Module 1 Comparative Spirituality

ALDERSGATE COLLEGE
Solano, Nueva Vizcaya
COMPARATIVE SPIRITUALITY
Module 1: Man’s Search for Meaning
Instructor: Rev. Rosemarie D. Agonias

OVERVIEW Level: BSBA
This module is designed to help students understand man’s search for meaning. Allotted Time: Two hours
LEARNING BJECTIVES:
Upon completion of this module, students should be able to:
1. explain why man’s search for meaning is very important.

2. articulate their own experiences in connection to Viktor Frankl’s experiences on his search for meaning.
PRETEST
Direction: Define the following terms:
1. Search for meaning
2. depression
3. freedom
4. motivation
5. logotherapy
6. environment
7. creativity
8. happiness
9. suffering
10. reality
LEARNING FOCUS
Man's Search for Meaning
Meaning as a cure for depression and other ills.
[Article revised on 4 May 2020.]
In Man’s Search for Meaning, psychiatrist and neurologist Viktor Frankl (1905-1997) wrote about his ordeal as a concentration camp
inmate during the Second World War. Interestingly, he found that those who survived longest in concentration camps were not those who
were physically strong, but those who retained a sense of control over their environment.
He observed:
"We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece
of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last
of human freedoms—to choose one’s own attitude in any given set of circumstances—to choose one’s own way."
Frankl’s message is ultimately one of hope: even in the most absurd, painful, and dispiriting of circumstances, life can be given a meaning,
and so too can suffering. Life in the concentration camp taught Frankl that our main drive or motivation in life is neither pleasure,
as Freud had believed, nor power, as Adler had believed, but meaning.
After his release, Frankl founded the school of logotherapy (from the Greek logos, meaning "reason" or "principle"), which is sometimes
referred to as the "Third Viennese School of Psychotherapy" for coming after those of Freud and Adler. The aim of logotherapy is to carry
out an existential analysis of the person, and, in so doing, to help him uncover or discover meaning for his life.
According to Frankl, meaning can be found through:

 Experiencing reality by interacting authentically with the environment and with others,
 Giving something back to the world through creativity and self-expression, and
 Changing our attitude when faced with a situation or circumstance that we cannot change.
Frankl is credited with coining the term "Sunday neurosis" to refer to the dejection that many people feel at the end of the working week
when at last they have the time to realize just how empty and meaningless their life has become. This existential vacuum may open the
door on all sorts of excesses and compensations such as neurotic anxiety, avoidance, binge eating, drinking, overworking, and
overspending. In the short-term, these excesses and compensations carpet over the existential vacuum, but in the longer term, they
prevent action from being taken and meaning from being found.
For Frankl, depression results when the gap between what a person is and what he ought to be, or once wished to be, becomes so large
that it can no longer be carpeted over. The person’s goals seem far out of reach and he can no longer envisage a future. As in Psalm
41, abyssus abyssum invocat—"hell brings forth hell," or, in an alternative translation, "the deep calls unto the deep."
Thus depression is our way of telling ourselves that something is seriously wrong and needs working through and changing. Unless
change can be made, there will continue to be a mismatch between our lived experience and our desired experience, between the
meaninglessness of everyday life and the innate drive to find meaning, to self-actualize, to be all that we can be. From an existential
standpoint, the experience of depression obliges us to become aware of our mortality and freedom, and challenges us to exercise the latter
within the framework of the former. By meeting this ultimate challenge, we can break out of the cast that has been imposed upon us,
discover who we truly are, and, in so doing, begin to give deep meaning to our life.
Top 10 Viktor Frankl quotations:
1. "Our greatest freedom is the freedom to choose our attitude."

2. "When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves."
3. "But there was no need to be ashamed of tears, for tears bore witness that a man had the greatest of courage, the courage to
suffer."
4. "In some ways suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice."
5. "The meaning of life is to give life meaning."
6. "Those who have a 'why' to live, can bear with almost any 'how.'"
7. "Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by lack of meaning and purpose."
8. "Happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue."
9. "The point is not what we expect from life, but rather what life expects from us."
10. "For the world is in a bad state, but everything will become still worse unless each of us does his best."
Neel Burton is author of Heaven and Hell: The Psychology of the Emotions and other books.
LEARNING ACTIVITY
Activity 1: Explain thoroughly your understanding of Viktor Frankl’s top 10 quotations.
POST TEST:
Direction: Read the following sentences and write True if the statement correct and false if the statement wrong. Write answer on the blank
provided before the number of the statement.
____________ 1. Those who survived longest in concentration camps were not those who were physically strong, but those who retained
a sense of control over their environment.
____________ 2. Even in the most absurd, painful, and dispiriting of circumstances, life can be given a meaning, and so too can suf fering.
____________ 3. The aim of logotherapy is to carry out an existential analysis of the person, and, in so doing, to help him uncover or
discover meaning for his life.
____________ 4. Depression results when the gap between what a person is and what he ought to be, or once wished to be, becomes so
large that it can no longer be carpeted over.
____________ 5. From an existential standpoint, the experience of depression does not oblige us to become aware of our mortality and
freedom, and does not challenge us to exercise the latter within the framework of the former.
REFERENCE:
Wikimedia Commons

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ALDERSGATE COLLEGE

Solano, Nueva Vizcaya

Module 1: Man’s Search for Meaning

Instructor: Rev. Rosemarie D. Agonias

Upon completion of this module, students should be able to:

1. explain why man’s search for meaning is very important.

[Article revised on 4 May 2020.]

According to Frankl, meaning can be found through:

Top 10 Viktor Frankl quotations:

1. "Our greatest freedom is the freedom to choose our attitude."

8. "Happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue."

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