Online series with Jackie McInley, January 3, 2026

/in /by
The overall theme of our dialogue session was the duality of consciousness.  What exactly is that duality and one of the group asked whether the separation between observer and observed is real. Is the understanding of this duality an abstraction of the mind: in other words a mental description of duality; or, can the nature of duality be directly perceived? One friend amongst us noted that to remain in an abstraction might be synonymous with remaining caught in the web of an ideal rather than what is actually happening.
 
Another friend asked for a concrete example of what we were discussing since they felt the dialogue was “too abstract”. This comment was appreciated for its honesty and straightforwardness, so very necessary in the dialogue process. The group wondered whether it were possible for there to be an immediacy of perception without actually needing to find examples. Are we aware of a tendency in our thinking to yearn for an example; might this be a habit of mind that betrays a subtle avoidance of the question asked? “I do not understand the question so I need an example”. We wondered if the total impact of a question is being allowed its full force of challenge to our assumptions and states of mind.
 
Usually our relationships have no immediacy. Are our daily relationships held in the “delay” of thought and time which separates us from others? Is there usually a subtle distance created through the prism of memory and the sense of a separate self? Are our relationships a memorisation that is conditioned to appear as happening in the present moment?
 
So what is immediacy in observation and perception? Illustrating this, participants noticed in themselves an impulse to answer questions rather than face the more immediate sensation of loss, created out of not having an answer. Is there sorrow present in the loss? What is this sorrow: is it met in the immediacy of perception or is this very sorrow itself avoided? The session ended with the observation that an immediacy of observation might point to a state of mind that has no opposite: it simply is.
 
  • Jackie McInley