and why he’s a prick and how everything is fucked. Instead, stay interested in the movement of the emotion, this cresting wave of feeling.

When you feel sufficiently steeped in it, name it. You might say that you feel angry or irritated, alone or abandoned, numb or restless. You’ll get it wrong plenty of times. But keep naming, keep describing, until you land on some words that turn a key.

When that door opens, stay attuned to what comes next. Something always comes next. The first feeling might morph into another. It might just change shape. A memory might pop up. An image may arise. Notice and articulate. Then listen anew. Rinse and repeat.

You don’t get to know what will arrive, or in what order. You can only show up, willing.

There are many ways to attend and articulate: write your worries down, talk out loud in the car, have a candid conversation with a coach, or read poetry and allow others to grant you their gift of words.

Emotions often need something more than a bare awareness. They need to be seen, picked up and spoken into awareness. They need to take flight and only you can grant them flight through your articulation. So move between the two—speech and silence—and see how things unfold.

A few other points on articulation:

• You can practice this in meditation with a “weather check”: for the first couple of minutes, name each thing you feel: tightness, pressure, restlessness, aversion, irritation, breathing, space, presence, doubt, fear, presence, curiosity. Stay attuned to your body-sense as you name each feeling.

• This kind of work is not popular in non-dual circles. It might reek of “indulging in content.” Try it and find out. What do you have to lose?

• This kind of work is also the essence of coaching, an articulation in tandem. Done well, it requires a willingness to sit in the unknown, to experience our inner multitudes and the ability to hold silence until the next thing arrives.

Where articulation saved me

Again and again, I have found this kind of attention and expression to be the only way to meet the most intractable contractions and long-standing malaises. Especially those that a meditative awareness did not address.

I could meet fear and panic, but I clamped down at the first sign of anger—felt deeply uncomfortable with any sense of being angry with another. Talking therapy allowed me to connect with and slowly give voice to a rage simmering just below the surface. Prior to that, seeing the changing nature of the sensations that make up rage, or the awareness in which rage arose did nothing to address the rage itself. These tricks only gave me a safe viewing hole that kept me distant from the anger; an anger I was terrified would destroy everything around me. That terror did not subside until I started to articulate the rage and gain confidence that the world didn’t crumble.4

I can do sadness. But I struggled to come to terms with despair: the powerlessness of it, the sense of being uniquely broken. Then I read David Whyte’s Despair5, and his words elevated the feeling to an exquisite fever pitch and release.

At other times, I was paralysed by grief, by being stripped bare and not knowing how to orient. Once again, the words of someone else helped me recognise grief as something bigger than I could hold.6 In the articulation, there was a coming home to myself.

When I went through burnout and anomie, writing Three Years was the gateway into a new life, the emergence of new and old friendships, and a newfound appreciation of what I’d been through.

I felt a deep tension in my throat for nearly a decade of intense insight meditation. No matter how constantly I recognised the sensations that made it up as impermanent, unsatisfactory and not belonging to a self, the tension never budged for more than a few minutes. In fact, it seemed to get worse.

Release only arrived through exploring somatic work, specifically TRE and tremoring. Whatever it was there demanded movement: the somatic language of trembling, writhing and noise. I learned that the body has a deep intelligence that knows how to coil itself into the original pattern of tension and then release it.

Incorporating a somatic approach completely revitalised my practice, which had felt stagnant for some time. It’s not a coincidence that the therapist who told Jack Kornfield he had “the monk’s defense” was also someone who specialised in bodywork.7

All of these feelings stagnated until I found a way of connecting with them, feeling their energy, and articulating them: whether journalling, living through the words of others, talking or trembling.

Some of these practices might seem anathema to meditators who are used to the idea of wisdom arising in silent stillness. But perhaps you need to bite, scream, pound, cry or stomp. Listen, articulate and find out.

Learning to articulate is building the confidence to feel and express, knowing that the expression will not define you.

The heart in articulation

All of this requires courage—an under-appreciated quality in spiritual circles. Courage comes from the French coeur, meaning heart.

Bypassing is a natural response to the fear of experiencing yourself fully. But if we want to venture deeper, we have to ask what we’re afraid of.

This is what Jack Kornfield calls taking the One Seat: the only seat you can take, and staying put for what arrives, come what may. I will not turn away.

