Sit quietly for a few minutes without doing any formal meditation practice. Let everything be as it is. Give up trying to control your experience, even your thoughts. Take what you get without picking and choosing, judging and comparing. This is it.
Now ask yourself, am I happy, content, or satisfied right now? Notice the mind’s response. If the answer is no, I’m not happy, ask yourself, what gets in the way of my being happy? What feelings or thoughts tell me that I’m not happy? Where do I go inside and what parameters do I check or measure to give me the answer to this question?
Maybe it’s a series of thoughts about what you don’t have but think you should. Maybe it’s a pattern of tension in your chest and belly. Maybe it’s painful memories of failure or loss.
Set aside all the arguments and reasons your mind puts forth, all the inner feelings, emotions, images, and memories that convince you you’re not happy. If letting go makes sense to you, then let them go. Notice all the sensations in the body that you identify as unhappiness or dissatisfaction and set them aside or let them go as well.
Let go of the ongoing inner chatter, what neuroscientists call the default mode network; let it pass through without deliberately attending to it. Let go of your story about the past, and let go of your agenda for the future. As you’ve heard it said before, only Now exists. Just be here now!
Now shift your awareness to your present-moment experience in all its wondrous simplicity. The play of sensations inside and outside your body. The interplay of light and dark in the space in front of and around you. The sounds of the traffic, the people, the birds.
Isn’t it extraordinary that any of this exists? This table, this computer, this chair, this floor, this sky, this sun, this earth, this breath? Isn’t it amazing that anything is at all? You didn’t have to do anything to make this happen, you didn’t have to earn it. You are alive right now, in this irreplaceable moment, experiencing this! There is no other moment, no other time, no other reality. Just this.
Let yourself open as much as you can to take this in. Notice how this realization affects you. Without picking up your problems again or analyzing your situation, would you call yourself happy or content right now?
This is the happiness you seek, the peace of mind and heart you’ve spent years pursuing. Here it is. You’re done, nothing more to experience or achieve. This is the fruition of the spiritual search. Just this! And it’s available right now, in any moment, if you just stop to enjoy it.
You are not sitting on the bank of the river, waiting for a better moment to float past. You are the powerful river itself, filled with being, filled with infinite potential. You are the light and the love that you seek. You just need to let yourself be it.
Rest here for as long as you like, then get up and go about your day, noticing how this meditation affects your mood and your outlook on life.