Is contentment elusive because many of us have got too much materially?

Question

ideal muggle; i was asking!

Answer 1

I don't agree with you. I don' t have many material possessions, but still struggle with contentment.

I think content encompasses at least 8 different areas of our lives and ensuring that we are 100% fulfilled in all those 8 areas is where elusive contentment prevails.

Answer 2

I agree with Marylin B because Satan makes us believe that we need more when in fact the opposite is true. Sufficient unto the day are the cares therof, if you will. If there are too many cares then you are not content because one is always looking for more when more is not necessarily what one needs. I stress needs other than wants because the two are as different as chalk and cheese. One must always choose needs other than wants all the time

Answer 3

You can have both, but a person has to set some time aside each day to "let go" of the material life, as well as all our thoughts and whatever else distracts us.

Some time each day to be in the "I AM" at the center of our being. We let go, but that doesn not mean we give up everything we own. Chs. 21-22 might be helpful.

Answer 4

Either having too much OR too little is "distracting." We're here to experience "full/eternal aliveness" which is an abstract experience we long for. To achieve this deep contentment we have to remember who we are - dig up our true nature, remember our authentic Self before we developed the fake defensive ego identity with it's ludicrous belief system. It is THIS little identity that controls our perceptions and experience of reality.

Answer 5

I think contentment is elusive by definition. As long as we are seeking contentment, whether through material things or otherwise, we are basically not content.

Answer 6

I think the culture of one's own time has a lot to do with discontentment. A materialistic culture, for example, or one that worships perfection, or wealth, will make the masses of people, who lack these elements in their life, feel inadequate. They will run on a treadmill seeking fulfillment by fraudulent, invalid means much of their lives. They will mistake shallow thrill-seeking for trying to attain something of substantial value in their lives.

Popular culture fears, above all, our individual search for the inner person, self-knowledge. Pop media is about throwing up flak to preoccupy your mind and interfere with your attention to the things that really matter. It does this in many ways: celebrity news, the ever-ready cheap and easy joke, porn, mindless navel-gazing entertainment, etc. And the reason it does it is because, without the hold on our mind of their useless stuff, it couldn't sell us things. It couldn't perpetuate itself.

I think you can subscribe to this whether you are an atheist or a believer in God. It has to do with pursuing things in life that have a worth commensurate with the very real worth fo human beings. It is a higher level perfectionism. A life lived trying to attain that is worth living, whether one succeeds, finally, or not. To have tried at all will be its own success, in the end.

Answer 7

Satan deludes us into wanting and thinking that "stuff" is what contentment is all about. Wake up,people-we will never know contentment (peace that passes all understanding)-until we have that peace that can only come from a deep personal one on one relationship with God that comes only by accepting our Redeemer sacrifice on Calvary.

Answer 8

Materialism is transient; thus, it cannot bring eternal contentment. Only that which is transcendent can bring satisfaction to the human soul and mind.

Answer 9

No. Contentment has little to do with material possessions.

Answer 10

I think feeling content is being happy with what you have.
For me , having too much ( thinking of material things here )makes me feel a little anxious, claustrophobic , disorganized. . . not condusive to productivity.