We've all had that friend who just went through something devastating and seems almost too okay, or been that person ourselves, turning to faith or practice or the certainty that everything happens for a reason, and finding, at least for a while, that it actually works. In this episode, Shagun explores spiritual bypass, a term coined by transpersonal psychologist John Welwood for the tendency to use spiritual ideas and practices to sidestep unresolved emotional pain, and makes the case that it may be less a failure of the spiritual path than a necessary resting point along it. To illustrate what spiritual bypass actually feels like from the inside, she shares a live coaching session with Ava, who arrives less than a week after a blindsiding breakup with parents involved and marriage on the horizon, and is, somehow, calm. The session raises a ques ...