Josh Goldberg | Spiritual & Existential Change through Disclosure

It messes with what we think about ourselves – whether or not we think we’re competent and valuable or in control. It messes with our perceptions about other people – whether they’re good and trustworthy or not. And it messes with our sense of the world and whether the world’s a good place or a bad place. And in so many ways when we think about spiritual and existential change, we’re talking about the third of those things – the world and the idea of life. When we talk about spiritual and existential change if you Google existential philosophy what you may find are people like Camus who explored and reflected upon life – and what they’ll generally talk about is the idea that life is absurd, that life isn’t fair, that bad things happen to good people and on and on – and therefore, the only question is do we stay? It’s Shakespeare – to be or not to be – and as we walk the path of PTG, we find the answer – of course you stay – because each and every every experience you have is an opportunity to find meaning and to be able to grow and to learn, not simply for your own sake and not simply for the sake of growing and learning, but so you can share what you’re learning with other people. And what greater cause is there in life than the ability to be that much better at helping other human beings because of what you’ve experienced?

As Warriors you know that – that’s what drives you – so as we’ve done in each of the other phases, what I want to offer up are a few ideas on why people including ourselves, struggle when it comes to spiritual and existential change.

The first thing will be no surprise – and it’s our past training and experiences – and in some respects this could be looking at your military or first responder experiences, which is seeing so much darkness and seeing the awful things that people can do to each other. It starts to make you cynical about life and about the purpose of all of it – and so that’s one of the reasons why it’s easy to struggle when you have a warrior’s experience. The other part of those training and experiences is your childhood because what we know and the reason why we must look back is that our core beliefs in so many respects about ourselves, others, and the world are shaped by our first training environment. They’re shaped by our families – for better or for worse. Sure our culture matters and the rest of it but our families in many respects are the ones who set limits on what we think we are and aren’t capable of doing. They teach us whether or not people are good or bad and they give us a sense in that environment. If you think about our childhood world as the whole world we start to make conclusions about whether or not the world is a good or bad place and whether or not life is worth living. So that’s one of the reasons why we tend to struggle with spiritual and existential change in the sense that our past training and experience obfuscates and obscures our ability to see what’s true for us.

The second is a lack of clarity. Clarity is one of the things that we need in order to reflect deeply on concepts about life and death and spiritual an existential change. So when we can’t see clearly, when we get trapped in a fog of struggle, it’s very difficult to ask and answer bigger questions because all you’re trying to do is get to the next minute, the next hour, the next day – and so when you have clarity – when you can play chess in a world of people playing checkers – this stuff makes a lot of sense – but it can be hard without clarity.

The third is a sense of falseness. When we struggle and have difficult experiences and upbringings we tend to play a character. We play a role and I did it really, really well as this indoor, Jewish kid who was super successful at that. And we get further and further and further away from what is true for us. There’s this idea that struggle is the distance between who we are deep down and where we are at any moment in time – and so that distance makes it hard to have deep reflection about life because you don’t know who the hell you are. I didn’t know who the hell I was deep down – and all you’re trying to do in this environment is get your needs met – which is reasonable – but not constructive and helpful for reflection. The fourth is about judgment and it’s this sense of being quick to judge other people. This often comes from lots of past training and experiences that we’re not open to experiences or people or ideas that aren’t part of what we already know. And what we know is that curiosity is the key to life. Einstein said it best,  ‘I have no special talents, I am only passionately curious.’ The fifth is a lack of a agency. What is agency? Agency is the sense of an internal locus of control. The belief and recognition that our actions can create change in our environment – and if you don’t believe that then you aren’t getting into big questions about life and death and senses of connections and spiritual and religious matters – those aren’t on your agenda – because you don’t believe that anything good out here is going to happen. And so we start to engage in that victim mentality and self-destructive practices and when you’re doing those things you’re not getting into the bigger ideas. The sixth is a loss of faith. I come at this as somebody who is what I call a lapsed Jew. When I struggled, I sought comfort in lots of different faiths and I couldn’t find what I was looking for and we start to ask questions questions about why the bad things happen to good people or why would this happen if there’s a God – deep questions that start to interfere with our capacity to be able to experience things and to really explore ideas of spirituality or religiousness – or religiousness interferes with that and so the loss of faith, the sense of nihilism that can come about, that nothing matters – what’s the point of all of it – it interferes with our willingness and our ability to reflect upon deeper questions.

As with all things in PTG – that can also be an opening. If nothing matters and then all of a sudden you start to be open or start to say well maybe what I believed isn’t all true or no longer works, let me go find out what is. These things have two sides to them just like everything in life. And the seventh and final cause of struggle when it comes to spiritual and existential change is disconnection and isolation. You know a core part of the notion of this domain of PTG is the idea that at some level we’re all connected. Viktor Frankl talks about the idea that we’re at our most human when we struggle because it is the one universal part of the human condition. When you’re disconnected, when you’re in the midst of deep struggle and believe that something’s wrong with you, that you may never be right again and no one will understand what you’re going through, we tend to withdraw – we do the opposite of what we need to do when it comes to spiritual and existential change, which is to be open to connecting with other people and to have a belief that there is something that connects us to everybody around us and to the world as a whole.

So those are just some of our thoughts about the reasons why we struggle when it comes to spiritual and existential change. Now I want to ask you to reflect on what’s true for you. First, what causes you to struggle when it comes to this area of PTG? The second is, what do you need to overcome those obstacles and struggle in terms of resources outside of you and resourcefulness inside of you? The third is, what do you need to do to overcome those obstacles in real and tangible ways – what do you need to do – what kind of chances do you need to take? What kind of places do you need to go? What kinds of things do you need to start to do to make sense of your experiences and start moving forward?