1. Where Existential Spirituality Begins.

    This form of inwardness begins with our own human spirits
rather than focusing on possible spirits beyond ourselves.

    Once we have come to grips with our Existential Malaise,
we can either embrace it—which helps us to become more Authentic—
or we can search for release from our Existential Predicament.

    Existential spirituality differs sharply from most other forms of spirituality
because it almost completely lacks speculation about supernatural beings.
Most forms of existential spirituality have very little doctrinal content. 
How can we know about 'beings beyond ourselves'?
But we can explore our own inner depths.
Usually what we human beings project upon the heavens
is really our own interior sensitivity to our own spiritual dynamics.

2. Existential Spirituality is Not Thinking, Feeling, or Morality. 

    The concept of "spirituality" should be reserved
for phenomena that arise in our individual human spirits,
as distinct from human thinking (our intellectual dimension)
and human feeling (our psychological-emotional dimension).

    Here are six manifestations of our human spirits:
(1) self-transcendence, (2) freedom, (3) creativity,
(4) love, (5) existential anxiety, & (6) glimpses of joy.

3. Existential Spirituality is Much Deeper than Our Emotional Responses.

    Emotional responses can be explained psychologically.
The various schools of the psychological sciences do not agree
about the complex dynamics of the human psyche,
but they all attempt to explain why we feel as we do.

    When a response like romance, anger, jealousy, or happiness
can be explained psychologically,
there is no need to invoke "spirituality".

4. Existential Spirituality Embraces the Scientific World-View.

    The basic way of knowing that underlies existential spirituality
is the scientific method, which results in the scientific world-view.
Nothing that is affirmed within existential spirituality
conflicts with the scientific method and its results
—unless science is understood to exclude or explain
all the phenomena we experience within our spirits.

5. Existential Spirituality Involves No Supernatural (or non-obvious)
    Beings, Entities, Forces, Influences, or Tendencies.

    Søren Kierkegaard was the founder
of the modern form of existential spirituality.
And he himself was a Christian believer.
But he had remarkably little to say about God.
Rather, he focused entirely on how we might orient ourselves,
perhaps using the Christian belief system as an explanatory aid.

    Modern followers of this spiritual path are also free
of claims about beings, entities, forces, influences, or tendencies.
The natural world can be entirely explained
without appeal to anything beyond the given, physical world.
For example, the existence of the universe does not require a 'creator'.

    Existential spirituality does not see
any hidden or mysterious tendencies in human history.
The world is not under any supernatural control or influence.
There is no destiny being manipulated from behind the scenes.

    But none of this excludes the possibility of
new forms of existential spirituality arising
that do include metaphysical systems.
If and when such new branches of existential spirituality do sprout,
they will have to explain their own non-obvious claims
and provide whatever bases there might be for believing those claims.

6. Existential Spirituality Explores Release from Our Existential Malaise.

    The most powerful benefit of existential spirituality
is release from our Existential Predicament.
It could be said that many forms of spirituality
seek as their ultimate purpose release from
such things as existential anxiety, meaninglessness, & despair.
Does existential spirituality open new ways of understand these?
Are existential peace, meaning, & hope possible?

    Several cyber-sermons will be found in the Existential Spirituality section
of the complete list of secular sermons by James Park:
https://s3.amazonaws.com/aws-website-jamesleonardpark---freelibrary-3puxk/CY-LIST.html

7. Existential Spirituality Does Not Deny Death.

    Death is one of the deepest challenges for any form of spirituality.
In fact, we might say that the deeper awareness of death
is the beginning of spirituality.

    Existential Spirituality probes behind
the biological, emotional, & intellectual dimensions
of the awareness of death to "ontological anxiety".
This is the existential or spiritual twin that hides behind
the psychologically-intelligible fear of ceasing-to-be.

    Just as existential spirituality yearns for freedom
from our Existential Predicament understood in other ways,
it also investigates freedom from ontological anxiety.
But this does not imply life after death.

    A full explanation of this dimension of existential spirituality
will be found in An Existential Understanding of Death:
A Phenomenology of Ontological Anxiety

8. Existential Spirituality is Very Self-Critical. 

        1. Beyond the Life of the Body, the Heart, & the Mind .

        2. Ways to Expand Our Spirits .

        3. Self-Transcendence, Self-Criticism, & Altruism .

        4. Freedom: Transcending Enculturation and Choosing for Ourselves .

        5. Creativity: Making Something Genuinely New .

        6. Love: The I-Thou Encounter, Discovering Other Persons of Spirit .

        7. The Disclosure of Existential Anxiety
        and other Manifestations of Our Existential Predicament .

        8. Glimpses of Joy and Fulfillment .

OUR EXISTENTIAL PREDICAMENT

        Loneliness of Spirit:
        Deeper than the Reach of Love .

        Being Depressed in Spirit:
        Deeper than Psychological Depression .  D

        Existential Anxiety:
        Angst .

        The Existential Void .

        Sinking into the River of Existential Despair .

        Existential Insecurity .

        Existential Guilt:
        Deeper than the Pangs of Conscience .  C

        Looking for the Meaning of Life .  D O

Depressed?
Don't Kill Yourself! .  D

Asking the Ultimate Questions .  D

Passionate Inwardness:
Surrendering Self