Understanding Ourselves, October 2, 2022

Understanding Ourselves

Sunday, October 2, 2022

With Jackie McInley

Zoom online

 

The group facilitator, Jackie McInley, joined us online from London, UK, at 10 am on a Sunday morning. Twelve people, all included, were present for the open dialogue session which has been attended without restriction by interested people for some months now on the first and third Sundays. New participants have be joining the meetings as the weeks have gone by. As usual, the meeting began with some silence and then an introductory talk by Jackie with some explanation of the intention of such gatherings. With the intention of “understanding ourselves” that J. Krishnamurti has spoken of in great depth, Jackie spoke of the need to look at the human mind’s tendency to move away from what is uncomfortable and painful. Thought tends to move towards the comfort of the “known” and this habit must be clearly seen and understood before there can be any freedom. Freedom which is a result of thought is limited and mind-created. Krishnamurti was always interested in seeing the nature of the prison we are living in psychologically rather than decorating it nicely. Jackie suggested that we are not separate from the prison and asked if we are listening attentively from within the prison as we explore or are we strengthening the bars of the prison as we communicate in dialogue.

After some description of what seems to be our difficulties in finding freedom from the prison of thought, Jackie invited the group members to present their own questions which are considered to be significant in the search to go beyond the limitations of the thinking mind. There were many angles of approach to the issue, along with periods of silence, which all led to a central question, “What is real security and where is it found?” This question elicited a great deal of input and inquiry, with the recurring question “Can we get to the essence of the issue?” It was agreed that looking at the movement towards security was perhaps a key to unravelling the issue. Some of us felt that there may be a fundamental sense of lack, of something missing, which we are generally unaware of yet which drives us to seek security. And is the sense of lack created by the mind’s tendency to divide the “observer” from the “observed”, as Krishnamurti often suggested, thus creating a sense of isolation and separation in the human experience?

By this time the meeting was running overtime and it was decided we should take up the questions at our next gathering in two weeks. The meeting had been quite friendly and harmonious, with a sense of cooperation and “thinking together”.

DB