Greetings Dear Ones,

Picture it... the year was 1987. AIDS and ARC become an epidemic. ACT UP had just formed. They were committed to direct action to end the AIDS crisis.  They demonstrated in the streets regularly and were in the news constantly.  They mobilized their anger and made a difference.

At that time another group formed.  It was the Manhattan Center For Living, founded by Marianne Williamson with the help of Cynthia O'Neal, now the executive director of Friends In Deed. 

It was a spiritual organization offering emotional and spiritual support to those affected by the crisis. Yes! it was a crisis.

I was drawn to both organizations but chose to volunteer at the Manhattan Center For Living.  Without any specific training, I was made the assistant clinical director and the rest, as they say, is just my personal history, but that is not the point of this article.  The point is the potential within a crisis.

We are now faced with a new or perhaps not so new, epidemic.  It is the epidemic of the pursuit of happiness. 

While a guaranteed right in the constitution, it is not a well understood pursuit. This pursuit is not really one of happiness but one of relief. 

Relief from what you might ask?  Relief from the moment, the here and now, relief from being present.  Our pursuit has been the ongoing pursuit that happiness is something that...

1. Needs to be pursued.
2. One can buy it or get it.

Take for a moment the idea of unconscious consumerism.  This type of consumerism is fueled by the positive prediction that some thing, some one, or some place will, at some time in the future, make us happy.

This reality is often taken advantage of by marketers selling you on the idea that you can have all of your heart's desires.  That is simply not true and on some level we all know this:

1. Because we don't really know what are heart's desires are because we don't listen to our hearts.

2. Because marketing is very powerful and imprints the unconscious mind and we must act on what is accepted by our unconscious programming.

So why do we buy it?  Why do we try to buy it in a bottle, a book, a workshop?  Why?

Because we WANT to believe that it is true.  We want to believe, like a child, in Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy and that we are deserving, as if to say deserving has something to do with it.

The distribution of wealth in this country is not held by those who deserve it but is held by many who are just greedy. And so are we when we buy into the old model of happiness.

So what is the new model of happiness?

You can find out by ordering...No...just kidding.

Happiness, joy, connection is who you are at your core.  You do not need to search for it, you need only to sit still.

Happiness is in your connections, not just with yourself but with others, those that you love. 

It is the awareness and connection to the reality that we are all one and while we have individual aspects, these aspects are still part of a collective that is greater and bigger than any single individual...that we are part of a human family that includes each and everyone of us and that we are all ultimately responsible not only for ourselves but for the world that we live in.

It is time for all of us to take up membership in our family and contribute to our human family in a way that is no longer just good for ourselves but also good for others.

It is time and the time is now!

Many blessings,
Dr. Eric