Idiot Compassion, Spiritual Bypassing, and Other Mis-steps on My Journey So Far
This is my “Eat, Pray, Love” story, only with zero prayers, and no love.
I wasn’t allowed to have nice things, and that seemed to include pre-packaged systems of belief.
I had been born to atheists in a multi-religious country. Religion was treated in my family as opiate of the weak-minded masses. For most of my upbringing, I would quietly find flaws or inconsistencies in my friends’ religious beliefs, and I stayed unaffiliated for the most part. As I got older, I sometimes wished I had the comfort my friends seemed to have, even though worship held no attraction for me.
Around 2005, I picked up a book on meditation from the public library in Cary, NC. It was easy to follow, and surprising: The author was a Buddhist nun who had spent time in Asia, and in my native country of Singapore. On my next trip home, I even found that she had teaching dates there that conveniently fit my schedule.
I attended her talks and workshops, and found myself taking quickly to meditation and quiet visualisation. As an artist, I found it rather easy and natural.
Spiritual Ego and Incomplete Compassion
Buddhist temples are a dime a dozen in Asia. The Buddhism I’d seen up to that point in 2005 was mostly subscribed by grandmothers and aunties, who would every so often go to the temple to burn incense and pray to Guan Yin for dispensations (something my privileged butt didn’t need).
In 2007, my then-husband and I moved (back) to Singapore. I was pretty seriously Buddhist by then, reading homages to the 21 Taras whenever I could. I was even casually vegetarian.
It was Tibetan Buddhism that had hooked me in. I admired the beauty and detail of Himalayan thangkas, and was happy to learn their symbolic meanings and focus on them in meditation. This brand of Buddhism was more conceptual than the supplication I’d always seen, and to me, this made it a better spiritual path. (And therefore, I was “better” than others for choosing it.)
In the Buddhist retreats I attended, compassion was continually emphasised. I didn’t resist — in fact, I was already something of a chest-beating, granola-eating social justice warrior, mad at the world since my teens about clueless people and powerful corporations poisoning the planet and putting profit over people.
Intellectually, and maybe with the underprivileged, I did have compassion, but in meditation classes, all it would take was an ignoramus asking dumb questions for me to lose my shit.
Doing It Wrong
To be honest, I was mad all the time. It was hard to figure out; I kept seeing insensitive and seemingly lazy people not comprehending the consequences of their choices.
Of course this was where my compassion was needed, but I struggled to understand their minds and decision-making processes. (Perhaps it is little wonder I eventually wound up studying psychology.) I couldn’t understand why they didn’t know the things I knew or hadn’t read the things I read to make their “best” decisions.
I had always been a perfectionist — so averse to making mistakes that I often had analysis paralysis. I either avoided challenges or researched the heck of them before I did absolutely nothing.
My anger towards others masked many things:
- A lack of patience and acceptance towards anyone who made mistakes, myself included
- Real anger towards those who had judged me
- My cowardice and lack of self-confidence that prevented me from sharing information I’d gained from time, experience, and research
- A childish expectation that I should be visible and understood even when I had not spoken up.
- A complete lack of belief that I even deserved to be heard, because I felt that saying anything would only draw questioning, mockery, or dismissal. (I didn’t yet understand what traumatic conditioning was.)
The toxic positivity rife in Buddhist circles (despite the best efforts of some teachers) did nothing to help me understand myself or my anger.
Motherhood and Weaponized Compassion
In 2009 I became pregnant. At the time, I was working as a licensed history guide. This job involved some physical exertion that was not recommended in the last trimester.
At the time, my employer was a problematic company with a high staff turnover. They tended to overbook tours and not have sufficient guides to work. I had already found my free time and boundaries constantly encroached by their demands.
Turns out that compassion gets all but impossible to show others when one is desperately in need of rest and recuperation. I constantly found myself arguing for mercy and time off before the last 3 months, and not getting it. I would rage and wish the worst possible things against my captors, who kept holding my work contract above my head.
Then after the baby arrived, I found myself constantly begging for more help from my own partner. I was beset by insomnia, hyperthyroidism, and exhaustion, and the baby required special care. Qualified help was short; the help from my parents was a mixed bag. One weekend, both the ex and I were sick and needed help. I appealed for help from relatives (playing mahjong with my mother at the time) and was rebuffed. I dared to be angry at them. They punished me with ostracization. I spiraled into rage, hopelessness, and despair.
And then, my brother died.
The hitherto advice I’d been getting to show others compassion during my post-partum difficulties stopped, because finally, this one loss (unlike my sleep, waking hours, health and sense of support) was harder to minimize or ignore.
After this, Buddhism and its constant appeals to compassion lost its shine. I never felt as if I got any that helped me when I needed it most. My brother hadn’t, either.
Dark Night of the Soul
Spiritual bypassing is the use of spiritual practices and beliefs to disown one’s deep-seated issues, problematic behavior, and real-life challenges.
I had thought meditation would be the answer to everything. But motherhood, physical illness, exhaustion and loss (and later, divorce) would prove me wrong, and no spiritual perfectionism could help me bypass the grieving and raging process.
For someone who had been taught to treat all feelings, emotions, and needs as shameful weakness, the realization was hard and scary. And, it had become clear that I could only emote when alone, because no comfort, only overreactions, would come from the people around me. They were the people who had raised me suppress everything, the same way they’d raised my brother.
To not feel. To not have problems. To pretend everything was OK. To grit one’s teeth and white-knuckle through life. To hold everything in until the dam broke.
And when it did for me, I was treated as out of control and over the top in my asks and requests.
It took me three decades to realise that going through all this, me being human and having needs and feelings about things was not the actual problem. It had never been.
But meditation, dissociating, and putting on the stoic face worked well to cover everything up, in Buddhism as much as New Age. (I found New Age did help me accept loving messages, instead of trying to deny all my experiences with dependent arising. It was also more welcoming of the art I did.)
The Way Out
I would find out later that counselors and therapists are trained to hold space for intense emotions. That they are trained to help people identify their needs — and that emotional, social, and creative needs are real and not meant to be shamed. Mental health professionals recognise and celebrate sensitivity and self-reflection. They know that people have more than base physiological needs for food, clothing and shelter.
This was not what I’d grown up with, at all. And so the story actually does go on longer, but at least at this point, there was light in the darkness when I realised that my artmaking and love for my daughter could pull me out of there.
The story of that, I suppose, is about how I created my first meaningful published work. (The Self-Love Oracle combined my paintings of nearly 2 decades with supportive messages crafted out of experience.) I think that’s going to take another entry.
