Self-inquiry
With Ralph Tiller and David Bruneau
Sunday, November 17, 2024
At Metchosin location
Eight people were present for this Sunday afternoon meeting at the Swanwick Road location in Metchosin, BC. We sat in a circle while David guided the group in a meditation focusing on awareness of thoughts and feelings or bodily sensations which could reveal aspects of one’s nature or conditioned “self” as we explored the make-up of our psychological structures by noticing what was arising in the space of our awareness.
After the short silence David asked if participants had any issues they would like to explore within the context of the group. One person said that she was experiencing anxiety about sitting in a group of individuals feeling that her awareness was revealing a sense of social anxiety in her body but that only the sensations above her body were the ones that mattered.
Other group members shared their habitual sense of social anxiety and, further, the presence of what Krishnamurti called fear in his talks and dialogues. David related that he’d been reading a K book called Krishnamurti for Beginners but had found it far more challenging to understand than a book for beginners. In fact, the book had brought up difficulties in understanding what K was communicating.
Ralph and David spoke of K’s “teachings” regarding the process of freeing oneself of fear and the necessity for “insight” when seeking self-knowledge or self-awareness. After we discussed the need for “interest” in learning about oneself, some group members confided that they were feeling very interested in the possibilities of self-observation and self-discovery. Later in the day, David found that many quotes later in the Krishnamurti book were from a selection of K books that would be well worth exploring in the participants’ own time:
The Collected Works of J. Krishnamurti
Commentaries on Living
The Only Revolution
Krishnamurti to Himself
Krishnamurti’s Notebook
The Urgency of Change
Two quotes of Krishnamurti that struck David were the following:
“God is when you are not. When you are, it is not. When you are not, love is. When you are, love is not.”
“The understanding of yourself is the ending of sorrow”
The meeting was a quiet and gentle sharing of mutual support and learning.
DB
Investigating Truth with JC Tefft, January 5, 2025
/in Event Summaries /by Drew MarshallPart of a six-day online series led by JC Tefft entitled “Investigating Truth.”
Sponsored by the Krishnamurti Educational Centre of Canada
Day One: January 5, 2025
14 Attendees Present
Using Krishnamurti’s teachings as a guide, we asked and investigated the question: “What is the nature of mind.”
“To understand the mind … you must observe how your own mind works. When you know the whole process of it – how it reasons – its desires, motives, ambitions, pursuits – its envy, greed, and fear – then the mind can go beyond itself, and when it does there is the discovery of something totally new.” ~ J. Krishnamurti ~
Referencing Krishnamurti’s teachings throughout, JC shared testimony and insight into the nature of mind, and how mind creates the illusion of separateness that veils living Truth within. Attendees were encouraged to inquire and share insights of their own as well, as we looked within ourselves to discover the Truth of what is actually so in the eternally present Now.
Primary references for Krishnamurti quotations came from ‘The Book of Life’ and ‘Krishnamurti to Himself: His Last Journal’.
JC Tefft
Exploring Ourselves with Jackie McInley, January 4, 2025
/in Event Summaries /by Drew MarshallOnline dialogue with Jackie McInley
January 4, 2025
Exploring Ourselves with Jackie McInley, December 21, 2024
/in Event Summaries /by Drew MarshallExploring Ourselves
Online dialogue with Jackie McInley
December 21, 2024
For our last session of 2024, one of the group asked a question that was immediately adopted as this dialogue’s theme : “Why is it I take things so personally and often feel hurt ?” The group agreed on the very habitual reaction of being offended and how inevitable this feels. Despite this apparent unavoidable reaction, it was also felt that somehow there must be another way. Soon it became clear that we often have a hidden motive when we ask how to be free of hurt; we wish to find a solution to our problem and our deeper intention is to get rid of the hurt not to understand it more deeply.
We wondered as a group what the personal actually was? We also wondered if hurt was a movement of conditioning or whether this disturbance is part of human nature. It was pointed out that we are in conflict with this hurt and that it is seen as separate from us. We see being hurt as something that befalls us, rather than part of our conditioned make up that is being triggered. The hurt, we discovered together, seems to highlight the “me” since it is the sense of self that is affected directly.
Finally we asked, what is the relationship between personal hurt and self image. Do we need a self image in order to be hurt? Is the self image itself inevitably at the root of all psychological wounding and the sustained memory of it? This is a question for each one of us to discover carefully for ourselves.
