Juanita Lepage MSW, RSW, BHP

Counselling & Energy Healing (289) 812-8089 Hamilton, Ontario

Joe Dispenza

High Frequency Life: Spiritual Bypassing or Not?

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When I was in my mid-twenties I went on a week-long retreat called Enlightened Warrior Camp. It was a fascinating combination of spiritual & warrior type activities. Afterwards when I returned home, I felt like I was on fire. People close to me noticed it too. Some people worried that I had joined some sort of cult. I felt energized and amazing.

Over time, this energy faded and I went back to my regular way of being in life, however ripples of that experience stay with me even now.

The Tony Robbins Style of Life

During that same period of time, Tony Robbins was very popular. My husband used to listen to some of his cassette tapes on his way to work in his twenties.

One of Tony’s big themes is the power of “changing your state”. He teaches many techniques including jumping into a cold plunge pool, dance like no ones watching, create energized gratitude & affirmations to shift your frequency and saying them every day.  He is committed to helping people create a life worth living.  

I’ve followed his trajectory over time with mixed feelings of intrigue, excitement, awe & fatigue. It seems so tiring to be in that energy all the time. Yet, as much as I kind of groan at Tony Robbins, I remember watching his Netflix documentary “I am Not your Guru” and realized I was being quite judgmental. He brings a lot of healing & inspiration to people & the world.

The New World With Joe Dispenza

(Side Bar: After I wrote this title, I googled Joe’s age – he’s 2 years younger than Tony Robbins. So interesting that while Joe Dispenza is more newly on the scene, he really isn’t that new.)

I chatted with some people who have attended Joe Dispenza’s retreats and I have also gone through a period of doing his meditations on a daily basis. Joe uses a different method than Tony to “enter the quantum field”, raise your frequency & create a life you want. What has made Joe’s method noteworthy, is that he has tons of testimonials from people who have attended his retreats who have healed themselves from physical issues that are deemed incurable by the medical community.

Again I find myself on one level generally annoyed at Joe’s demand of using so much will power to shift one’s state and then at the same time quite in awe of the transformation he’s brought into people’s lives.

But Is It a Spiritual Bypass?

Joe & Tony are both white cis-gendered American men.  Part of me has always been averse to their methods because I felt like they minimized oppression & pain and focused on shifting into a higher vibration.

Part of this aversion has also been present because with this demand of being in a high vibration, the new age community took this belief on by storm. A pressure emerged to always be in a “high vibration”.  Bad thing happened in your life? You must’ve caused it.  You should’ve been in a higher vibration. Poverty? You must have caused that too – clearly an issue in shifting your frequency. Don’t these attitudes blame oppressed people for their problems?

The pressure to be in a high vibration created a vat of shame that followed it. But don’t feel shame, because that’s bad too..so then there’s shame for feeling shame. In addition, it created anger at these methodologies – but anger’s not good either. So now what? Cold plunge? Use your will to change your state?

When horrible things happen in a person’s life, it isn’t generally helpful or appreciated to then judge them and tell them to change their state to create a better life for themselves. Feel some gratitude! Shift into the Quantum!

So What Should We Do?

I recently went to a short retreat where we discussed these dilemmas.  There were no concrete answers and I have no concrete answers, but this is such a deep and important topic to discuss when it comes to healing and also acknowledging oppression & making changes in our world.  Here are my thoughts:

It feels like this is another duality about life to be held within us:

  • We need to allow space for our “low frequency” feelings – they need to be validated and held with compassion and allowed to move.
  • Sometimes holding that compassionate space isn’t enough – we need to find that will-power within ourselves to shift our vibration to a higher frequency.

The dance between these two places is in interesting one. Stay too much solely shifting your frequency, and you could end up spiritually bypassing your emotions & this can lead to arrogance, judgment of others who are struggling, and shame within ourselves when we hit a rough patch in life. Bringing compassion & love to low frequency feelings can sometimes be the ticket to have them clear and move into a different vibration and sometimes they are so strong & sticky we can’t move out of them.

Therapy & Energy Healing

One place in my life that I have seen the value of both acknowledging & feeling emotions and also going beyond that is with integrating counselling & energy healing.  Therapy gives the place for feelings & for understanding our patterns & consciously noticing our patterns and making different choices. It also allows us to connect to our Wise Self that is ever present at the same time as our many different parts.

Energy Healing has been a place to bring in some grace. A place to allow things to shift beyond the conscious level. To invite something beyond ourselves into healing journey. Sometimes I find that things don’t need to be talked about anymore. Holding unconditional love is often a powerful place of healing.

