Existentialism is frowned on today because it seems like such a gloomy philosophy. It is often confused with Nihilism, which further makes life seem comfortless. Nihilism proposes that the world is meaningless and everything is absurd so don’t even try to find meaning or purpose.

Existentialism also deals with the absurd but has a bit more of a hopeful attitude about it. The individual can act with authenticity and responsibility based on the level of his own consciousness, divorced from cultural conditioning, and thus find redemption in life. So it is not as totally devoid of any lightness or fun.

For example Sartre, in his Myth of Sisyphus, presents the unfortunate man who rolls a heavy stone up a mountain, only to have it fall down again when he gets to the top. So the next day, he rolls the stone up again, it falls down, over and over again until he dies. This is not a happy philosophy. Yet Sartre says that if we persist and imagine Sisyphus (ourselves) happy we will be able to get out of our state of angst and confusion. Our happiness depends on what we make of it—but it doesn't seem convincing from the example of Sisyphus.

This is why Camus, another existentialist said, “Happiness, too, is inevitable.” He was saying that in the course of life happiness and misery all happen and we can give them equal weight. Just wait around long enough and happiness will happen too. And then misery and despair will happen. Then happiness.

Angst, dread, and despair are key components of existentialism. These emotions do not fit in well with the current trends to think positively or manifest vibrationally. Angst is kind of an objectless fear. It is combined with dread to make a horrible life for the deeply thinking person who has no faith. It comes from knowing that they are out there alone, making their own decisions. So they feel vertigo, like on a high scaffold swaying in the wind.

Despair is also not an emotion a happy, positive-thinking person likes to entertain. Yet Sartre and other existentialists say that everyone is in underlying despair when they realize how quickly the rug can be taken out from under them.

Finally, Camus’ statement about suicide causes many people to hate existentialism. He says suicide makes sense as a Response to Absurdity. “There is only one really serious philosophical problem,” Camus says, “and that is suicide. Deciding whether or not life is worth living is to answer the fundamental question in philosophy. All other questions follow from that.”​

Instead of seeing this statement as liberating because now they are choosing life, people see it as an argument for ending it all. Therefore, existentialism has fallen out of favor. Though it is a brilliant philosophy, people don’t look deeply into it and prefer, if they care about it at all, to look at it from a surface point of view.

​Technology can help us to be mindful. Whether we are a programmers or users, to operate any complex technology requires the ability to be in the present moment. We cannot be scattered all over the place and write a correct line of code. We must pay attention to every comma, every period, every letter and number. One mistake and things go wrong, won’t start, won’t work, and cause chaos. The same holds true for users. It’s usually not the machine’s fault, it’s something the user forgot, didn’t get right, or blanked out on.

So it isn’t that tech makes us mindful, but we must be mindful to operate or build it. In this sense it is very valuable as an example of the need for mindfulness. But on another level, the Internet and all wireless technology, have further shown us that many powerful things cannot be seen with the human eye.
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We can’t see electricity, air, and the world wide web—yet they all exist and we take them on faith. However, when it comes to our Souls, Spirit, or the underlying powers of the Universe, we have a lot of doubters. Many people do not believe in this substratum of existence because they can’t see it. Yet modern technology is bound to make believers of these people as well, as soon as they become conscious of it, for they will then recognize the boundless possibilities of the unseen.

Thoughts count, but if we don’t back them up with action, they fizzle into nothing. So we must have thoughts and then action, otherwise they are just general, unreal, illusory bubble rising in our brains.
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We can have a thought that we really need to get fit and work out with more energy. That’s a thought. Many people have that thought. But when it comes to actually doing something about it, they get other thoughts: “My knee hurts, it’s raining, it’s boring, I’ll run into ____ and they annoy me, I’m too old for this, I’m not cut out for this. . . .“ And so we stay home and play on the computer or binge watch something that will get our mind off of the thought of getting fit.

So I don’t put too much credence in thoughts. I need to see what a person does. However, on a deeper level, all action originates in thought. First we see the dirt path. We imagine how good it would look paved. Then we set the whole road-building activity in motion. In this sense the thought does count, but only as an initiator for action. It all began with a thought but it would have died if no one carried it out. The road would remain rocky and unpaved.

