Before Sartre, philosophy was "essentialist." It was concerned with defining the essence of each species, with details about their characteristics.

Existentialism, on the other hand, places existence before essence. People exist, or are born, before they can be anything. Before they can become anything they have to be born. Therefore, existence precedes essence.

To Sartre our situation is basically unhappy. There is no way of separating good and evil. Therefore, people are condemned to a life of freedom in which they must choose. They make choices and take the consequences.

As to Sartre’s critics, Sartre’s defended existentialism against a number of charges which had been made against it:

• Existentialism as a philosophy which leads to “quietism of despair.” They saw it as a philosophy of inaction. They saw it as only contemplative and that it discouraged people from committing themselves to any course of action.
  
  
• Existentialists are overly pessimistic and for concentrating on all that is absurd and ugly in the human condition.
  
  
• Existentialism concentrates too much on the choices of the individual. It ignores the solidarity of all mankind.
  
  
• Existentialism seems to excuse the most heinous crimes in the name of free existential choice. It rejects the idea of God-given moral laws.
  
  

Sartre’s response to these criticisms revolve around his concepts of “abandonment,” “anguish,” and “despair.” These words have specific meanings for him – he uses them as technical terms and their meanings are very different from those they have in ordinary usage. All three terms in everyday usage imply helplessness and suffering of different kinds. For Sartre, although they preserve some of these negative associations, they also have a positive and optimistic aspect, one which a superficial reading of the text might not reveal.

Abandonment

For Sartre ‘abandonment’ means specifically abandonment by God. This doesn’t mean that God actually existed at some point, and went away. It means that belief in God didn’t make sense at his period of time in nineteenth century. “Abandonment”refers to the sense of loss caused by the realization that there is no God to mandate our moral choices, no divinity to give us guidelines as to how to achieve salvation. Abandonment emphasizes the lonely position of human beings in the universe with no external source of objective value (such as God).

To meet the criticism that without God there can be no morality, Sartre develop his theory about the implications of freedom and the associated state of anguish.

Anguish

Sartre believed in the freedom of the will. He declares: “Man is free, man is freedom.” Yet Sartre states that we are “condemned to be free.” This means there is great responsibility that goes with human freedom.

“We are left alone without excuse.” Sartre believes that we are responsible for everything that we are. This means we are responsible for how we feel and what emotions we choose.
We are not only responsible for everything that we are, but also when choosing any particular action we not only commit ourselves as “a legislator deciding for the whole of mankind.” Sartre uses this example: If you choose to marry and to have children, you thereby commit not only yourself but the whole of mankind to the practice of this form of monogamy.

Sartre labels the experience of this extended responsibility, which is an unavoidable part of the human condition, “anguish” He compares it to the feeling of responsibility experienced by a military leader whose decisions have dire consequences for the soldiers under his command. Like Abraham whom God instructed to sacrifice his son, we are in a state of anguish performing actions, the outcome of which we cannot be sure, with a great weight of responsibility: “Everything happens to every man as though the whole human race had its eyes fixed upon what he is doing and regulated its conduct accordingly.”

Despair

Sartre defines despair as the existentialist’s attitude to the aspects of the world that are beyond our control. This is particularly true about other people. In his play No Exit one of the characters states, “Hell is other people”. Whatever I desire to do, other people or external events may stand in the way of its fulfillment. The attitude of despair is one of detachment to the way things turn out.

Sartre says we cannot rely on anything that is outside our control. But this does not mean we should slide into to inaction. The exact opposite is so for Sartre. He argues that it should lead us to commit ourselves to a course of action since there is no reality except in action. For Sartre, there are no “unsung Miltons.” People are defined by their actions and if you haven’t composed great poems, you are not a great poet.

This is how Sartre defends himself from misperceptions of his philosophy. It is one of action and free will, not giving up and retreating into helpless misery.

Meditation is not for everyone. Sitting quietly and allowing your inner being to emerge out of the ceaseless chatter of your thoughts may not be your path to peace and self-realization.

Present moment awareness during your everyday activities may be a better path for you.

For example, when you are brushing your teeth, stay with that in the moment, without racing ahead to all things you need to do or becoming alarmed over the things you haven’t done. Really get into the feeling of being here and now. When you are in the now, the fear that is the basis of anger dissolves. You are all right now. Nothing is threatening you. You can be at peace.

