How NOT to Spiritual Bypass: A Practical Guide to Avoid “Love and Light”

How do you practice spirituality responsibly?

Following my critique of ‘love and light’ spirituality that has become so prevalent in New Age communities, I also wanted to offer some actionable suggestions.

Critiquing “love and light” doesn’t mean rejecting care. It means refusing sentimental shortcuts and committing to the full work: the luminous practices of compassion and clarity and the difficult, necessary labour of shadow work and death work. Shadow work asks us to notice what is hidden, such as rage, grief, structural harm, and to sit with it until it can be transformed. Death work teaches endings, ritual closure, and how to make space for what must be released. Both are essential if compassion is to be accountable and real.

These are behaviours and habits you can adopt personally, in groups, and in ritual spaces to make sure compassion isn’t merely performative.

1. Slow the sentiment; act the responsibility.
Before offering a platitude, ask: what concrete step can I take right now to address this harm or need? Say that first, and follow through. Feeling warm and fuzzy is not a substitute for labour.

2. Name to yourself what you feel and why. Then widen your awareness beyond yourself.
Replace blanket positivity with short honest sentences: “I’m sad about this,” “I’m angry,” or “This makes me uncomfortable.” Then understand that your feelings aren’t everything, and your comfort is not the highest priority.

3. Hold witness, not applause.
When someone speaks hard truth, sit with it. Offer presence and questions that clarify, not immediate soothing. Witnessing looks like steady (daily) attention and clarifying, curious questions; it does not look like immediate cheering, platitudes, or emotional rescue. Those quick consolations often redirect the conversation back to the group’s comfort rather than the speaker’s need.

4. Ask: Who benefits from this consolation?
Before you comfort, consider whether your words protect the person or the system. If your “love and light” relieves a powerful person’s conscience while leaving harm in place, choose accountability instead.

5. Require context when sacred language is borrowed.
If you use words, prayers, or gestures from another lineage, name their origin and state your relationship to them. Don’t use sacred language as décor; attribute and, where appropriate, defer. Study with practitioners who are rooted in the culture the practice comes from.

6. Make reparative offers, not only spiritual ones.
When injustice shows up, offer time, money, labour, or advocacy and other specific acts that repair harm. A ritual sentiment should follow or accompany material repair because ritual without tangible care is theatre. Do not let acts of repair become props for self-congratulation.

7. Teach containment and aftercare.
If you lead ritual work, include grounding, named aftercare, and a clear return clause. Don’t leave people raw with trite reassurances. Closure is a practice.

8. Refuse tone-policing.
Name the difference between style and substance: blunt language about harm is not aggression by default. Protect speakers from being framed as “aggressive” simply because they’re speaking plainly. At the same time, “freedom” is not a licence for careless or abusive words; bluntness should not be an excuse to disregard others’ safety.

9. Centre those most impacted.
When harm is named, prioritize the needs and perspectives of those harmed. Let them set the terms for what “healing” should look like, not the most comfortable people in the room.

Wanting to engage in spiritual practice with both the light and dark in a safe and meaningful way?

A Samhain Séance: Scrying the Dark Stream (Hexagram 29) 

Thursday, Oct 30 from 6:00–8:00 PM PDT (live stream; recording provided)
Sliding scale pricing

Who it’s for
Grief workers, occult practitioners, serious seekers of necromantic practice, and curious creatives who want a disciplined, ethical approach to ancestor work and scrying.

What we do
A two-hour live-streamed Samhain ritual and practice session exploring Hexagram 29 (the Abysmal — water over water). We move between short teaching, guided water scrying, trigram-casting with the I Ching, offerings practice, and brief mini-readings grounded in animist and mediumship technique. I discuss how to hold danger and descent as initiatory forces while practising ethical necromancy and aftercare.

Takeaways

• A clear method for water scrying as a mirror of the unseen.

• Practical meanings of Hexagram 29 and how to use it as a structural map in séance work.

• Trigram transformation reading (how water moves into other trigrams and what that suggests).

• Concrete offering templates and how to integrate them into necromancy.

• A short aftercare and grounding protocol to protect nervous systems post-ritual.

Finding I Ching Clarity, online

Series One: I Ching Form
Series Two: I Ching Spirit
or the Full Arc of both Series One and Series Two

Who it’s for
Writers, grief workers, ritual practitioners, occultists, and curious creatives — anyone ready to sit with fast and slow change, endings, and thresholds. Ideal if you’re looking for inspiration, are blocked, grieving, holding transition, or want a disciplined method for timing and pattern-reading.

What we do
A structured, practice-led apprenticeship in the I Ching Book of Changes. Across monthly live sessions and guided practices, we teach how to read hexagrams as living patterns (and not something to memorize). You’ll learn:

• Line-work and trigram grammar (how single lines pivot meaning).

• Changing-lines practice (how transformation happens in a reading).

• Xi Ci (Great Commentary) principles: Dao, Qi, and relational action.

• Practical layering with other divinatory methods: casting protocol, offerings, grounding, and aftercare.

• Applied work: case studies, group casts, and journal prompts that turn readings into clear next steps.

Series One focuses on form (lines, trigrams, structure). Series Two deepens into spirit (Xi Ci, cosmology, and ritual application). The Full Arc weaves both into a two-year apprenticeship.

Following the spirits,

Mimi
Spirit medium and occultist

PS. Stay tuned for my upcoming I Ching Series, where we substantively and substantially explore Yin (shadow) and Yang (light) in a divinatory context.