We can also have destructive thoughts and act on them, so acting on our thoughts alone is not always a good thing. People whose fears cause them to hate others because they belong to a certain group think its a good idea to act out their thoughts. They are the ones who righteously kill and enslave others base on a thought that they were superior or that others need to be stamped out.
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Wise people are humble about what they think they know and what they don’t know. They see the larger picture and realize that their minds are limited, their senses can report false information, and just because someone said it is so, maybe it isn’t.


Unfortunately, it’s the people who “know” they know all the answers that create the most suffering on this planet. Obviously, all the evil dictators that oppress and slaughter people “know they know” and will kill or torture anyone who doubts it. The wise person, understands ideas such as relativity and what is just a matter of opinion. The person who knows is inflexible and righteous in his puffed up egotism.


Certain oppressive groups of people “know” that women don’t have the capacity to be educated, that showing an ankle is a mortal sin punishable by public stoning, that certain races should be eradicated, and that singing and dancing is a sin that will take you straight to hell. This so-called knowledge is nothing but received, unexamined prejudice based on fear and dominance.


Wise people have the broad insight to see the beauty of natural individuality. They have a rich and vivid life of the imagination, spirit, and intellect. They don’t believe anything just because someone in authority said it. They examine things for themselves and come to their own conclusions. While knowledge is set in stone, wisdom is fluid, constantly growing, changing, and becoming more profound.

It does seem that society is pushing us to fit into a mould but actually we are the ones who unconsciously try to conform to its dimensions.

Societies in which we grew up had certain rules that evolved for the smooth functioning of groups of people living together. Human sacrifice during the time of the Aztecs and Mayans was thought to be a good way to conduct their societies’ rituals. At the time, everyone thought it was a great idea. It was the best thing a person could do to repay the gods, whom the believed had also sacrificed their lives to keep the Universe running.

Of course, we see this as completely absurd now, as did the Spanish conquerers of the Aztecs. The Spanish had their own absurd practices, which they imposed on the the Aztecs, but they were the ones who prevailed on the Aztecs to stop killing people to appease the gods.

As children, we are taught rules and beliefs of the society we were born into. If we want to be loved and accepted, we conform to them. Then, when we grow up, we mindlessly pursue those values, unless we are part of the few who question them. But usually, people just go along with them. They will be accepted and even rewarded, while those who buck the system will be considered outsiders.

Being alone and friendless in the world is a very unhappy state. So we fit into whatever mould our society presents. If it is a materialistic society, we will be a success if we amass lots of money and possessions. If it is a society that values sharing the wealth, we will be unselfish and giving. If it is a society that values spirituality, as in Tibet, the highest attainment is uniting with Divine Consciousness.
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Society is just made up of lots of people who go along with the program. The problem is when a society aggressively imposes its belief system on others. It punishes people, imprisons them, or kills them. So that is why so many just fit into it. It is easier not to question the values and just try to get by on a daily basis.

Enlightenment has nothing to do with gender. It has nothing to do with age. It is about wisdom and the ability to be at peace with all of life.

Just because a male has a preponderance of testosterone coursing through his bloodstream, it does not mean he is on a faster track towards enlightenment than a women endowed with estrogen. Enlightenment has nothing to do with the body at all! It is about consciousness.

Consciousness is not something you can see or touch. A man who is unaware of his deeper and higher Self is just as benighted as an unaware woman. Children who have come into contact with their connection with the Universe have more wisdom than foolish adults who blindly seek after perishable and impermanent things that don’t bring happiness.

So enlightenment is not gender-related, nor does it have anything to do with cultural prejudices or how many years a person has spent time on this planet. There have been many great, enlightened women, most of whom are content to live quiet lives and not broadcast their wisdom. But some like Anandamayi Ma were so radiant, they attracted students from many countries.

Don’t limit yourself by thinking that wisdom and deep understanding only come from someone who happens to be born a male this time around.

The great philosopher Descartes once said, back in the 1640’s, “All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”

Because we can’t sit still and be at peace, we engage in a lot of activities and create a lot of drama. Descartes is not referring to our daily survival activities of eating, sleeping and taking care of business. He is talking about after all our needs are met, we must add more to the picture.

We can’t sit still and be at peace. We’ve got to jump up and do something. Peace bores us. Drama interests us. And so we add more and more to buy, maintain, clean, fix, return, complain about, and cry over.
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Simplifying life means getting rid of all the excess stuff: Excess thoughts that don’t bring harmony, toxic people who make us feel bad when we are around them, all the extra toys, trinkets, clothes, and accumulations that end up dragging our lives down. The extra bills, the huge amount of information and constant engagement with social media. In other words, as Socrates says in the book The Peaceful Warrior: “Take out the garbage.”

