Exploring Ourselves

With Jackie McInley

Sunday, September 4, 2022

Zoom Online

Sixteen people in total were in attendance at this Sunday morning meeting led by Jackie McInley from the UK. The session began as usual with a brief period of silence which created a space for authentic questions to be brought forward as they arose for participants. The group seemed most interested in the topic of fear, which we had explored in the previous meeting two weeks prior. Some very interesting and pertinent questions were put before the circle for our investigation, including a wondering if there is enough space created within the group in order to fully consider the questions deemed of significance. In that spirit, the meeting went on for a full two and a quarter hours, which was longer than most meetings of this kind.

Quite a number of subtleties involving the experiencing of fear were presented for inquiry.

– What is it that is creating the fear?

– Do we fear the known? The Unknown?

– Are desire and fear two sides of the same coin?

– What are we trying to protect in ourselves or in others?

– How is the mind creating division and separation in life, and is that a deep cause of fear?

– Krishnamurti’s emphasis on the issue of “the observer and the observed” was hovering in the background but did not emerge fully into the light of day. I, this participant, felt that it was an important subject to be explored but did not make a point of sharing it with the group given that numerous other subjects were being looked into.

Jackie commented that dialogue is a forum for learning how to communicate with each other. Can we be fully attentive, she asked, to all that is going on in us and in our relating with each other? Others mentioned they felt this kind of learning was taking place but was not an easy thing to accomplish!

The length of the meeting seemed to demonstrate the level of interest held in its subject matter by most of the participants. If Ralph had not brought it to an end it may have gone on indefinitely.

DB

Exploring Ourselves

With Jackie McInley

Sunday, August 21, 2022

Zoom Online

A total of sixteen participants, staff included, signed on for today’s meeting with Jackie on Zoom. As usual, the session began with a period of silence, but before that Jackie gave an introduction to the place of silence in our exploration and acknowledged the value of giving a space for meaningful questions to arise in the group. Jumping in quickly with inquiries or answers to them is usually counter-productive and limiting to the spirit of careful listening and looking together. Can we ask questions without looking for an answer? The thinking mind so easily comes up with its conclusions. What if we look without knowing the answers: is that kind of looking more fresh and alive?

The questions that arose out of the silence expressed curiosity about how we can change deeply conditioned patterns of thought and behaviour and an interest in discussing the place of responsibility, obligation, and freedom in the realm of self-transformation. The subject of habit vs. intense attentiveness was looked at. It was asked if habit is “dangerous” and what does that mean to us? Do we judge the habits of others and ourselves and is such judgement helpful?

The nature of self-observation and “meditation” was explored, including a fact often shared by Krishnamurti: to be aware that we are not in a state of meditation is meditation.

Other central issues brought forward were the human desire for safety with its hidden fears. Can we be with the Unknown, with the actual experience of fear? And can we be with the breaking down of the self as it is happening? Can we stay with it? It was pointed out that dialogue can help in this challenge when we approach it intelligently.

Exploring Ourselves

With Jackie McInley

August 7, 2022

Zoom Online

This Sunday morning meeting, facilitated online by Jackie, was attended by fifteen people in all. We picked up the thread of the previous meeting from two weeks before and entered a discussion of how to best conduct the dialogues. It can be challenging to generate an effective way of inquiring and asking questions. And there is also the issue of responding to the questions in a way that supports the inquiry and best invites insight and a deepening of the sharing and sense of “looking together” that Krishnamurti strongly recommends. The dialogue moved into an investigation of various ideas about promoting an experience of “shared meaning” spoken of by David Bohm in relation to the process. The idea of finding connection within a group was brought in and along with it the question as to what exactly it means to be “connected” in such an endeavour. With what are we connected and how can it be described? The inquiry seemed to get quite complicated. It seemed that some participants, as often happens in such discussions, felt the need to keep bringing forward the difficulties involved with the activity of thought whereas others were more interested in simply engaging awareness as the natural catalyst for freedom from the problems generated by thought. Some participants felt that there was an expanded listening developing during the dialogue, whereas others may not have seen the process so positively. There often seems to be quite a mixture of experiences amongst the group. One possibly useful question was asked at the end of the session: “What is aware of the image-making process that is so central to the movement of thought?”

