Existential Crisis: The Rupture Of A False Self

Okay.

Okay.

Okay okay okay.

So you have found yourself in an existential crisis and decided that enough is enough. Well, fear not, dear reader, for swimming in a sea of existential dread has long been one of my favourite spare-time activities. Hence, we’ll meditate on what it means to turn an existential crisis into Existential Courage and find meaning in such a crisis, rather than merely suffering because of it.

To do so, we’ll apply a way of thinking that uses existential dread as a turning point for change, helping you navigate life when you’re in the midst of an existential crisis.

After reading this text, you’ll know how to: 
1. Approach your existential storm as a vehicle for change. 
2. Use inner turmoil for tuning a false Self into your authentic Self.
3. Replace existential dread with existential courage.

*A disclaimer: please note that if you’re experiencing suicidal thoughts, seeking out the help of a mental health professional or psychologist can get you through the dark. Know that there is always help available.

What qualifies as an existential crisis?

There will be a day when you’re at that yearly family gathering, slightly depressed, glancing at that one weird family member who’s always drunk, you catch the sound of existential shit hitting the fan, and you go: “What. The. Fuck.” 

“How did I end up here?”, you start to wonder. What is the meaning of life? Is this all there is? Why do I feel like a complete alien all the time? Who am I? Why am I here? What is my purpose in life?” If this sounds familiar to you, then congratulations! You’ve stumbled into an existential French kiss with life’s absurdity!

And even though the sensation of tongue-on-tongue feels generally pleasant, some of us avoid the confrontation with existential anxiety like the plague, long enough so they never have to mingle with them at all. For some of us, however, the act of birth itself felt like a direct faceplant into existential dread. No matter which category you fall into, you probably developed your own ways of staying sane (I hope). But sometimes, just sometimes, the self-fabricated illusion of normality shatters, and we’re exposed to life’s inherent absurdity.

Last month, I had such a moment: while on the hunt for a new bidet sprayer (and its predecessor exploding earlier that morning), I found myself stuck in traffic. Shops were about to close, and the chances of finding a new spray to hose my butt clean the next morning were shrinking by the minute. Meanwhile, across the crossroad, some homeless guy was juggling a bunch of fire torches, and an A.I. toothbrush’s cover of Gangsta’s Paradise started blasting from my phone. I’m suddenly hit with an existential despair that echoes:

“Why am I here?” 

In those moments, life is reduced to a chain of mind-boggling banalities. People, society, roundabout art – everything seems abstract; nothing makes sense, the point is totally lost. Such moments are funny when they’re short-lived, but when they occur more often than usual, you may be on the verge of an existential crisis, and potentially wake up one day as Gregor Samsa: the protagonist in Franz Kafka’s novel “Metamorphosis”. 

What an existential crisis feels like:
the story of Gregor Samsa

Gregor, a traveling salesman, wakes up one day to discover he’s been transformed into a “gigantic insect.” Being somewhat shocked at his transformation for the first minute or so, he continues to worry about being late for work, catching trains, hating his day job, etc. Instead of even attempting to come to terms with what had just happened to him, he seems to actively, perhaps unconsciously, seek his default mode of ignoring his inner distress. What’s bizarre about Gregor’s story is that he continues to try to blend into his normal routine, but being an insect, he obviously fails horribly to do so. The story concludes with Gregor dying of nothing spectacular; his family had neglected him, he didn’t eat, and he got an infection on his back because of an apple his father threw at him. Again, no spectacular or dramatic death; Gregor just fades away and dies. 

In this sense, we’re all a bit like Gregor Samsa. We are all prone to clinging onto a former state of “normality,” even though it’s obvious that that same normality has never been in accordance with what we truthfully are. For some, the feelings of displacement accumulate over the years, until finally the walls cave in and we’re forced to face the strangers we’ve become to ourselves. Some people then either see the light, get into mindfulness, divorce, or join a Harley-Davidson club (or all three). For others, the sense of a separation from Self is felt as a daily reality: depression, apathy, a sense of being an insect unable to articulate the cause of the self-estrangement. Both scenarios disable us from living a truly fulfilling life, one that is in accordance with who we truly are. 

