• by Valerie Joy King •
Recently I got the subject of “Practicing Contentment” as the topic I was to cover during my meditation talk. It caused me to contemplate deeply: What is contentment? How should we practice it? and why would you want to practice contentment?
Contentment has me thinking of a big mama cow sitting in the middle of a lush, green field chewing her cud with not a care in the world. Or it’s a baby who’s just finished nursing and they’re sleeping, with that blissful little smile on their face—utterly content. But as we grow older, contentment begins to have deeper meaning.
Contentment is a translation of a Sanskrit word “santosha,” and it may not have exactly the same meaning. Santosha comes from two different words: “sam,” meaning absolute, and “tosha,” meaning acceptance. To me this doesn’t mean absolute acceptance of some outer circumstance; it’s absolute contentment and peace within you. People may think of contentment as a sort of apathy, or “Oh, whatever. I’m not going to do anything.” But that’s not the spiritual meaning of it.
Meditating on it, I realized that if I see something in the outer world—a circumstance, relationship or something that needs work—I don’t just leave it be. It means I find and connect with that place inside of true peace and then deal with it in a way that is going to be helpful, and really move that situation forward and improve it.
A chance to practice came during a recent council meeting at a nearby city, where some people were very angry and upset, while misunderstanding a current situation. In the midst of the complaining and negative comments, I realized I had to practice gratitude, compassion, and connect with the bliss consciousness deep inside my spirit. Then I could listen to others and be able to see the good that these people were trying to do, even if it was misguided.
The city mayor wanted a positive outcome, and was looking at both sides. He happened to be a man, probably about 70, with white hair and beard. He was so kind and compassionate, I thought he appeared like Santa Claus. And what happened because of his energy was that everyone felt pretty good at the end, even though they didn’t get what they wanted. That was a really nice experience of understanding what contentment means—not that we simply accept the circumstances, but we feel at peace and move on from there.
How can you practice contentment from the inside out, and the outside in? We can grab a hold of the reins of our mind and senses through being conscious of our actions, our feelings and our thoughts. We can hold them, and work through them. Even if we’re feeling frustration, anxiety, worry, fear, or anger, we can work through that without having to throw it out on somebody else, making the whole situation worse. We have compassion for ourselves and others, by taking responsibility for ourselves. “Here I am. I may not be in control of the circumstances, but I’m always in control of how I respond and resolve a situation within myself.”
As long as we’re breathing in and out, we’re going to be riding on this sea of life, which is like riding a wave. Some of them are bigger than others; some of them knock us over. Some of them are fun to ride. So, it’s up to us to make the effort each day to find that place of peace. It’s funny that it takes effort to find that peace, but it does because there’s so much swirling around us all the time, so many circumstances. You have to make the effort.
