The Urgency of Change Dialogue Group Meeting, May 10, 2020

The Urgency of Change Dialogue Group
Sunday, May 10, 2020
Online Meeting

Although we were potentially in competition with Mother’s Day activities, the majority of group members showed up for our afternoon online meeting. Nine of us were present for the two and a half hour session which focused on material in the first chapter of the Krishnamurti book The Urgency of Change. The first half of the chapter had been explored during the previous meeting, stimulating extensive discussion and therefore slow movement through the text. Resuming the reading of the chapter quickly provoked numerous observations that had arisen for participants in their own reading and self-inquiry process concerning the nature of perception, awareness, naming, the psychological “me”, insight, and thought. Also worthy of noticing was the process of the dialogue itself and how each one of us was interacting with the movement of thought and attention as we shared our ideas and understandings. There was appreciation on the part of some that we could come together in this way and talk about issues that are seldom looked into or investigated in any depth. At the same time there was the experience for others of impatience and frustration with the sense that the discussion was overly conceptual or caught in revolving thought patterns. It seems sometimes to be challenging for most of us to suspend our sharings in the centre of the group and look at them together without moving to conclusions or fixed viewpoints. Our communication can therefore be accompanied by a thought-generated energy which prevents resting as awareness or Being. The difficulty in staying in touch with the capacity to “simply be” at the same time that we communicate with each other can then create a sense of incompleteness or lack of wholeness. This in turn can feel frustrating. It’s worth noting that David Bohm mentioned this phenomenon in his writings on dialogue. Frustration and conflict are, he says, a natural part of the process and should not be avoided. The group should continue to move through the obstacles, looking at how we might be contributing to the limitations being experienced, and exploring how a greater presence and attentiveness might be possible. There can be great learning in staying with “what is”.