What Are Your Thoughts Or Experiences With This Topic?

I bring up this topic, because I also want to hear from you.  What do you think about the balance of acknowledging oppression & feeling “low vibration” emotions and also that intentionally raising your frequency can have incredible results?

What has been most healing for you when you hit a rough patch in your life?

Alright – that felt like a lot today, but I hope you could feel my excitement about this topic too.

How Do Spiritual Leaders Deal With Their Anger?

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Years ago I googled, “Dalai Lama Angry”. I was in a state of honestly wondering what spiritual leaders do with their anger. I was tired of being in spiritual and psychotherapy communities that by-passed their anger. In the spiritual world I rolled my eyes every time I read some trite advice about “letting it go” or “opening your heart”. In the psychotherapy world I felt anger when models said “anger is a secondary emotion” or “you just need to shift your thoughts to change your emotion”.

Um, anger can actually be a very accurate response to a situation – anger can sometimes be incredibly healthy. Too often the anger gets the focus and not the problem underneath.

I remember feeling relief as I watched a Youtube video of the Dalai Lama lashing out towards someone. Part of me felt relieved at seeing such a strong Spiritual Leader having such a human moment.

Shifting The Stigma About Anger

I have been thrilled to see a slight opening in dialogue about anger emerge from spiritual leaders.

Here are few!

Jack Kornfield

Jack Kornfield is a leader in the Buddhist meditation world. He was interviewed by Tim Ferriss in June. Here’s a link to their conversation: How to Overcome Apathy and Find Beautiful Purpose.

Jack tells a great story about returning from a few years in retreat in a monastery and finding himself struggling with his anger as he started to be around people (right?!!). He shares that for him, he realized that he had a strong discomfort and judgment towards his own anger. He did some body-based psychotherapy to help him process his anger and learn new ways to be present with it. He doesn’t share his ongoing journey with anger, but I love that he shares that he needed something different than meditation to help him.

Tim then shares how the process of therapeutically expressing anger, generally just makes him more angry and more stuck in his anger. Jack gives him some ideas from a Buddhist approach.

Dan Harris

First of all, Dan would likely hate be called a spiritual leader. He is a news anchor who had a panic attack on live television and that was the impetus to start exploring meditation. He is wonderful for anyone who is more cynical about spirituality, and he has a great sense of humour.

Recently he gave a Ted Talk: The Benefits of Not Being a Jerk Towards Yourself. This one is short and sweet (13:39). Dan shares about his cringing hesitation to try being kinder to himself and his journey to get there. After practising meditation for years, he decided to do a 360 review (a corporate type of performance evaluation). He was noted as being arrogant, rude, and a diva. He then set out to change this and shares the multitude of things he tried and that a (spoiler alert) silent meditation retreat with a a loving-kindness approach towards himself, was a big piece in helping him shift. He realized that if he was nicer to himself, he was then able to be nicer to others. After his second 360 review, he shares his transformation.

Joe Dispenza

I’m new to the Joe Dispenza world, and his work is often interpreted as by-passing sadness, anger, grief, and the more challenging emotions. Here’s a great article he wrote trying to dispel that understanding: Emotions Are Not Your Enemy. He doesn’t share at all about his own journey with anger, but he tries to normalize the process of feeling emotions and highlights his work is often beneficial for anyone who finds that they are stuck in those emotions and past experiences. If you’re a new subscriber and missed my most recent post that includes him – here’s the link to learn more My Crush On Physics.

And More?

If you’ve seen a spiritual leader share about their own journey with anger, please share that with me, I’d love to hear more.

And if you’re curious to explore anger a little more, I seem to write at least one post a year about his topic, so here are a couple of them.

My Crush On Physics

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When I was in high school, I loved physics. I was at the exciting point in time where physicists were discovering that light was both a particle and wave. It was also when Stephen Hawking published A Brief History of Time and the concept of black holes wowed me.

Unfortunately, as much as I liked physics, I never did very well in those classes. My brain could never really understand it in the way I wanted to no matter how I tried.

When I went to the Barbara Brennan School of Healing, part of their marketing was to highlight that Barbara Brennan was a Nasa physicist. And yes, I was impressed and curious how this woman bridged her scientific background into become a master energy healer and teacher.

Over time many people have tried to bridge this gap with books and teachings – Bruce Lipton, Lynne McTaggart, and Dean Radin were some of the first authors I came across. And again, I would read their books and understand parts of it – but I would reach a point in the book were it got pretty fuzzy.

