Life is a delightful, complex, messy business. How do you respond to the existential human predicament? Do you wonder how best to balance your spiritual longings while honouring our ordinary human life? Here, Manjunaga offers reflections on the tendency to skip over the messy bits of ourselves (aka spiritual bypassing) as occupational hazard in the spiritual life.  Excerpted from the talk The Universe Is Expanding: Soulful Reflections On the Human Predicament given at the Birmingham Buddhist Centre, November 2019. *** Subscribe to our Dharmabytes podcast:  On Apple Podcasts | On Spotify | On Google Podcasts Bite-sized inspiration three times every week. Subscribe to our Free Buddhist Audio podcast:  On Apple Podcasts | On Spotify | On Google Podcasts A full, curated, quality Dharma talk, every week. 3,000,000 downloads and counting! Subscribe using these RSS feeds or search for Free Buddhist Audio or Dharmabytes in your favourite podcast service! Help us keep FBA Podcasts free for everyone: donate now! Follow Free Buddhist Audio: YouTube  |  Instagram  |  Twitter  |  Facebook  |  Soundcloud