What is a gift? It is something that is bestowed upon us, provided without compensation. The best gifts often come as surprises; they are not delivered out of duty or obligation but arise spontaneously. Gifts delight us, but many of us also have trouble accepting them. They may not be exactly what we would have picked out. Perhaps they don’t quite fit the image we have of ourselves. And if a gift is truly a gift, we are not in control of the giving process.
In the pages that follow are numerous gifts of contentment, passed along through stories, anecdotes, and exercises. Some require deliberate effort, but many are available just by being more aware of our inner lives. Most of these gifts cost nothing, and they are ever present. To honor and accept simple gifts brings an unexpected measure of contentment.
Contentment requires energy. As modern people, most of us squander our energy as capriciously as we do our money, and as a result, we live at the edge of exhaustion much of the time. We like to spend more than we have. Just as we owe for home mortgages, car payments, and consumer debt, we also push our own energy beyond reasonable human limits.
Bankrupting yourself in energy is just as risky as falling into financial insolvency. When will we make peace with the hound of desire that keeps us on the run?
In a spiritual exercise practiced by many Native Americans called a vision quest, the first requirement is to gather enough energy so that you can stand the vision of the divine when it appears. Similarly, East Indian yoga teaches that 90 percent of the work toward enlightenment is spent preparing your body and mind to withstand an encounter with God. There is an ancient Japanese practice that is said to cure many human ailments: one is locked into a room where there is a toilet but very little else. Food is provided three times a day. It is said that the penitent is tired the first day, sleeps much of the second day, is restless the third day, is climbing the walls the fourth day, is nearly out of his or her mind the fifth day, can hardly remember the sixth day, and comes to a great peace and tranquillity on the seventh day.
Make it a priority to stop your deficit spending and create a savings account of energy. A common phrase for an earlier generation was, “Enough is enough.” These days this should be changed to “Enough is already too much.”
How can we find this much-needed gift in the midst of busy, modern lives? Honor the sabbath.
The word sabbath is of Jewish origin and denotes the seventh one, the end of a cycle and the pause before a new cycle begins afresh. We all need a sabbath, whether we are religious or not. Early in World War II, Great Britain’s government was so desperate to produce war goods that the day of rest was temporarily abolished. In response to the war crisis, people were asked to work steadily with no day off. To their astonishment, officials discovered that workers produced less following the new schedule. There were more accidents and many more mistakes with the seven days of work than when the sabbath was honored.
Without the pause of the seventh day (or sabbath), life simply becomes an indistinguishable blur and monotony rules. Your sabbath doesn’t have to be on Saturday or Sunday, though this custom honors tradition and fits in with most of our work schedules. The important thing is to schedule a sabbath each week as a time to replenish your energy and refresh your spirit. Don’t let duties and responsibilities from the week, even work around the house or social obligations, spill over and claim your energy on this day. Make it a priority to preserve an oasis of rest, contemplation, and spiritual nourishment each week.
The Gift of Fidelity to the Moment
St. Benedict, an Italian monk of the early sixth century and founder of the Benedictine order, had a powerful approach to staying in the present. The word novice comes from medieval Latin, and it means to be a beginner, a person who is new to an activity. St. Benedict instructed novices to take a special vow—a vow of fidelity to the moment.
This vow was designed to help support men and women who were embarking on a spiritual journey. St. Benedict’s formula is just as relevant and useful as ever. Fidelity to the moment is a deliberate, concentrated attention on what is immediately before you. Focus your full attention on each action, each thought, each feeling, and each sensation. Pay attention to the particularity of the here and now, even in mundane things. For example, if you are washing dishes, notice how the soap swirls over the plate. Let go of the modern tendency to do multiple things at once and instead focus on one thing at a time. Try to view dish washing—or any other routine task—as a worthy activity, an end in itself. Notice how quickly your “I” leaves the present moment and drifts off to replay something in the past or worry about the future. The past is gone, and the future is yet to be. All that exists is now.
To ensure that their focus is never far from the holy now, Benedictine monks return to the church to sing their prayers seven times daily. Similarly, Muslims are called to prayer by the muezzin at special times throughout the day. This is to ensure that one’s focus of energy is never far from the contentment of the inner life. Pause throughout your day to notice the fullness of the moment, then carry this fullness back into your worldly activities.
These days we all need reminders that stopping is possible. Stopping is going nowhere happily, turning away from the hurry that fills so much of modern life. Each day you can give yourself a minivacation by stopping your doing for a few moments. Let go of paying bills, returning phone calls, crossing things off your to-do list, and take some time just to be.
