Spirituality, so last decade?

I am suffering from a severe existential crisis. I have renounced my athiesm and would like to know if anyone has any good books I can read to find out about spirituality. Once upon a time I used to feel connected and happy. Now I feel nothing but alone and terrified.

I am reading Kahlil Gibran and finding some comfort in his words but I was wondering if anyone knows of any other books that may help me find some answers. Does anyone have a recommendation for a book that has helped them through a dark time such as what I am going through?

I'm not interested in religion or religious organisations. I am also not interested in being mocked at this point in time so please respect that.

Thank you.

Existential crisis? How about Being and Nothingness by Jean-Paul Sartre?

Okay, seriously...use what's near at hand.

haha, don't worry, I haven't lost my sense of humour completely.

Thanks, I will get myself a copy of Hardcore Zen.

You could try this.

this book was a really interesting read for me. it also has a lot of contributors that have their own philosophies that you can look into if you're so inclined.

if you're having an existential crisis, try reading some existentialists. that's what they're for. if you've just noticed the essential absurdity of human life and aren't sure what to do about it, I recommend the myth of sisyphus by albert camus.

"The Dance of the Four Winds" an autobiographical book about a psychiatric student making a study on a psychotropic drug native to Peru and really having a spiritual awakening. Very good read. Made me look at life differently too.

Wandering the Way. It's a collection of 2,500 year old Daoist parables, and can be a little inaccessible at times, but there are some real gems in there.

Thank you everyone! I am checking out every single link/book suggested.

Thank you so much.

Viktor E. Frankl's "Man's Search for Meaning" helped me when I was suddenly feeling a lot of pain and disconnection from the world and existential angst. It's about Frankl's experiences in a Nazi concentration camp during WWII. Most of his family was killed there, yet he survived. A really interesting book about finding meaning and spirituality in a world where there seems to be none at all.

Anything by Thich Nhat Hanh is also good.

Even though you are not necessarily interested in religion Hindu texts can be lovely and healing. The Upanishads. The Bhagavad Gita. The Mahabarata. I wasn't raised Hindu and don't consider myself one but I really found my soul reading these books.

Thanks, I will definitely be checking those out too. I have actually found Gandhi to be a great inspiration right now so I certainly wouldn't write off anything to do with Hinduism. I think it's possible to gain wisdom from other religions without actually adhering strictly to the religion itself. I have so much reading to do, this is great!

The Little Prince

i wish you the best of luck. i'm going through something similar, so i'll be checking some of the links in this thread too.

If you're interested in a different take on what religion and religious language is, I'm very fond of The Dynamics of Faith. Tillich was a Christian theologian, but not at all what one would expect. He's fond of Nietsche, spent some of his last ten years studying Buddhism, had an open marriage of sorts... Speaking to existential crisis is sort of where he excells in my opinion, or at least he helped me out quite a bit. The Courage to Be is his most cited work, and was written to directly address the anxiety of modern existence. But since the title looks sort of "self-help" I dismissed it and I'd expect other angst enthusiasts to do likewise. I'd give another reccomendation or two, but they'd be Christians also & it looks like you've already got a lot of good suggestions!

The Way of Chuang Tzu
The Tao of Lao Tzu