How to Deal With Discontentment?

Posted on by Sen.



Growth is an inherent nature of life-energy. The term “growth” is just a pointer – it basically points to the dynamic nature of life-energy, which is also what is sensed as “aliveness”. The word “life” is more a verb than a noun, it’s not a constant, it’s ever-changing, always in movement. Life-energy is also an intelligent force, and hence is creative in nature – it’s intelligent because it’s not a dead energy, its nature is to “think” and the desire for growth is exhibited in its thinking. All of creation comes from “thought”, and creation is just an expression of life-energy from its nature of desiring something “new” in terms of experience. A human mind is a creation of life-energy and has the nature of life-energy, which includes the inherent desire for growth and dynamism. Contentment is not the reality of life, the very thought of contentment goes against the inherent nature of life which is its nature of wanting growth. The reason why people who meditate for several years fail to achieve contentment is because it’s just not a reality of life, and you can’t achieve something that’s not a part of reality. Wholeness is not a permanent state of contentment, it’s a state of complete alignment with reality which includes a total openness to your nature of discontentment.

As long as you are hung up on the idea of finding contentment, you will constantly keep buying into “delusions” and hence will keep feeling disappointed; you will keep blaming yourself or the outside for your lack of contentment. In many cases, people who desperately seek contentment are ignoring the real problem, which is their “fear of living”. If you are trying to find contentment as a means to escape life, the experience you will achieve is one of “detachment” and even there you will encounter an inner sense of psychological suffering because there will be a constant pressure towards growth which you would have to keep suppressing. It just takes a moment of honesty to realize that there is no such state called permanent contentment. The problem is not with the nature of discontentment which is present in us (as life-energy), the problem is when we are either over-identified with it, or when are suppressing it – in a state of balance, discontentment reveals its “positive” aspect in that it becomes a creative force towards new expressions, experience and growth, and it does not have the intensity to create unwise movements or psychological suffering.

Of course, in order to live a balanced/wisdom-based expression, you need to first find freedom from the pull of discontentment, before you can align with the nature of discontentment. If you are pulled around by discontentment, you will have no sense of inner freedom, in which case you will just be a prisoner to your own nature.

Understanding the nature of discontentment

Discontentment is a dark nature of life-energy, just as joy is a light-nature of life-energy. When I use the term “dark nature” I never imply it as a negative. For me, negativity is the act of suppressing a natural nature of life. When you try to suppress, or deny, your nature of discontentment you are bound to become imbalanced in some way (imbalanced in light nature), and that’s part of negativity. States of lethargy, inactivity, fear of involvement, lack of creativity and detachment-based behaviors arise when you try to suppress your natural nature of discontentment. The whole movement of trying to find freedom through the means of “suppression” is rooted in fear, it’s rooted in ignorance of your nature and it’s rooted in denial. Freedom never comes from a place of suppression, all that you will end up doing is create “imbalance” and hence end up in some form of inner/external negativity. The path towards freedom is to no longer be afraid of a force in you, and thus be consciously allowing of it (within you) until its imbalanced/accumulated momentum can ebbs away, after which you can live a balanced expression of this nature/force. It’s all about “balancing”, it’s never about getting rid of something – if an aspect is present in you, it means it’s an aspect of life-energy itself, and you can be sure that you will never get rid of it, what you can do release it imbalanced momentum in you and live its balanced expression.

It’s important to realize that none of the natures of life-energy, be it dark nature or light nature, are “negative” by themselves. For example, the nature of growth is not a negative by itself, it only becomes a negative when you become totally hooked on to this nature alone and disconnect from your other nature of love/joy – when you focus on growth while denying yourself rest, and rejuvenation, you will get burnt out and thus your nature of desiring growth becomes imbalanced. Discontentment is not a negative by itself, this nature in life-energy allows for new growth, evolution and “fresh” expression – without discontentment everything would just be “static” and stagnant. If you channel your discontentment, in a balanced manner, you become highly creative, with a zest for life. It’s only when you become over-identified with discontentment that you become “restless”, impatient, over-aggressive, frustrated, irritated and unwise – this over-identification also keeps fueling the momentum of discontent, which ends up getting stored in your “energy-field”, leading to a sense of congestion/contraction in your body, creating a strong force of resistance in you. Suppressing your nature of discontentment has its own imbalance; it causes you to become inactive, lethargic, meek, detached, dull, indecisive, un-creative, and passive, with a sense of meaningless-ness about everything.