We recently observed an unexpected experience of contentment after arriving at an airport early for a flight and spending a delicious half hour doing nothing. Was it the airport? Was it the collective environment of being in the sweep and flow of humankind? No, that half hour of contentment resulted from having freedom taken away! We could not leave the airport or engage in any of the usual guilt-driven activities that fill so much of daily life. We were forced to simply stop.
One of our favorite quotes from India’s sacred scriptures comes from the Katho Upanishad: “By standing still, we overtake those who are running.”
One day while swimming at the YMCA, a lifeguard asked one of us, Robert, to contribute a quote for the bulletin board. After some careful thought, the above-noted Indian proverb was placed on the board for all to see. The lifeguard puzzled for a moment over these words and then vehemently said, “No!” She approached the board and wrote the words, “Go, go, go!” Such is the contradiction of modern life.
The next time you are given a few free moments—you get off work a little early, you find yourself alone in the house for an hour, you have thirty extra minutes before you need to go to sleep—try not to immediately fill it.
The Gift of Your Heart’s Yearning
Today, all you hear is “I,” “I,” “I.” People are fond of saying, “Where there’s a will there’s a way,” and, “I’ll think my way through it.” Sometimes, even when we stop doing, the mind just keeps going. Here is a useful exercise for listening to a voice of wisdom that exists outside the “I.” In many spiritual traditions, it is the heart, not the head, that is the center of knowing. The voice of the heart is heard in prayer, meditation, and imagination.
Find a quiet place and close your eyes. Place your hand over your heart, and draw several deep breaths. Now think of those things on which you invested energy during the past week. Consider how each of these items contributed to or detracted from your contentment. Now, still holding this list of items in your mind, consider how you feel about this assignment of resources.
As you continue to breathe calmly, shift your attention to your heart, and ask it what is required for its contentment. For what does it yearn? Don’t try to answer right away for your heart, just wait and listen. If the answer seems complicated, your outer personality is interfering. For the inner Self things are simple. When you have an answer, compare this with your earlier list. Notice what feelings arise. Then consider investing some of your money, time, and energy in what your heart yearns for as opposed to what your head desires.
To assist your head in surrendering its agendas for a while, here is a story from India.
Once there was a very intelligent man, but unfortunately he was not a very wise man. With his great power he declared war on the gods, saying that he, the intelligent man, could do a better job of creation. The intelligent man lost the battle but was not entirely annihilated. With what was left of his power and intelligence, he went back to the earthly realm and decided to raise up a crop of supermen with which he could challenge the gods again.
The man experimented with creation and decided to grow people on trees, which is much more cost efficient and rapid that begetting people in the old, inefficient way. Trees bore fruit much faster and with less trouble than the human way. All the circuitous paths of courting, lovemaking, gestation, and raising children could be avoided.
This worked out very well, at least in practical terms, and soon the man had a flowering army of supermen who did what they were told. But the gods saw that a terrible error was being committed, and they sent Ganesha, the elephant-headed deity, to add some wisdom to the man’s already burdensome intelligence. Ganesha, amazingly, succeeded with this task and convinced the man that he had raised a crop of powerful but unhealthy and useless people.
The experiments had succeeded in growing only the heads of people on the trees, as he thought that this was the only useful part of a human being. The inventor, now more than just intelligent but also tempered by divine wisdom, saw his mistake and repented. He offered to destroy the whole creation of head-only men, but Ganesha saw that a better solution was possible, and this is how coconuts came into being!
In earlier times, and still in a few places in the world, people have listened to the unconscious via oracles, divination, and the voices of nature. Birds, trees, and even stones have been perceived as valuable sources for the whisperings of the divine. Modern people have a bias that only the human head, the ego, and its thoughts have validity, but we too yearn to be touched by something beyond the confines of the personal “I.”
The origin of the phrase “to saunter” is good medicine for modern people caught in the too-muchness of life. At a certain point in time, medieval Europeans developed the custom of “sainting” things. We are familiar with venerable individuals raised to sainthood, but the enthusiasm went far past this in the Middle Ages and included inanimate objects. The cross was sainted (Santa Cruz), and even the earth was sainted. This became St. Terre, from which we gained the phrase, “to saunter,” that is, to walk on the earth with reverence for its holiness. Perhaps there was an intuition even in those early times that we would need a way of walking with reverence to recall us from hurried lives.
