Self-Inquiry Meetup, April 5, 2023

Self-Inquiry Meetup

Wednesday, April 5, 2023

With Jackie McInley

Gorge Park Pavilion

 

This was the first meeting sponsored by the Krishnamurti Educational Centre of Canada to be held in the new Esquimalt Gorge Park Pavilion in Victoria. We gathered in the Boardroom, a spacious square room with large windows allowing in plenty of light and providing a lovely view of the outside world of trees, bushes, grass, and the Gorge waterway. It was a most conducive setting for a dialogue organised for the purpose of exploring the fundamental “spiritual” question “Who am I?” within the context of an interest in the teachings of the East Indian philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti, 1895 – 1986. The process of investigation was explained very clearly by Jackie, a visitor from the UK staying at the Krishnamurti Centre in Metchosin for the month of April and facilitating small group sessions for those interested in understanding what Krishnamurti said about self-knowledge and applying his wisdom offerings to their own journey of discovery.

In addition to Jackie and two KECC staff (Ralph and David), there were six participants eager to explore the kind of questions Krishnamurti had spent most of his lifetime investigating and inviting people to join him and each other in a potentially profound process of uncovering their true nature and capacity for living a life of wholeness and happiness. Renowned physicist David Bohm became very interested in Krishnamurti’s approach to life and involved himself with such looking and listening over many years of collaboration with K.

As the meeting moved forward, there was a certain amount of questioning as to the form the meetings, to be held weekly, would be taking. Jackie offered suggestions about the possibilities of looking at our experience of life with fresh eyes rather than as an already known story that we are repeating in mechanical ways which reveal nothing strikingly alive and new.

Jackie then focused on each of the participants with the question, “What was it that attracted you to a meeting such as this?’ It was very interesting to hear participants speaking of their life experiences and the challenges that had led them to the present moment along with their interest in looking within themselves for a deeper understanding of self and life. As the sharing progressed, Jackie dropped in various suggestions about what we would be doing in the meetings, including the “practices” of watching or observing ourselves and our reactions to what was being shared. Could we listen carefully and with great sensitivity to ourselves and to each other, and could we notice when we are not listening? “Listening leads the way” was one way of expressing the central principle in the group’s inquiry. There was some discussion of the question, “Is it healthy to reveal our disturbances and difficulties as they (are bound to) arise in the dialogue interactions?” It was agreed by all that such revelation of our “sorrow” could be very meaningful and it would be good if our hearts could be open to such an exposure. Such insight could, as Krishnamurti had said, bring a kind of healing or freedom which could be very significant.

Participants seemed reluctant to bring the meeting to a close and keen about those planned for the future.

DB