Ofcourse, there is nuance to both cases, as they both attempt to protect us when we’re in difficult situations: many times we have to take on personas that are different from our real selves, to survive in this world or take care of our loved ones. But to spend years and years pretending to be someone you’re not is a fruitless pursuit. Likewise, we can live through difficult times precisely because we disable our inner desires to be heard. But even so, a life drenched in depression or apathy is just as fruitless. It is Kafka’s story of Gregor Samsa that depicts this fruitlessness of both scenarios so accurately: His pre-insect life being one he despised, particularly his job, his boss, the commute to work, with his post-insect life being one of incompetence, neglect, (self-)alienation, and eventually, death. Both situations are responses to the confrontation with unanswered existential dread, both responses ultimately leading to a dead end.

Existential crisis as the rupture of a false Self

Kafka didn’t title his story “Transformation.” He titled it “Metamorphosis”, and for a very good reason. “Metamorphosis” is generally linked to a progressive step in the process of becoming whole. However, Gregor didn’t think of his becoming an insect as a positive. But wasn’t Kafka suggesting his transformation was actually meant as a call for change? This begs the question: what would have happened if he had chosen a different response? One which he’d treat his metamorphosis as a rupture of his false self, and into his authentic self, with him becoming the critter he is, instead of rejecting it. Isn’t it interesting to see what that response would look like? What life changes could he make to accommodate his new being? How would it feel for him to crawl around on his newfound legs, to go out in the forest in search of food, to enjoy shelter in the dark corners of the room, to stop conversing with humans and forget about catching trains? What would happen if Gregor were to embrace his new situation?

The story of Gregor has a different ending. Perhaps logically so, since the act of owning up to whatever wants to awaken within yourself is undoubtedly an immense task (especially after years of repression). In Gregor’s case, he’d have to give up on his family, his job, and his former life, which, albeit a miserable one, still offered a sense of security and predictability. On top of that, it would force him to accept the fact that his prior life was full of shit. Perhaps, this was too much for Gregor to sacrifice, even though many aspects of his former life couldn’t care less about him. 

As it is for Gregor Samsa, so is it for many of us: accepting the rupture of our false selves is often too radical to be considered a viable option. Hence, this is why so many people only “turn their lives around” after they’ve had a close encounter with death. In those rare moments where we’re forced to confront the fact of our finiteness, we’re finally able to see how much of our misery is based on the mismatch between the internal and the external, and allows us into the realisation that, since we’ve been in misery anyway, we might as well take a swing at a different flavour of misery: that of letting go of a former life.

Unlearned control: the risk of staying stuck

Letting go of a former life comes with risk. But the risk of staying put in a place where you don’t belong is even greater. I learned this when I was 27, a time in my life when I woke up feeling like a total alien a little too often, with each waking moment oozing a sense of meaninglessness. Alas, shit happens, but the real danger comes when such periods start to last for so long that they become your new normal.

Humanity’s superpower is its ability to adapt. Paradoxically, it is also its Achilles’ heel. To be more nuanced, we’ll zoom in on the phenomenon of “unlearned control” as described by Maier and Seligman in their 2016 study that revisits the concept of “Learned Helplessness.” According to their findings, helplessness is humans’ default state. To put it bluntly, when we come into this world, we don’t know shit, and it’s only through action that we can grow from a state of helplessness into a state of learned control, exercising the ability to create a life to our liking. In turn, when we find ourselves stuck in a shit-situation for too long, we are actually unlearning control, losing our agency, and defaulting to a life of inaction and apathy. The longer we stay stuck, the more we roll back into a state of helplessness, binge-coping Peaky Blinders, and indecisive whether to order takeaway or cook something ourselves. (my interpretation, btw.)