Courage lets us look the darkness in the eye. Too often, spiritual pointers can be used as a soothing simplicity that keeps us at arm’s length from our messy particulars. The dark room remains unlit and we avoid it at all costs.

What you might find

From my own experience, a lack of articulation might not hold you back at the beginning. Things opened up very fast for me as I applied the Vipassana way of seeing to anything and everything.

But years on I realised I was still scared of myself. Addressing that fear required something more naked, more vulnerable; not filtering reality through any particular way of seeing.

To do this deeply means sitting without help, without hope, and so it is deeply unappetising, horrendously unsexy. But if you go deep enough, you’ll see there’s no other way. You might also find a vaster intelligence at play when you consent to listen.

We overlook this when we denounce "thought" as a whole, as is common in spiritual circles. Compulsive storytelling is one thing, but spontaneous articulation is one magical way that reality expresses itself, and it furnishes us with a wide array of imaginative, creative and novel ways to relate to this life.

Practising in this way won’t feel as spiritual. It won’t feel cool or fashionable. But such is the work. My experience is that this kind of work becomes more essential the deeper we go, and can provide an incredible release as we stop trying to see through, around and under our emotions.

You might discover a bustling inner world when you start trying to articulate it, when you begin to follow the thread; yearnings and emotional tides that have been vying for your attention since you began to look into yourself.

Labelling this world as “content” does a good job of obscuring it. But your inner life is not “content.” Your interiority is not a commodity.

If we do not invite all emotions to shake and rattle us, we will never discover that which is truly unshakeable. Fully feeling and expressing emotions creates a sense of groundedness, a comfort in one’s skin, an embodiment that doesn't need to engage particular forms of awareness to avoid or transcend.

Direct path teachings are powerful pointers. They orient us to something easily overlooked. But be ready to use and abuse them. Stay alive to the temptation to leave behind the particulars, and stay sceptical of any teaching that actively encourages this.

that Siddhartha has remained alien and unknown to me, stems from one cause, a single cause: I was afraid of myself, I was fleeing from myself! I searched Atman, I searched Brahman, I was willing to dissect my self and peel off all of its layers, to find the core of all peels in its unknown interior, the Atman, life, the divine part, the ultimate part. But I have lost myself in the process.

—Herman Hesse, Siddhartha

You are what you do, and if you can manage your time more effectively and reshape your habits, the life you desire is just around the corner.

In other words, the solutions to your problems are practical upgrades: you’re one routine or one new meditation away from nailing it.

This message is convenient and comfortable; a soothing soft porn.

And when life doesn’t miraculously change, the implication is that you didn’t set things up correctly or follow through with enough gusto.

But here’s the truth: 95% of the time, what’s missing is not a system or routine.

95% of the time, people struggle with feelings of which they’re only dimly aware: fear of failure, anxiety about the unknown, and pressure to conform.

Familiar, old foes.

A lack of clarity

One response is to identify the emotions as hindrances: to be “more rational”, to push on, to not get “caught up.”

However, this problematises emotion, the result of which is thrashing yourself ever deeper into the swamp.

You can go to war with your feelings, but you’ll find they’re bigger, faster and more potent than the limp, best-seller routine you nervously wield at them.

If you want to move forward, you have to work within this inner ecology.

If you can do this, the tools and tactics become secondary; icing on the cake.

You can’t make progress if you’re fighting an invisible enemy, so the first step is always clarity.

It is the lack of clarity, not any emotion itself, that keeps us stuck in place.

The writing cure

The best way to create clarity is to write.

Here’s how: remove distractions, block out 10 minutes, turn to a blank page or open a new note.

(You do not need a pretty journal. You do not need creative intent. You do not need inspiration.)

Write whatever is on your mind.

Let the words tumble out as they arise and stay attuned to what’s going on inside you.

If you feel intimidated by writing, write that down. If you’re frustrated and at your wit’s end, write that down. If you don’t think you have enough time to do this, write it down. If you feel like your relationship is suffocating or your boss is an asshole, write it down. If you feel numb, write that down. If you feel sad—but have no idea why—write that down. If you’re at the edge of murderous rage, write it down.

Bitch, moan and berate.

Be petty, impulsive and judgemental.

This is your arena of discontent. Gratitude is optional.

There is no need to tidy or censor. No one else is going to read this.

You don’t need to paint a beautiful picture or write prose.

You don’t have to figure anything out.

You only need to write down what comes to mind for the magic to happen.