Being 56 years old, you have many past experiences that can obtrude upon your peace of mind and trigger anger. While you are meditating in the style you mention, you may be opening the floodgates of your consciousness to all the fearful and upsetting moments when you felt you were not in control. Therefore, letting go and just allowing yourself to be, while you sit and watch your breathing is not effective for you.

Also, too much effort, such as trying very hard to concentrate on your breathing can put you in a situation in which, while you are waiting for something miraculous to happen, you are feeling nothing of the sort and so anger and frustration arise.
I do not believe meditation should be stressful, effortful, a chore, something to be done to ensure salvation, or anything other than a pleasure in itself. It is not a means to an end, or just one more thing you have to go through to get where you want. It is just one way to get in touch with the ground of your being.

It sounds like you need some more direct instruction in Transcendental Meditation than just being led in a guided meditation exercise. If you decide to continue your pursuit of meditation, enroll in a TM course. You will learn how to deal with the anger and upset that comes up for you, among many other life-changing techniques.

There is no good reason for people to struggle. Struggling does not produce great results. Working hard with a song in your heart, does help manifest our desires. But struggling, which implies suffering, no. There is too much resistance to the present moment in suffering and struggling for any good to come of it.

Flowers do not struggle to be flowers and birds don’t struggle to be birds. The only entity that struggles on this planet (except for a trapped animal) is the human being. Somehow, it has even been determined that struggling and suffering is holy and will buy us a place in heaven. If we are putting off our happiness and fulfillment, thinking that struggling will bring us closer to heaven, we are following a mistaken pathway.
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Not one great, holy teacher ever said that struggling was a good thing. The laws of the Universe are of unlimited potential and effortless ease. It is the blight of the human, ego-based mind that thinks it needs to struggle to get results. But any action that begins in a lowered state of consciousness will not manifest good things. So people should not struggle at all.

The Kantian categorical imperative can be seen as a fancy pants way of stating the Golden Rule. But the difference is that with the categorical imperative, it is our duty, as moral beings to treat others well. Whereas, the Golden Rule leaves out the duty part and states it as a moral precept for navigating blamelessly through life (and possibly keep yourself out of trouble).

I understand how you would feel that Kant’s, and other philosophers’ writings, are obscure and tend to complicate basic and simple ideas. When philosophy becomes a system of language, with its own definitions, based on other definitions in that system itself, it becomes cloudy, plodding, and hair-splitting. The passion that lies behind the questions about the meaning of life, death, and human interactions get lost in quibbling over the exactitude of terms. And then philosophy loses its blood and guts. It becomes an academic exercise that does not speak to the heart.
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I sat through many a philosophy class in which the professor would make statements, such as, “That depends on what your definition of “is” is.” The rest of the class would be arguments about definition of terms. Yet behind Kant’s obscurantism, lies the passion of a heart that was burning for answers. He may not have seen that his language creates a smoke screen that is sometimes difficult to penetrate.

There are no universal laws of right or wrong. Each society reaches an agreement about what is considered right. Murder, for example, is probably one of the most world-wide agreed-upon wrongs. Yet in most societies murder, in war-time conditions, is approved or promoted.

Right and wrong are subjective in how they relate to suffering. It feels bad to suffer. If we have empathy, we don’t want to impose suffering on others, including animals. We don’t want to have the memory of making someone suffer. It feels wrong and therefore it is wrong. It feels bad to do wrong things and these feelings, how strong they are, depend on the individual.
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Psychopaths do not have this feeling of right or wrong. They do not feel empathy for the beings they harm. They also have no feelings of love or compassion for themselves. In that sense, too, right and wrong are entirely subjective. Feeling bad when we do wrong things is what keeps people in line, even more than the fear of being punished by the society that makes the rules.

You are referring to the Australian philosopher, David John Chalmers, who specializes in the philosophy of mind and philosophy of language. In his book, The Conscious Mind, Chalmers states that the physicalism that dominates modern philosophy and science fails to account for the existence of consciousness itself, which is non-physical.

