Contentment

Contentment has become a throw-away word, nearly synonymous with complacent. After decades of mind-altering advertising designed explicitly to keep us discontent for the sake of provoking consumption, we need to stop and look at this.

Joanna Macy points out that we need a “ -- great turning of human consciousness. We are going to have to want different things, seek different pleasures, pursue different goals than those that have been driving us and our global economy.”

Imagine ---- being content. How would that be? Just – rest with that for a while.

I’ve noticed that gratitude is such a close cousin to contentment that any time I’ve ever sat at the kitchen table in Contentment’s house for very long, gratitude has come knocking. And when she comes bursting in through the door, the whole house rolicks!

All kinds of zany things start happening. Joy. Inspiration, even! Jumping up to call someone just to tell them how much I appreciate them in my life!

And – a sense of having so much. Abundance.

More than anything, we need a cultural attitude shift.
Let contentment come sit with you awhile.
It’s bad for consumerism.

And really, really good for our world.

Change from Peace

I hear from you: so many who are feeling the stress of deep change in and on our planet right now. Many familiar systems that are in place are simply not sustainable. And – what can we really do to make a difference? The feeling of helplessness can be overwhelming; the despair crippling.

I suggest what may seem radical in the face of this despair.

Surrender.

Surrendering into the suchness of this moment does not mean resignation to the circumstances. Finding legitimate gratitude and joy where we are does not mean disowning, suppressing or repressing aspects of our situation we find painful. Staying astutely honest with ourselves about all the facets of our experience most aptly enables us to make the changes we need for our well-being.

Being at peace where we are does not mean it will not and cannot change. In fact, it is safe to say it will. All things do. To stay awake to the opportunities for active choices and decisions that are kind to us and our planet in the face of the continual flux that life is – is precisely what steers us where we next need to be, to do that which we most need to do. The circumstance of the moment is our truing tool.

The present moment we most need to accept is that moment which is our-self. Our experience in this moment – right now. Wrapping around our experience with compassionate acceptance gives us the space we need, to live through that which is in us to be.

Stay with your sensations. Embrace them. Be curious about them. Inquire, “Yes, what am I to know here?”

Only by developing a kind inner space will we ever effect lasting change for good on the planet. It is the only way we can make choices based on peace. Agitation begets agitation. Action that arises from a center of peace is on the mark. Always.

Allow the healing of the pain within you in this moment. In every moment in which it appears. Accept. Embrace. Allow space. FEAD1 it differently. Create a safe space in which you can live in peace with yourself.

Be the center of Peace we all need. It is such an important thing you can do. For all of us.

1 http://www.maryanniyer.com/articlesbydr.iye.html. FEAD Yourself a Different Way.

Change

It has become nearly common knowledge that when a caterpillar hides itself in a chrysalis to metamorph into a butterfly, it decomposes completely. From this soup of apparently random cells come progenitor cells, called imaginal cells, which find one another in such a way that a new cohesive pattern is formed. A butterfly. In the cosmos is contained the plan – the blue print – for this new form to take shape.

In like fashion, every decomposing leaf, trunk and body can be seen to be returning to the chrysalis womb of the great Mother, Earth, to be reshaped into the cellular pattern of that which is waiting to be formed from those particular cells. All matter is imaginal. Transforming yet again and again into new forms of the Cosmos’ imagining.

What is seldom mentioned in the butterfly story is that the original caterpillar cells put up a fight. There is some initial struggle when the newly christened imaginal cells reach out to find one another in that soup. Some are killed in this battle. Eventually, they do coalesce, and that which is to be does emerge, but beneath the hardened shell of that chrysalis the newly created butterfly had to ward off the efforts of the dying caterpillar to maintain itself before it could successfully find its own new form.

I imagine personal and societal change must surely follow this same pattern. If you are experiencing discord and turmoil in your life; if you know change needs to happen but you feel yourself clinging to some outmoded past, give your imaginal cells a boost.

Imagine yourself as that butterfly you are longing to be. Imagine the world as that place where you want to be. And see how you fit into that new pattern.

Then – live it. It is what you are here to do.