Santosha - Contentment

I've been struggling to write about the niyama santosha for nearly a week now. I realized last night that it's been difficult for me to comment on santosha because I've been deluding myself about how content I really am. I am profoundly content with many areas of my life right now, but I have unknowingly allowed my 'quest to find a home' to torment me. More accurately, I've allowed my attachment to fulfilling this notion of "home" to torment me.

In one of my teacher training courses we were asked to provide one word that described our lives up to that point. My word was "searching." I believe it was contentment that I had been searching for, and had moved literally to the other side of the planet in pursuit of it. What a waste of time! The journey towards contentment is an internal one. No searching necessary!

I believe the key to contentment lies in another cornerstone of yoga - detachment. I have this image, a fantasy really, of how I will feel when I find "home." I've been dwelling on this concept for so long that the fantasy has grown to include how I will find my "home," who will be around me when I do, what the whole scene will look like, blah blah blah. It's really quite ridiculous. I have created this huge attachment to something that I don't even have. Yoga Sutra II.7 says, "Pleasure leads to desire and emotional attachment." My mind has been dwelling on the pleasurable experiences associated with having a home and has thus developed a strong desire to realize those feelings again. "The cause of pain is the association or identification of the seer (atma) with the seen (prakrti) and the remedy lies in their dissociation" (II.17). I need to start detaching from my concept of home. It's time for that cheesy old cliche, 'home is where the heart is,' to be taken literally. I don't need to find a place that's full of warm fuzzies to be content, serenity is inside me. (Easier said than done, but the first step is always admitting that you have a problem, right?)

Alright - I was supposed to be sharing ways of bringing the niyamas into YOUR daily life here! =)  I would suggest taking a moment to evaluate your own desires and start thinking of ways to detach from those desires. Ultimately, our goal is to transcend the instant gratification of satisfied desires and find true contentment within.