Exploring Ourselves, January 29, 2023

Exploring Ourselves

With Jackie McInley

Sunday, January 29. 2023

Zoom online

 

Jackie joined us from Ojai, California, to lead us skillfully through this Sunday morning meeting. The dialogue was attended by sixteen people, including Jackie and KECC staff, Ralph and David. There were a number of participants new to sessions at the Krishnamurti Educational Centre of Canada but they seemed to have no trouble blending harmoniously with the flow of the dialogue and its way of inquiry into the nature of our experience as human beings.

Jackie began the meeting with some questions and concepts that laid out to some degree the structure and unfoldment of our explorations. “Do we feel free,” she asked, “to share whatever is going on in us? Is there a sensitive listening to each other? Do we have ideas and images about others and about ourselves?

The subject of fear came up in the conversation, as it often does, with some examples of fear in life situations and the need for action. Some fears were considered to be abstract and some more real, some more physical and others more psychological. How often do we avoid looking directly at our problems and what is it we don’t want to look at? Can we face the actual state that is present in our consciousness? Without any relief, what happens? Without a solution, what happens? Are we in danger of being destroyed?

The issue of identification with thoughts was brought in, along with the duality created by such identification. Are they even “my” thoughts, it was asked. What assumptions are mixed in with our thinking and with our pure seeing? What do we really know to be true and do we really know anything? What is a result of insight and what of thoughts and assumptions? Is the “freshness” of our seeing something to do with its “truth” (as Krishnamurti has written)? What happens when we hold a question without giving an answer?

The meeting came to a close with a period of silence

DB