Ludwig Börne said that “Getting rid of a delusion makes us wiser than getting hold of a truth.” Knowing this, perhaps one of the most extraordinary delusions is to stay stuck in a situation that drains the life out of you. But you need to understand the following: if your current situation is making you miserable and causes an existential crisis that goes unanswered, you’re already failing. To accept this as a reality, you enable yourself to make a change that can lift you out of your existential dread for good. In my case, it would have been a matter of time for things to become irreversible, mentally or physically. Knowing that staying stuck offered these two prospects, I could then, wholeheartedly, break the cycle of staying stuck.

Some time later, Merette and I left our former lives completely. We embarked on an adventure of a lifetime: we created Same Worldwide (the site you’re currently on), vowed to create artworks that inspire change, walked 600km backwards, got married, moved to Panama, and started a business. I don’t say this to brag, but to show what could have been left on the table by staying stuck in a life that doesn’t fit.

Even though Merette and I rolled the existential dice (and are incredibly lucky to be able to do so), it all started with what Maier and Seligman propose as an antidote for unlearned control: to take ACTION. Before we left Holland, some people probed whether we had thought through the consequences if our gamble would fail, to which Merette famously said:

“By staying in this current situation, we will fail anyway.”

But what, for the love of God, does that practically mean? In our case, we placed a bet on our ability to venture onto a course of personal metamorphosis. In the case of Gregor Samsa, instead of rejecting the misfit he had become and pondering how he still might fit in, he could also have explored what it’s like to take to the skies and fly like an insect. What it practically means for you, well, we can only find out! (keep on reading)

The 3 requirements for dealing with existential crisis

...but to find out, you first need to understand and apply three principles. Together, they form the foundation for lasting, meaningful change. The internet is spoiled with lists of things and ways to deal with an existential crisis: Instead of drowning in negative thoughts or feelings of anxiety, you could make new friends, practice gratitude, start working out, dive into existentialism, make new friends, find a new hobby, seek existential therapy, ladieladiela – and (don’t get me wrong:) they are all true. But what most of these approaches lack (to me, at least) is the foundation that allows you to understand yourself on a deeper level: Knowing your options, knowing your triggers, and understanding Selfless Curiosity.

1. Choose the right response

When you’re experiencing an existential crisis, you’re left with three responses. Of course, there are many, many, many more responses, but for the sake of simplicity, we’ll focus on just three:

1. You can try to avoid them. This way, you sacrifice meaning in exchange for a sense of control. 
2. You can suffer because of them. This way, you sacrifice the present moment for a sense of self-honesty. 
3. You can treat them as invitations. This way, you sacrifice your sense of safety and control in exchange for a sense of meaning and purpose.

As we have seen in Kafka’s Metamorphosis, both options 1 and 2 lead to a dead-end or a Harley-Davidson membership. The third option is to interpret the presence of recurring existential concerns as a sign that change is due, and to respond in a manner that invites you onto a path of depth and meaning.

2. Recognize your personal triggers for existential dread

Wanna know what existential diarrhea sounds like? Go to the railway station during rush hour and rejoice in the choir of repetitive beeps, blurted out by the entrance gates, while a human Play-Doh compound of squirming limbs and torsos squeezes itself through the ports. Each time I enter such a stampede in public transport, my mind wants to die. Five seconds later, I’m disgusted by the fact that I’m disgusted. Five seconds later, my crisis usually has evaporated; I giggle about it and think of hunting mammoths, for whatever reason.

But why am I talking about public transport? Because I’m often triggered by public transport so purely, it’s become a great personal benchmark for me to “spot the potential elephant” in myself. A railway station during rush hour? Total nightmare, and always leaves me with a good dose of existential dread. Just the smell of the daily commute renders me receptive to the potential skeletons banging on my door. How does it work as a benchmark? Here’s how it works: If I can giggle about the absurdity of public transport, I’m in a good place. If I can’t, I’m in a bad place, and I know there is something that I’m not seeing within myself.

Likewise, you probably have your own moments in which it’s hard to avoid what your inner compass is pointing to. Even though we humans are experts at denying elephants in rooms, there are always moments when we cannot deny them, no matter how much we distract ourselves. It’s essential that you pay close attention to those moments and what emerges in them. That way, you’ll develop your own method for recognizing an existential crisis before you topple into the abyss.

