Step into a conversation that bridges the worlds of inner awakening and real-world action with this episode of Exploring the Mystical Side of Life. Join host Linda Lang and special guest Hawah Kasat—mystic, poet, and host of the Everlutionary podcast—as they unravel the profound topic of Spirituality without Illusion.

Hawah reminds us that true spirituality isn’t about escaping pain or “raising our vibration” above the realities of the world. Instead, it’s about embracing the full spectrum of human experience—and learning to hold both the absolute and relative truths at once. By doing so, we become sacred activists, bringing love, compassion, and wisdom into every corner of our lives and communities.

Here are three inspiring takeaways from this transformative discussion:

🔹 Embrace Both Truths: True spiritual growth lies in holding the absolute truth of oneness and the relative truths of our lived experiences—especially the hardships faced by marginalized communities. Ignoring either is spiritual bypassing.

🔹 Sacred Activism Starts Within: Being present with your emotions and the suffering around you fuels genuine change. Compassion, listening, and healthy boundaries open the door to transformation, both individually and collectively.

🔹 Transform Illusion into Empowerment: Rather than prematurely forgiving or ignoring pain, real healing invites us to acknowledge and process our shadows. Forgiveness, empathy, and mindful engagement are potent forces in restoring both personal and planetary balance.

Let Hawah’s heartfelt wisdom inspire your journey toward a spirituality that’s not only mystical, but also deeply engaged with life. Tune in for practical insights on living your highest truth—right here, right now.

 

 

Transcript

Hawah Kasat:
“Oh, I don’t associate with negativity because it lowers my vibration.” I’ve heard that before in our communities. And you know, if we’re really doing this work, our vibration… first of all, our vibration cannot be lowered.

Announcer: Welcome to Exploring the Mystical side of Life with your host, Linda Lang.

Linda Lang:
Hi, this is Linda Lang from ThoughtChange.com we are Exploring the Mystical Side of Life once again this week. If you enjoy our conversations, remember to subscribe, share with a friend. Today we are talking spiritual bypassing. I have mystic, poet and community leader Hawah Kasat with me. Hawah is also the host of the Everlutionary podcast.

Hawah Kasat:
Welcome how thank you, Linda, for having me. I’m really, really grateful to be here and in your company today.

Linda Lang:
We have a beautiful topic to talk about, something that a lot of people maybe could use a little clarity on. We’re talking about spiritual bypassing. So for the record, Hawah, how would you define spiritual bypassing?

Hawah Kasat:
Yeah, that’s, that’s a great question. I. I would begin by taking a moment to really understand when we use a spiritual value we have, or a spiritual hope that we have, as a way to minimize or to ignore or to not acknowledge the real suffering or the real pain or the real injustice that’s happening in the world. When we’re spiritually bypassing, we sometimes can not acknowledge the shadow side and the work, the real work, that exists when we are truly engaging in what is sacred activism. And sacred activism in many ways for me, in my heart, is, is the opposite of spiritual bypassing. So the first part of being able to recognize when I’m spiritual bypassing, that’s, that’s the first step towards becoming a spiritual activist and a sacred activist.

Linda Lang:
That’s a really interesting phrase that you use because a lot of people don’t put activism and spirituality together.

Hawah Kasat:
Yeah, that’s right. Well, and a lot of people… some people who are, who are on this path and on this life journey sometimes can become overwhelmingly committed to the response or the, the disposition of it’s all “love and light.” That everything’s perfect, exactly as it is, it’s all according to plan, everything’s exactly as the Universe wants it. You may have heard this terminology in your spiritual communities, and it’s important to name and understand that the response, especially when there is real suffering in the world, when, when there is real grief in the world and there’s real pain in the world, when we’re spiritually bypassing, there is a tendency to ignore that grief or ignore that suffering or say through the response we have which oftentimes is a non response. We bypass the reality. And so for me, Linda, like part of, part of this work of being a sacred activist is understanding that there are two truths. There is an absolute truth and there is a relative truth, right?

