What is existentialism?

Who are we? What is life, and what are the laws that govern it? What is its meaning and purpose? What is real; what is unreal? What is truth, health, evil, disease, death? How are these elements of existence cognized and understood?

The term “existential” is used to connote whatever deals with the above issues.

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Healing Holiday Confusion

At Christmas time and other holidays, families come together and the members make a supreme effort to express love toward each other. They try to do it and the result is that after these holidays people tend to run into various problems (such as colds, flu, sadness, exhaustion, etc.) .

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Transcending Discord

if we have the right idea of what abundance is and what its source is, we will never lack an opportunity for being useful and helpful. But if we are ignorant of this fact and feel deprived or sorry for ourselves, we have closed the floodgates of the good which God is generously pouring out continuously.

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Work as Spiritual Opportunity: part 2 Harmonious Prospering

. . .Our ability and willingness to be useful and helpful in business or employment determines the prospering of it. Should we experience insufficient income or a slowdown in our business, we need to improve our ability to be helpful.

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At the Core of Addiction is a Spiritual Longing

One core thought at the root of addiction is the urge for liberation, freedom and joy. This urge is from the soul, the depth of being. Confronted with the cultural, educational, familial ways of life that are often dismissive of this spiritual longing or relegate it to meaningless rituals and rules, the opportunity to escape to a "high" is welcome relief.

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Ambition

There are three frequent afflictions which people tend to suffer from: pride, ambition, and vanity. It is hard to measure which of these is worse, but it would seem that ambition is the most troublesome. . . It is full of frustration because if one succeeds, one gets sicker; and if one fails, one also gets sicker.

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It's Good to be Good

The point is to find the valid, intelligent, harmonious way of coping with life. . . . It is good to be good, right? Unbelievable as it sounds. People will say it is crazy to be good in a world that is so evil. But we say it is good to be good. It is not good to be judgmental and critical and vindictive and hateful and aggressive. Those things are not good for anybody.

-Dr. Hora, Encounters with Wisdom book 2: chapter 8: Reverence for Life

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Letting-Be

Letting-be” is an existential term.  It originated in Taoism. Letting-be actually means: reverent, loving responsiveness to that which is from moment to moment.  It is a highly constructive, supremely spiritual attitude toward all life forms, not unlike Albert Schweitzer’s reverence for life.

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What is So Great About Humility?

". . . humility, is not proud; it is dignified, inspired, intelligent, peaceful, assured, alert, responsive, and highly effective. It is not a form of behavior but, rather, a quality of consciousness. . . . If we could be truly humble we would never know anxiety."

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How Can I Get My Two-Year Old to Stop . . . ?

Children are influenced by three factors in parental consciousness: what the parents cherish, what they hate and what they fear. Therefore, healthy parenthood is impossible just on the basis of good intentions or self-sacrificing love. Parents can be loving, generous and devoted, and move heaven and earth for the sake of a child, but if they don’t understand these three elements in consciousness, they may be of little benefit.

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“Our Hearts are Broken”

President Obama opened his heartfelt speech in Tucson, Arizona with this phrase.And, it is true. Our hearts are broken by what happened this past Saturday in Tucson, Arizona.

This confirms a universal Truth - that what happened is wrong. We agree on that. There is nothing good about a disturbed individual shooting innocent others.

On the other hand, the individual responses to the violence, and to those who were hurt by the violence, is recognized by all as good.

These two self-evident truths sum up our purpose in life.

The recognition of what is good and the healing of what is not. In every moment of our lives, this is the task.

God did not plan this tragedy, nor was it anyone’s destiny to be hurt or killed in this untimely violent manner. Neither was it anyone’s goal to heroically charge the violent attacker or in anyone’s dayplanner to sacrifice themselves in an attempt to save the one they loved.

Yet, the choice between violence and peace, fear and love, happens everyday in an infinite amount of ways, large and small, and this is our purpose – to choose love over fear; to respond to real needs over reacting out of personal frustration.