Contentment: A Way to True Happiness

Robert A Johnson & Jerry M Ruhl

As modern people, we like to believe that contentment comes from getting what we want.  It does not.  Contentment grows out of our capacity to mediate our desires with “what is.”  A basic spiritual principles is learning to accept “what is” instead of insisting that life be a certain way.  Life is rarely the way we want it to be; it’s just the way it is.  This doesn’t mean that you should give up or become passive.  The art of realizing contentment is an active and dynamic process.  You might imagine it as a dance between your wishes and reality, what you want and what you get.  This doesn’t have to be a struggle.  Perhaps you’ve seen old movies featuring the great dance team of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.  Fred and Ginger developed a wonderful shared rhythm, two entities so responsive to each other that there was no longer a sense that one was leading and the other following.  As one stepped forward, the other stepped back.  They moved as one.  This is how each of us can learn to dance with what is given.  Sometimes you take the lead and assert your will, and fate moves with you.  In the very next step you may follow rather than lead.  Clearly, to move with such agility and grace takes a lot of practice, but our practice studio is daily life.   (Preface)

…contentment is not the result of what you have or even what you do in life.  Contentment isn’t out there.  Wall, maybe there are small tastes of it out there, but those tastes stop satisfying after a short time and then you hunger for more.  And try as you might, no amount of possessions, power, or prestige satisfies for long.  P3

In this way of looking at civilization, much of popular culture today, not just advertising, is simply propaganda aimed at stirring up our discontent.  How do you avoid the constant hammering of propaganda in modern life?  A good first step is to recognize that chasing after new or different things is never going to satisfy, and your contentment is too important to be lost in an endless cycle of getting and spending, desire and regret. P6

Contentment:

                Being satisfied, not desiring more than you have.
                peace and tranquility
                Being in love with the moment

Contentment grows out of a willingness to surrender preconceived ideas and affirm reality as it is. 

Contentment does not require more reasoning and willpower; if that were all that was needed, humanity would surely be content by now.  No, instead we must learn to humble our pride and admit that the “I” inside does not know everything and sometimes has a hard time figuring out what is best for us.

As the play opens, Lear has decided to give the largest share of the kingdom ot the daughter who apparently loves him the most.  What a horrible thing to do!  This is like insisting that your partner declare how much he or she loves you.  At that moment, love flies out the window.  If you have to pry the love out of someone, authentic feelings run and hide in that very instant.  Love must be freely given. P35

Projection is the error of attaching an aspect of your inner life onto someone or something on the outside.  This way you do not have to take responsibility for it….then you turn around and praise or blame the person or situation, while all the while you are reacting to an unconscious, inner part of yourself.  P36

Jung: Everything of which I know, but I am not in the moment thinking; everything of which I was once conscious but have now forgotten; everything perceived by my senses, but not noted by my conscious mind; everything which, involuntarily and without paying attention to it, I feel, think, remember, want, and do; all the future things that are taking shape in me and will sometime come to consciousness: all this is the content of the unconscious.”

If you want to see projections in action, just observe yourself in traffic for one day.  At each traffic light notice how you attach a projection to the simple reality if stop, slow down, or go.  If a simple traffic light can create so much emotion, what happens in much more complex interactions?  Consider how much of your day is filled with negative and positive projections distorting your perceptions of the world…  p41

When projection is at work, our response is typically: 1)emotional, 2)compulsive, and 3)out of proportion to the reality if the situation.  P42

Love cannot be reduced to a psychological mechanism, but it is useful to think of infatuation, that “falling in love” experience as a force by which we reach out ofr our own missing qualities.  We project our capacity for greater wholeness upon someone else.  Recall past loves, asking yourself what you loved about them and what quality they possessed that you wanted to merge with.  This will tell you what aspect of your unconscious was yearning to be made conscious. P44

When a projection no longer holds up against reality, we have a wonderful opportunity to become more whole.  For example it is only after a romantic projection starts to break that a sustainable, human-sized love becomes possible.  Human-sized love is based upon knowing a person as she or he really is, not grasping for your own unrealized qualities.  Reality is far nobler than any projection. P44

Unfortunately, when reality can no longer sustain our projections, we generally react badly, blaming others for deceiving us or lamenting that the world has not lived up to our expectations.  We create scenes, slam doors, and shout recriminations…We would rather cling to a projection than take back our own inner potential.  In reclaiming a projection, we are faced with the task of dealing with all the unfairness and devilry that we have attributed to others. P45

A modern person experiences the treasures of the unconscious, and instantly his or her ego structure snatches them up and tries to fun off with them…we cling to inflations, even mistaking “highs” for contentment, but peak experiences are not contentment.  What goes up must come down.  P49

Another psychological process that undermines contentment in modern life is inflation.  Inflation is a distorted sense of who you are.  Modern people have a tendency to inflate like a balloon.  When inflated, we think and act as if we are more than we really are; we are filled with high expectation, sometimes even arrogance.  Anything that interferes with our willful desire feels like a disappointment.

