Exploring Ourselves, December 4, 2022

Exploring Ourselves

December 4, 2022

With Jackie McInley

Zoom Online

 

Ten people were present, all included, for this Sunday morning meeting with Jackie, who facilitated the session on Zoom from the UK. She began by outlining the challenge we face in these meetings given that thought often operates outside of our awareness. Therefore, being aware of our thought processes, as Krishnamurti suggests we “do”, is a paradoxical kind of activity. Awareness of thought takes great humility, for we cannot assume that we are truly listening without the interference of thought. The nature of thought is to know and in a basic sense thought lacks humility. It may be best to have no conclusions about ourselves and our way of conducting ourselves. A question arose about the mind’s habit of asserting that there can be little awareness of our thinking processes and whether or not this is true. There was a good deal of discussion amongst the group about this and related issues in the attempt to “be aware”.

As the conversation was opened up, there was some use of the term “self”. One participant wanted to explore the meaning that was being given to the nature of a “self”. It was suggested that it might be best to look at what meaning we were giving to the term rather than trying to describe what the self actually is. This might be more in the spirit of the “negative way” which Krishnamurti seemed to think was the most effective when engaging in inquiry. To see what something is not is perhaps more useful than to assert what we think it is. We then explored the significance of being widely interested in everything that thought produces as ideas about who or what we are. This might introduce a more unbounded and inclusive sense of awareness than anything divided up by thought or chosen as a focused approach to self-knowledge.

The investigation was perhaps challenging and “arduous”, and yet participants expressed that the “process” still had real value.