Recently, one of us read a quote from the Middle Ages that set his head spinning: Christ is constantly being born in a stable, constantly fleeing Herod, constantly confusing the elders, constantly being betrayed, constantly being tried by Pilate, constantly being crucified, constantly resurrecting. Summoning up this constantly into daily life, he took a walk in the desert in search of the fleeting moment that is constant. It was not hard to find. A rock here, an ocotillo in early bloom, a brittle bush plant that had made its brave thrust into life after a recent rain but then perished when no more rain came for several months.
Nature does not ask for explanations, only that we witness the fleeting moment that is constant. Go for a walk in nature and receive the blessings of an ancient tree, listen for a message in the cry of a bird, take counsel with a constant and abiding stream. Allow yourself to reconnect to the creative matrix that supports all of life.
It has been said that, in a sense, all sickness is homesickness. Like the extraterrestrial in E. T. or Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, we all carry with us a memory and a longing for something left behind. We yearn for home.
What is your image of home? Close your eyes, relax, and allow an image of home to come to your mind. What is the landscape, the season, the time of day? Who is there, what do you see, and what can you smell? Pay attention to the details, and bring your senses into play as you explore your image of home. Now ask yourself, “What is required for me to realize this gift of home?”
Our nostalgia for home shows us not just where we come from, but where we are going; not just our heritage, but also our destiny. Regardless of your childhood experience, home is rightfully a place of belonging, safety, and comfort; it is the place where your most precious treasures are kept.
Here is a story about finding the treasures of home. We are indebted to Martin Buber for his retelling of this ancient tale.1
It is told that Eizik, son of Yekel of Cracow, lived for many years in great poverty. Then one day Eizik had a dream. In this dream a voice told him to look for a treasure in Prague. What a mysterious message! Like many of us, Eizik at first ignored his dream, but it came back to him with increasing urgency. Perhaps he dismissed this strange dream as merely the result of indigestion. But when the dream came a third time, it was even more specific: a voice said that Eizik must go to Prague, and there he would find a treasure beyond price under the bridge that leads to the king’s palace. Eizik set out for Prague.
When Eizik arrived in the busy city, he soon discovered that the bridge was guarded day and night by the king’s soldiers. There was no way he could climb down and begin digging. Eizik wasn’t sure what to do. He went to the bridge every morning and kept walking around it until evening. Finally the captain of the guards, who had been watching him, asked in a kindly way whether he was looking for something or waiting for someone.
Eizik poured out his story of the dream that had brought him such a long distance to the bridge leading to the king’s palace in Prague.
The captain listened patiently, but when he heard Eizik’s story he nearly doubled over with laughter. “So to please a dream, poor fellow, you wore out your shoes to come here! How foolish! As for having faith in dreams, if I pursued such folly, I would have had to get going when a dream once told me to go to Cracow and dig for treasure under the stove in the room of a Jew named Eizik, son of Yekel. Yes, that was the name, Eizik, son of Yekel! What a joke! I can just imagine what it wound be like, how I would have had to knock on the door of every house over there, where half of the Jews are named Eizik and the other half Yekel.” The captain laughed uproariously and ambled over to the other guards to share the story of this country bumpkin named Eizik.
Eizik bowed politely and immediately began his journey home. Upon arriving back at his own home, he dug up the treasure from the hearth under his stove. He celebrated his good fortune by building a house of prayer.
This story suggests that there is a treasure, the fulfillment of existence, that we search for everywhere. But it can be found in your own home, under the hearth, within the circumstances of your current life. When you find it, you build a house of prayer in your heart.
We all dream. Short of refusing to remember, we can’t refuse our dreams or hide from them. They simply reflect what is. Dreams are an invaluable source of objectivity for a person of integrity. Most of the content of one’s dreams consists of elements of the personality that have been relegated to the dungeon of the unconscious. From that place of imprisonment, they make their irrational attempt to find a place in consciousness and assume their rightful role in the personality.
It is safe to assume that every character in your dreams is a “lost” faculty and would broaden your character if it were rightly incorporated into your consciousness. If you dream of Satan or of St. Francis, it may be a shock to think that these are lost aspects of yourself, but this proves to be true if you have the courage to take an objective view of your potential. Both Satan and St. Francis (metaphors for aspects of your character) will serve you well—if you can find the courage to bring them into consciousness and find a useful place for them.
Working with dreams is a complex subject about which entire volumes have been written. (For example, please see Robert A. Johnson’s earlier book, Inner Work.) However, if you watch your dreams, sincerely try to relate to them, and follow four basic steps, they will give you an accurate illustration of what is happening in your inner life.
