Online Workshop with Jackie McInley “Is there a new kind of learning?”, March 25-29, 2026

We began our 5-day workshop by asking what our motive is behind learning itself. We wondered whether we usually learn about ourselves and the world around us, in order to be secure, safe and in order to know how to behave, act, think or feel. Learning, we realised in our societies, is to know better and to understand more. In fact how much we learn – the group commented – is a proof of intelligence and an indication of recognition and status. We asked ourselves as the workshop progressed, whether there could be a conscious learning that does not involve an attachment to knowledge and the accumulation of memory.

We came to the question of whether there might be a new kind of learning that does not come to conclusions, but that stays open and discovers something new. Is there a learning in observation that realises that the mind is constantly seeking “to know”? Is there a state of mind that consciously notices choosing and identifying as part of its process? Is there a learning that questions the solid sense of “me” preceding experience? We were discovering in the workshop that there was a kind of listening to each other, that came to conclusions and confirmed what we already knew: that confirmed in fact, our very sense of self. We began experimenting in real time – a listening to one another – where learning was taking place in the listening itself. We wondered as our workshop drew to a close whether there is a learning that listens and observes directly: allowing whatever takes place now to unfold, inform and empty?

In this workshop we had not been pursuing an ideal of learning. We were not replacing the “old” learning with ideas of newness inspired by Krishnamurti, yet intrinsically emerging from the same “old” mind. We were discovering the nature and structure of this mind, as we were exchanging and inquiring in group dialogue. Whilst we were actually learning together.

• Jackie McInley