Six day dialogue retreat at Brockwood Park, without facilitator or topic draws 16 fellow seekers, many with vast experience of group dialogue with form and specifically input from Krishnamurti, in person for many of them and on record for them and others ... a style inevitably leading to demonstrations of scholarship and memory ... a huge irony given that K's message was to work it out for ourselves and not rely on any authority, including himself ... echoing the historical Buddha, 4th incarnation in some systems ... and some seriously propose K as the 5th, a question he declined to go into, though may not have denied ....
17 human beings seeking together to explore the Nature of Reality, without form beyond the times ... 9.15 to 12.45, 16.30 to 18.45, plus optional silent meeting 7.50 to 8 and evening session 20.15 to 21.30 ... felt liberating ... personal routine added early silence in the Quiet Room, walk to the Grove and round the wet fields for Sunrise and skipped evening session since it was well past bedtime and brain already overheating processing all the information ... meal breaks became opportunities for more mundane matters with group members and other retreatants, often moving on to meatier topics ...
All of which had the mind keenly aware, since listening is highly prized, and talking or thinking what we might say when the others pause really gets in the way of listening fully ... the temptation to stay silent all the time and be thought stupid instead of speaking and removing any doubt about it also a trap for those doubting the value of their input ... balance being the art ...
Fear a feature throughout the week ... fear of this and that. .. storms with names, flu with dangerous variants, as if normal winter flu doesn't finish off enough of us already, with or without vaccines ... almost leading to conspiracy theory thinking that it's promoted to keep us enslaved ... philosophically speaking fear keeps us from diving into the void, emptiness, despite all the evidence that realisation of the fundamental non-existence of a separate self gives rise to liberation from fear itself ... which is not to deny the relative reality of our human beingness, with all the roles and memories projecting out to the world of us and the others, a very persuasive phenomenon and a little complex when the idea of 7 billion humans uniquely processing worlds through our own centre comes into play ... a mind-blowing revelation from some years ago during one of those long solitary wanders over the fells near Stanhope ... simultaneously the centre of the universe and nothing at all a huge paradox to be played with ...
A writer on retreat shares a draft of her short story ... full length story in the works, alongside a job and being a mother as well as writer leads this lazy pseudo-writer to question motivation and today's visit from the editor hardly clarifies things ... ah well, blog at least is back in action and maybe that's enough ...