These steps are:
An analyst friend in Zurich used to greet therapy patients at the door of her consulting room with the question, “What did you do about the dream we talked about last week?” If the patient mumbled, something about having worked on it, she immediately closed the door with the comment, “Come back when you mean business.” In her estimation, you had not taken a dream seriously until you had involved the muscles of your body in bringing the dream into the world.
A woman once came into psychotherapy with a wonderful dream. In the dream she was riding in a Boeing 747 at forty-thousand-feet elevation. The plane was full of passengers and running out of fuel, but the pilot refused to bring the jet down. She awoke with a sense of urgency.
This powerful dream was warning the dreamer about an inflation of the first order: she was up forty thousand feet and still the pilot would not bring the plane down! This was discussed with the patient, and she was asked to consider a response that would bring the wisdom of the dream into her daily life.
She returned the next week with a powerful solution. Working with the dream in her imagination, she had the ground crew (that part of the personality that has its feet on the ground, in other words, the ego) disassemble the plane. The woman became conscious of how she had been inflated, acting arrogant at work and alienating her colleagues. She avoided a “crash landing” by sacrificing a bit of her drive for power and slowing down.
Humans are like a highly complex jigsaw puzzle. We need every piece of the pattern to be whole persons. Dreams are a valuable way to connect with the unconscious and correct our projections and inflations.
The divine often moves in mysterious ways, and we may only realize its purpose and meaning with the passage of time, as demonstrated by a dark tale from the eighteenth Sura of the Koran. This is the story of Khidr, an angel who directs and helps people. In the Moslem world some people believe that Khidr is responsible for sudden turns of good and bad luck. He serves as a mysterious guide for the Sufis.
One day Khidr comes across the path of Moses, who asks Khidr if he can accompany him and learn the deepest secrets. Khidr protests that this will only lead to trouble since a mortal being like Moses cannot stand the divine perspective, but Moses promises to accept everything that happens, so Khidr reluctantly agrees.
The two wanderers come to a village where Khidr proceeds to drill a hole in all the fishing boats, causing them to sink. Moses starts to complain, but when Khidr reminds him of his promise, he falls silent.
At the next village they meet a beautiful youth whom Khidr unexpectedly kills, and now Moses really protests, but he is reprimanded.
Next Khidr makes the walls of a town fall down. Moses cannot hold his tongue, and Khidr responds that he knew a mere mortal could not comprehend the greater perspective. Khidr insists that the two must part, but before they do he explains to Moses what has taken place. He sank the boats because he knew that a fleet of robbers intended to attack and steal them, and this way at least the boats could be salvaged and repaired. The youth who died was destined to commit a murder and Khidr’s act not only prevented the murder, it also saved the young man from losing his soul. Khidr forced the walls of the town to fall because under them was hidden treasure which would now be found by some very poor people who were in desperate need. Moses realizes that he has misunderstood and misinterpreted Khidr’s ways, and he falls into silence.
Like King Lear, this is a tragic but insightful story. Viewed psychologically, we can understand Khidr as a force in nature that seems to do bad but simultaneously creates good. We need not moralize about why painful things happen or attempt to justify Khidr’s actions to see that there often is hidden purpose and meaning in events.
Like the story of Job in the Bible, the example of Khidr reminds us that there is mystery in life that surpasses rational understanding. This is expressed in the everyday expression, “Well, you never know.” In truth, we often don’t know how the slender threads of fate might contribute to the larger tapestry of life. While our conscious “I” must do its best to differentiate and stand up for what seems right and good, it can never know with certainty and there are times when it must wait for the hidden purpose to be revealed.
To let go may be seen as a failure, a deviation, from the point of view of the “I.” But just as there is a time for seizing hold of life, for taking control and applying your willpower, so there is a time for surrendering to forces that are greater than you. We are indebted to Dr. Mary Watkins for this exercise.2
Think of a time when you followed a determined path, doing everything possible from a conscious standpoint to reach a goal, but you still fell short. Recall what that felt like. Now look inside. Who or what in you tells you not to let go? Why does it need to be in control? Spend some time getting to know this inner aspect of yourself.
Now imagine the situation again, this time letting go of your willful agenda. How might your experience have been different?
Dr. Watkins points out that just as plants wander, sending their roots out in search of rich soil, we too can allow ourselves to move from the known to the unknown. Explore what it must be like to be a plant. Close your eyes and entertain this image in your mind. Drop, for a few moments, all notions of who you are, where you are going, and what you will find. Try to imagine how life might be if you were able to let go of a determined course of action and instead accept what life presents to you. When you bump up against a rock, try moving in a different direction.
