Ridhwan is a kind of contentment which arises when you're liberated. Your personality becomes contented when you're free. Your personality itself is free from its suffering and conflict. Christ said you need to become like little children in order to enter the kingdom of heaven. Ridhwan, contentment, is the entrance into the kingdom of heaven. It is an aspect of Essence.

The Arabic word Hameed chose to refer to this state is Ridhwan. No word in English completely conveys the meaning, but the closest translation would be "contentment, contented, and contenting" all at the same time. Awakening through the joy of discovery and the love of truth opens one to Ridhwan. It is the essential quality that expresses heart in a very particular way - a pink fluffy love, yellow joy, and rich apricot fulfilment as one fluid presence of deep, sweet, happy love. It is contentment that can't help but be contenting as our heart rests in its humble truth. The pleasurable and fulfilled heart alters the feel of practice in a very important way on this journey of the Diamond Approach. It shows us how the practices can be expressions of the pleasurable love for Being. We were discovering that practice done in a state of contentment, abundance and settledness - rather than from dissatisfaction and striving -made it natural to feel plentiful and find ways to share the bounty with others.

When you see this unity and understand that it has always been there, you will understand the meaning of Ridhwan, the name of our school. In Arabic, ridhwan means totally satisfied, satisfying, fulfilled, fulfilling, contented, contenting. You are personally and impersonally contented, objectively contented for yourself and all others. Your story and the story of each and every human being makes sense in the light of this unity underlying all of experience. Without this understanding of unity, your mind’s questions are still unanswered. Many people say (and it is true for some states of realization) that the questions are not answered; the questions are simply not there any more. In this state of embodiment, however, all of the questions, including even your mental questions, are actually answered. They must be, for you to be completely satisfied and fulfilled. Your mind itself is full of ridhwan. All of you, not just one aspect of you, is satisfied. All of you is complete. There is no duality. All of you must become satisfied: your mind, your body, your personality—every aspect of you. All of it must be integrated, not discarded. This is what I call then the integrated identity. Personality, Essence, Supreme, body, mind, are all one identity operating without a split. Then you are simply ordinary. You are not someone who is working on himself. You are someone who is just living. You do what you do without feeling that there is something wrong with you, that some part of you needs to be rejected.