How to Be Happy Now

Posted on November 21, 2007 in Laws Of Attraction by byronb

The title of this article is a bit sneaky in that itcontains, in the problem it poses to solve, its own answer. It’s in the lastword: ‘Now’. That is how to be happy- Now: to access the power of the Now.

The Now is this moment and only this moment. Because Now it’s this one. And Now thisone. That first ‘Now’ at the beginning of this paragraph andall subsequent ones since have already become the past. And the nexttime the big 3-letter ‘N’-word is mentioned here (you know the one we mean), itwill be a future Now - there it is. UntilNow.

Why all this silliness focused on the present moment?Because in truth, Now, or the present moment, is the only moment there everreally is. Why is understanding that so important to our happiness? Because allof our unhappiness, and every other negative thought and emotion associatedwith it, exists in the nonexistent past or future.

The present moment is timeless, eternal. And in it, if youare really in it, to be unhappy is impossible. Unfortunately, most of the timewe think we’re in the present moment, we’re really in our heads, thinking aboutit, judging it, fretting about the past or worrying about the future. But inthis inexorable moment Now, where the past is behindus and the future has yet to be, there is none of that (or at least there neednot be).

There’s just the breeze, or lack thereof. The sun, or clouds. People and animalsscurrying about, or lying still. Our thoughts and feelings on thosecircumstances are judgments, but happiness is not a judgment. It is an inwardstate of being, independent of circumstances, thoughts, feelings, andjudgments.

Try for a moment, just being in the Now. It’s not soesoteric as it may seem. All it means is to still your constantly jabberingmind for a moment to let the still and silent observer deep inside you observethis moment.

Observe the breeze, or lack thereof. Observe the sun, orclouds. Observe the people and animals scurrying about or lying still. Andespecially observe those thoughts, feelings, and judgments about those things:about this exercise, even. And recognize that none of those thoughts andfeelings and judgments are YOU. You are the still andsilent observer watching and listening to it all. Try as hard as you can toexperience that state for just a moment and then ask yourself if it was evenpossible for unhappiness to wheedle its way in there somehow.

The still and silent observer that is the real You is at peace, untroubled by errors of the past and hopesfor the future. Circumstances don’t make us happy or unhappy. That’s whywhenever we do manage to get what we thought we needed to be happy, we suddenlyfind something else to fix on, to hinge our continued happiness or unhappinessupon, something else that we must have or change in order to maintain thishappiness and stave off future unhappiness.

Resistance to being fully presentto the experience of this moment as it is and nothing but is what fostersunhappiness. Acceptance of this moment, embracing Nowas it is, free of and untrammeled by the past and future, is where true andunshatterable happiness lies.