Then ask yourself: What situations in my life require more letting go, and how can I achieve this state of mind?
Many people don’t like letting go because it seems to imply defeat. But letting go is not the same as giving up. In letting go you consciously do what can be done, but also recognize the limits of the personal “I.” Just as there are times for taking the lead, asserting your will, and going after what you want, so too there are times for sacrificing your conscious agenda to what is.
What? Being confused is a good thing?
To be confused is to be mixed up with and in the swirling midst of “what is.” In modern culture, confusion is identified as a mistake or even a madness. In truth, the unconscious reveals itself in moments of disruption. Confusion is an opportunity for your true self to appear.
Instead of rushing to remove confusion, try approaching it as rich with potential. Don’t be in such a hurry to chase away these moments through willful action. Try to sit with your confusion, to go more deeply into it with an attitude of expectation. Patiently hold the tension of not-knowing.
This will take some practice. The imperialistic “I” inside of us likes control, clarity, certainty. It wants to divide the world up into “good guys” and “bad guys,” but usually life is not so simple. We snub the gift of confusion through impatience. What is needed is for your “I” to accept confusion rather than fear it. Think of this as relaxing a much-overused and overtight muscle.
Become aware of how the urge to act interferes with true knowing. You might even thank those practical, demanding, perfectionistic, and “doing” aspects of yourself for their input, but then redirect your attention back to simply being aware. If you go into your confusion rather than trying to run around or over it, the fear will dissolve and eventually you will gain a deeper understanding of your situation.
Often, the gift of confusion must be honored to clear a space in your life for something new to claim you. To make confusion work for you, reverse the usual procedure: don’t just do something, stand there.
Opposing forces in our lives make us anxious and worried. For example, I want to lose weight, but I also want to enjoy a fine dinner. Which should I choose? I want to go to the party tonight, but I also feel a strong need for rest. Which need should prevail? My budget is overtaxed, but I want a new car. Which of the opposing forces will win? In an ordinary day, we live constantly with warring points of view. The “I” sees the world in terms of contradiction, as this versus that. Contradiction can grind your contentment to bits.
The problem is our inability to see a hidden unity. Reality, by nature, is a paradox. Paradox is the healing balm that we need so badly, for it embraces all reality. Religious experience is typically expressed as paradox, which allows room for grace and mystery.
In paradox, the seeming opposition of two things is seen as complementary. You must allow both sides. Activity has meaning only in relation to rest. It is good to win, and it also is good to lose. Freedom is fine, and so is bowing to authority. Without suffering, we would never know joy. Both sides must equally be accepted and honored.
By accepting both sides of the balance, we change our way of looking at life’s problems. To advance from opposition (always a quarrel) to paradox (always holy) is to make a leap of consciousness.
At the ancient temple of Delphi in Greece, a special stone was found with an engraving that said: Measure is Best. This has been translated as “moderation,” but experiencing measure is different from trying to strike a happy medium. Having measure means allowing yourself to experience the pull of opposing forces that are present with any problem. Don’t go to half measures; find the measure that can be lived in your particular life on this day.
If you can stay with two apparently conflicting impulses long enough, not jumping into one or the other, you will gain an insight that serves them both. The gift of paradox forces us to move beyond ourselves.
Oddly enough, birthdays and holidays are among the most depressing times of the year for many people. One reason is that we turn them into celebrations of our specialness. Today we need celebrations of ordinariness. The word ordinary doesn’t mean mediocre, it means ordered. Telling someone they are ordinary is not an insult but a high compliment. To be ordinary means that your life is in order. A friend found deep insight in this fact and ever since has signed his name on correspondence as “Ordinary Joe.”
One of us, Robert, once went to a Zen master, hoping to gain wisdom. The custom in this tradition is that you come with a gift and a question. As a gift, he brought a bag full of water plants for the monastery pond. The master accepted this gift with a bow, but when the young man’s question came, the master brushed it off with a wave of his hand and proceeded to talk about the propagation of water plants. This conversation went on for an hour, and then the master dismissed his guest.
The next week the seeker again came with a question and a gift: three goldfish for the pond. Again, the master brushed the question aside and said, “Now, as to the propagation of goldfish… ” He spent the next hour talking about raising fish.