Jackie McInley
Exploring Ourselves with Jackie McInley, December 7, 2024
/in Event Summaries /by Drew MarshallExploring Ourselves
Online dialogue with Jackie McInley
December 7, 2024
Present: 13
Once again we welcomed a new participant to our dialogue. It made sense to shed light on our intentions, since the deep art of dialogue inquiry is a process of discovery and essentially a work in progress for us all. The group highlighted one major aspect as the crux of dialogue: listening.
At the heart of the word itself is a sense of to obey – an obligation to listen – as a test or goal to be achieved especially in traditional education. We went into how the collective meaning we attribute to a word can deeply condition our listening; this process of sense-making strongly guides us and can stay undetected in the process. Do words speak and listen for us and do they hold a set of individual and collective expectations? If language is using me what is that “me” being used? Does this sense of me create an added impression of separation in listening to another? Does conditioned listening, the group inquired, imply an already concluded view of what it hears? Does it construct a version of what is being listened to – and by extension a version of the world around – according to its own content? Does this conditioned sense-making lie at the root of our problem?
Is there another kind of listening that doesn’t come to a conclusion as its process? Is there a listening with no past?
Jackie McInley
Self-inquiry with Ralph Tiller and David Bruneau, November 24, 2024
/in Event Summaries /by David BruneauSelf-inquiry
With Ralph Tiller and David Bruneau
Sunday, November 24, 2024
At Metchosin, BC, location
Only four participants were present in the Gatehouse for this meeting sponsored by the Krishnamurti Educational Centre of Canada in Metchosin, BC.After a quiet sit we slowly began to discuss the way we sometimes found ourselves getting stuck or bogged down in patterns of behaviour. We then moved into the ways we can get free of these patterns. Krishnamurti suggests we examine our lives with choiceless awareness or unbiased observation of our consciousness. We just have to look at ourselves without judgement, self-attack, or self-criticism.
A few of the group explained that it can sometimes be tricky to actually realise what K is talking about in terms of attention. What does it mean when he speaks of “sensitivity”? One person offered that it might mean noticing how your state of mind is affecting you. One approach is to allow “the flowering of the senses” of which a few said K had sometimes spoken. What happens when we are highly sensitive to all the experiences of our senses? It can prove to be an interesting experiment as images tend to fall away and the mind becomes empty. As K said, an empty mind is a religious mind.
We spoke of how we enjoyed Javier’s style of presentation in the recent weekend workshop and its effectiveness for teaching. As far as our own communication styles had demonstrated, we acknowledged that we had in many cases been conditioned by our parents to be critical or to anticipate criticism and judgement. One group member reminded us how, in dialogue, David Bohm appreciated having a mixture of ideas which encouraged a variety of views and perspectives. With this appreciation of the benefit of self observation we brought the session to a close.
DB
Self-inquiry with Ralph Tiller and David Bruneau, November 17, 2024
/in Event Summaries /by David BruneauSelf-inquiry
With Ralph Tiller and David Bruneau
Sunday, November 17, 2024
At Metchosin location
Eight people were present for this Sunday afternoon meeting at the Swanwick Road location in Metchosin, BC. We sat in a circle while David guided the group in a meditation focusing on awareness of thoughts and feelings or bodily sensations which could reveal aspects of one’s nature or conditioned “self” as we explored the make-up of our psychological structures by noticing what was arising in the space of our awareness.
After the short silence David asked if participants had any issues they would like to explore within the context of the group. One person said that she was experiencing anxiety about sitting in a group of individuals feeling that her awareness was revealing a sense of social anxiety in her body but that only the sensations above her body were the ones that mattered.
Other group members shared their habitual sense of social anxiety and, further, the presence of what Krishnamurti called fear in his talks and dialogues. David related that he’d been reading a K book called Krishnamurti for Beginners but had found it far more challenging to understand than a book for beginners. In fact, the book had brought up difficulties in understanding what K was communicating.
Ralph and David spoke of K’s “teachings” regarding the process of freeing oneself of fear and the necessity for “insight” when seeking self-knowledge or self-awareness. After we discussed the need for “interest” in learning about oneself, some group members confided that they were feeling very interested in the possibilities of self-observation and self-discovery. Later in the day, David found that many quotes later in the Krishnamurti book were from a selection of K books that would be well worth exploring in the participants’ own time:
The Collected Works of J. Krishnamurti
Commentaries on Living
The Only Revolution
Krishnamurti to Himself
Krishnamurti’s Notebook
The Urgency of Change
Two quotes of Krishnamurti that struck David were the following:
“God is when you are not. When you are, it is not. When you are not, love is. When you are, love is not.”