The logic is very simple, in order to have a balanced expression of a certain nature (like discontentment), you first need to release your past accumulation of imbalance of this nature (mentally/emotionally) and then consciously align with its expression. The only way to release a past accumulation, permanently, is to do it “consciously” – any unconscious means of release will cause you to re-create it because you’ve not consciously seen through it. The way to consciously release a past accumulation is to “allow” it to arise, in all its intensity, without identifying with it or suppressing it – just allow it to arise fully, by staying consciously open to experiencing its “intensity”. This practice of conscious allowing causes you to become “fearless” towards the force/nature that’s being released of its imbalance in you. An unconscious release does not allow you to become aware of the dynamics of a certain nature/force, and hence causes you to re-create the same imbalance later. Once you are done with the “release” of imbalance of a certain nature in you, you can then start living the expression of this nature in a balanced way. The logic is straight forward – stop being over-identified with a nature and stop suppressing a nature, release the past accumulation of its imbalance in you, and live its balanced expression.

Releasing the imbalanced accumulation of discontentment

Discontentment is a nature in us, as life-energy, and it’s an inherent part of our thinking. When we get over-identified with this nature of thinking, we can end up fueling the momentum of discontentment (in our thoughts), and hence we end up thinking higher percentage of discontentment based thoughts than other thoughts (like thoughts of joy or appreciation). When a certain nature of thought gains momentum, it starts getting stored up as “emotional energy”. This emotional energy not only gets imprinted in our consciousness, but it also gets stored up at a “cellular level” (or cellular memory) in our body, as a human being. The more the emotional energy we store-up the more the body becomes “congested” in terms of becoming less spacious – this form of energy congestion causes disharmony in the body functions, which manifest in several ways in terms of bodily disorders. The cellular memory also gets passed on to the off-springs created by the person, as a part of genetic inheritance – in this sense it’s possible to inherit an imbalanced momentum of discontent from your gene pool, you can see some kids with a very heavy energy of discontentment in them.

The reasons are not important, and the past is not important in any sense at all. To sit and blame your past or your parents or life, is of no value, it’s just a waste of energy and in fact will only cause a further hike in the momentum of imbalance. The practice of conscious allowing causes a release of past acquired momentum, without requiring any “analysis” on your part – you don’t have to figure out the reasons, you don’t have to do any past-regression exercises, you don’t need to know “how” you created this momentum or where it came from – it could have come from a past lifetime, it could have come purely as a genetic inheritance from your gene pool, it really doesn’t matter where it came from. The fact is that you are “aware” of it now, and hence have an opportunity to release it instead of being lost to it.

You can read this post on – reaching total allowing – to get a sense of the practice of allowing, which is needed for a conscious release. You must understand that the phase of release requires you to consciously allow a force to arise in you fully/freely, in all its intensity, so that its momentum can ebb away – the fact that you are consciously allowing it, without being identified with it or suppressing it, causes the force to lose momentum on its own. It’s a very straight forward process, it’s just that you have to give yourself the time that’s required for a certain force to release itself (based on its load of accumulation in you) – it happens in layers, which can take a few release cycles, so it’s important to develop the patience to ride through the process of release, there are no short cuts. When you are releasing the past accumulation of the energy of “discontentment”, you will feel a strong sense of discontentment arising in you (during the release), this does not mean that you are regressing in some way, it just means that past momentum is being released. Once the release is done with, the energy of discontentment loses its intensity and grip – this is when you know you’ve acquired a freedom towards this nature. Once you sense your freedom, you can then consciously connect with allowing the expression of this nature in you – this time it will be a balanced expression.

A balanced expression of discontentment

When you’ve released the imbalanced momentum of discontentment, that got accumulated through unconscious thinking (either over-identification or suppression), you can start tapping into the immense creative potential that this nature of discontentment avails in you. Discontentment is the source of all creation, it’s the source of growth, the source of evolution, the source of betterment and the source of aliveness. A balanced alignment with discontentment will allow you to lead a “rich life” in terms of experience and expression – by “rich life” I don’t just mean material abundance, but also an inner sense of aliveness, zest and freshness. When you don’t encompass the nature of discontentment in you, it’s not possible for you to experience your “inner wholeness”. Wholeness always means being fully aligned with your nature as life-energy, and discontentment is an integral part of your nature. Anyone who tries to disconnect from this nature always ends up disconnecting with wholeness also, they may exhibit a sense of “dull peace” but it’s nothing compared to the sense of “alive peace” that’s the true nature of life-energy.