The seeker despaired of such mundane conversation. He wanted answers to life’s mysteries. However, just as he got up to leave, the master looked him in the eye and said one word: “ordinariness.”
You too can share the gift of ordinariness. On the next holiday or birthday, substitute ordinariness for the desire to be special. This could be as simple as pulling weeds in the garden, straightening your closet, performing a service for someone, or making a basket of paper flowers. Keep your expectations low and your contentment high.
It has been said that science concerns itself with what is true while mythology concerns itself with what is more true. We are always living in some myth, whether we are conscious of it or not. It may be the myth of progress, the myth of the outsider, the myth of perfection, the myth of the hero. Here is a story that reflects the infatuation with technology that is so prevalent these days.
It is the year 2500, and robotics have advanced to a very high level. A young woman is unhappy with her marriage, but she doesn’t want to hurt her husband. So she goes to a specialist and has a robot made that is an exact duplicate of her. She has decided to replace herself with the robot, thinking that her husband will never know the difference.
So, she saves up extra grocery money and eventually has enough to pay for the robot. The robot master makes up an exact duplicate, but just as she is leaving with her purchase he says, “Now, there is just one difficulty that you should be aware of. You see, human beings have a heartbeat, and robots have a sixty-cycle hum. I have, however, worked this out by programming the robot to go to your husband and, at first contact, to secretly make a recording of his heartbeat and then duplicate it. This way there should be no problem.”
So the woman takes her look-alike robot home and leaves for a night on the town. When the husband comes home, he is greeted by the robot, which, as programmed, records his heartbeat. But all it can detect is a sixty-cycle hum!
This story is not entirely science fiction. A technology expert recently said that a child born today is practically never away from the sixty-cycle hum, day or night. It is characteristic of every fluorescent light, every motor, every electronic device and mechanical gadget. We live at the close of one of the most creative centuries in history, surrounded by miracles of technology. One study estimates that in the average American household, twenty-eight servants would be needed to accomplish the work that is handled by consumer items such as dishwashers, washing machines, and microwave ovens. Such labor-saving devices should contribute to our contentment, but in the process of becoming skilled at controlling external reality, we often lose contact with inner realities.
It is highly instructive to ask yourself: What is the myth by which I live? Did I inherit it from my family, my teachers, my culture? What is the myth that most calls to me? What would that look like in my daily life?
Every person is blessed with special talents. We often think of talent in terms of musical prodigies or athletes gifted with outstanding speed or strength, but talent may reside in any type of activity. Some people are good listeners, others possess the capacity to make beautiful or durable things with their hands, others have an eye for decorating a room. Your talent is whatever makes you excited, fulfilled, and content. The key thing is to find your God-given talent and then put it to work in the world.
If you don’t know what your talent is, it may be helpful to review the many different things you have done in life, starting with early experiences as a child. What activities have claimed you? When did you feel passionate about what you were doing? When was there a sense of being taken over? When you are utilizing your talents you feel fulfilled and contented.
Sometimes we abuse a talent. This may take many forms. Generally abuse of a talent occurs when the ego thinks that it is the creator. This is an inflation. As we inflate, the ego becomes dizzy and lightheaded while our work becomes so much hot air.
The great jazz musician John Coltrane spent his twenties running in place, a narcotics habit stifling his musical career. Then, at the age of thirty-three, something happened, and he underwent a spiritual conversion. He renounced drugs and alcohol and created his own quartet. Everyone who worked with him was impressed by his newfound conviction and dedication, both musically and professionally. Coltrane went on to record his masterpiece, A Love Supreme, after music became for him a form of worship.
There is an old prejudice that the search for inner knowledge is incompatible with work, yet worship and work belong together. When doing work that utilizes your special talents there is ease and energy. Doors seem to open in unexpected ways. You feel good and have a sense of being at one with your activities and with the universe.
People look forward to their vacations all year. Vacations are a time when you don’t have to do anything, not even answer the telephone.
It is instructive that there is no word for vacation in ancient languages such as Hebrew or Sanskrit. If you were to visit the villages of a premodern culture, you would see people instead going on pilgrimage. There are prescribed pilgrimage places, or holy spots, where there is a general consensus of opinion that something special happened—where a footprint was left by a holy person or a miracle occurred. The destination of the pilgrimage is this special place, and along the way, busy things are curtailed as much as possible. Pilgrimage isn’t a painful activity. It is like a country fair in its joyousness. Participants on a pilgrimage have more fun than most Westerners do on vacation.