And the absolute truth is the truth that those who might be engaging in spiritual bypassing are holding on to so tight, they’re just grasping to the absolute truth. You might hear, “Well, there is no color. I don’t believe in race. We’re all one race. It’s the human race. We’re just one human race.” Now, on an absolute level, absolutely. We are one human race; that is an absolute truth. And there is a spiritual significance to having that realization. However, if that individual cannot also hold the relative truth; the relative truth is the direct experience that we have moment to moment while living here on this planet Earth.

And that relative truth shows us that actually some people are treated differently than other people. There’s a history of slavery, the transatlantic slave trade. There’s a history of civil rights and apartheid in South Africa. There’s a history of women being marginalized and kept from, from education and having their own credit cards and having the right to vote. There’s an actual real history where there’s epigenetics and, and sorry, there’s eugenics and the whole eugenics movement, right? Where you have people with a certain color skin that have been pedestalized in our society, in our culture. So the relative truth is actually different than the absolute truth. The relative truth also exists and we can’t deny that. And if we deny the relative truth, we’re bypassing; we’ve lost sight of reality as it is.

And we’re living in Maya. We’re living in illusion and we’re holding on to just the absolute truth. And in that way we dismiss and we dehumanize the experience of people that are in marginalized groups that live on this planet, that don’t have the same access, that don’t have the same freedom to practice their spirituality or mysticism or to access health care, right? So a sacred activist is one who can hold both the absolute truth and the relative truth. And a sacred activist can hold both of these in, in the same container. And that to me is the bridge, that is the work of the modern day spiritualist. The true yogis, the true mindfulness practitioners, the true reiki practitioners, we’re not bypassing the relative truth. And that requires a lot of work, Linda.

That requires looking at our own shadows; none of us are free from implicit bias, and I don’t care how spiritual you are. If you think you are free from implicit bias, then I think there’s a little bit of an illusion that, that we’re living under. And so it’s being able to do that work of, of acknowledgment and then holding the space for transformation.

Linda Lang:
I think for many people, being on this spiritual path is very personal and internal, and they don’t necessarily include the rest of the world in their path. But what you’re talking about is having that spiritual connection, developing yourself, doing your healing work and radiating that out and being a force for change in the world, right?

Hawah Kasat:
Absolutely. And in addition to that, Linda, not using our spirituality as a way to escape or, or suppress my own psychological or emotional struggles or suffering. Right? It’s me also engaging with my negative emotions instead of just trying to avoid them. And that terminology, “everything happens for a reason” or just “stay positive,” that is, that’s a part of, part of that non-acknowledgment of reality, which is an old teaching, an ancient teaching of the yogic texts of the Patanjal Yoga sutras. We learn it in the Vedic texts, the Manduka Upanishadas. We learn this in the Bhagavad Gita.

For those that are yoga practitioners or teachers, karma and yoga does not teach us to just accept our reality as it is. It teaches us to see reality and understand reality as it is. But it also, it also brings us to a space of disciplined awareness and concentration and wisdom, right? So that we can actually have the agency to make choice in our lives, to remove ourselves from the cycles of karma and samsara, right? So that, that, that is an active, it’s an active interplaying with the world. It’s not this, “Oh, this is how the Universe wanted it to be.” That’s also bypassing, because when we just say, “Oh, well, that’s just, that’s just what the universe wanted,” we’re forgetting something really important here, which is, first of all, you are the Universe. Right? Let’s go into absolute truth again. In absolute truth, I am the Universe. The whole universe is inside of me.