Every inflation is followed by a deflation… A deflation is thinking and acting as if you are…”not enough.”  Deflation is displayed through negativity, withdrawal, pulling back, giving up, even shyness.  You feel alienated and lonely.  At the bottom of a deflation nothing in life iw enough or worthwhile.  Inflations and deflations turn life into a wild ride of “too-muchnes” followed by “not-enoughness.”  They undermined our capacity for contentment.  Contentment can be found only in the middle place, the point where you are neither inflated nor deflated.  It requires that you be who you are, no more and not less.  P48-49

The fool:  The fool deflates pomposity, and he may use humor, foolish talk, or exaggeration to point out egotistical folly.  We may think of a fool as the object of scorn, but if we would pay more attention to our own inner fool, we could save ourselves a lot of embarrassment.  P52

What is needed is not for the ego to give up, but for it to give up its pretensions.  The deepest disappointments and sufferings in life bring us face t0 face with the deepest mysteries.  Suffering may shakes us out of the stupor of a provisional life, shatter our illusions of control, throw over naïve and immature attitudes, and force us to consciously consider our relationships with other people and with God.  P54

Sacrifice is one of the most powerful cures known for an inflation or a deflation.  A sacrifice involves surrendering your conscious position; it means letting go of getting your way.  There are times to push for what you want and times to let go, and it is a wise person who can differentiate between the two.  When you find yourself in an emotional mess or you have painted yourself into some corner or despair has becomes greater than you can bear or it’s three in the morning and you can’t sleep, you must find a way to sacrifice your conscious viewpoint.  Like Gloucester, you must throw yourself over a symbolic cliff, get up, dust yourself off, and arise with the potential to be a different person.  P58

Sacrifice is not giving up something to get something else you want more.  Sacrifice is the art of drawing energy from one level and reinvesting it at another level to produce a higher form of consciousness.   P59

Contentment grows, not out of pursuing self-interest, but from our capacity to connect to a larger whole—family, social groups, nature, and ultimately, God.  P64

Lear…accepts the imperfections of the world as part of the play of God.  Lear sees it all—the joys and the sorrows, the victories and the defeats,--and he can laugh, the merriment of insight, not the derision of bitterness.  The enlightened person can participate in the daily frustrations and absurdities of life while simultaneously understanding them as divine play.  P67

There is a human tendency to turn even spirituality into an attempt to get what we want.  For example, we may pray to God to help us avoid suffering.  This represents a fundamental confusion between serving the desires of the ego and serving the divine.  We get closer to the divine by accepting that suffering cannot be escaped, but must be embraced as part of life.  “Following your bliss” is not a call to narcissism and getting what you want.  It is pursuing the rapture that resides at the core of your suffering…Creative suffering involves affirming all that comes our way,  even those circumstances that we don’t want and would never choose. P68

It is hard for us to let go of our pride and accept that “what is” is.  P69

In “I and it” relationships, we treat other people as objects.  An object is something that can be controlled, ignored, manipulated, and used for our own selfish purposes.   There is a yearning in each of us to be fully met by others, to be accepted for who we are, and to be imagined by others as the best person we are capable of being.  In “I and Thou” relationships, other people are perceived as carriers of shared humanity as well as divine potential.  Instead of treating other people as objects to be manipulated, ou look for the best possible experience in every circumstance.  No encounter lacks hidden significance.  What would your day be like if in every interaction with another you treated that person not just as a means to some end but as the very point and fulfillment of your life?  How might it feel if you were treated this way?  Such a day would surely bring a real measure of contentment.  P 70-71

When we allow ourselves to be truly related to others, our usual boundaries of self luxuriously expand, demonstrating that our sense of “I” need not be a lonely, isolating shell.  Recognizing the divine potential in any situation cannot be reduced to a tidy formula, but one general guideline is to ask yourself what is needed for wholeness in any situation.  Instead of asking, “What’s in it for me?,” you consider, “What is whole-making?”  What is required for more wholeness will be different for each person, and it changes constantly.  This requires realigning yourself each day, each hour, and each moment. 

