For good reason, tomorrow’s Mega Millions drawing is getting lots of attention. The jackpot: $540 million, a new record that blows by the previous mark of $390 million. Over half a billion dollars. It’s hard if not impossible for most people to conceptualize.

The amount has been coming up a great deal in conversations lately – are you buying a ticket? What would you do with the money? I’d do this, that and the other. I’d sure be the happiest person on Earth if I won it.

It’s the last one that is most troubling for me.

If you believe happiness is a condition, then you’ve assured yourself that you’ll never find it. True happiness does not depend on a situation to exist – it already exists within you if you are willing to accept it. But that goes against almost everything we’re told in our culture.

Buy this car, you’ll be happy. Go to the Happiest Place on Earth and be happy. Eat this, smoke that, take this, drink that – you’ll be happy. But it doesn’t work that way. The cars get old and new models are used to make that great purchase not so great anymore. Food comes and goes, trips end, etc.

What is being sold in the previous example is pleasure – an enjoyable feeling, sure – but not true happiness. Pleasure is situation dependent – and like all things in life, it comes and goes based on those situations.

Happiness, however, is as permanent as you allow it to be. If you choose to be happy and accept the happiness that the universe has to offer, you’ll never want anything else. Once you truly understand and embrace what happiness is, you realize it never comes and goes, nor does it increase or decrease. It is a state you can always be in or return to if you find yourself swayed by the pleasure and pain cycle of the world.

If you don’t believe me, consider this. Let’s assume you win Mega Millions. Do the things in your life that you allow to interfere you from being happy really get any better? If you’re unhealthy, do you suddenly become healthy? If you’re plagued by self-doubt, does that suddenly go away? Maybe some things do – you could quit a job you don’t like, for instance, but if you’re not truly happy now you certainly won’t be truly happy if you win the jackpot. Think about those things that really stand in your way of happiness – would they go away with a huge sum of money? My guess is no.

You don’t need $540 million to be happy. In fact, you don’t need anything other that what you already have. The universe has given you infinite happiness at your immediate disposal. All you have to do is allow it to accept it.

Something to think about when you buy your ticket.