“The understanding of yourself is the ending of sorrow”
The meeting was a quiet and gentle sharing of mutual support and learning.
DB
Freedom from the Known, November 14 – 17, 2024
/in Event Summaries /by David BruneauFreedom from the Known
A 4-day workshop with Javier Gomez Rodriguez
November 14-17, 2024 (Thursday – Sunday: 10 am Pacific Time, 19:00 CET)
The book Freedom from the Known was edited by Mary Lutyens from a selection of talks from the years 1963 to 1967 to produce what she called a ‘Krishnamurti primer’. The title, which was K’s idea, is a key aspect of his approach to human freedom and wholeness.
Javier introduced the study of the book in the following way. “Our inquiry will take us sequentially through the sixteen chapters (i.e., four chapters per session) in the book. In our four meetings we will be taking a journey through the fields of awareness and self-knowledge, the issue of conflict and violence in relationship, the conditioned structure of thought and consciousness, and the nature of meditation and the religious mind. None of these aspects are separate from each other but continuously and inherently interwoven. Naturally, each of them subsumes many other issues that we will do our best to include.
Each session will include a talk and time for discussion. As the participatory exploration that it is, it is expected that those taking part will bring a quality of mutual consideration and sensitive probing to the dialogue.”
Self-inquiry with Ralph Tiller and David Bruneau, November 10, 2024
/in Event Summaries /by David BruneauSelf-inquiry
With Ralph Tiller and David Bruneau
November 10, 2024
At Metchosin location
Seven people were present for this meeting sponsored by the Krishnamurti Educational Centre of Canada and held at the Metchosin location on a cloudy, grey day which kept us inside at the 538 Swanwick Road building. Ralph gave a short introduction to the proceedings and asked if there were any pressing questions that participants wished to share with the group. If not, he explained, we could choose a passage from the Krishnamurti work The Book of Life: Daily Meditations with Krishnamurti for reading and discussion. Another suggestion was to watch a video of K being interviewed on BBC Television. One participant spoke up to say that since recently beginning to study Krishnamurti’s teachings in greater depth she had found herself in conflict with the values and ideas of her parents and family. This had become especially obvious while watching the US elections featuring Donald Trump and she had felt an urge to isolate herself and cut off from the society around her. How, she inquired, would Krishnamurti recommend we proceed in such a case? In response several participants brought forward the necessity, pointed out by K, to be sensitive and compassionate with others of different views. Such compassion could develop when a person took up the challenge of observing their own thoughts and feelings in their many small reactions to the life and people around them. Such attention might bring forward a sense of love which could change the individuals and change the world. This idea was agreed upon by many of the group and some expressed that the dialogue had been helpful and enlightening.
DB
Self-inquiry, November 3, 2024
/in Event Summaries /by David BruneauSelf-inquiry
Sunday, November 3, 2024
With Ralph Tiller and David Bruneau
At Metchosin, BC
A small group of three was present for this meeting sponsored by the Krishnamurti Educational Centre of Canada and held in the Gatehouse at 538 Swanwick Road. Participants were asked if they had any pressing questions or issues they would like to explore in the group. One person (Jeff) expressed interest in the history of the Krishnamurti school that was the beginning of the activities at the Metchosin location of the Centre. Ralph and David were able to share a good deal of the background, including such historical details as Krishnamurti’s personal visit in 1978 to the grounds and including the development of the school which then became an adult Centre based on K’s teachings. We then looked at a movie about the Brockwood Park K school in England and the Ojai school in California and discussed some of the developments of the organizations around Krishnamurti. A newspaper clip was found from some time ago which quoted from the book Freedom from the Known; it provided material for some study of K’s thoughts on relationship and the desire for safety and security. The quote Included the necessity of seeing ourselves and others without an image.
It was an interesting and valuable afternoon of discussion.
DB
Realizing Presence with JC Tefft, October 25 – 27, 2024
/in Event Summaries /by David BruneauRealizing Presence
3 Day Workshop with JC Tefft
October 25 – 27, 2024
Sponsored by KECC
Online Event
Ten people showed up for this three-day workshop with JC Tefft sponsored by the Krishnamurti Educational Centre of Canada. JC began with some introductory remarks about what he would be covering in the three one-and-a-half hour sessions held online.
JC invited us to join in, as we inquired together into the essential, underlying nature of:
Referencing Krishnamurti’s teachings throughout, JC shared testimony and insights into the nature of the illusion of separateness created by Mind, along with the nature of awakenings that serve to unveil the truth of What Is, as evermore clarity comes to light in the eternally present Now.
JC/RT