Exploring Ourselves with Jackie McInley,
January 4, 2025

Today one of us asked: is it clear to us when we are talking out of memory or knowledge, or, if we are experiencing something directly?

We are aware that we consciously use knowledge and memory of experience, to guide our decision making in everyday life. It is however less obvious that knowledge is involved in emotional reaction. The example of anger, indignation or hurt was pointed out to illustrate how these reactions seem to be happening in the present, alongside physiological manifestations such as the quickening of the heart beat. The group assumed that the beating heart was in the present, but that its cause was either from an outside agency or from within ones own past experience being triggered.

It was then asked whether there was a root (or background) to these perceived and apparently spontaneous reactions? Is it assumed that we know for sure where danger lies when our fear reaction is triggered? Is knowledge involved in the very “reading” of our emotional reactions? Is a past memory of fear or pain reactivated and projected, thereby warning us to act in a conditioned way to avoid further disturbance? Is any direct awareness involved in this process of experience and knowledge based reaction?

Can a reaction be looked at without the assumption that it is already identified and known? Can sensitivity meet the reaction as a response taking place in real time? We also noticed that all negative emotional reactions seem to be happening to us as a disturbance to our apparently harmonious selves. Is the sense of self, separate from the content of the reaction?

Our dialogue extrapolated into questioning the nature of learning and inquiry itself. Is inquiry possible without knowledge? Is there a new kind of learning that none of us have been schooled in, but which may lie in the unnamed, direct perception of whatever is?

Jackie McInley