He sees life as naturalistic dualism. In terms of consciousness, this means, physical explanations of mental experiences don’t hit the target. Mental states can be caused by physical systems such as our brains but mental states, such as altered states of consciousness, cannot be described in terms of physical systems.
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How non-conscious sensory stimuli becomes conscious experience is not known. We try to connect the two through the use of language. But language can only hint at non-verbal states. As crude a tool as language is, it is all we have to at least try to communicate what these varying states of awareness feel like.

If there were no concept of right or wrong, we would be living like the animals. Killing would not have a moral value nor would stealing from each other. It would all be about survival and nothing more. Hyenas do not think twice about stealing hard-earned prey from other animals. Nor do cheetahs think twice about attacking a helpless gazelle faun. A dog does not think about how cute the little rabbit is that he is slaughtering, nor does the male lion feel guilt about eating his own offspring.

The problem with living without morality is that, even if it ensures survival in the short run, in the long run it does not work, at least for humans. We have risen to the top of the food chain because of our ability to cooperate with each other and to share. Even among the animals, there are certain frameworks of right or wrong. The alpha male wolf gets first pick of the prey. After that, there is a descending order all the way down to the omega female. If a wolf transgresses this order, they are quickly brought into line.

Morality implies a conscience that makes us feel bad when we break the moral code, unless we are psychotic. Yet, some of the moral codes that have existed in the past could seem psychotic now. For example the Hammurabi Code, one of the oldest systems of law in the world from Babylon, predating the 10 Commandments. The Code divides justice into the three classes of Babylonian society: Property owners, freed men, and slaves. If a doctor killed a rich patient, he would have his hands cut off, but if he killed a slave, only financial restitution was required.
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It seems barbarous today to even have slaves, no less laws that applied to them alone. Enforcement of such laws, as in cutting off people’s hands, is also barbarous today. This illustrates that even moral codes can be immoral, depending on what period you are living in and in what part of the world.

There are many enlightened souls who are not in the limelight and just go about their lives living in peace and fulfillment. But here are two gurus, one a man and one a woman, who have gone beyond personal enlightenment, into humanitarian activities:
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• Sri Sri Ravi Shankar: He created courses that provide techniques and tools to live a deeper, more joyous life. He also has established nonprofit organizations that recognize a common human identity above the boundaries of race, nationality, and religion.
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• Amma: She has said, “A continuous stream of love flows from me to all of creation. This is my inborn nature. The duty of a doctor is to treat patients. In the same way, my duty is to console those who are suffering.” She has founded many global charities to feed hungry children and nurture abused social cast-offs.

Both of these gurus have a huge following, and rightly so. For they are a force of good on this planet right now and are moving it to the next level of consciousness.

Cosmopolitan ethics comes from Diogenes (5th century) in Ancient Greece. When someone asked him where he came from he said: “I am a citizen of the world (cosmopolitan)". This is a broader concept than what most people held at that time.
Most Greeks, in those days, identified with their individual city-state or with being Greek as a group. Now the individual could be part of two communities, the one in which they were born and the community of mankind in general.

Pluralism recognizes and promotes diversity within a nation or state. This permits the peaceful acceptance of different lifestyles, ideas, and beliefs. 

​The relation between the cosmopolitan ethics and pluralism is that that both go beyond local prejudices and cultural patterns to embrace the fact that the world is large and so many people can’t all have the same way of looking at things.

​Both cosmopolitan ethics and pluralism foster the idea that not only can we live in peace with one another, through acceptance and tolerance, but also benefit by contributing knowledge and understanding to each other’s lives.

It is not your soul that is sorrowful and tempestuous, it is your mind. Your soul is always at peace because it exists outside of time. It is eternal. However, your mind is a battleground of upsets and pain because it is time-based. It is either worrying about the future or distressed about the past and it gives you no rest or peace.

This is why it is so important for you to get acquainted with that eternal part of you that does not suffer and is in touch with the creative energy of the Universe. Many methods of bypassing the mind exist, including Transcendental Meditation. During these states you will observe the mind acting up but will be detached from it and able to attain the deep, stillness inside that you seek.
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Bliss is a path, a state of being. It is not an end result of a given number of steps. When the chattering mind is put in its proper place (as a helper, instead of running the show), sadness will not run your life anymore.