What are the Keys to Contentment?

When the stories of Parzival, King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table were initially written during the Middle Ages, there was a great change sweeping the Western World. The power of The Church was being challenged by powerful new ideas as well as the return of ancient ones like those represented in Gnosticism.

A conflict was brewing between the forces of social order and authority (the Church) and the influence of the individual and the direct experience of love and the divine (the Gnostics). The possibility that one could chart one’s own course, marry for love rather than duty, and experience the love of God directly rather than filtered through the Church hierarchy was considered a direct threat to the Church’s authority, and many who espoused these beliefs were branded as heretics, persecuted and killed.

This notion, however, that “the God within us is the one that gives the laws and can change laws . . . and it is within us” is at the heart of attaining contentment. When we follow our own path, we are participating in a heroic, divine activity that manifests the “God within us.” By living authentically, by listening to the divine within us, we make our own rules and serve the divine in the process.

What this essentially means is that we are Co-Creators with the divine. We create our fate, our destiny, our relationship with the divine. When we live authentically, following our own chosen paths, when we manifest our own unique potential and individual nature, we are serving the divine in the most pure sense.

When Parzival, out of compassion and love, heals the Grail King, he himself takes the throne and becomes the Grail King, the guardian of the highest spiritual values of compassion and loyalty. By choosing to live authentically, from the spontaneity of his own heart and soul, Parzival shows us how we might follow our own path with heart, loyalty and compassion, leading to a life of joy, passion and contentment.