The exploration of ourselves will continue on August 21.

DB

To Be Human, session 1, with Javier Rodriguez

Sunday, July 10, 2022

Zoom online

Towards the end of his life, J. Krishnamurti produced a summary of his teachings which was published in booklet form entitled The Core of the Teachings. Javier will explore the booklet in six instalments over the next six months; this first presentation was labelled “Truth is a Pathless Land”. There were 17 participants in total in attendance.

Javier began by questioning the meaning of the word “truth” and the value we give it. Truth and falseness are necessary distinctions in many ways in our ordinary lives and also in the philosophical domain. How is the truth of any idea established, and is it anything more than a belief? Javier pointed out that Krishnamurti was not asserting any absolute truth. There may be truth, but it cannot be conceptualised or found in the religious domain. In K’s world truth is a rather strange creature not found through analysis or knowledge. The focus on the known must be relinquished for the truth of the unknown to be realized. It is not a fixed point and it can only be “found” in the “mirror of relationship”. Through this mirror one must understand or see clearly the contents of one’s own mind as they are revealed in relationship with others and with oneself. The mind is the seat of illusion, and illusion must be understood for truth to come into our awareness. The tendency to escape from the facts of what we are must be put aside, at which point love will begin to flow through us as the truth of what we are.

After a presentation of about forty-five minutes Javier opened the meeting to questions from the participants. A process of exchanging ideas took place within the group for the remainder of the meeting, another forty-five minutes, and involved inquiry into a number of issues such as our tendency to deceive ourselves when we bring in our past experiences when considering the truth of any concept or idea. We must be aware of how we “lie” to ourselves. Group members were invited to share their questions and insights or comments, which stimulated discussion of topics such as awareness, love, stopping of thoughts, belief systems, right relationship, and the mystery of life and relationship. It was a lively sharing of inquiry and insights and will no doubt be interesting as the series of presentations unfolds over the next six months. The session was guided with skill and intelligence by Javier and promises to be continued in that manner.

Self-inquiry: The Merging of Heart and Mind

June 24 – 26, 2022 with GP Walsh

Zoom online

We were pleased to have GP with us again, online from Seattle, with a group of participants numbering between 23 and 25 on each of the three days of the workshop focused on self-inquiry or the study of who and what we really are. GP skillfully guided us at the start of each of the three 1 ½ hour sessions with a guided meditation featuring an experiential journey into the nature of our consciousness and our identity. He referred to a few teachings from ancient sources such as the Ribhu Gita and modern sources such as Ramana Maharshi, Mooji, and J. Krishnamurti. His main pointer was that we are the pure awareness that is hearing the words being spoken at this very moment. This awareness cannot be separated into subject and object or into other categories such as Being, Consciousness, and Feeling, or Heart and Mind. The Heart is the felt sense of Being and is that which we are experiencing at every moment. The nature of consciousness is very subtle and invites a great deal of inquiry into its nature in order to realise the simplicity of the truth that “I am That”. Over the weekend the group participants explored various aspects of our nature, our thinking, and our non-dual identity which turns into an experience of suffering as soon as we identify with the body or the mind. When “otherness” disappears the infinite appears.

Together GP and the group members explored a variety of questions such as “Who is perceiving?”, “What is the thought “I” referring to?”, “What is aware of being aware?”, “How can I let go of attachment?”, and so on. Such profound questions may have no answer in terms of ordinary thought processes and yet may produce a direct experience of ourselves, which may be what we are looking for. According to Ramana, the greatest barrier to Enlightenment is the belief that we are not enlightened already. We investigated the wisdom of such pointers which often appear complex and incomprehensible and yet can be understood in terms of thought’s habit of making everything into a problem. GP made twists and turns that challenged our understanding but somehow made the fact more accessible that “what we are looking for is what we are looking from.” It was a very interesting three meetings and GP’s presentation was much enjoyed.

DB