1. Where Existential Spirituality Begins.

    Existential spirituality begins with
our interior experience of 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 open ourselves to the possibility of release.

    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,
which is distinct from human thinking (our intellectual dimension)
and human feeling (our psychological-emotional dimension).

    Our intellectual dimension depends on human words and concepts.

    Our psychological-emotional dimension
can be explained in terms of cause and effect, for example,
most of the emotional responses we have developed since birth.

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

    (Each of  these is discussed in a separate cyber-sermon
in a series called WHAT IS SPIRITUALITY?
http://www.tc.umn.edu/~parkx032/C-SPIRIT.html)

    Many forms of so-called 'spirituality' deal with
the intellectual and emotional dimensions of human life.
But according to these definitions and distinctions,
such verbal and emotional matters should not be called "spirituality".

    Likewise, existential spirituality does not imply any moral system.
Frequently people believe that a spiritual system
should be basically morality tinged with emotion.
But ethical reflection has almost no place in existential spirituality.
Certainly, moral systems are needed for public order.
But public morality should be decided rationally,
not supported by spiritual claims.

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

    Emotional responses can be explained by psychology.
The various schools of the psychological sciences do not agree
about the particular dynamics of the human psyche,
but they all attempt to explain our emotional responses.

    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 arise,
they will have to explain their own non-obvious claims
and provide whatever bases there might be for believing those claims.

6. Existential Spirituality Offers 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 human release from
such things as existential anxiety, meaninglessness, & despair.
But one of the most extraordinary claims of existential spirituality
is that this spiritual path actually leads to
existential peace, meaning, & hope.

    (Several cyber-sermons will be found in the Existential Spirituality section
of the complete list of cyber-sermons by James Park:
http://www.tc.umn.edu/~parkx032/CY-LIST.html .)

7. Existential Spirituality Does Not Deny Death,
but it Offers Release from Ontological Anxiety.

    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 what is called "ontological anxiety".
This is the existential or spiritual twin that hides behind
the psychologically-intelligible fear of ceasing-to-be.

    As existential spirituality points the way toward freedom
from our Existential Predicament understood in other ways,
it also includes 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 :
http://www.tc.umn.edu/%7Eparkx032/UD.html . )

8. Existential Spirituality is Very Self-Critical.