The essential aspect of a pilgrimage is that you go to a holy site and present yourself to something that is greater than your personal self. This gives value, meaning, direction, and healing, opening the pilgrim to new possibilities.
When Westerners go on vacation, they present themselves to something they think is greater—the ego’s pleasure. It is the inflated “I” that must be honored and served. If this is not achieved, then the vacation is a bust. If it rains or the car breaks down or something interferes in some way with their plans, then the whole event is a big disappointment. We take a vacation for amusement and stimulation, and many couples end up quarreling.
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 opus dei, the work for God. All of life—every act—would become sacred and therefore purposeful and meaningful. Even eating would become a communion. Such a perspective brings meaning and holiness into immediate experience.
As modern people, we need to be reminded to move away from the habitual.
Contentment is often found in out-of-the-way places, the shadows, cracks, and crevices of the psyche. Ask yourself, Who is this one inside who likes to take the shortest path, who values efficiency, who needs to feel that something is being accomplished and ruthlessly demands perfection? What is this part of me like? Certainly there is a time for efficiency, but when we become ruled by it, much is lost. Consider what it is like to make a place in your life for the spontaneous, that part of you that takes pleasure in surprise and the unexpected.
In traveling around the world, we have learned that many of the best experiences come from spontaneous wanderings to small, out-of-the-way places, little turns in the road, sleepy villages, intimate shrines that are not on any map.
Spontaneity allows you to be a traveler rather than a tourist. As tourists, we want to know ahead of time what is worth seeing; we become fearful of getting lost. Travelers, however, delight in spontaneity. A chance encounter with a stranger sends you to a remote village or to the hidden monkey forest or to the bungalow rented out by the expatriate’s family. The expatriate gets to talking in the bar about life after the war, and—by the way—would you like to see his paintings? He does not show them to most people. For a traveler, doors open that the tourist never sees.
The route of the traveler is often not orderly or efficient. It backtracks, stalls, goes in circles. There is some risk that the traveler may never get to all the “must sees” on the tourist itineraries. But there is a very different quality to the experience of the traveler. It has spontaneity and depth.
At least on occasion we need to risk being inefficient, getting lost, and going “nowhere.” Find a new place for lunch, reverse the direction of your walk, take the scenic route whenever you can. Discover those moments when desire and fulfillment arise spontaneously.
For years we have worked with people in analysis, personal therapy, and workshops on the need for forgiveness. This often involves letting go of the memories of parents and traumatic experiences of childhood. We have utilized numerous psychological tools to try to facilitate this, but in the end it seems that most people are not willing to let go until they have something more important to move on to.
The first thing most of us experience is our parents and so they leave an indelible impression upon us, but while you cannot erase that impression, you can grow beyond it. An important step in forgiving your parents is to see them as people. Your healing may be assisted if you are willing to invest some time and energy creating a family tree. Do some research about your grandparents and your great grandparents. What is known about them? What drove them in life? What were their personality traits? What was their relationship to their children? Look for patterns of thought, feeling, and behavior. Then explore the experiences of your parents. How did they meet? What were key events’in their partnership? What were challenges that they had to overcome? How did they respond to their own parents?
It is easier to understand and forgive another person when you have walked a mile in their shoes. Many people develop a new relationship with their parents only after they themselves have children. You begin to see that everyone brings skills and limitations to a difficult task, and it is hard work to go beyond the model that you have inherited.
Why is it so important to forgive? Because 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. This applies not only to relationships with parents but equally to all your relationships. 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.
In twelve-step programs, such as those developed by Alcoholics Anonymous, one of the key steps toward healing is recognizing the wisdom and power of reparation, meaning efforts to repair harm or injury that you may have caused to another. You are instructed to take personal inventory and, where you were wrong, promptly admit it. Then you make a list of all persons you have harmed and, wherever possible, try to make amends. You go to such people and say, “I fear that my past actions may have injured you. Is there something I can do?”
Reparation takes humility one step further by including service to another person. It helps to clear away 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. Then we are ready to move on.
Compassion is empathetic concern for the suffering of another combined with the urge to provide help and support. When we say “I,” we are speaking of just one single person, but in compassion there is connection with another living being, and the 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 to practice compassion. It also instructs that our ordinary sense of compassion is often tied up with attachment and centered on selfish motivation. For example, one may feel compassion for one’s parents or children simply because they are my mother and father, my children. But just as the unconscious is not bounded by our skin, so it does not leave off with our biological families. The boundaries of the greater Self extend as far as we can imagine or be in relationship.
