Loving What Is
Online Workshop with Kathryn Jefferies
February 21-23, 2025
The intention of this workshop was to give participants direct experience of the non-conceptual mind through the process of self-inquiry, specifically The Work of Byron Katie. Kathryn framed the content with Krishnamurti’s directive to look deeply at why people behave as they do, and notice the tendency of the mind to instead assess the world. Kathryn invited the participants to become acquainted with “the one mind” by seeing for themselves the justifications the mind uses for its activities and the effects of judging (i.e. drawing conclusions about) the world.
“I think one should be aware of what is happening in the world, and not be depressed by it, or optimistic or pessimistic, but to observe impartially, dispassionately what is actually going on.”
“But we are always seeking answers for fundamental human disturbance in the outward symptoms by trying to deal with superficial symptoms without going very, very deeply into why human beings throughout the world are behaving as they are …”
“First we ought to look, I think, at the consciousness of mankind. Why this consciousness, which we are, why it has become what it is …”
Kathryn asked the participants to consider the possibility that their resistance to life isn’t needed, that life’s apparently negative occurrences are happening in support of their awakening to reality, in service of their freedom.
We looked at how resistance is necessary to avoid completely accepting how things are, and how this very resistance creates the illusion of the separate self by creating boundaries of identity. In inquiry, people could experience for themselves the effects of resistance on the physical self as well as the emotional-mental self.
Participants generated personal lists of what they believed was going wrong in their worlds and they were guided to notice if these were statements of fact or rather just interpretations, and therefore if they could open to the possibility that their initial perceptions could be just images generated by the mind — i.e. pure imagination — and that through thought they could never perceive accurately.
From there, working with a single thought, Kathryn invited participants to notice who they are without it, thereby removing the obstacle to experiencing themselves as pure awareness.
Kathryn Jefferies
inquirywithkath.com
Learning Together with Jackie McInley, March 26-30, 2025
/in Event Summaries /by Drew MarshallLearning Together
Online 5- day workshop with Jackie McInley
March 26-30, 2025
The overall theme of our workshop was learning together and our first question was: “What are we here to learn?” Being in the present moment was felt to be the place where real learning begins. Our dialogue then delved into the question: “ But what is the present moment?”. Does the mind mistake the past as the present? What we call the present, is actually a reality formed and informed by past experience and prerecorded thought.
Throughout the week we explored several topics including perception, identified thought, and the nature of inquiry itself. An interesting dichotomy emerged when we were wondering together, whether inquiry and awareness could exist simultaneously. Doesn’t awareness need complete stillness and silence, not a conscious process of investigation?
Our workshop ended with our whole impression of existence embodied as the “me”. We explored how we see ourselves as the thinker who thinks: we wondered if it was in fact thought that was “thinking up” the sense of me? As our workshop came to a close, there was a feeling of affection and sharing between us, and that perhaps some real learning had indeed taken place.
Jackie McInley
open-door-worldwide.com
Exploring Ourselves with Jackie McInley, March 15, 2025
/in Event Summaries /by Drew MarshallExploring Ourselves
Online dialogue with Jackie McInley
March 15, 2025
Todays dialogue began with the world dialogue itself and its etymology. The meaning of the word comes from dia: through and logos: word or meaning. Through the word: a flow of meaning or connection through words. Participants exchanged on how dialogue is a forum where one becomes aware of what is. The drives behind our behaviour can also be exposed in dialogue. We also asked what role dialogue indeed can play in life?
Our questioning expanded into wondering whether dialogue is a practice? Should it be repeated frequently to deepen the investigation into human consciousness and conditioning? Practice, some said, implied a path with a predetermined end point; practice can also become a means to overcome problems and help self improvement.
Can we practice real life? Can we be ok without having a practice to support us? In fact can we live life with no dependancy at all?
Jackie McInley
open-door-worldwide.com
What is the Nature of Enlightened Being with JC Tefft, March 16, 2025
/in Event Summaries /by Drew MarshallPart of a six-day series led by JC Tefft entitled “Investigating Truth.”
Sponsored by the Krishnamurti Educational Centre of Canada
Day Five: March 16, 2025
8 Attendees Present
Using Krishnamurti’s teachings as a guide, we asked and investigated the question: ‘What is the Nature of Enlightened Being?
Referencing Krishnamurti’s teachings throughout, JC shared testimony and insight into the nature of Enlightened Being. JC shared his personal experience in this way. Attendees were encouraged to share insights of their own as well.