So now I’m saying the universe is outside of me, which again is a misunderstanding of absolute truth. And now I’m also denying the relative truth, which is like, I can sit and meditate for hours a day and become aware of my sensations. I can become aware of my reactive patterns. I can change how I react to my irritability or my anger or my hatred. And when I can start interrupting those behavior patterns, I begin to become the Universe in motion, and set the Universe in motion. So it’s not just, “Oh, I got into a car accident that was just supposed to happen.” Don’t bypass the things that you may have done or not done to have gotten into that car accident. Because now you’re losing your agency; you’re losing the whole teaching of yoga. You just lost the whole teaching.

Linda Lang:
You’ve lost your power because you’re giving your responsibility away.

Hawah Kasat:
Exactly, exactly.

Linda Lang:
There is a very powerful prayer or intention that would be to “let go and let God.” It’s a form of surrender and it can be very deeply motivating in a non-spiritual-bypass way. But it’s such a fine line. Such a fine line.

Hawah Kasat:
It really is. It’s walking a tightrope, right? So enlightenment and, and self-realization is walking a tightrope. And what’s very interesting is in the early stages of our spiritual progress, it’s very important to have a seed of desire to make progress, to change or transform my emotional body, my physical body, my spiritual body. That’s important to get the inertia to start us on the path. However, as we progress further and further on the path, what’s more and more important is that we let go of even that desire to achieve liberation, to achieve moksha. Right? So that’s the tightrope because we need some of that initial spiritual motivation, (and) be like, “I really want to live a liberated life.

I want to experience samadhi, I want to, I want to have like a new relationship with myself and the Universe.” And ultimately to take the final few steps on the path. Even that desire has to be shedded. Because if we’re holding on to achieving something, we’re actually, in the teachings, we’re never going to achieve that thing. Let go, let God. It’s beautiful. It’s also a choice to let go of something. Right? So we need to also remember that to let go is a choice. Right? And that’s not bypassing. That’s me consciously saying, “I’m gonna let go of that.”

We, we have to be mindful of premature forgiveness, you know, and that’s also spiritual bypassing. When we’re prematurely forgiving someone because we’re like, “Ooh yeah, I, I’m enlightened, I don’t care anymore. That’s in the past, I live in the present. You know, the past is not, you know, something I associate with.” But still inside, we haven’t done the work to fully clear the trauma. And so we’re still stuck in cycles of spiritual trauma. And so, that’s also important that we can see that. That, you know, just don’t say you’re okay if you’re not okay. You’re not doing yourself a service, and you’re not doing anyone else a service.

Linda Lang:
It’s another illusion. Right?

Hawah Kasat:
Yeah.

Linda Lang:
So, what I’m hearing from you is that the goal is to really be present, and present with what’s in your environment, what’s on your plate, what you’re feeling, what you’re experiencing. It’s like living mindfulness. Being present and making very clear, intentional choices about where you want to share your energy, let’s say.

Hawah Kasat:
Yeah, that’s right.

Linda Lang:
And then in doing that, we can avoid spiritual bypassing.

Hawah Kasat:
Yeah, we can avoid the spiritual bypassing, and we can avoid believing or holding really tightly to just the one, one part of the, the two truths that both exist simultaneously. Because a lot of this work for me, Linda, is about holding multiple truths at the same time. We live in a world that is absent of healthy dialogue. We live in a world where there is spiritual narcissism, people believing that my spiritual path is, is more superior or better to your spiritual path. Right? We live in a world where listening is

become not the cultural norm. And for me, spirituality is about developing listening, developing patience, developing dialogue. Dialogue for truths that are different than your truth. And I think a lot of the violence and the pain in the world is, is a result of us holding on to believing that my truth is the only truth possible to exist. And everyone else needs to be like me or needs to think the way I think or feel the way I feel. And that creates a lot of misunderstanding. It creates a lot of oppression and marginalization back to the human race. And we’re one human race.

I mean, racism is a real thing. Poverty is a real thing. People live without running water and without access to health care. People in this world die of diarrhea still, to this day. I am more of a mystic and a poet when I can see those things and not try to change the channel because I’m raising my vibration. “Oh, I don’t associate with negativity because it lowers my vibration.” I’ve heard that before in our communities. And, you know, if we’re really doing this work, our vibration.