To help you out, you could make a list of moments that trigger existential crises. To give you a personal example, here are my 7 benchmarks that signal to me if shit’s about the existential fan (or not): 

– Public transport during rush hour
– The amount of decayed food in my fridge
– Being late 3 times in a row
– Christmas dinners and birthday parties
– Running out of toiletpaper
– Phone usage
– Receiving feedback (good or bad)

If either one of these gives me existential dread for longer than 30 minutes, I know I’m doing something wrong in my life. It might sound ridiculous, but many times it’s in the mundane moments of daily life where our actual inner sensations shimmer through in their rawest, most sincere forms. So before you plunge yourself into a $2.5k Self-Discovery course, you might as well take a hard look inside your fridge first.

3. Embracing “Selfless Curiosity”

Understanding your inner world starts with a sincere curiosity for whatever turmoil is stirring inside – but just curiosity won’t get you far: what you need is to have a curiosity that is selfless. Selfless Curiosity refers to a curiosity that is free from the interference of one’s Ego’s judgment. It’s a way of thinking that places anything that can occur within the realms of both the conscious and the unconscious as not merely fantasies, but as real as an exploding bidet sprayer head early in the morning.

But why is this called “Selfless Curiosity“?
Because in general, our Ego asserts an “I” that establishes itself by opposing Otherness: the accumulation of things that are in constrast to Selves. Even though these fixed identities give us an assuring sense of Self, a hyper-fixation with the Self can constrict us to a one-sided experience, simply because it’s generally wary of new experiences out of fear for breaking one’s own construct of the perceived Self.

So, blablabla, here’s the gist: the Ego Self is opposed to Otherness, because the unknown can enrich us, but also shatter us into a thousand pieces. Hence, the Ego “better safe than sorry” and protects us by shielding us from the parts of ourselves that we’re not familiar with, even though that’s precisely where we can discover what Robert A. Johnson labelled as the “inner gold”: hidden talents, authentic desires, virtuous character that defies limitations.

What does this practically mean: Understanding what your inner world is best done from a place that understands that “we are not who we think we are” as it allows you to discover things about yourself that you never knew could be a part of your being. On the contrary, to interpret your inner world from a place where “you are who you think you are”, you won’t find new inner life. You’ll only find what you think you ought to be.

How to find meaning and purpose: Reconnecting with your authentic Self

Now that we’ve touched on the three principles for approaching your existential dread, we can dive into the practical side of reconnecting with your Authentic Self. But before we do so, it’s important to note that “reconnecting with your authentic self” or “dealing with an existential crisis” does not mean you should turn your life around in drastic ways. Sure, you could do so, but often the small changes you make in your perspective, habits, or attitude towards life will already get you so far. This is because by sincerely integrating what’s living inside you, you can start living a more fulfilling life without having to change jobs or move to Bali.

As we noted earlier in this article, existential dread can result from the rupture of a false Self. To find your authentic Self and reconnect with what makes you tick, we’ll use 4 principles of the Same Method, a method designed to replace unauthenticity with depth and personal meaning. The 4 principles are as follows:

1. The Act of Denoising
2. The Act of Presence
3. The Joy of Physical Awareness
4. The Power of the Inner Compass

1. Denoising: Reset your brain from stress

[…] As individuals, my best recommendation is to go on an information diet, the same way that people go on food diets. Information is the food of the mind. More information isn’t always good for you. It’s actually good to, from time to time, take time for information fasts. When we don’t put anything more in, we just digest and detoxify. Similarly, we should watch the quality of the information we feed our mind. If we feed our mind with all this junk information full of greed and hate and fear, we will have sick minds.“

– Yuval Noah Harrari,

Source: BigThink

The first step to resolving an existential crisis is to establish a clean connection to your inner, authentic desires. We’ll do so through the practice of Denoising: the process of letting your mind digest excessive information, or any (negative) feelings, by allowing it to observe itself in stillness. This might sound fluffy, but it’s an increasingly vital practice for staying sane in this fast-paced, digital world.

