Goddart (author of A New Now) delivers an impassioned plea urging readers to meditate on various issues and troubles to connect with their true spiritual selves and achieve daily contentment. Goddart declares, “You have the power within you to liberate your soul from the mind’s dominance and achieve reunion with God.” To that end, The Contentment Dividend presents 49 bite-sized explorations of issues, emotional states, prejudices, fears, and inevitabilities, and offers new ways of approaching them or applying them to our life to bring out a sense of control, grounding, and spiritual awakening. The first meditation sets the tone, centered on the “Inescapable Unknown” of our life and death, and how this uncertainty fuels anxiety. In the face of that, Goddart contends that to accept the unknown we should embrace life as it is now, be present, detach mentally, and strip away everything from our life and commune with our true self.

The meditations are based on spiritual teachings that Goddart argues can help us navigate life’s challenges, access the wisdom of our higher mind, and evolve spiritually. A meditation on the topic of “Unsparing Kindness” involves letting go of our ego to understand the ways others suffer so we can offer unsparing kindness and return to our state as a divine spark of God’s love, known as the LoveSource; one dedicated to the “Illusion of Success” suggests that earthly achievements are as fleeting as our past lives—and that true success involves the soul becoming LoveSource.

Throughout, Goddart makes the case in clear, inviting prose that we need to become attached to something higher within ourselves and pursue spiritual purpose. With many, varied meditations on everyday life and situations, the book will prove a valuable compendium of thought-provoking and spiritual reflections for readers who strive to better themselves through meditation and spiritual growth.

Takeaway: Meditations to discover one’s spiritual self and achieve spiritual evolution.

Comparable Titles: Monica Garcia Duggal’s The Power of Breath, Iyanla Vanzant’s One Day My Soul Just Opened Up.

Production grades
Cover: A-
Design and typography: A
Illustrations: N/A
Editing: A
Marketing copy: A