Existentialism

Existentialism is the belief that the experience has no inherent meaning of its own. Any meaning derived from the experience is created by the person perceiving or having the experience. We can use that to create hopelessness and decide that it's all meaningless or we can use it to give ourselves the freedom to create helpful meanings instead of harmful ones.

How does that tie into self-mastery and spirituality? I use spirituality and specifically the concept of non-judgment as a means of understanding that my perception is just that - it's my perception. It's not the truth of the experience. It's just how I feel and think about the experience. Without any judgment of the experience, I can focus on the meaning I want to create from the experience. If I make the meaning blame, shame, guilt, or victimization, then I'm the one creating the extra pain, not the experience. If I make the meaning into something I can use to heal myself further, then suddenly even something I perceive to be bad, can be made into something positive. 

If experience has no inherent value of its own, it means I'm not stuck with my perception of the experience as the only meaning I can derive. I can look for other meanings, I can give the experience a helpful purpose in my life. If you think about it, we do this all the time. I just happen to do it intentionally with every experience I have.  When was the last time you saw as an experience as a catalyst to change something? When you look back on your life, are there turning points? What were they?  When those experiences happened, you created helpful meanings from them that allowed you to change something within yourself and your life. 

Many times people see things like weddings and funerals as life-changing experiences. We can derive meanings from those experiences that are helpful or not. If your marriage was awful, then you may see your wedding day as something traumatic. If somebody dies that harmed you, you may see that death as something positive. I can turn a wedding that's supposed to be happy into something sad and I can turn the funeral that's supposed to be sad into something good. If the meanings were inherent in the experience I wouldn't be able to do those things. Weddings would be absolutely positive and funerals would be absolutely negative and there would be no exception to those meanings. They would be absolute in nature by virtue of the experience itself - but they are not. It doesn't take away the catalytic nature of those experiences as a means of creating new experiences, it just means that the package the change comes in may not look the way we think it should.

Existentialism offers freedom from perceived meanings. It means the stories we're telling about our experiences - especially the painful ones - aren't true. We have the ability to change those. We have the ability to examine the story we're telling about the experience and we have the ability to change it. Just because we think it's bad, doesn't mean the effect will be negative. Just because we think it's good doesn't mean the effect will be positive. Maybe you thought your wedding day was the most amazing day of your life, until your partner did something and suddenly it was traumatic. 

Our limited perception and our assumption of certain experiences as either good or bad can combine to create confusion. The confusion will frequently create pain because we tell the story of what we should have known. "I should have known better." When experiences come packaged differently than we expect, we blame ourselves for what we didn't know was in the box. It's not our fault. The Universe knew that if it had packaged it the way you expected to see it, you never would have gone down the path. The value is in the journey not the destination. You needed that experience to heal something within yourself. You were given the experience in a way that made you take it. The Universe was trying to help you.

When it's explained that way people see the Universe as manipulative. It's not giving you things at face value. It makes you question everything. It creates distrust. The Universe doesn't see experience the same way humans do. What's the difference between humans and the Universe or God? Judgment. Bad experiences can be seen as punishment or something that shouldn't be happening. "The Universe tricked me into having a bad experience."  The Universe doesn't see the experience that way. The experience is neutral and has no inherent value. It's just an experience meant to help you. It's not good. It's not bad. It's not right or wrong. It's just an experience. How you see it and how you use it is entirely up to you. If you would take the experience regardless of your perception of it, you wouldn't feel tricked that way because you would see the Universe is trying to help you, not punish you. The only thing that clouds your ability to see that is your judgment of the experience. That's why dropping your judgment matters - it would help you heal and allow you to have experiences you would otherwise avoid.

Existentialism makes sense of the ideas of non-judgment, perception, and using experience to heal ourselves. It fills in some of the gaps in our understanding of how it's all meant to work together. Below you will find articles around how to use existentialism to heal by creating meanings that are helpful to us. I'll use it to fill in the gaps in our perception and clarify what we're seeing in the world around us. Please feel free to take in the articles that are relevant to you and leave the rest.

Love to all.

Della

Making Meaning Out of Chaos