First of all, our, our vibration cannot be lowered. I am a truly embodied being. Wherever I walk, whatever space I’m in, whether I’m in the middle of a conflict zone and a war, whether I’m in the middle of a conversation, that’s toxic, my vibration just doesn’t shift because of what other people are, the stimulus coming at me. My vibration is my vibration.

Linda Lang:
It’s an internal job.

Hawah Kasat:
It’s an internal job. Right. So, it’s not like I need to raise my vibration or keep my vibration protected from this. If that’s how I’m seeing the world, I’m missing an important part of understanding the cultivation that I need to do inside to make sure that I’m steady. And even in the middle of the hurricane, I’m still in a place of calm and tranquility and high vibration.

Linda Lang:
One thing that you said, Hawah, that I think is really important, I hear it from a lot of my own clients similar, similarly expressed that, you know, just because you avoid it or you turn your face and you’re not looking at it, it doesn’t mean that it’s not there. Just because you’re not feeling that emotion, it doesn’t mean that emotion isn’t there. And it settles in and creates problems in your emotional health, your mental health, your physical health, your spiritual connection to Source and to other people. It’s, it’s like an ostrich sticking its head in the sand, pretending that it isn’t there.

Hawah Kasat:
Yeah. Pretending it’s not there. Yeah. I’m feeling this is what we need. These are the conversations that we need to be having within our spiritual communities right now. Because right now the world really needs a lot of sacred activism.

Linda Lang:
Now, when you say sacred activism, it doesn’t mean you have to go join a picket line or chain yourself to a tree. Right? How can you express your activism in a sacred way? Or another way of saying that might be your choice or your intention?

Hawah Kasat:
Yeah. I would begin by first of all having curiosity about the things that we don’t know about, having curiosity about people’s experiences. Developing empathy is a great way to begin a journey of spiritual activism. I believe that action and a movement towards peace-building and justice, it begins by developing compassion and empathy. And so that that requires really taking a moment to make sure we’re not bypassing that experience. And that leads us into deep work with our interpersonal relationships and how we show up in interpersonal relationships. It might impact the way you respond when one of your friends is really hurt and grieving. And instead of making a response that dismisses their pain or dismisses their grief, rather you hold space for their pain and you hold space for the grief and you acknowledge that that’s also real and true.

Those beginning interpersonal relationships, I think they begin to create ripples into our community because once we start seeing pain and grief, we then begin to start seeing how it may also be in other parts of our community, whether that’s in our schools or whether that’s in our doctor’s office. It’s like really being able to sit with the full spectrum of human emotion. And I really believe, Linda, that at that point, one will be called in a way to know how to best engage in a way that they are able to with the resources they have, whether that’s physical resources, whether that’s emotional or spiritual resources. But I think the first step is really not trying to pull the curtain over it and act like it doesn’t exist. I think when we try to act like it doesn’t exist or that it’s not real or it’s beneath us, then I think we run into problems.

Linda Lang:
So once again, it’s about listening. It’s about listening and taking appropriate action.

Hawah Kasat:
Yep, that’s right.

Linda Lang:
So there are many people, I’m sure you’ve heard too, that thoroughly believe that your thoughts and your intentions create or they go into that creative pot. And there are many people who would look at someone who, who is maybe experiencing some challenges or poverty, downtrodden, whatever circumstance, and look and say that they have created that that’s the result of their previous actions. And they feel maybe it’s not their responsibility to show them a different type of energy that could help them actually heal that.

