It would seem that you continue to believe that your happiness is dependent upon events around you. No matter how much I iterate that your awareness of happiness comes from within you, you don't believe Me, do you? I am well aware that your happiness has often been a barometer of the conditions around you. I am well aware that you live in a relative world, and that what seems to create happiness for one could be unhappiness for another. Certainly it is no surprise that, to a hungry man, the piece of bread you scoff at, is his happiness fulfilled.

And, you, too, in changed circumstances, would appreciate all that which you do not now. This is not exactly count your blessings that I'm saying, for it is your mind that counts your blessings, not your heart. Your heart doesn't count. It experiences.

You have your moments of happiness based on nothing but that you are happy. Perhaps you are observant of something you were not a moment before. You are walking along and the sweet scent of an unexpected flower reaches you, and you are charmed. You lean down and receive the flower's blessing again. For that moment, you are one with the flower and consumed with its sweetness.

Sometimes you may just sit on a bench, and, for a moment, you are attuned to the light of your surroundings. For that moment, it is as if your heart takes a still picture lighted from behind and, simply sitting there, you are enlivened by the picture. You have stopped a moment to see, whereas before perhaps, you hadn't stopped to see.

Or for a moment a sound, music, children's laughter, gives you pause. Perhaps you hear a music that holds a quality that arrests you now.

Sometimes even, you are deliriously happy over something or nothing at all. Perhaps you are in love, and nothing can interfere with your happiness at that moment. You are happy because you are aglow with love.

For a moment you love what a flower gives to you. For a moment you love the setting you are in, and you look at it with new eyes. You look at it with your eyes lit from your heart. Or your ears vibrate as if your heart were filled with humming birds.

You have looked at a baby and for a silent moment, there is nothing but heart between you and the baby. Of course, the heart puts nothing in between. That is just the point. For a moment, your mind is stilled.

When the mind recognizes your moments of pure happiness, it is already creating an image of duality. The mind tells you: "The baby and you are now One." The mind can't seem to let go of the past. It reminds you over and over again of separateness, never letting go of it, so it even takes you away from your Unity. Your mind was trained that way. It trained you to think that way.

You are opening up your perception. Now you perceive that you go by what you perceive. Your life is what you perceive.

Consider all of your environs as jewels.

Consider all of a life as a garden of unsurpassed beauty.

Consider the universe as a meeting-place of souls, appointments made and appointments kept.

Consider the Earth as the melting-pot of love.

There is a great wave of Oneness traveling the Earth, and you are going to be swept up in it. The crowd will follow love, and you will follow the crowd. This is not different from what you have been doing. It's just that the crowd you follow is moving forward now into the realm of love.

From now on your course of love will not be stopped by a frown or discordant note. Your heart will be like the Gingerbread Man who keeps running ahead and nothing can catch him. Now nothing can catch you because you are caught up in love.

There is a permanent quality of love within you. Happiness is love, and you only have to experience it.