To put the severity of this problem into perspective: today’s global average for screen time is 6 hours and 45 minutes a day, with the average Gen Zer topping 9 hours a day. (Source: Demandsage) Another perspective that may shake you to the core: Aza Raskin, the inventor of the infinite scroll, estimates that about 200.000 lifetimes a day are spent scrolling without purpose. (Source: The Telegraph)

But why is this important for dealing with an existential crisis? Because the noise that’s cluttering your mind disables you from connecting with who you truly are. Just like with a picture, noise doesn’t let you see the whole picture with clarity. Or like when listening to the news on the radio, a bad signal prevents you from getting the message, etc. Likewise, the noise that’s caused by a cluttered mind limits your capacity to see what your inner compass is pointing to, what your inner voice is trying to tell you, or to see the full scope of your being.

Hence, when dealing with existential angst, a first good step is to denoise the mind. Unfortunately, there is no quick fix for finding the best way for you to denoise the mind, simply because each mind works in a slightly different way. Even so, the best way to start finding your approach to denoising is to literally sit with the discomfort. Sounds like a silly thing to do, but when was the last time you actually sat down, without a purpose whatsoever? My former 20-year-old meathead self lmfao’d when he first heard this concept. But soon after, he found that sitting with his pain proved to be one of the most potent ways for facing an existential crisis.

To help you get practical, here are 3 approaches to denoising the mind, derived from the Same Method:

• Start each day with 20 to 30 minutes of nothingness: Instead of rushing to work, wake up a little earlier and create a moment of nothingness. This time window should be completely free of anything you “have” to do: You could open up your window and enjoy the view outside, you could make a tea and do nothing else but sip it, or you could simply sit with your thoughts, not in a meditative way per sé, and observe your own thinking.

• Incorporate meditation: Even though writing about the pros of meditation feels like beating a dead horse with a white boa, it deserves mention, as it’s one of the strongest methods for building a clean connection with yourself. Only 10 minutes of meditation a day could already help keep existential dread away. Once, when I felt stuck entirely for weeks on end, I forced myself into a 24-hour meditation. It sucked like hell for the most part, but after digging through internal shit for 18 hours, something clicked, a pattern of thought broke, and my life was changed for the better. (If you don’t know where to start, I highly recommend you get familiar with Vipassana meditation.)

• Welcome boredom back into your life: Use the daily in-between moments as opportunities to denoise your mind by allowing yourself to be bored. When used right, boredom becomes a superpower: it allows you to observe yourself and your surroundings, gives you new inspiration or ideas, and helps declutter your thoughts in the process. For example, when you’re on public transport, you could keep your phone off and observe your surroundings instead. Those moments of initial boredom might turn out to be golden. Find more of those in-between moments, and use them to denoise your mind.

• Leave the phone out of the bedroom, get an old-skool alarm clock (or better: a wakeup light)
  A great way to start denoising is to re-evaluate the relationship with your phone. For many people, the first and last thing they do every day is grab their phone, either to set the alarm or to turn it off. This habit creates a pattern of excessive phone use. On top of that, checking your phone is a profound way to ruin your dopamine levels from the get-go. So instead, disconnect, get an alarm clock, keep your phone off, and see what effects it has on your day.

2. Presence: Experience fully

Strong emotion is like strong love, strong hate, strong suffering, strong pleasure. Everything is strong. It takes a high price to pay for that… and you know, I can’t do less. And people prefer not to have that just to live a kind of life similar to numbness. I think that people are so medicated. They take medication for something, to not feel pain, not feel emotions, to go to sleep, to this kind of oblivion state. I don’t even like aspirin. I don’t like anything. If I feel pain, it’s pain. If I feel like crying, I cry. To feel your emotions is very important.

– Marina Abramovic

(Source: UpstateWoman, Abramovic Interview)

The “second step” in dealing with an existential crisis is to reclaim your presence in your daily life. Presence is, among others, the act of fully experiencing the present moment that you’re currently in. Even though we sometimes prefer to escape the moment, being present nonetheless deepens your experience tremendously.