Hawah Kasat:
Yeah. So back to walking on the tightrope and understanding the balance, the push and the pull, the holding on versus letting go. I think part of the work of being really present in this world today is learning how to create healthy boundaries. And so let’s not mix up creating healthy boundaries with spiritual bypassing. Okay? What is happening in the world. And we have to create healthy boundaries to make sure we can keep a container for ourselves where we don’t become overwhelmed or over anxious to the point where we become paralyzed by fear of what is happening in the world. Right? So learning to create those healthy boundaries, learning when you get to your kind of limit in terms of how much you’re able to take in right now, creating some healthy boundaries there, not ignoring, not ignoring, but saying, “Okay, I need a break.

I got to take some time. I’ve really got to just go inwards.” There’s an important time for that. Look, I would never say don’t go inwards. I sit long silent meditation retreats; I’ve been practicing deep stillness for over 20 years in silent retreats. But I come out of my silent retreats more prepared, more inner-resourced to engage in the world in a way where I have my full creativity, my full power. And then there’s times where I get tired and I have to take a step back, you know, and I can’t look at my phone for a few days. I have to be off social media, you know, so it’s like, healthy boundaries are really important.

And this is why this conversation is very nuanced. Right, Linda? It’s a very nuanced conversation because it’s not black and white, you know, and if we see spirituality as black and white, we’re missing the texture, the, the beauty of all of the ways that we are all uniquely at our own place in our journey. My journey and where I am in my journey is different than where you are on your journey. And there’s nothing wrong with that. That’s, that’s fine. We have to meet each other where we are, and we have to do that, that work. So I would say healthy boundaries and learning how to cultivate them without bypassing.

Linda Lang:
I think for me, I would say it really boils down to intention. In that moment that that person looks at someone and says, “Well, they’ve created whatever’s happening in their life” and turn the other way… because it can be a bit of bypassing or it can be that need for, you know, kind of tough love, letting them experience what they have created. So it’s like you say, it’s not black and white. Right. Every instance is a different expression, and it could go either way.

Hawah Kasat:
Absolutely.

Linda Lang:
And it’s a detachment, almost. Like the total, “his is me, and that’s them.” Yeah. Stick your head in the sand kind of thing.

Hawah Kasat:
Yeah, yeah, stick your head in the sand. And, you know, the binary. When we talk about the black and the white, we’re talking about the binary and the world of binaries. And in many ways, when I was talking about the absolute and the relative truth, I’m discussing the binaries. And oftentimes we’re caught in one reality more than the other reality. And that black and white thinking can actually become a obstacle within our spiritual growth and our spiritual progress. So we do have to break out of the binary in how we practice and show up. Whether that’s on our yoga mat, whether that’s in our meditation cushion, if you’re a school teacher, whether that’s how you show up in the classroom with your kids, whether you’re a doctor.

You have to get out of seeing the world just in black and white terms, because the world is filled with colors and it’s filled with rainbows. And it’s, it’s also filled with, you know, dark spaces where there are no light. And in dark spaces, that’s where light is incubated. That’s where seeds are planted underground. The darkness holds so much space for our transformation and our growth. Right? So it’s like, yeah, we get caught in the good and the bad a lot, which is, again, the binary.

And I think the teachings that… How I’ve learned and how I’ve been taught through my, my studies and my teachers is that we have to continue to question the answers we’ve been given, and question why we hold on so tightly to these beliefs and these patterns.

Linda Lang:
Can we go back for a moment to premature forgiveness? It reminds me of when people come and want to work with grief. And sometimes I think actually we do need to grieve before we, you know, try and get rid of that emotion. There is some healthy aspects to the grieving process that help develop our compassion and our empathy and enrich our life experience, even though it’s not comfortable in the moment. But I’m curious about the idea of forgiveness as being premature. If someone wants to forgive, if they want to forgive, wouldn’t that automatically mean they’re ready to forgive?

Hawah Kasat:
So we have to be careful here because we all may want to forgive. And if we try to force forgiveness without actually processing the harm done or processing the way we’ve been violated or hurt, and not really metabolizing that harm and just saying, “Well, it’s in the past. I’m over it,” but really not looking at it, then that can lead to suppressed resentment. Right? And then when we become resentful. There’s all these other internal emotions that become heavy baggage that we continue to carry that weight of resentment, also not healthy.

