At the December meetup, six of us gathered to enjoy a recent talk by Eckhart Tolle.  The talk delved into the two ways of knowing:  conceptual and intuitive.  Eckhart emphasized that while both are necessary, in modern society we have over-valued conceptual knowledge, leading to widespread habitual or even compulsive thinking. He also suggests that while thinking can be used to manifest our reality, it is only through spaciousness and the cessation of thinking that we are able to create from the depths of Being.

Members resonated with many of the key messages such as taking many small moments each day to rest into beingness and allowing thoughts to settle.  Eckhart for example, pauses in between activities to enjoy the sense of ‘un-doing’.  It was fun to imagine those around him asking why he is sitting in his car so long after turning it off!  In a society that often calls us to move immediately to the next priority or activity, I loved this affirmation of the joy of stopping to simply remember our essential beingness.

“There is a great happiness in not wanting, in not being
something, in not going somewhere” Jiddu Krishnamurti

In another example, Eckhart talked about making the present moment your friend – saying yes internally to whatever arises.  Tricky – for sure when things are not what you would have chosen!  Eckhart suggested that accepting ‘what is’ is a first step – denying or getting angry about what’s happening, often leads to greater suffering and less effectiveness in addressing situations.  He could have had a wonderful discourse with Krishnamurti on this topic, who linked back to the concept of true knowing:  “The ability to observe without evaluating is the highest form of intelligence“.

Thank you to those who came out as well as to KECC for their support for this event.

Inquiry Sunday
December 3, 2017

For our morning session we showed part of a talk by Jac O’Keefe at a recent Science and Nonduality Conference in Italy and a full talk given at SAND in San Francisco. The first talk, entitled “Trust and Spirituality”, dealt with the importance of trusting one’s own intuition and insight rather than giving authority to a teacher, book, or other source of information. We are all unique, with different issues and conditioning, and will have different experiences of the unfolding of our true nature. Noone can actually know what is the truth of our experience except ourselves. The second talk focused largely on the state of nondual teaching as Jac sees it. She questions the perspective of those who bypass the need to be fully with our conditioning and our emotional life, particularly with the use of concepts which tend to explain everything away. She also wonders if there should not be some way of evaluating the effectiveness of teachers in producing an awakening in their students. A number of teachers in the audience were very supportive of the necessity of facing our conditioning directly. The sound quality of the video was unfortunately not very good, but it gave some interesting material for group discussion amongst the four people in attendance.
In the afternoon we looked at a number of videos produced by the Krishnamurti Foundation of America with the intention of appealing to young people, and they therefore presented the teachings in a more modern context. Titles included “Understanding Yourself and the World,” “Who Am I?” and “Revolt.” They presented some of the basics of K’s teachings in a straightforward manner which we felt was quite interesting and useful.

This month’s session at the Church of Truth was focused on the topic of “The New Mind”. On a dark, rainy night only one person joined me for the event. We started by watching a Krishnamurti video from the Evelyn Blau series “Beyond Myth and Tradition”. This selection was entitled “The Religious Mind” and it looked into the question of what is a truly religious mind. K approaches the issue by negating what is not religion – beliefs, rituals, repetitive practices, and so on. Then he states that true religion is discovered when the mind is deeply silent. The mind must become the stillness beyond thought in order to know the sacred.
The one participant was new to Krishnamurti’s approach and had a number of questions about it which we discussed in some detail, going over the basic teachings and points of inquiry. She seemed quite interested, took a number of handouts with her, and expressed an intention to come back for the January meeting.

This session we looked into Q & A # 19 in The First and Last Freedom by J. Krishnamurti. The question concerned prayer as a way to God. K’s response included an investigation of prayer, concentration, and meditation. Prayer, he says, usually involves asking God to clear up the mess and confusion that we ourselves have created, thereby avoiding our responsibility for the way things are. Prayer may, he admits, produce a result that we want, but such a process is a projection of our own minds and is not putting us in touch with reality or clearing up our confusion. He goes into a few different aspects of prayer and then proceeds to question whether concentration as a process of exclusion has anything to do with real meditation. Meditation is understanding the ways of thought and feeling, seeing into all the layers of our consciousness, and being free of the content of the conditioned mind.
The reading of the chapter was interspersed with discussion of the issues presented and a sharing of questions and insights. The four participants were able to look into the relevance of K’s pointers for their own lives and to continue with the deepening of their inquiry and self-understanding.

Krishnamurti Study Session
Saturday, November 4, 2017

Our meeting this week focused on Q & A # 18: “Surrender to ‘What Is.’The question asked of K was “What is the difference between surrendering to the Will of God and what you are saying about the acceptance of what is?” In responding to the question, K emphasizes the difference between what actually is and our projections, imaginations, beliefs, and ideals about what is. “If you know reality, you cannot surrender to it; you cease to exist.” The short chapter was dense with ideas that could be explored in depth and the five participants were able to inquire quite deeply into the various issues raised by K and by each other as we went through the text. It was a very interesting contemplation on a key subject.