Compassion is expressed in any act that reconnects us to the deeper layer of experience that we share with our whole culture and with all creation. Our task is to free ourselves from the prison of separateness by widening our circle of compassion.
Kabir, a fifteenth-century Indian poet, wrote:
Are you looking for me? I am in the next seat. My shoulder is against yours.
You will not find me in stupas, not in Indian shrine rooms, nor in synagogues, nor in cathedrals: not in masses, nor kirtans, not in legs winding around your our neck, nor in eating nothing but vegetables.
When you really look for me, you will see me instantly—you will find me in the tiniest house of time.
Kabir says: Student, tell me, What Is God? He is breath inside the breath.3
As Kabir points out, the divine can be found in the particularity of daily life. We simply look for an opportunity each day to tend to the needs of someone in a human way. Small acts of kindness are best for cultivating the gift of compassion.
Contentment is not a matter of what you possess or don’t possess. You can whittle your possessions down to practically nothing and still be miserable. Alternatively, you can be a king in a palace, if that is your job, and realize contentment. Mother Teresa taught that we must be prepared at any moment to give up all our possessions. If we can sustain this attitude of detachment, then we don’t need to take a vow of poverty. It is your attitude that is key. A story from India is quite instructive on this matter.
There once was a king who, despite his reign over a great empire, was very humble. Each morning he would attend to the political, financial, and social affairs of his kingdom, but early each evening he would retire and sit at the feet of a spiritual master who taught in the forest adjoining the royal palace. The king possessed an elaborate carriage that was carved and gilded and pulled by shining stallions, but when he went to the master he always walked quietly on his own two feet. In fact, the king had let it be known that he was not to be treated in any special way while he was in the presence of the wise one.
Among the group of spiritual seekers who regularly attended the spiritual deepenings, there also was a sunyasin. A sunyasin is an ascetic or renunciate in India who owns little more than the yellow robe on his or her back. The sunyasin has renounced possessions, relationships—everything. He or she lives by begging and is completely at the mercy of fate. This man’s only possessions were his robe, a begging bowl, and two loincloths.
Day by day the meditation and the teaching went on in the small clearing near the edge of the forest. Both the king and the sunyasin were devoted, and they sat in the front row, one on each side of the master. One day the sunyasin couldn’t take it any longer, and he exploded in anger at the master. “Look here,” he said. “I have renounced everything to be a holy man. Yet you don’t treat me with any more respect than this king who comes here in fine silks, wearing jewelry with priceless gems. He drinks wine and eats whatever he wants from golden plates. He has a harem, servants, and we all know that he partakes of earthly pleasures without end. I have given up all possessions, yet you don’t treat me with any more honor than you do this man!”
The master nodded at this outburst but said nothing. Similarly, the king was silent. It is the custom in India that if you ask a question of an enlightened one, you don’t always receive a direct answer. The answer may be tucked into a conversation or provided through an example at a later time. This keeps the seeker on his or her toes and helps to distinguish lived experience from mere intellectual understanding.
A few days after the sunyasin’s outburst, everyone was again assembled for the master’s daily teachings, including the king and the sunyasin. No one had spoken of the earlier conflict. Just as they were beginning their prayers, a messenger came bursting in and, with great urgency, whispered something in the ear of the king. The king nodded calmly, dismissed the young man, and returned to his prayers. A few minutes later another messenger arrived with even more urgency; in fact, he could scarcely control himself. “A fire has broken out, and it threatens the palace,” the messenger blurted out before the entire assembled group.
The king nodded calmly and returned to his meditation.
A few minutes later a third messenger came dashing into the clearing and shouted across the heads of everyone, “Your Majesty, Your Majesty, the fire is at the gates of the palace.”
Again, the king nodded, but that was all. By this time everyone could see the fire. With great horror, they smelled the acrid smoke that came billowing up from the palace walls. While the prayers continued, the fire raced through the palace, and it wasn’t long before it reached the edge of the forest. Ash and smoke filled the air, and soon the members of the devout circle could feel the very heat of the blaze against their faces.
Suddenly, the sunyasin remembered that he had washed his extra loincloth and hung it up to dry in the branches of a tree near the clearing. He jumped to his feet and went dashing across the clearing—but in that very moment the raging fire stopped! The smoke was entirely gone, the sun was again visible, and everyone could see the palace shining serenely just beyond the forest. The puzzled sunyasin stopped in midstride and came back with a sheepish and puzzled look on his face. “What happened?” he asked.
The master replied, “Now tell me, who is attached and who is not?”