Linda Lang:
And I believe it will show up. I do believe it will show up at some point in your life for you to deal with.

Hawah Kasat:
Absolutely. So we may be taught, you know, we’ve even been taught by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. about the power of forgiveness. Right? Nonviolence in Ahimsa teaches us about breaking out of cycles of violence through forgiveness. And we just need to make sure that we are having those honest conversations with ourselves and with the people around us.

And we may not be able to have those conversations quite yet because we are in so much pain, but we need to just acknowledge and validate our emotions that I am hurt. If we rush to forgive, it could avoid the accountability that actually needs to happen. And accountability is a big part of this work. Right? I mentioned the word justice earlier. And I’m also going to mention the word accountability, which is a part of taking responsibility. So if we just prematurely forgive, we may not be going through the restorative healing processes or the restorative justice processes that are needed to, to support us in making sure that there has been accountability and enough accountability to make us feel safe again in our bodies, to make us feel safe again in our emotions and our thoughts.

Right? So we, we still may be unsafe, we might be resentful because we’ve prematurely forgiven. So it’s one thing to say you’ve forgiven someone, and it’s another to really have forgiven someone. And, and what, what is that difference? And this comes back to spiritual bypassing. You know, I could be bypassing the process of forgiveness because I’m just working with the mantra in my head that “I am love, I’m light, it’s in the past, it’s over.” Yet there’s all this stuff inside that we have not metabolized.

Linda Lang:
Absolutely. And if you’re bringing up the past, whenever you start sliding in similar circumstances, you know you haven’t forgiven.

Hawah Kasat:
Absolutely. If you get into a new relationship and you can’t trust that person, and you start projecting past behavior that was harmful to you into how you’re able to trust the new person you’re with, you really haven’t forgiven. You haven’t forgiven. And, you know, these are ways. And this is how we get stuck in these cyclical patterns in our lives. We get stuck because we think we’ve forgiven, but we really haven’t forgiven.

Linda Lang:
The great American psychic Edgar Cayce has a beautiful niversal Law of Forgiveness. It says, “Forgiveness heals and empowers the one who forgives.” It really has nothing to do with that other person. It’s really about doing your work, healing yourself and stepping into your power in that circumstance.

Hawah Kasat:
Absolutely love that quote. It’s beautiful.

Linda Lang:
Wonderful chatting with you today, Hawah. Where can we send people who want to know more about you?

Hawah Kasat:
I would say the best thing to do is if you want to connect with me, just, just join my podcast listening crew. I launched the podcast in 2024 and it’s called Everlutionary. That’s E V E R – Ever – Lutionary. Kind of the space between revolution and evolution, evolutionary and, and the podcast is, is really powerful conversations with catalysts and leaders, educators. There’s, there’s just incredible reflections of mysticism and science and how we can heal the planet through our, through our efforts of being more present. So, yeah, come. Come and tune into my podcast you can find it anywhere. Podcasts are found, Apple, Spotify, anywhere. Just look up my name, Hawah Kasat, or look up Everlutionary. I also teach all around the country. I lead silent meditation retreats. I lead international yoga retreats. I’m teaching at Esalen in California regularly. I teach at Kripalu center for Yoga and Health in Massachusetts regularly. So you could find me as well. Come. And come and join me somewhere on the journey. I’d love to meet you all.

Linda Lang:
Ever evolving, right?

Hawah Kasat:
Ever evolving. Ever changing. Yes. Ever growing.

Linda Lang:
Thank you so much for being my guest today.

Hawah Kasat:
Thank you for having me, Linda. It’s been a wonderful conversation with you.

Linda Lang:
And thank you for listening to this week’s edition of Exploring the Mystical side of Life. Come Visit me at www.ThoughtChange.com Pick up your copy of Learning to Listen and we will see you again next time.