Seducing Happiness

It's interesting to me that we need self-help books, gurus, and therapists to tell us how to be happy.  How is it that our lives have become so complicated and complex that happiness seems to be an elusive lover we're always trying to seduce but can't claim? 

We are first and foremost spiritual beings that are living in a human body in a physical world.     We were formed by the hand of heaven to experience the wonder of human life, and yet we find ourselves thinking about the stress of our work, the complexity of our relationships, the rising gas prices, the war in Iraq, the chaos of constant activity instead of being aware of the breath and beat of our heart that reminds us that we are alive!  We are alive now— right now—this moment, and oh, what a miracle that is! 

The spiritual teacher Ram Dass has given us the wonderful book Be Here Now.  Perhaps, what is most important about the book is the very title itself.  When we can stop our endless mind chatter to simply be here now, we are astonished to find that happiness is not an elusive lover at all.  She is inside our own soul —right now.