You can see the nature of discontentment present in your brain, and in your heart, quite naturally (if you are not suppressing it). The brain is a creation of life-energy, so is the heart, and hence they imbibe the nature of life-energy in their way of functioning. It’s such a futile effort to try to create a “contended brain”, it’s just not possible, because it’s not based in reality of life. Once you release the imbalanced momentum of discontent (mentally/emotionally), through the practice of conscious allowing, you will see that your brain’s discontentment-based thinking is no longer a problem, in fact you see the creative potential resting in this form of thinking. If you are looking at discontentment as a “negative force”, it just means that you are not able to realize the creative potential that this nature has in you and are just disturbed by its “intensity” (due to imbalanced accumulation).

In a balanced mind, there will be thoughts of discontentment interspersed with thoughts of solution, thoughts of desire, thoughts of anticipation, thoughts of joy, thoughts of appreciation etc. It’s a whole medley of thoughts, and there is no “concentration” on one form of thought alone. If you are stuck in a certain form of thinking, either light natured or dark natured, it just means you lack a balance in your being and might have an imbalanced accumulation of a certain nature (energetically/mentally) in you. It’s true that there is no such reality in life, either in physical life or non-physical life, that will ever give you a sense of “permanent contentment”, but it’s also true that you can always feel whole if you are aligned with this nature of discontentment in you (in a balanced way) – the delusion is to imagine wholeness as a state of permanent contentment, the reality is to see that wholeness is a balanced alignment with your true nature as life-energy in all its facets of light and dark nature, including the nature of discontentment.


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5 Comments

  1. casey

    Sen,

    I want to thank you for description of “release of imbalance” and mind-momentum. It has been a pointer that I have looked to often during my 5 month battle with anxiety. I’ve gone from a 10 to a 2 in intensity and have cut my medication to 1/4 of what it was even two months ago. I’m more balanced than I’ve been in quite some time and I bear witness that conscious allowing through awareness is one of the main keys in my recovery.

    Thank you. The western world remains largely unaware of this approach and these pointers that you teach so well.

    Balance feels so good. Thank you!

    Casey

  2. asli

    Sen, your articles are as deep as a well. Although I have already re-read them couple of times, I still find something new and valuable. Since I realized this creative potential of darker emotions, I have also started to appreciate them and allow them more easily. Every time I fully allow a sadness without to much thinking, a creative solution comes to my problem naturally. I realized that this darker emotions can be transformed into lighter ones like almost alchemy. But I wonder something, is it OK to see darker emotions in a lighter way (like appreciating them as things waiting to be turned into gold)? Or am I still trying to cling to the light by turning dark into light? Can this make me imbalanced towards light? Can allowing become a crutch? Thank you again for your blog, I wish there was a way for me to reciprocate (Since I’m still broke, I am not able to donate:()

    1. Sen Post author

      Asli, there may be some bent towards an imbalance of light nature in your current mindset, however it’s definitely a huge growth compared to the previous mindset of suppressing the dark aspects. Basically, at some level, you are still holding back on fully allowing the experience of the dark nature aspects in you, rather, as you rightly surmised, you are trying to find a light-natured interpretation. It’s not about “appreciating” the dark nature aspects in the form of finding a way to be “cheerful” about it (in which case you are just trying to stay put with the light-nature), it’s about allowing what arises naturally without the need to manipulate it.

  3. asli

    Thank you Sen, I’m truly grateful…

  4. Peter

    Sen, you explained in your article the way of consius release of past emotional acumulations, then you mentioned how unconsious release does not work. Could you please explain or give me an example of what you mean by uncunsious release. I’ve been attempting relaxed awarness for about a month, but prior to it, about nine months, i’ve been learning the Sedona Method founded by Lester Levenson in wich you are indentifing negative emotions first then you are welcoming them to your consious then releasing them till you only have a feeling of only love and peace. Of course this will take time. The mechanism here as I understand, as you releas present emotions or past negative emotional acumulations you become freer from the grip of these feelings and you naturally start shifting toward more positive emotions (Courage, Acceptence, Peace). They say as a child everbody has a naturall ability to release negative emotions but we loose this ability as we age. But this ability can be relearned.
    I tried to sit in relaxed awarness three times a day but during normal activity through the day since my awarness is not strong enouthg I tried to release my emotions (resistance and contractions in my body). So when I read about consious and uncunsious release I was thinking about what you ment by unconsious release and what form of release you would consider the Sedona Method.

    Peter

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