But why is this important for dealing with an existential crisis? To put it simply: because Presence is the ultimate antidote to numbness.

Below are three ways, derived from the Same Method, that you can do each day to revitalize your presence.

• Adopt an open posture: Funnily enough, your posture affects your presence in vast ways. By simply adopting an open posture, through rolling back the shoulders, opening the chest, straightening your back, and breathing in deeply (from the belly), you naturally open yourself up to experience more in the present moment.

• Act with intention: During the day, you train and experience Presence by focusing with full attention on what you’re doing in that specific moment. A practical example of this: When you have dinner, focus on exactly that, having dinner. Don’t multitask, don’t watch your phone, don’t do anything else but focus on your dinner. What does it taste like? What does it feel like? And what is going on in your environment while you’re having dinner? Likewise, when you’re talking to someone, be open and fully attentive. Listen to their stories, what they say, but also to what they don’t say.

• Make “taking in the present moment” a habit: When you’re in public transport, instead of being a mindless slump of Play-Doh, try to take in everything that you can sense: What do you smell? What do you see? What do you hear? And how is it influencing the way you sense?

By training your presence, you enrich the present moment in ways that fill your life with inspiration, sensation, meaning, and intention.

3. Physical Awareness: Feeling that you’re alive

The body and mind are deeply connected, making physical awareness a key aspect for aligning the inner world with the outer world. Your physicality influences the way you think, how you feel, and how you move through the world. That makes the pursuit of physical awareness a priceless endeavour, one that generates personal depth, self-knowledge, energy, discipline, strength, and courage.

I’m not simply advocating for you to hit the gym 2 times a month; I’m inviting you on a deep dive into what it means to be “fully alive as a physical sensation, and to integrate this enriching pursuit of physical awareness into your daily life. Taking this deep dive is a topic in its own right. But to get you started, here are three things you can do immediately to grow and nurture your physical awareness.

• Walk lightly: Modern shoes with thick rubber soles have dumbed down the way we walk. We carelessly ram our feet into the ground and rely on those bizarre soles to dampen the impact. But here’s the kicker: the way you walk influences the way you’re thinking. Therefore, whenever you feel hopeless, heavy, or stressed, try to walk with lightness, without making a sound. By simply changing how you walk, you influence your mind in beautiful ways. Wanna know how to spot a controlfreak? Look at their inner shoe soles: if they’re worn only at the heel section, you’re probably dealing with one.

• Keep your hips open: The body stores stress around the hip joints, especially in the psoas muscles. So whenever you’ve got a lot on your plate, or when you’re dealing with an iffy situation, you’d be surprised what 15 minutes of opening up the hip joints could do. You can do specific yoga exercises for this and include them in your warming-up or cooling-down, integrate them into your morning routine, or however you see fit.

• Shine a light from your chest: Your posture is an immense factor in how you feel, how other people react to you, and how you can influence your day-to-day experience. As I said earlier, adopting an open posture is one of the most powerful things you can do for yourself. To start, instead of reminding yourself to “roll your shoulders back, you can instead imagine a light shining from your chest. You want to shine this light into the world, no matter what you do or where you are. Be mindful of this light, keep it on at all times, and share it with the world. It’ll stimulate a posture of self-esteem, openness, energy, and virtue.

4. Inner Compassing: Pursue your authentic desires

Last but not least, we can reconnect with the Inner Compass. The Inner Compass is, simply put, the inner drive to become interested in things that align with your authentic desires. Thus, by honouring your heartfelt curiosity and interests, you’ll create for yourself a life that is a direct manifestation of your true character.

Likewise, you should be cautious of ignoring your inner compass for too long. Doing so may result in a life that is nothing more than a false manifestation of your true character, and it’s precisely this approach to life that leads to situations like Gregor Samsa’s.