My husband studied physics in university and he recently recommended a podcast about quantum physics. Once again, I eagerly listened to it, and you know what – I didn’t understand all of it, but I did understand parts of it. And as fuzzy as it is in my brain, I still find it all quite exciting.

The podcast was Tim Ferriss interviewing Donald Hoffman – The Case Against Reality, Beyond SpaceTime, Rethinking Death, Panpsychism, QBism and More.

I mean – the Case against Reality? beyond SpaceTime? Rethinking Death? – All things I’m interested in. The long-story-short that I got from this episode is that the Newtonian model of physics is limited. Our material world and it’s laws are only one part of our reality. In terms of light being both a particle and a wave – the same can be said for everything including ourselves.

If you’ve ever had an energy healing, had connection to the spirit world, or had weird things happen in your life that defy material-based logic, this will be of no surprise to you. Most people I meet have at least one mysterious experience in their life, not defined by logic, that is often said in a hushed tone of not wanting to be judged for talking about their experience out loud. Naming our energetic parts as real is not a way to get rid of the mystery, but to add some validity and clarity to the complexity of being in a human on earth in this space and time. Our brain and it’s function of deduction and understanding is only one aspect of ourselves.

Dr. Joe Dispenza

More than one person in my life has mentioned the name of Joe Dispenza. I kept him in the back of my brain as someone to learn more about. Out of curiosity, I decided to read his most recent book Becoming Supernatural.

And you know what I loved? He explained quantum physics in a way that my brain understood.

Side Note: For all of you science people, my husband has pointed out that while his descriptions make sense, Dispenza is explaining theories more as facts, so take that into account. Yet at the same time he has a beautiful way of taking science-speak and putting it into terms most of us can understand.

The exciting part of acknowledging ourselves as both “a particle and a wave” or both matter and energy, is that it gives us more than one way to heal in our lives and shift our lives into what we want them to be.

Joe Dispenza has had incredible success in helping people overcome serious health issues in their lives with his approach.

Counselling & Energy Healing

I have loved combining both talk therapy and energy healing. Sometimes we need to understand ourselves and our patterns in lives so that we can make conscious changes. Other times, we benefit from having a hand with this by balancing, clearing, and recharging our energy field. Energy healing offers support, clarity, and energizes and solidifies the intentions you have in your life. I find that everyone thrives with a different combination, and that this combination changes over time and situation. I have seen people make and maintain big and small shifts in their lives with this combination.

Guided Meditation

Recently, I have been enjoying Joe Dispenza’s Morning Meditation and his Chakra Blessing Meditation. He has quite a variety of meditations to choose from on YouTube. If he’s not your style, I encourage you to try out other meditations that have an uplifting and/or supportive quality. If you haven’t meditated, or haven’t meditated in a while, guided meditation is nice way to ease into regular meditation.

Avoiding The Spiritual Bypass

Bringing energy healing into therapy offers a person an element of grace on their journey that is beyond their contributions of effort or will. There are always stories of people who have spiritual epiphanies without seemingly having to make any changes in their lives. At this point in time, I have not experienced that to be the norm. More often than not I see the effort to “bright-side” or always be positive and never acknowledge anger or shame or grief (for fear of bringing more of that into one’s life), as spiritual bypassing. Spiritual bypassing is a mask that covers the pain and true feelings that lie underneath.

I see Joe Dispenza’s work as matching very well with the psychotherapy model of Internal Family Systems. Joe Dispenza helps people, “raise their vibration” to joy, love, and higher frequencies”. Internal Family Systems helps people connect to “Self” – the part of ourselves that acts more as a witness to our thoughts and opens space to consider a different story behind our old patterns and then hold space for the wounds and the heavier emotions we feel, so that they can finally move and clear.

In my work using Internal Family Systems therapy, I have seen people heal old patterns.

Either way, both methods require time and commitment to strengthening these parts of ourselves that can be in a “higher vibration” so that a person than can also hold space for all the shadow parts, old patterns and emotions connected to old wounds. Too often in the spiritual world, I have witnessed a fear of acknowledging anger, pain and shame. These are not emotions to be feared – they are often quite valuable and have served a purpose. AND these parts of yourselves are not the full picture of who you are and what you bring.

Also both methods hold an element of grace around timing. There is no sweet spot or amount of time or energy that guarantees a specific result. However, the energy put into shifting old patterns will not be for nothing – they will help you interact with life with more vitality and less heaviness.

Whew!

Alright, that was a lot. If you’ve done any of Joe Dispenza’s work, I’d love to hear about it. And if you’re a physics nerd or have a physics crush like I do..I see you 🙂

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