The Secret To Happiness

The secret is to let go of the attachment to results. A fear that many people have is that if they don’t hold tightly to their goals and dreams and think about them all day long, they won’t achieve them. Yet it is precisely the attachment to outcomes, to obtaining a specific result, that paves the way for fear, the fear that you will not achieve what you want.

As you learn to let go of the attachment, new creative energies – as well as feelings of courage and confidence – emerge, actually moving you closer to your goals.

Worrying about the future is one of the main causes of stress in our lives. It’s a habit that only perpetuates fear, the uncomfortable feeling that we are not enough as we are. It keeps us stuck in the belief that this and that has to happen if we want to be happy, and that if it doesn’t, our lives will be miserable.

There is a story about J. Krishnamurti that says a lot about what it means to be free from this limiting, fear-based thought pattern. Every spring he gave lectures in a beautiful oak grove in Ojai, southern California. He had been speaking there for more than sixty years. On this particular occasion, when I went to see him in the late 1970s, there must have been almost two thousand people present, sitting on the grass or in their folding chairs.

Revealing its secrets

Halfway through this particular conversation, Krishnamurti suddenly paused, leaned forward and said, almost conspiratorially:Do you want to know what my secret is?Almost as if we were one body, we sat up, even more alert than before, if that was possible. I saw people around me leaning forward, their ears pricked and their mouths slowly opening in hushed anticipation.

Krishnamurti rarely spoke about himself or his own process, and now he was about to tell us his secret! He was in many ways a mountaintop teacher – somewhat aloof, aloof, seemingly unapproachable unless you were part of his inner circle.

Yet that’s why we came to Ojai every spring, to see if we could find out exactly what his secret was. We wanted to know how he managed to be so aware and enlightened while we struggled with conflict and our many problems.

There was silence. Then he said in a low, almost shy voice, “You see, I don’t care what happens.”

I don’t care what happens. That is the essence of inner freedom. This is the secret of happiness. It’s a timeless spiritual truth: Let go of attachment to results, and—deep down—you’ll feel good no matter what. You will feel good because you are connected to, one with, the energy of the universe, the beauty and power of creation itself. Or as Krishnamurti himself put it:

“When you live with this awareness, this sensitivity, life has an amazing way of taking care of you. Then there is no problem of safety, of what people say or don’t say, and that is the beauty of life.”