Spiritual Bypassing is an especially relevant term on social media right now. TikTok user, @yourspiritualmermaid, defines it as trying to force yourself not to be sad or angry and “trying to force gratitude onto yourself.” And this is the definition on which I want to focus as I talk about Abraham Hicks. But first, I have to tell you how I got all the way to Abraham from the IFB. In a previous post, I talked about going from severe fundamentalism to less severe fundamentalism before arriving at non-demoninationalism.
The majority of the latter was during the three years prior to the move the children and I made from NC to AZ. During that time, I had accepted a nurse management job in the NC mountains. And the daily commute from the foothills was too far. But I was still paying the mortgage on the old place which meant I couldn’t afford cable at the new place. However, when we moved in, the cable was still active. But there was only one channel, CBN, the Christian Broadcasting Network. I knew that my father would say all of their content was heresy taught by apostates.
Regardless, through that channel, which the cable company never did turn off, I learned to embrace “easy believism” and “the prosperity gospel” which IFB’s love to condemn. Joel Osteen quickly became my favorite preacher because his messages were so uplifting, At the same time, my employer’s corporate nurse consultant, Noble Morissey-Longtail, whose job it was to teach me to be a leader the company way, introduced me to motivational speakers, Jim Rohn and Les Brown. He also wouldn’t sit and commiserate with me nor would he allow me to do so in his presence.
Endorsement of viewing the glass as half-full was liberating.
And although some of the religious influencers to whom I listened along the way have since been canceled, it doesn’t change anything about my experience. See, for me, their words were like planks on a bridge, on which I was walking, away from where I was, and towards where I wanted to be. I’m also talking about the spiritual influencers I encountered after relocating to Phoenix. By the way, I still took the kids to church for a little while after the move.
I chose the church I thought was the most open minded.
And then I picked a different one. But after that, I turned to books, the internet and the University of YouTube. I listened to Bruce Lipton, whose book, The Biology of Belief, I had found just before leaving NC. I listened to all of the teachers from The Secret. And I also discovered Louise Hay, whose magical voice came through the stereo seakers, while I drove to my patients’ homes. This was vaguely around the same time that the previously mentioned patient’s husband introduced to me the book, Dying To Be Me.
The YouTube algorithm brought Abraham Hicks to me as well. However, much of their message was not only beyond my comprehension, but it was also very annoying to me. So I usually just clicked away after a short time. However, after my introduction to marijuana because of my BBL, and especially after the start of my employment at the crisis line, I became more willing to listen and I was gradually able to understand. And once I embraced Abraham’s teachings, I went in neck deep.
I listened without an ear piece for hours a day for months on end while annoying everyone in the house or car. In this entry, I won’t break down Abraham’s five steps (the shortcut) for creating one’s own reality. However, I will say the crux of it is that the individual is supposed to find better and better feeling thoughts. In so doing, their vibration will rise which will then attract to them matching high vibrational people and experiences. And appreciation, Abraham says, is the primary tool for finding better feeling thoughts.