Anger is not being happy with the present moment and how it appears to you. You don’t like things the way they are. Maybe it is justified, maybe it isn’t but it anger always carries with it the intense feeling that you are very upset with what is happening—either out there or within your mind.

Even if you feel anger about something that happened in the past, the feeling of anger is still always in the present moment. You may be swimming in a beautiful lake and start thinking about a person whom you think is a hypocritical egomaniac. Instead of being in the present moment with the serenity of the lake, you are now consumed with fury at what this person did and said. Your NOW has turned into a fiery pit of anger.
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You are irate and plan on what you will say to them next time you see them. You jump into the future and picture different scenarios. This is a great example of how the ego mind cannot abide in the peace of the present moment. It wants to prod at some hurtful situation in the past. It wants to get angry to validate itself as always being right. These people and events don’t fit into your picture of how life should be. Anger then prods you to act, often in destructive ways and take it out on innocent victims.

Therefore, anger is one of the most powerless emotions we can have. It comes from following our fearful ego minds instead of trusting in Life. We can feel indignant at cruelty and do something to address it, for our emotions are part of the Overall Plan too. The negative emotions, such as anger, are there to guide us through creating a life that we love. We can use anger as a geiger counter for whether a situation is right for us.

So we don’t want to shut anger down completely and stomp it out from the face of the earth. It is mistake to think that all we can tolerate are the sweet emotions, such as love and affection. The Universe equipped us with all the emotions. We can feel anger, honestly and receptively. We can then look within to see if we are simply not accepting life as it is, if it is just one more passing mood, or if it is a call to action.

​A huge amount of information is coming our way every day in the Computer Age. Bits of knowledge, bytes of data, to fill our brains, eyes and ears. We think we need all this knowledge to survive and stay on top of the food chain. And in some sense, we do. For if we lag behind in our knowledge base, or at least in our ability to retrieve and apply knowledge, we will be left in the dust. Others who have boned up on the “latest and greatest” will pass us on their road to the future.

But unfortunately, knowledge changes. What we thought was true a hundred years ago, such as that women were not intelligent enough to vote or have political interests, is ridiculous now. Bloodletting in already weakened sick people was also was part of the medical knowledge until about a hundred years ago too.

All this information that we think is knowledge may be disproved in the future. But wisdom is timeless. It is always true. It does not depend on the fads of the culture or of the moment. It applies across the board to every situation. It allows us to find a sanctuary within instead of filling ourselves up with all manner of acquired knowledge.

While knowledge about everything in the world is growing and growing, there is still no connection of knowledge with happiness. We have all heard that “Knowledge is power.” But there is still no relationship between all the stuff we know about and our peace or contentment. If there were, the world would be a sanctuary of abundance and joy—because there is no shortage of knowledge now.
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Wisdom can’t be accumulated the way bits of information can be. It has to be experienced, matured, ripened, and allow to grow organically. We cannot buy it the way we can buy a database or a book. And therefore, people are starving for it. They spend too much time running after other things to give wisdom a chance, so they go hungry—like a thirsty man surrounded by sea water—which he cannot drink.

We don’t need to be at war with our lesser selves. We need to transcend them. If we try to defeat the tendencies we don’t like in ourselves and that don’t bring us inner peace, we set up an adversarial situation. We are then actually going against ourselves, blaming and criticizing.

As in war, there is defeat, if we become angry with ourselves. And no one ever wins in a war really. Everyone is scarred by it in some way.

So we do not want to defeat ourselves. We want to examine the traits that do not support us and then lovingly set about to rise above them gently to our Soul level. For example, we recognize a tendency to cut corners and be lazy. We know this is not a great character trait and does not lead to success in any undertaking. We also know that at the end of the day we will beat up on ourselves for being slackers.

Adding self-criticism to our already low sense of self-esteem leads to a downward spiral. It more effective to look within and see the fear behind the procrastination. We need to look at what about the task at hand makes us want to escape the present moment, and we need to arrive at what we can do to get out of our inertia in a fun and lighthearted way.
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In this way, our lesser selves (our petty, frightened ego-minds) will become neutralized. We have not given them the power and therefore do not need to fight them. We just leave them where they are and move to a higher level.