Existential Review Part 13 FREEDOM & GUILT by Sasha Lessin, Ph.D.,
sashalessinphd@... 808 244-4103

[Based on Koestenbaum, P., The New Image of the Person: The Theory
and Practice of Clinical Psychology, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1978.]

Now that you've familiarized yourself with the ideals in earlier lessons, continue the exploration of the existential model of
being starting with the next ideal; then share your results on this site.

YOU'RE FREE TO CHOOSE VALUES AND SELF-CONCEPTS
ACCEPT GUILT FOR YOUR CHOICES AS SIGNALS TO D0 BETTER (Ideal 11)

You are unavoidably free. Deliberately choose a level of
consciousness and an orientation on the inward-outward and individual-
universal poles of existence. You likewise choose your own self-
concept, actions, attitudes, values and the meanings with which you
organize your world.

Exercise your freedom from the perspective of your
individuality by willpower overcoming obstacles. Exercise the
freedom given you from your individuality as spontaneity when you
meditate, hike, travel, relax or receive a message. These practices
help you to expand beyond your individual personality and flow with
shared consciousness with other people, nature and the universe.
Exercise freedom inwardly as understanding when you analyze and
meditate.

Experience your freedom outwardly by risking assertive
action. Risked, outward action is necessary for you to live from the
existential ideal of freedom; outward action you choose is a
commitment you must make whose consequences define your being in the
world.

You're free when you listen to your inner voices, see your
inner visions, feel your subjective feelings and translate these into
action.

When you passively choose to ignore your freedom, you
experience healthy existential guilt. Your existential guilt is the
realistic assessment that you are not exercising your freedom, not
living up to your positive possibilities, denying your potentials,
living inauthentically from passively accepted (rather than
deliberately chosen) values.

EXPLORE HOW YOU EXERCISE YOUR FREEDOM

List the key decisions you already have made. Go back in
your experience to when you made them.

Notice which decisions you are still living from.

Indicate which decisions were right.

What would have been better choices?

What results would you have had if you made better decisions?

Be aware of any decisions you made which were untrue to your
authentic self-possibilities.

Note any resistance you created to stop yourself from making
authentic decisions.

Now think of the present. Focus on decisions that you are in
the process of making and on those you are not making.

* Prepare a list of five overdue decisions, prioritized by
importance to you.

Add a sixth overdue decision, "the one you were afraid to put
down." Feel your resistance to making these decisions in your body
and emotions; ask "in what organ you feel the resistance against
making a specific and necessary choice." Observe your resistance to
choosing in your failure patterns.

* What did you learn about your freedom and guilt?


Review: THE EXISTENTIAL PRINCIPLES (See each on this site):

Realize the reciprocal INTERPLAY between you and what you
experience; learn of field theory, intentionality.

Experience yourself at several LEVELS OF CONSCIOUSNESS.

Acknowledge that you are responsible; CHOOSE your attitudes
and reactions.

Consciously experience your ever-developing sense of yourself
as an individual and as humanity (phenomenologically SELF-DISCLOSE.)

Value PAIN and ANXIETY as opportunities to learn.

Use limits to make your life meaningful; reflect upon
NEGATION, FINITUDE and DEATH.

Live and reflect using phenomenological bracketing (EPOCHE)

Be INDEPENDENT, SELF-RELIANT and SUBJECTIVE (to balance out
love and commitment.)

Realize your own unique, creative INDIVIDUALITY.

Experience TRANSCENDENTAL SUBJECTIVITY; revere this core self
of each and all consciousness.

Realize you are free to CHOOSE your own values and self-
concepts

Accept GUILT for your choices as signals to do better.

Say YES to life. COMMIT yourself. Be REALISTIC.

LOVE and encounter others. Be FLEXIBLE and adaptable

Experience time living now, using the past, focused on your
future.

GROW; expand and transcend your self-definition.

Use contradictions, polarities, paradoxes and ambiguities as
opportunities to establish dialogues and DIALECTICS leading to
further growth.

sashalessinphd@...