Have you ever gotten to around 5:00 PM feeling like you were having a pretty good day, then you turn on the news and everything seems terrible? When we forget that we live in the world of the mind and start thinking we live in what we see outside of us, just by watching world events on the news we can easily get swept up in hope and fear.

To be happy, we need to recognize we live in our minds, not in an external world.  Of course the world around us is there, but our thoughts create its meaning for us. We are affected by our thoughts about the world, not by the world itself. If we focus mainly on a backlog of disappointments about the past and stressful concerns for the future, it doesn’t make for a happy present!

We can regain our ability to let the aliveness of the world touch us, moment by moment. To do this, we have to override our mind’s tendency to label and pigeonhole everything and everyone as “just  this again.”  We don’t feel this tiredness with the world because the world itself is tired. The world is ever-fresh, new in every moment. We knew this once. To be happy…

#4 Listen to this moment.

In order to listen to this moment, sometimes we have to be humble enough, and courageous enough, to recognize how much we have let ourselves harden, without realizing it. And then we have to make a conscious decision to soften into love.

May all beings be happy and free! May our compassion for all beings, ourselves included, continue to increase.