Contentment

Being content is a technique offered by the sage, Patanjali.  If someone were to ask, "how do you be content?" he might answer, "be content," even though you don't like it, even though you don't feel like it, even though you're right about being discontented.  Try it as an experiment, take it as it is, and see what happens and appears before you that you didn't expect, a unique way into the next moment we may not have noticed if we were all bothered.  

"Don't be complacent and careless about things you can control, but do be content with what you can't, if at all humanly possible."  That's one great answer that came out of tonight's satsang at Norwood.  The satsang topic is santosh (contentedness), the state in which there are no vrittis, or unconscious, pre-thought lines that move and guide our attention away from our centre, away from the moment, into agitating thoughts.  Vrittis are the long-standing, crazy mental habits of a human being's lifetime.  

This is to be distinguished, however, from the movement of thought for the sake of creating something, or solving something or some life supportive thing.  This is completely different than the unintentional stream of the sum total of all our impressions that rule us and everyone from the underground.

To what extent do we wait for fear to motivate us? The fear of poverty to work, fear of loneliness to relate, fear of death and sickness to be healthy, fear of stupidity to get educated (that's a good one, we should fear stupidity).  If we are moved by fear, however, then fear follows the movement through and tends to attract the very thing we are afraid of.  If love moves us, then love follows us and tends to attract the very thing that we love.  If joy moves us, then joy follows and attracts what gives us joy.  If contentedness moves us, then supreme happiness is there, under all circumstances.

Be content.  So simple, and yet so humbling to practice.  If we are present to what is there in front of us, we are not in our vritti, we are in a moment.  And that moment so powerfully is, that it's potency cannot be denied, argued with or mistaken.  "Take it as it is...it's all there is and you're it...there in lies the Bliss.  Shine a light on this." (From 'Take It As It Is,' The Yoga Lullabies)