Primary references for Krishnamurti quotations came from: ‘The Book of Life’ – ‘Krishnamurti’s Journal’ – ‘Probing the Mystery: J. Krishnamurti’s Process’ – Scott Kiloby, ‘Reflections of the One Life’ – and ‘Krishnamurti to Himself: His Last Journal.’
JC Tefft
jctefft.com
Exploring Ourselves with Jackie McInley, March 1, 2025
/in Event Summaries /by Drew MarshallExploring Ourselves
Online dialogue with Jackie McInley
March 1, 2025
We began this session with a question about feeling right or wrong. What does it mean to be right, or to have a sense of being right or good? Is being right a fact, or is it a psychological standard that I must adhere to? Does this standard come with a certain weight or pressure to be right? Is my energy very invested in being right and what is being avoided during this psychological investment?
Does the need to be right create conflict? The more acute the conflict, the less space there is for neutrality and objective fact. The expectation to be right generates a need to hold opinions, which in turn guarantees a position of psychological self righteousness. These opinions seem to turn the neutrality of direct perception into the bias of a particular perspective. Belief overrides actuality: bias justifies lack of restraint and often violates goodness itself. The mind is following ideas rather than seeing clearly. The self identifies itself with what it sees is right and good: when there is an attachment created to being right – attention is fragmented.
Has the self confused right and wrong, preferring to see justice through distorting masks, rather than from an innocent awareness of what is?
Jackie McInley
open-door-worldwide.com
What is the Nature of True Freedom with JC Tefft, March 2, 2025
/in Event Summaries /by Drew MarshallPart of a six-day series led by JC Tefft entitled “Investigating Truth.”
Sponsored by the Krishnamurti Educational Centre of Canada
Day Five: March 2, 2025
9 Attendees Present
Using Krishnamurti’s teachings as a guide, we asked and investigated the question: ‘What is True Freedom?
Referencing Krishnamurti’s teachings throughout, JC shared testimony and insight into the nature of freedom from attachment to the content of Mind. Attendees were encouraged to share insights of their own as well.
Primary references for Krishnamurti quotations came from: ‘The Book of Life’ – ‘Krishnamurti’s Journal’ – and ‘Krishnamurti to Himself: His Last Journal.’
JC Tefft
jctefft.com
Loving What Is with Kathryn Jefferies, Feb 21-23, 2025
/in Event Summaries /by Drew MarshallLoving What Is
Online Workshop with Kathryn Jefferies
February 21-23, 2025
The intention of this workshop was to give participants direct experience of the non-conceptual mind through the process of self-inquiry, specifically The Work of Byron Katie. Kathryn framed the content with Krishnamurti’s directive to look deeply at why people behave as they do, and notice the tendency of the mind to instead assess the world. Kathryn invited the participants to become acquainted with “the one mind” by seeing for themselves the justifications the mind uses for its activities and the effects of judging (i.e. drawing conclusions about) the world.
Kathryn asked the participants to consider the possibility that their resistance to life isn’t needed, that life’s apparently negative occurrences are happening in support of their awakening to reality, in service of their freedom.
We looked at how resistance is necessary to avoid completely accepting how things are, and how this very resistance creates the illusion of the separate self by creating boundaries of identity. In inquiry, people could experience for themselves the effects of resistance on the physical self as well as the emotional-mental self.
Participants generated personal lists of what they believed was going wrong in their worlds and they were guided to notice if these were statements of fact or rather just interpretations, and therefore if they could open to the possibility that their initial perceptions could be just images generated by the mind — i.e. pure imagination — and that through thought they could never perceive accurately.
From there, working with a single thought, Kathryn invited participants to notice who they are without it, thereby removing the obstacle to experiencing themselves as pure awareness.
Kathryn Jefferies
inquirywithkath.com
Exploring Ourselves with Jackie McInley, February 15, 2025
/in Event Summaries /by Drew MarshallExploring Ourselves
Online dialogue with Jackie McInley
February 15, 2025
Today’s dialogue was about “Choiceless Awareness”. It was pointed out by a participant in the group that choices we make are both conscious and also unconscious. How aware are we of the choices we actually make? Choice also implies a chooser: a “me” that is making decisions. This chooser or observer is separate from the object of its choosing and points to a continuous evaluation of preference. The group then stated that any psychological reaction, such as hurt or offense, often brings up a choosing of what needs to be done to mitigate the pain felt.
The group penetrated further into this question of Choicelessness and reaction. Reactions perpetually trigger the past to life even though the conscious mind is still felt to be operating in the present. The self is felt as an intelligent, protective mechanism that underlines the need for mitigating action. The reaction is in fact a memory and yet appears as immediate: “I am hurt” is seen by the conditioned mind as a fact. However, is hurt actually an idea informed by thought? Can the mind – seeing the reaction as a kind of belief – question the validity or truth of the reaction of hurt?
