Rachel Ricketts on Spiritual Bypassing & Why We Need To Quit It

Spiritual activism to me is my take on how you call folks of all shades and hues into the work of activating for racial justice. I always explain this in my workshops that the name "spiritual activism" is actually more about me (laughs) than it is about other people. It's the work that I do. I feel called by spirit to use the tools and mechanisms, guides, and offerings of spirit and consciousness to help other folks get called into the work, specifically white folks because they have the most work to do. They're the most behind, and they cause the most harm. It's racial justice work that is entrenched in connection, plus soul, spirit, and consciousness. It's an embodied approach to activism, which is, I think, one that is often missing.

I think it's really important to have an analytical left-brain approach to justice, based in facts and statistics and reason. There's certainly a time and place for that. I also think it's equally if not more important to have a heart-centered, embodied approach because if we are not going about this work in a way that resonates with every cell of our body, then we're never going to actually commit. … A lot of us are used to learning in a white heteropatriarchal way, which would require facts, statistics, and reason, and that's just not where I come from. This is a divine, feminine, intuitive, emotional approach to being, to learning, to processing, to healing, because that's what it is. If you're really committed to racial justice, then you're committed to healing yourself and collective healing. That's really the root and the basis for what I do.

Predominantly I mean white people thinking they're doing the work when they're not doing the work. Because this is cellular level. I'm talking about white supremacy, racism, heteropatriarchy—these are systems of oppression that have existed through all of our lifetimes and affected every single one of our ancestors, and so we've all been raised and entrenched in them, and they're in our cellular DNA. From birth. And so to overcome them requires a complete overhaul of everything we have ever known—and that is no easy task. This is the hardest task you will ever encounter because you have to face everything you've ever known about yourself, irrespective of your color. ... This is a complete overhaul of everything you've ever known and requires an ability to face your shadow. Most people are really ill-equipped to face their shadow. Truly. Truly.

There's a lot of spiritual bypassing going on, which is using spirit as a means to skirt around issues to stay in the light. Right? I talk about "love and light supremacy" a lot. It's this notion that spirituality means that things are light, and we stay positive, and we don't get dragged down in the negative. We don't talk about the hard stuff. And that is not spirituality. That is the opposite of spiritual. That's spiritual bypassing. That's using spiritual tools or offerings as a means to bypass the reality of people's lived experience, to bypass human emotions, to bypass discomfort.

I believe that we are all souls having human experiences. We are all intricately connected. I'm a very spiritual person, so there is a larger purpose. We are all energetic beings comprised of stars. We are all on this planet at this time for a reason. I believe all those things.

I'm by no means suggesting that you're bad because you're white or that you just need to sit around being like, "I have all this privilege. I'm an asshole." (Laughs.) No. You have all that privilege; that's great. I have a lot of privileges. I'm a black woman, so I'm oppressed and discriminated against in many ways, but I also have a lot of privileges, and so my job—everyone's job—is to utilize those privileges and spend them in spaces whenever possible. ... So if you hear people who are saying oppressive or discriminatory stuff, you say something. Because if you are doing your internalized work, you will not stand for it. Period. It's unacceptable for you.

It's imperative that we are prioritizing the comfort, well-being, voices, education, wisdom of black and indigenous women—women inclusive of trans, gender nonconforming, nonbinary, intersex women. And that obviously means that more white folks have to get out of the way. ... Not saying that you're wrong or bad. It's not saying that you can't lead in particular ways. But it's saying that the status quo has allowed you to move through the world with ease and freedom and priority and comfort in a way that the folks of the global majority, people of color, have never been able to.

If you believe that we are all connected and if you are a spiritual person who is linked into a higher being, then that is part of how we all get free. Because until black and indigenous women, who are the most oppressed people on the planet, are free, none of us are free. Period. That's the piece. That's the work. So creating more spaces for folks of color, especially black and indigenous women, is creating more space for all. For all.

A society, a community, can only ever run as fast as the slowest runner. And right now black and indigenous women are the slowest runners, not because we can't run fast but because we have a million additional obstacles in our way. And so as a collective community, it is our collective role and responsibility to remove those obstacles so we can all actually breathe easy and have access to freedoms.