The Existential Crisis of Being Human

Adapted from the preface of an upcoming book.

Being a licensed professional counselor in various settings amongst people of all backgrounds and age groups, I have had privileged access to peering into the depths of the human crisis and to witness it manifest and expose itself in diverse ways.

The privileged opportunity of being a therapist allowed me to see the existential crisis of being human firsthand, and to notice that irrespective of race, religion, sex, social class, or age everyone is susceptible and vulnerable to this crisis that is innate within the human being.

Although race, religion, sex, and social class do not safeguard human existence from the existential crisis, they can play a protective factor by contributing to how each human being goes about dealing and reacting to this unavoidable crisis.

But nevertheless, it ultimately comes down to the individual and how they choose to deal with it, through their free-will they have been graced.

The existential crisis of being human is not only foundational to the human being, but it is also as fundamental as learning a language or developing a belief system is. This crisis can be a blessing or a curse, it is fully dependent upon how one chooses to perceive and consequently go about dealing with it, that determines its nature. Because the human crisis at its core is in a neutral state, awaiting the will of each individual to channel it their own way.

The overarching issue I have noticed is that people cannot seem to help themselves. People just cannot seem to get out of their own way. For as much as people would like to be the complementary factor that progresses them towards liberation, ironically they generally play the counter role which promotes the advancement of their imprisonment. Without having obtained the knowledge and understanding of the true self, people tend to be more prone to being an obstacle and a hindrance for themselves than they are to being helpful. This is due to the decisions they make being more detrimental to the progress they seek than assisting it. Unfortunately what people want to be and what they are is not the same; people hunger to be the hero, but feast on being the villain.

Therefore, the individual’s greatest enemy is the self. The self is its greatest obstacle, the self is its greatest mystery, as the self is its greatest stranger.

And the self remains a mystery to the individual because the individual has no interest in getting to know the self, no effort in investing time in building a relationship with the self because the assumed belief is that they already know themselves because they are themselves. The focus from birth is set to serve and fulfill the animalistic urges within, wants that drive people to do what they do and to act as they act. These wants are served through the individual believing that the self and their wants are one and the same.

It is with these assumptive beliefs that people come to “know” themselves, by identifying the self with these wants. It is this misidentification of self, that stops people from seeking to know the self, because the belief is that they already know themselves. These inner urges drive human beings to attain momentary pleasures which validates the false belief that the urges are the self. The thought blindly assumes without any self-reflection — since the urges lead me to feel good, it must be good, and who would guide one to feel good but one’s own self.

Unbeknownst to them that what is pleasurable now can be harmful later, what seems to be a good service to one in the moment may be a disservice to one’s greater being.

It is in this ignorance of self that allows people to have their lives dictated by this stranger. It is this stranger that is controlling their being and deciding their becoming. It is this stranger that chooses which potential within the self will be picked, and ultimately determining what kind of human being will be manifested.

Although human urges drive people to act, it is ultimately the stranger (self) hidden deep within one’s boundless depths that decides and chooses whether to serve the presenting urges or not. It is the stranger within that chooses how to go about serving the urges.

Yet, when someone is asked why they do the things they do?

Why they think the way they think?

Why are they affected by the things they are affected by?

Why they feel the way they feel?

Why they like the things they like?

The answer is generally “because I want to” or “I don’t know”.

Naturally the follow-up question to a response such as “because I want to” is, what is it that makes you want to? Is it truly you that wants? And they respond with I “I don’t know”.

Well, wouldn’t it be helpful to know, since the thing you don’t know is controlling, dictating, and determining the choices you make, and those choices you don’t know why you make, construct and shape your life? Which only leads people to become a person they don’t know.

These questions are generally responded with “yes, I would like to know, I want to know, but how do I go about knowing”.

The issue with wanting and liking to know something is that it is not thought to be a need, and the willingness to know need not be exercised.

The person claiming that they want to know and would like to know is not aware that to get to such a knowing takes excruciating levels of willpower. It demands strength and resilience that is not for the faint of heart.

The need for strength and resilience is to withstand the rude awakening that comes with the knowing of accepting the truth. The truth can completely uproot the identity of the present being, and severe it from all the roots it was laid down.

When the individual gets to know the self, they discover that the person they thought that they were was merely an illusion. The person they believe to be the self may not even exist.

More frightening than realizing that the person the individual believed to be the self does not exist, is to realize that the self never even existed.

Transitioning from not knowing to knowing begins a whirlwind of self-questioning:

Who am I?

Who have I been?

Who has been living this life up to this point, if it was not me?

These questions arise when the assumptive belief of the self is realized to not be true, when the self begins looking through the sight of knowing and sees what they thought themselves to be was not them at all but a mirage from the lens of ignorance.

These thought bubbles that people think in, come to be exposed. Exposed when the self comes to know the self, a knowing through which the self will come to a realization that such thoughts and thinking are instruments of distortion used to make illusions and fairy tales of self.

On the journey to getting to know the stranger that is the self, the world becomes a stranger —before it gets any clearer — because all the false self assumptions and beliefs must be destroyed and permitted to crumble away.

The falsities of illusions, delusions, lies, and deceits must be torn out from the roots to open up space for the seeds of truth to be sown and nourished to grow.

By merely tasting the the tiniest drop of self-truth, the person that has been built by the world, and the world that the person has come to know will dissolve.

This dissolution is an inevitable part of the journey for anyone truly seeking to know the self.

The dissolutions liberate, but they are also the formidable obstacles that strike the heart with immense fear which stops the individual from continuing on the journey to the truth.

To overcome the obstacle of fear that dissolution causes, the individual must be willing to look beyond the things they want to see and to be willing to accept to see things they do not want to see, or like to see.

The obstacle is only an obstacle in those that are not willing to exercise their willpower.

The obstacle is only an obstacle in the unwillingness to face and accept the truth, and the unwillingness to go beyond the delusions to get to the true self.

People may want to know why, but the lack of willingness to utilize the willpower needed to get to know the “why” that is professed to be wanted, is what keeps them in the unknown.

This is a question that each must ask themselves:

What is more telling of my truth, that which I say or that which I do?