But hang on, how can one question the pure physical sensation of hurt, one participant pointed out? The sensation is surely real? Perhaps the sensation is real, but is the recognising of that sensation from memory? We call the sensation, pain, because it has become identified and conditioned as pain. Can we question the label, “hurt” yet stay in attention of the immediate sensation that remains unnamed? Here, is the mind in a state of choiceless observation of what is? Is this a new kind of freedom? I am, in effect, happening right now and no longer defined within the movement of a conditioned responding. Can we see this directly in ourselves?
Jackie McInley
open-door-worldwide.com
Investigating Truth with JC Tefft, February 16, 2025
/in Event Summaries /by Drew MarshallPart of a six-day series led by JC Tefft entitled “Investigating Truth.”
Sponsored by the Krishnamurti Educational Centre of Canada
Day Four: February 16, 2025
12 Attendees Present
Using Krishnamurti’s teachings as a guide, we asked and investigated the question: ‘What Does it Mean – To Be Purely Aware’?
Referencing Krishnamurti’s teachings throughout, JC shared testimony and insight into the nature of Pure Awareness the underlies all that appears in consciousness. Attendees were encouraged to share insights of their own as well.
Primary references for Krishnamurti quotations came from ‘The Book of Life’ – ‘Krishnamurti’s Journal’ – and ‘Krishnamurti to Himself: His Last Journal’
JC Tefft
jctefft.com
Investigating Truth with JC Tefft, February 2, 2025
/in Event Summaries /by Drew MarshallPart of a six-day series led by JC Tefft entitled “Investigating Truth.”
Sponsored by the Krishnamurti Educational Centre of Canada
Day Three: February 2, 2025
8 Attendees Present
Using Krishnamurti’s teachings as a guide, we asked and investigated the question: “Is There a Process We All Go Through?”
“Self-knowledge is a PROCESS – not an end in itself. And to truly know oneself, one must be AWARE of oneself in action – in relationship. You discover the truth of yourself, not in isolation – not in withdrawal, but in relationship – to society, to your husband or wife, to your brother, to your fellow man. It is to discover how you react in every situation; what is your response? … And this requires an extraordinary alertness of mind and keenness of perception [in every situation].”
“We only learn about ourselves when there is no attachment to the past as knowledge – when [that which is perceived is not translated] in terms of the known…. I only learn about myself moment to moment…. Learning is never accumulative. It is a [constant] movement of ‘knowing’ that has no beginning and no end.”
“You must become AWARE of the PROCESS of attachment to – and dependence on [the content of Mind]. [And you must] then … PERCEIVE the significance of the conflict of opposites [that is projected of mind]. [And – as you become more] deeply AWARE [of this ongoing PROCESS occurring within you, you might then come to understand] … the full meaning … of dependency on [and attachment to – the content of mind].”
~ J. Krishnamurti ~
Referencing Krishnamurti’s teachings throughout, JC shared testimony and insight into the nature of the process that we all go through as the Truth of ‘What Is’ is unveiled from within. Attendees were encouraged to share insights of their own as well.
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, February 1, 2025
/in Event Summaries /by Drew MarshallExploring Ourselves
Online dialogue with Jackie McInley
February 1, 2025
We opened today’s dialogue with the question: How can a perception be totally new and can we explore and discover a very different energy of newness in our dialogue itself?
We first wondered – for our actual approach to be new in nature – whether there is a way of looking that does not have a hidden purpose to it. We then explored what manifests the old way of looking; we discovered motive, conclusions, judgement, image making and control, as factors rendering perception “old”.
Our inquiry brought us to the point where we wondered how a mind so steeped in its recorded content, could possibly ever be new at all. The past is always ready to interpret the present moment though the lenses of what it already knows. How can a past mind so continuously active, be aware without the past operating? Indeed there is nothing one can do about the continuous, mechanical activation of the past. However, the question is: can this past be seen, yet not acted on? One member of the group suggested that we never give ourselves totally to what is taking place; in fact we evaluate how much we give according to the situation.
We discovered that thought itself believes that it is already fully aware of reality, when in fact it is remembering rather than awake to what is. Consequently, attention is never fully engaged, since it is left to thought to engage from the safety and security of the past. Can an intensity of attention – giving everything we have – end this complacency of awareness? Each one of us has find out for ourselves.
Jackie McInley