Exploring Ourselves with Jackie McInley, March 1, 2025

Exploring Ourselves
Online dialogue with Jackie McInley
March 1, 2025

We began this session with a question about feeling right or wrong. What does it mean to be right, or to have a sense of being right or good? Is being right a fact, or is it a psychological standard that I must adhere to? Does this standard come with a certain weight or pressure to be right? Is my energy very invested in being right and what is being avoided during this psychological investment?

Does the need to be right create conflict? The more acute the conflict, the less space there is for neutrality and objective fact. The expectation to be right generates a need to hold opinions, which in turn guarantees a position of psychological self righteousness. These opinions seem to turn the neutrality of direct perception into the bias of a particular perspective. Belief overrides actuality: bias justifies lack of restraint and often violates goodness itself. The mind is following ideas rather than seeing clearly. The self identifies itself with what it sees is right and good: when there is an attachment created to being right – attention is fragmented.

Has the self confused right and wrong, preferring to see justice through distorting masks, rather than from an innocent awareness of what is?

Jackie McInley
open-door-worldwide.com