Grace is in doing.  To support its realization you might begin an achievement journal; this is simply a record of how you are attending to divine potential and how your experience changes as a result.  When we can live in this fashion, it has a profound effect on the quality of our lives, creating the conditions for grace and contentment.  P71-72

…it often takes an illness, a loss, or a tragedy of some kind before we realize that individual willpower cannot master reality.  When your “I” is ousted from it’s central and dominating position, it feels like pure suffering.  If, instead, you can align your conscious position with something greater, then the suffering can be made meaningful and utilized in life.   P75

Earlier we alluded to Arusakumar, the contented coconut seller in southern India.  He sees the will of God in all that crosses his path—the disappointments and defeats as well as the joys and victories.  Contentment comes, not only from getting what he wants, but also from wanting what he gets.  He accepts that “what is” is divinely inspired.  What many pre-modern people do as a matter of course, because their culture supports them in it, we must achieve as a conscious process.  Learning when to assert our wills and when to let go and unconditionally accept “what is”—this is a supreme accomplishment.  We can approach this give and take as a clumsy chaotic struggle or as a graceful, choreographed dance.  The difference is a measure of our contentment.  P 75-76

• Preserve enough energy—particularly via observing the Sabbath
• Practice fidelity to the moment—deliberate, concentrated attention on what is immediately before you
• Stop all doing for a few minutes every day
• Listen to what your heart, not your outer personality, wants  (what is required for contentment?) (Find a quiet place, take deep breaths and think of what you have invested energy in in the last week.  How do these things contribute to or detract from contentment?  How do you feel about this assignment of resources.  What does the heart want in order to be content?  What does it yearn for?  If it seems too complicated, that's because your outer personality is interfering.  For the inner self things are simple...when you have an answer,...contemplate investing time/money/energy in what your heart years for as opposed to what your head desires.)
• experience nature
• experience “home”--realize that there is often hidden purpose and meaning in events.  In truth, we often don’t know how the slender threads of fate might contribute to the larger tapestry of life….sometimes we must wait for the hidden purpose to be revealed
• surrender to forces that are greater than you  --get to know the person inside who needs to be in control, how could life be if you were able to let go of a determined course of action and instead accept what life presents to you.  Letting go is not the same as giving up—in letting go you consciously do what can be done, but also recognize the limits.
• don’t rush to overcome confusion
• birthdays & holidays are among the most depressing times of year for many people because they are turned into celebrations of our "specialness."  Instead celebrate ordinariness--the order in our lives.
• find your God-given talent and put it to work in the world.
• pilgramage--instead of taking a vacation (serving the ego's pleasure) go on a pilgramage--take yourself to a holy site and present yourself to something greater than yourself.  Imagine what it would be like if we could view all of life as a pilgrimage or holy endeavor.  We would all get up in the morning and dedicate the day as our...work for God.  All of life--every act--would become sacred and therefore purposeful and meaningful.  Even eating would become a communion.  Such perspective brings meaning and holiness into immediate experience.
• Forgiveness--first, parents.  An important step in forgiving your parents is to see them as people.  It is easier to forgive another person if you have walked in their shoes.  You cannot hear the inner voice of the divine if you continue to re-injure yourself with old wounds and cling to a limiting sense of self.  An inability to forgive in effect ensures disconnection with God.  That is why  spiritual traditions of the world all recognize that forgiveness is a necessary step in the path to contentment.
• Reparation--takes humility one step further by including service to another person.  It helps clear away the guilt and shame, which interfere with realizing contentment.  Reparation provides a means for cleaning the slate, admitting our limitations, and getting guilt-provoking behavior out in the open.
• Compassion--in compassion there is connection with another living being, and teh lonely and isolating prison of "I" that usually separates us is opened.  This is why compassion is a gift for both the one who gives and the one who receives.  A basic teaching in Tibetan Buddhism is...that our ordinary sense of compassion is often tied up with attachment and centered on selfish motivation.  Our task is to free ourself from the prison of separateness by widening our circle of compassion.  We simply look for an opportunity each day to tend to the needs of someone in a human way.
• Detachment--being prepared at any moment to give up all of your possessions.