Exploring Ourselves, May 1, 2022

Exploring Ourselves

With Jackie McKinley

Sunday, May1, 2022

Zoom Online

 

Fourteen people in total were present on Zoom for this Sunday morning online meeting facilitated by Jackie McKinley from the UK. As there were a few people new to dialogue as practised in the Krishnamurti world, Jackie gave an introductory talk about the central ideas guiding it. The main points she emphasised were the following;

– Dialogue is a coming together of friends in order to talk over our problems on whatever levels or depths we are moved to do so.

– There is no leader or authority. We are all in the same boat and noone is considered to know any more than the others. Each person may see a part of the total picture.

– We are learning the art of communicating together and investigating our patterns or conditioning exactly as they actually are, not as we would like them to be.

– When we don’t see who or what we are, this generates a host of problems in our everyday lives. Can we get a true sense of this? What do we need to see about ourselves?

– How do we go about this exploration? Some of the requirements are that we relax, listen, observe, suspend our thoughts and judgements, open to what others have to say, and hold the paradoxes of different views existing at the same time.

– We do not allow our programming to take over but, rather, watch it in operation. From that foundation we exchange perceptions with others, ask questions (which may not have answers), and allow for periods of silence.

The discussion of these ideas led the group to an extended exploration of the issue of the “known” and the “unknown”. Is it important to learn about the Unknown or to understand and realize “freedom from the known”, the title of one of Krishnamurti’s books? Perhaps we need to understand the limitation of the known, the nature of it. Such questions involve a different kind of exploration than we may be used to and the group got quite involved in looking at and talking about the issues that were arising. Eventually Jackie had to wind up the meeting, leaving us with encouragement to engage in an ongoing inquiry into ourselves and our reactions within the relationships of our daily lives.