Now we turn to the dark side of our human spirits.
Developing our spirits brings us many wonderful, positive capacities:
the ability to stand back from ourselves in any given situation,
the freedom to shape our own futures to our own designs,
and the sensitivity to meet other persons as I and Thou.
But along with these life-enhancing possibilities
comes an awareness that initially seems entirely negative: anxiety.
Søren Kierkegaard made this link: the more freedom—the more anxiety.
As we become more deeply persons of spirit,
we discover both our freedom and our angst.

     Because our capacities of spirit are linked together,
we sometimes give up spirit in order to avoid existential anxiety.
If we are gripped too strongly by the inexplicable terror,
we may turn away from spirit altogether, giving up our freedom,
and returning to the psychological and intellectual dimensions of life.

     Some persons of spirit are so devastated by existential anxiety
(probably because they are especially sensitive persons)
that escaping this gnawing inner state-of-being
becomes the fundamental thrust of their lives.
They take drugs, become depressed, seek distraction
—anything that offers hope of relief from free-floating anxiety.

     In order to understand angst—a phenomenon of spirit—
we must separate it from its psychological twin, simple fear:

     1. General description.  When a definite situation in the world
threatens us or something that we value, we are afraid.
Fear is our emotional response to understandable dangers.

     But, existential anxiety threatens us internally rather than externally.
When angst makes us tremble, we don't know why we are 'afraid'.
However, anxiety often mixes with ordinary fears and worries.
When we experience both intelligible fear and existential anxiety,
our underlying anxiety often exaggerates our ordinary problems.
We become terrified and immobilized by daily troubles
that by themselves would not exceed our capacities to cope.

     2. Cause.  If we can find a specific reason to be worried,
our problem is psychological—some fear, dread, or trouble.
Much psychological digging may be needed to uncover hidden conflicts.
But if we resolve all possible causes of fear, worry, and stress,
and we still find ourselves inexplicably terrified,
we may be justified in calling our malaise "existential anxiety".

SPIRITUALITY FOR HUMANISTS: SIX CAPACITIES OF OUR HUMAN SPIRITS by JAMES PARK 18

    In saying that existential anxiety has no cause,
we mean that it does not result from a specific situation in the world.
Objective dangers always approach from a certain quarter,
but existential anxiety arises from deep within our own spirits;
angst seems to 'come at us' from everywhere and yet from nowhere.

     3. Duration.  Fear is temporary.
We are afraid when we discover ourselves in dangerous situations.
But whatever conditions make us afraid are likely to change.
And when the dangers have passed, our fears should also disappear.

     But if 'fear' does not go away, we may be feeling angst.
Angst is a permanent condition of our beings:  We are anxious.
We may not always be consciously aware of our underlying anxiety,
but when angst comes to the surface of consciousness,
we recognize it as a familiar inner state-of-being
that we have often tried to repress and forget.
When we fully understand our existential anxiety,
we recognize it as a permanent condition of our beings.

     4. Scope.  Fearful situations threaten some of our values
while other parts of our lives remain safe and secure.
A fear may be as trivial as worry about bouncing a check
or as major as our very survival, which includes everything we value.
But usually the threat is limited to one dimension of our lives:
our love-lives, our financial well-being, our physical health, etc.

     But existential anxiety touches every aspect of our lives
—because it arises from the very core of our beings.
We cannot turn away from existential anxiety
—except by means that make us spiritless,
which only ignores the inner trouble.
Whenever we are fully present in spirit, angst is there.
Existential anxiety is pervasive.

     5. Cure.  When we find ourselves afraid,
we 'instinctively' know what to do.
We may not know the perfect method for coping with a rival lover,
but at least we can think of a few things worth trying.
Fearful situations imply their own solutions.
When we have identified a threat and its means of approach,
we immediately think of appropriate ways to ward off the danger.

     Existential anxiety, on the other hand,
feels like a 'threat' from all directions and from nowhere.
So our fight-or-flight response to fearful situations will not work.
We cannot evade our existential anxiety
because this 'threat' comes from deep within ourselves.
In contrast to all situations of fear, we cannot cure our angst.
(But in the next chapter we will explore another way beyond angst.)

SPIRITUALITY FOR HUMANISTS: SIX CAPACITIES OF OUR HUMAN SPIRITS by JAMES PARK 19

    To summarize this 5-fold distinction:

       Simple Fear                  Existential Anxiety

1. Psychological response to danger.  1. Free-floating, uncaused 'terror'.

2. Caused by specific threats;                2. No intelligible cause or source;
we know why we are afraid;                 we don't know why we are ‘afraid';
approaches from a certain quarter.      ‘comes from' everywhere and nowhere.

3. Temporary—lasts only while            3. Permanent—ever-renewed inner
the danger is present; may pass by.     state-of-being; does not pass away.

4. Limited to the values                         4. Pervades our whole being;
that can be reached by the threat.       unlimited menace; touches everything.

5. We know how to cope with fear:      5. Nothing we do will overcome angst;
fight or flight.                                             psychological techniques are useless.

     When we first glimpse our existential anxiety, our minds rebel.
We cannot tolerate an unintelligible terror beyond cure.
So our immediate response to all dread is to look for a cause.
Usually we can find a valid explanation for our sense of apprehension.
But if we are actually dealing with existential anxiety,
our urge to explain may lead us to create fantasy worries.
It may also lead to exaggerated fears of real dangers.

     Angst may manifest itself in "jumpiness" or "nervousness".
We may cling tenaciously to 'security blankets' from the past
because any change threatens to uncover our underlying angst.
Thus it may cause fear of the future or fear of the dark,
because the unknown seems to harbor the "nameless dread".
We may even experience it as fear of 'the nothing' or fear of death.

     However, we should not resist these disclosures from our depths.
Becoming aware of our angst is a sign of our deepening spirits.

     Our Existential Predicament may also feel like as meaninglessness.
A similar 5-fold analysis would look like this:

Relative Meaninglessness        Existential Meaninglessness

1. Disappointed expectations;               1. Collapse of all meaning;
failure to fulfill accepted criteria.          lack of ultimate purpose in life.

2. Discrepancy between established    2. Uncaused; discovered as a
criteria and observable actualities;       fundamental condition-of-being;
based on intellectual information.        existentially disclosed.

3. Temporary—lasts only until               3. Permanent—no matter what we
the discrepancy is corrected.                change, meaninglessness continues.

4. Limited to a specific                            4. Pervades every
realm of meaning.                                   dimension of life.

5. We know what to change                    5. Nothing we can do will make
to bring meaning.                                      life ultimately meaningful.

     Our Existential Malaise may also be felt as:
existential loneliness, existential depression, existential absurdity,
the existential Void, existential splitting, existential guilt,
ontological anxiety, existential despair, and existential insecurity.

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