What do you like most about being alive now on planet earth? The song from "The Sound of Music" about favorite things ("Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens… these are a few of my favorite things”) is an expression from Essence. When we are in Essence, we love the little things, like whiskers on kittens—what a miracle! There is so much joy when we are really present to life and the miracle that it is. We get joy from the littlest things. This is so unlike the ego, which disparages such things:.“Oh that—I’ve seen that before!” is its attitude. It wants life to be about it, not about life itself. The ego loves whatever makes it feel good about itself, not what makes it feel good. This egocentricity is one of the most obvious differences between the state of ego-identification and our natural state, or Essence. The ego refers whatever is happening back to itself: What will itmean to me? But when we are in Essence, we experience Essence’s joy at experiencing itself through all of creation.

So, what is it you love about life? It’s so good to notice and acknowledge this because it will align you with Essence and strengthen your awareness of Essence's presence in your life. When you notice those whiskers, those dew drops, those beautiful and amazing things about planet earth and its creations, you can’t help but feel Essence’s joy. The only thing that gets in the way is not noticing such things, and the only reason you don’t is if you are busy noticing something else, which for most people is their thoughts.

Do your thoughts bring you this same kind of joy? It really helps to notice the impact your thoughts have on your state of consciousness because when you do, you see that your thoughts don’t give you the same sense of peace, joy, and happiness that noticing life more purely does.

Do you love how the clouds move and shift as you watch them? Do you love how the stars seem to twinkle? Do you love how your dog’s chest moves up and down when breathing? Do you love the sound of the wind in the trees before a storm? Do you love the feel of the water against your skin as you swim through it? You can never run out of things to love about life. What a wonderful spiritual practice this is to notice and feel gratitude for these small things. This that feels this way is Essence. So, you see, Essence is very close at hand. It’s not some mysterious force separate from you, but that which lives through you and experiences this precious life you’ve been given.

What a different world it is when, instead, we are identified with the ego. There is a tension around every little experience and change: Will it be good or bad for me? The ego evaluates everything, even the breeze, even the dew, even the whiskers on kittens. It can find a problem with anything: The breeze musses my hair, the dew makes my feet wet, I need to trim those whiskers. That’s how it sees life. It’s always about how these things affect me or how they might affect me in the future or how they have affected me in the past.

The egoic mind tells stories about the big and little things, which takes us out of the experience of life and makes life seem more terrible and frightening and troublesome than it actually is. The reason living in Essence feels peaceful is that peace is the real experience of life—yes, life is more peaceful than the ego’s experience of it. The egoic mind scares us and causes us to distrust life and live in fear, doubt, and suspicion of what is going to happen rather than in excited anticipation for what will be revealed next in this great adventure called life. Yes, life is terrible sometimes, but it is never as terrible as the mind says it is. The ego makes it terrible by telling us it’s terrible. How obvious this is once we really look, and that’s the difference. When we are conscious and noticing what is true rather than unconscious and just accepting what the mind tells us, the truth is obvious. Just notice this beautiful gift of life we’ve been given. Just notice what is true and real.

This blog post is included in Gina's book Living in the Now: Reflections from Another Dimension About Being Happy in This One, which is comprised of many other blog posts that were formerly posted on radicalhappiness.com.