Understanding Ourselves

Sunday, October 2, 2022

With Jackie McInley

Zoom online

 

The group facilitator, Jackie McInley, joined us online from London, UK, at 10 am on a Sunday morning. Twelve people, all included, were present for the open dialogue session which has been attended without restriction by interested people for some months now on the first and third Sundays. New participants have be joining the meetings as the weeks have gone by. As usual, the meeting began with some silence and then an introductory talk by Jackie with some explanation of the intention of such gatherings. With the intention of “understanding ourselves” that J. Krishnamurti has spoken of in great depth, Jackie spoke of the need to look at the human mind’s tendency to move away from what is uncomfortable and painful. Thought tends to move towards the comfort of the “known” and this habit must be clearly seen and understood before there can be any freedom. Freedom which is a result of thought is limited and mind-created. Krishnamurti was always interested in seeing the nature of the prison we are living in psychologically rather than decorating it nicely. Jackie suggested that we are not separate from the prison and asked if we are listening attentively from within the prison as we explore or are we strengthening the bars of the prison as we communicate in dialogue.

After some description of what seems to be our difficulties in finding freedom from the prison of thought, Jackie invited the group members to present their own questions which are considered to be significant in the search to go beyond the limitations of the thinking mind. There were many angles of approach to the issue, along with periods of silence, which all led to a central question, “What is real security and where is it found?” This question elicited a great deal of input and inquiry, with the recurring question “Can we get to the essence of the issue?” It was agreed that looking at the movement towards security was perhaps a key to unravelling the issue. Some of us felt that there may be a fundamental sense of lack, of something missing, which we are generally unaware of yet which drives us to seek security. And is the sense of lack created by the mind’s tendency to divide the “observer” from the “observed”, as Krishnamurti often suggested, thus creating a sense of isolation and separation in the human experience?

By this time the meeting was running overtime and it was decided we should take up the questions at our next gathering in two weeks. The meeting had been quite friendly and harmonious, with a sense of cooperation and “thinking together”.

DB

Exploring Ourselves

Sunday, September 18, 2022

With Jackie McInley

Zoom Online Meeting

 

Fourteen people were in attendance for the second “Exploring Ourselves” meeting of the month. Jackie joined us from London, UK, and facilitated the session with her usual skill and sensitivity. She opened with a few probing questions exploring some fundamentals of group dialogue and offering some concise suggestions concerning what we are actually doing in these meetings. She did this while emphasising that we stay clear of any rigid conclusions. Are we truly interested, she asked, in looking at our conditioning? And is there a quality of mind that can learn by perceiving what is actually happening in this present moment? Can we admit that we don’t already know all about what is going on and there may be subtleties about which we have been unconscious? Can we look into our reactions to what is taking place?

The meeting lasted for a little over two hours. The second half consisted of an increased level of interaction between participants. Group dialogue brought forward issues of how to be present with anxiety and other emotions, looking without the word, “arguing for” or giving power to thought and mind, and the role of memory in inquiry. There seemed to be some lack of clarity in the investigation, and it was decided that some of the issues should be further explored at our next meeting.

DB

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