Exploring Ourselves with Jackie McInley

Saturday 6th December 2025

We began today’s session by asking: can there be a newness in life? Or are we condemned to a time and knowledge based existence; which implies an old mind. Can there be a new mind?

We began exchanging around various observations, without there being any particular unifying questioning happening. Apart from the usual exchanges  where thinking is being stimulated, were there any questions being asked that would stop us in our tracks as it were?

One participant asked how we would know if something were new? Another, whether newness was a feeling? Is newness a fact? Or is newness another state I strive for? Moving away from conjecture around what is new and not new; we asked whether a reaction of mild anxiety is left exposed or whether it is quickly turned into a state I recognise. Can I look at my mild anxiety as something I don’t know anything about?

Is there another kind of learning about this anxiety through the immediacy of a direct seeing? Can I learn through the anxiety unfolding and exposing its active presence? Nothing is being done, applied or memorised. Is this learning revelatory and not based of knowledge?

Is this learning new and does it generate newness?

Jackie McInley