Exploring Ourselves, February 19, 2023

Exploring Ourselves

Sunday, February 19, 2023

With Jackie McKinley

Zoom Online

 

Jackie joined us from the Krishnamurti Centre in Ojai, California. There were a total of fifteen in attendance for the Sunday morning meeting. After the usual opening silent period, Jackie posed a few questions, focusing the attention of the group on the reaching for clarity in the exploration of ourselves, a clarity that seems often illusive. In this case, the endeavour involved looking at questions and issues such as the nature of “image” and “awareness”. Given that the human mind is generally strongly conditioned, Jackie asked what can interrupt our normal way of conditioned perceiving. Is sustained questioning the necessary action? Does it mean looking from a state of non-accumulation? Perhaps it is “doubting” that is the essential action that can generate something new in our consciousness. It was suggested that, rather than attempting to give answers, we could engage in ongoing questioning.

Ideas offered by participants included examining the “mirror of relationship” concept put forward by Krishnamurti in his talks and writings. The idea of image as a “representation” of reality espoused by another spiritual teacher was suggested as a possibly useful way of looking at the thought process. This was in turn challenged with the question, “Can we question our representations?”

Further exploration generated such questions as “Can we all question together?”, “Are we afraid to doubt?”, and “Can we love the responses to our questions rather than judging them?” One participant commented that he felt the sharing had become very fluid and had moved beyond the naming of our experience. Another offered that we may have entered into a state of “choiceless awareness”, another term often used by J. Krishnamurti. It seemed that this was a good place to bring the meeting to a close which might also be a new beginning.