Skype with Darryl Bailey

DEFINITIONS SIMPLY DO NOT APPLY!

Review of the Skype session with Darryl Bailey – Sunday June 25, 2017

On behalf of Robert Keegan, this post is an attempt to define the happening that we call a Skype session with a so-called nondual teacher/speaker labelled Darryl Bailey.

The session started with Darryl guiding the participants through an exploration of the “happening of this moment”. We were invited to explore ‘all’ of the apparent movements as they are presented including all the normal, apparent, body/mind functions of seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling and touch as well as thoughts and sensations. It was suggested that we suspend our normal tendency to “label” these sensations because none of these labels apply to ‘what is’ apparently happening.

He then went on at length about his experiences with Robert Adams and other apparent “awakened ones”, like Ramana Maharshi, Huang Po, UG Krishnamurti and finally Jiddu Krishnamurti.

Here are some comments and feedback from some of the participants…

Brigitte: It was a dream come true to finally “meet” him. Darryl’s session last Sunday has affected me profoundly. Since then I’ve been camping with my daughter and her two small boys at Rathtrevor Beach. The key words that Darryl’s message contained…expression, happening, eventing and movement…really helped to inform my awareness and appreciation of my grandsons as they moved spontaneously in every direction.

Instead of wanting to monitor or control their movement I spent more time observing and enjoying them. I kept thinking of the “tomato plant” and relating it to their behaviour. Consequently a lot of my anxiety has been alleviated….not only regarding my grandsons but for life in general. For this I am truly grateful!

Erik: Refreshing “story line”

Shannon: Darryl offered the group an honest view into his calm beingness. But of course, it wasn’t HIS beingness and even the word beingness doesn’t come close to capturing what we truly are.

For me, it had been a week of mind noise in the throes of a stranger than strange work world. What cut right through the din was the field of non-formed words that Darryl didn’t say but guided us toward, in his unique way. There was an alive sense of falling within whatever spark created all this… bubbling up in the space I sometimes call me. The group were truly touched by this unique opportunity – thanks so much for the K. Centre support which enabled this to come together.

Laurie: Darryl talked at length about how we do not direct anything that is occurring in our life. The only thing existing is an indefinable happening in nature. We don’t create our physical and mental abilities, needs, interests, urges, actions. This raises the question of freedom and free will. I asked Darryl how it applies to K’s teachings about choiceless awareness and the first and last freedom. Darryl studied K and had recurring contact with K for a number of years.

He said K was stating that “choiceless awareness” is just the seeing of the moving, shifting liveliness that is this moment. It is the first and last freedom. There is the only freedom.

I had always interpreted K’s teaching as something complicated I needed to understand in order to see, but the dialogue with Darryl and the group shifted that. Darryl pointed out that the mind always wants to understand but all that is required is “to simply acknowledge the life experience you already have in this moment”. This acknowledgment is not about coming to another idea or description. It’s not about a focus on new and complicated thoughts. It’s a simple acknowledgment of something we already know. Life expresses itself clearly; it simply happens on its own. There’s nothing else to get.

And finally, a few retrospective words from Darryl…

I enjoyed yesterday’s session as well. I’m happy it was of some practical use to you.

I’m including some of my favourite Krishnamurti quotes that relate to what I was expressing.

“The ebb and flow of the tide is like human action and reaction. … we are the ebb and flow of life … the outward and the inward. We try to establish a relationship with the outward, thinking that the inward is something separate … But the movement of the outer is the flow of the inner. They are both the same, like the waters of the sea, this constant restless movement of the outer and the inner.
Outer and inner are one movement, not separate, but whole. One may perhaps accept this as a concept, but when one focuses on concepts one never learns … To feel this movement … this ebb and flow … is to learn.”
[from Krishnamurti To Himself Ojai California Wednesday 28th March 1984]

“… you begin quietly and gently to feel a movement that is not of time … what is meant is a movement that has no beginning or end. A movement in the sense of a wave: wave upon wave, starting from nowhere and with no beach to crash upon. It is an endless wave.”
[Krishnamurti To Himself Ojai California Friday 11th March, 1983]

“When we look at this life of action the growing tree, the bird on the wing, the flowing river, the movement of the clouds, of lightning, of machines, the action of the waves upon the shore then you see that life itself is action, endless action that has no beginning and no end. It is something that is everlastingly in movement, and it is the universe, God, bliss, reality. But we [conceptually] reduce the vast action of life to our own petty little action in life, and ask what we should do …”
[Krishnamurti, Bombay 1958]

“Life is always in a state of arising. In this arising, there is no continuity, nothing that can be identified as permanent. Life is constant movement … action. Each moment of this action has never been before and will never be again.”
[from The Mirror of Relationship, Ojai, 7th Talk in the Oak Grove 17th May,1936]

“Perfection is not an end, an absolute, fixed point … there is a continual movement, a continual flow of reality. Perfection is the action, the continual flow … not an absolute objective to which you are progressing …”
[Rio de Janeiro 4th Public Talk 10th May, 1935]

Take care,
Darryl