Honing your Inner Compass starts with honest self-inquiry. Since we’ve focused most of our efforts within this article on achieving just that, below are two examples of what honing your Inner Compass looks like:

– Writing & journalling:
Writing is one of the most significant ways to understand your own thinking. Therefore, writing and journaling are powerful tools for reconnecting with your inner compass. One form of journalling that is particularly useful is writing down the things that live in your unconscious. This is essentially a form of writing that demands you to keep on writing without an initial conscious thought of what you want to write about. To do this in practice, it’s pretty straightforward: set a timer, put your pen to paper, and keep writing until time’s up. Even if you don’t know what to write about, force it. Keep on writing, and eventually you’ll discover things about yourself that your Ego consciousness could have never foreseen. You can also manipulate this technique: By starting with a specific question or a “prompt”, you can explore different areas of your unconscious world. For example, set your timer, write down a question such as “Who am I really? or “What do I actually want?” and start writing without pause. After you’re done, you might end up with verbal diarrhea for 90%, but the remaining 10% may hint at what a meaningful life means to you, in ways you couldn’t articulate before.

– Shadow work:
The act of doing shadow work is a topic in its own right, but fuck it: it still deserves mention as it’s one of the most important things you can do to enable the whole Self. For those unfamiliar with the Jungian concept of the Shadow, here’s a brief explainer: “This is the part of our unconscious mind that Jung believed to hold all the things about ourselves that we repress, whether because they are evil, socially unacceptable, harmful to others, or detrimental to our own health. Our Shadows embody our inner darkness, the things about ourselves we hide, the damage we experience in our lives but never fully heal, desires we cannot satisfy.” (source: tamug.edu)

To engage in shadow work is to make the unconscious conscious and to integrate the Shadow into one’s being. This, in itself, is a daunting task, but according to Jung, it is essential for full self-actualization. To get practical, Robert A. Johnson, a Jungian analyst, noted that to engage in shadow work, one should be creative in crafting one’s own rituals that symbolize an approach to the shadow, because the shadow can only be interpreted through symbols, never through direct language.

So, what the hell should you do? A significant first step to get into shadowwork is to familiarize yourself with the concept of the Shadow. A great starting point would be Johnson’s explanation of the shadow in his “Owning Your Own Shadow,” and I highly recommend his other works. From there on, you can get creative, experiment, and find ways to create your own shadow-ritual. As a starter, I’ll share with you my (highly personal) ritual that I do every week:

1. I set a timer for 30 minutes.
2. I then proceed to sit down, light a candle, and burn a piece of Palo Santo. I watch the flames burn through the wood before I blow out the fire.
3. The Palo Santo now produces smoke. With the smoke, I air-paint nine shapes: 3 circles representing my conscious side, three circles representing my shadow side, and three mandorla shapes representing the overlap between the two.
4. I lay down the Palo Santo and place the lighting candle behind me, creating a projection of my shadow on the wall in front of me.
5. I close my eyelids and look into the darkness. In my head, I’m imagining myself sitting inside my shadow, in total darkness. At this point, I always feel a rush of fear through my body. Still, nevertheless, I imagine myself opening my arms and reaching into the shadow, signalling that I allow everything in my shadow to be seen, to exist, or to be heard.
6. I don’t force anything, but welcome anything that emerges from the dark.
7. After 30 minutes or so, I thank the Shadow, wave it goodbye, and open my eyes.

Conclusion: Replacing existential dread with existential courage

Whoa! You’re still here? Well, there you have it, an approach to dealing with existential crisis, in a way that treats it as an invitation, rather than a burden! Now, to finish this article, I sincerely hope you found a new perspective and feel that whenever you feel you’re in the midst of an existential storm, it can also be the starting point of something beautiful: a harmonisation with the authentic nature of yourself.

Understand that there will always be moments of crisis, and therefore, you’re prompted to invent and reinvent yourself again and again. This, in and of itself, is a beautiful thing. It’s a perspective on life that, once integrated, allows you to rejoice in purpose and meaning by turning existential dread into existential courage.

…and to tell you how the quest for a bidet sprayer head ended: In the end, I found a beautiful new, steel sprayer head – too bad it exploded on the first try.

Life is a fucking joke, isn’t it?

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Next steps: Start building your Existential Courage

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May you find all that you are looking for,
Samuel

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