Recently a spiritual teacher, Byron Katie, asked me about my thoughts. I told her that I wished for people to meet without agenda. She asked me, what if I took the world out of it?I confessed the ridiculousness of my wish and held to it. My wish is ridiculous, because it carries an agenda, the very thing I want others not to have. I am okay with that though. I referred to my wish as an agendaless agenda, one whose outcome I like to be detached from, whose insistence is of no importance to me.
Byron Katie has my admiration for the immediacy and clarity of her insight. Really my desire for others not to have any expectations constitutes itself an agenda and she caught that right away. I could turn it around and say that I wished to meet myself without an agenda. That was her proposition, to leave the world out of it. Does this not sound more honest?
In the process of making such a wish I betray the very desire of that wish. The reality of it is I have a wish, no more, no less. I ask myself how attached am I to such a wish? Am I willing to let go of its agenda? When I know the world is okay, that people are okay just the way they are with each other, peace comes. Contentment is here. I love that.
How quickly I projected this wish onto a world I thought of as separate from myself! It is what the mind does. How many atrocities are committed in the name of love, in the name of so many noble wishes? Does the world need us? Can we know that it does? Can we really know that people need us?
What, if we left the -isms out of how the world should be, idealism, capitalism, communism, fundamentalism, perhaps altruism in my case, and so forth? Are these ideas of the world noble? What is a worthy cause? All causes are worthy, because they are. I know them by their effect, their reality. That is how I know they are worthy.
When I own my agenda, my story of the way I like the world, it becomes mine and I have the choice to hold on to it or to let go of it. I enjoy knowing that I have a choice about my thinking, or at least the way I approach my thinking. Without holding onto my agenda about the way people should be, I can be with that wish I have and be true to it; however, this is no longer of any concern of mine. I am present with the truth of it, and this is blissful.
What wishes do you have? Which way should the world be, if you had your say? What should be the agendas of the world? Spare no one and nothing. Leave no stone unturned. This is your story. Your story is important, because it is your reality.
When I get to know my story, I am finding out about me. I can then let go of it. I can then spare myself. When I do not recognize my story, it lives me. It dictates my life. It obeys my wishes perfectly and I get to experience the pain of my agendas for the world. When I recognize my story however, I own it. Then I can let it go or rejoice in it, live it where it serves me. I get to be selfish about what is.
I find my passion. I can be passionate about my wish for people to come together in the sheer appreciation of one another. I love life. This includes people with agendas. This includes myself. I get to be selfish how I want to spend my time. I am free to choose. I have no reason to be with you. I am with you or I am not. It is up to me. I spare myself the agony of my story of how you should be. You are all you need to be. That is all I can know, because you are. This is the worthiness of your cause.
Also, no cause is worthy, because none are unworthy. It is my attachment to such causes that would lead to worthiness and unworthiness. Without such attachments, an integral vision like the one put forth by the author Ken Wilber allows for all perspectives to be valued. This is accomplished without value judgment. None is more worthy than another. An integral view of the world contains values, all the values of what is.
These values call for its radical transformation. Paradoxically this is accomplished without calling for anything. Values confront the self-contradictory. I contradict myself if I hold on to one view over another. Then I defend this view against all others and in this process confound the essence of what I hold to be true. My wish for no agenda was in itself an agenda. The value of no agenda is self-contradictory. I confound the essence of such a wish by attaching to it. This is how the value of no agenda calls for radical transformation, to let go, to be undone.
Perhaps it is an uncomfortable thought, that all these stories of who we are may not be who we are. I am undone, my former self stripped away by each story that is found not to be true to itself. Who is left at the end of such realization? The one, who identified with the stories, that is who is left, one utterly naked in the truth, utterly exposed, safe, and free. Even this concept falls away as one calls for no one. This notion of one also being undone, only a truth experienced yet not describable is left. Be free beyond words and I am not asking you to be anything.
No more questions arise about wars, famine, disease, strife, poverty, or pollution. All are worthy causes to be undone. The agendas of the world carry no agenda. Why should I then, if I do not wish it?