Keep throwing out words.

Most of them will fit like a family hand-me-down. But occasionally one will land, and you will have a toehold.

Rather than a vague sense of unease, you now know something is going on. It may not be pretty, but you have a foot in the door.

Then: keep throwing out more words.

Don’t worry about getting the “right” words: just maintain a sustained assault on unclarity.

All you need to do is punch a hole big enough for the nebulous feeling to spill out from your internal darkness into the light of day.

If it feels awkward and uncomfortable, you’re doing it right.

If there’s a voice in your head screaming that this is bullshit, you’re definitely doing it right.

Remember: this is not about solutions, it’s about clarity. Problem-solving has its place, but it’s 10x easier after you have clarity about what’s going on.

Following the thread

I’ve been doing this for years, through the happy times and the terrible times.

I still fight it sometimes. And I’m still continually surprised at how it works.

I usually go in expecting some neat resolution. Instead, getting a grip on the first feeling reveals a slew of other beliefs and feelings hiding just below it.

All I have to do is follow the thread: honouring each thing as it comes up and being receptive to what follows it.

Irritation opens up to tiredness. Restlessness points to a deeper change in bearing. Inadequacy softens into a righteous rage.

Sometimes the writing feels like failure after failure at describing what’s going on.

Until suddenly, out of desperation, a few choice words skewer the feeling tone of the moment and there is a jolt of recognition.

Sometimes the wonderful idea I wanted to keep hermetically sealed dissolves at the first sign of inspection.

Sometimes the desire I’m worried about indulging is not at all what I thought it was.

I have no idea until I start writing.

Won’t this just make things worse?

It sounds too simple to be true.

It is simple, but it’s not easy. Why?

To write like this means admitting up front that you don’t know what’s going on. This admission creates the space that clarity requires. No space? No clarity.

To write like this means facing something that might overwhelm us. If we indulge the emotions, won’t they just get worse? Won’t it be too much?

Perhaps the deepest fear is that in admitting and naming a feeling we might give it permission to fundamentally define us. Maybe I am just an angry person, a sad person, a lazy person, after all.

The writing itself is the answer to all these fears; the confirmation that you can feel it all and carry on; the understanding that no feeling can fundamentally name you; the realisation that you can play the sinner and the saint in the space of a sentence; and the proof that these feelings can be intense, but that they’re always moving to and from a horizon that precedes them.

What I’ve learned is that emotions do not ask to be the final word in who you are. In fact, they do not require you to do anything at all.

But they do demand attention and articulation: that you show up, however confused and clumsy.

They are patient. But if they are continually ignored, they start to let off a smell that taints everything else.

Emotions can’t come to rest if they’ve never taken off. It’s up to you to allow them the gift of flight and pay attention to where they land.

A life raft

Whether you’re a writer, an athlete, a builder or a baker, learn to write your worries down.

It is transformative, in the true sense of that term: you don’t know where you’ll end up. But if you follow the thread, you’ll be changed by the end of it.

Learning to articulate your inner world is a skill, like any other. Each time you do it, the vocabulary of your inner life expands. You are less at war with yourself and better able to bring your many selves to bear on what you care most deeply about.

You could say this practice has many benefits. But really, the practice itself is honesty, curiosity, and courage in action.

This practice—whether we call it journalling, writing or ranting—is a quintessential life skill and, one shitty day, you might also find that it’s a life raft.

For years, I ignored it.

But I noticed something growing, filling the bed and climbing the house.

Bindweed.

I went to war with the bindweed.

I pulled it out carefully, used weed killer and generally did whatever I could to return the bed to a neutral state.

It never worked. The bindweed always came back. Sometimes in 2 or 3 weeks.

One day, someone told me the best way to stop the bindweed was to just plant something else.

Why hadn’t I thought of this? I was so fixated on removing the weeds that I didn’t stop to think what I wanted in their place.

I sowed wildflowers and the bindweed quickly lost steam. After a while, it stopped returning, with no effort on my part.

Don’t focus on clearing away the bad stuff—be proactive and plant something better, more beautiful, today. Something you want to see each day. Whether a fresh aspiration or a renewed focus.

Don’t try to maintain a clean slate that you’ll fill another day. If you value the space itself, you will lose the space. There’s always something ready to colonise it.

Plant and tend to what is most meaningful to you; if you do this well, there won’t be any real estate left for the rest.