Spiritual bypassing can look like ignoring the pain and discord in the world and retreating to my comfort, my meditation, my transcendent spiritual practice.

Yet simply succumbing to despair, only listening to the prophecies of doom, and surrendering my will feels like another kind of bypassing.

To live in this world and continue to make efforts, knowing how challenging it is and yet believing what I do matters, is both liberating and heartbreaking.

Recently a friend shared with me a quote that I know now is by Antonio Gramsci, who was an Italian Communist imprisoned by Mussolini’s Fascist government, ostensibly from a letter written by him in prison: “I’m a pessimist because of intelligence, but an optimist because of will.”

Context aside, this quote came after a session of working with the intellectual, emotional, and willful parts of self with a client, in which I was surprised to hear the potent energy and optimism of the willful parts of self restrained by the fearful and suspicious protections of the intellect.

Gramsci’s summation cuts to the heart of a human psychology that I see in clients and myself, I am saying. The will only focused on the work and the effort, taken out of the personal and social meaning. To be will-driven is to be indifferent to what this effort means to me, who is against it, my personal story about it. To be intellect-driven is to be wholly ruled, often by fear, by a removed and totalizing belief that one knows everything and thus should not bother trying anything.

All of these, in a sense, are forms of bypassing the experience of the heart, which cares for others and experiences the personal impact of life. And yet it is the heart which may gather the insights of the intellect and the power of the will and direct it in ways both life-affirming and socially conscious.