This book has been incubating for several years. It began with a lecture by my friend and colleague, Robert A. Johnson, who applied the powerful and profound story of King Lear to examine some ways that modern people sabotage their own contentment. We tend to look for something or someone on the outside to make us feel satisfied and complete, but contentment isn’t found out there. It is an inner experience. The word itself, contentment, carries the implication of content—to be at home with what you already contain. Realizing this can save you a lot of misdirected energy and put you on a more fruitful path.
During the past year Robert and I worked together, drawing upon depth psychology and many spiritual traditions as well as the genius of Shakespeare, to develop a more complete understanding of contentment. You don’t need to be a sage sitting on a mountaintop to be content, but these days it does require some uncommon thinking.
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 principle 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 need to follow rather than lead. Clearly, to move with such agility and grace takes a lot of practice, but our practice studio is daily life.
We live in a transitional, complicated age, perhaps the adolescence of humankind, so contentment requires effort on our part. The goal of this book is to provide readers with both practical strategies for the mind and rich nourishment for the soul.
I would like to thank Robert for his faith in this project and the guidance he has provided throughout its development. I also owe a debt of gratitude to the faculty at Pacifica Graduate Institute, in particular Dr. Charles Asher, Dr.
Robert Romanyshyn, Dr. Dianne Skafte, and Dr. Mary Watkins, who shared many rich ideas in lectures and conversations. Finally, I wish to thank my wife, Jordis, and son, Oliver, for providing the most meaningful content in my life.