The Park

[Jeffrey Angelson]

Back at the Park

Yesterday morning I woke with a quiet pull to go to a park I used to visit often. Years ago I went there almost every day when I was going through a difficult period in my life. Somehow the park had a way of dissolving whatever was troubling me, though at the time I never quite understood why.

I had spent many days there sitting for hours by the lake and then walking the open fields and trails.

It had been a couple of years since I’d been back.

When I arrived, I sat by the lake and simply watched and listened. Not focusing on the breath the way meditation is often taught — just resting attention in the stillness that seemed to hold everything.

After a while something subtle shifted.

At first it felt as though I was sitting there observing the park — the wind moving through the trees, the geese on the water, the distant calls of birds. But gradually it felt less like I was watching these things and more like everything was appearing within the same quiet space.

The sounds weren’t disturbing the silence.

They were part of it.

It was as though stillness was the envelope of everything, and everything — the breeze, the water touching the shore, the birds moving across the sky — was happening inside it.

Within that stillness there was also silence, and from that silence the sounds of the park would appear — a bird calling, wind moving through the branches, the quiet movement of water — and then fade again.

It felt as though everything was emerging from that stillness and returning to it.

Yet the stillness itself never seemed to change.

At one point I noticed the geese drifting quietly across the lake. They never looked toward me, yet I had the sense they were aware of my presence. We were simply sharing the same space.

Thoughts would arise from time to time, as they always do. But something about them felt different now. They seemed no more intrusive than the geese on the water. They were simply there.

I realized I didn’t have to follow them. I could acknowledge them the way I acknowledged the geese — knowing they were present, but letting my attention rest elsewhere.

Occasionally I would quietly say to myself, not now, and the thought would pass. What surprised me was noticing that I actually had a say in it. Thoughts could appear, but they didn’t have to continue.

At first I thought I should return my attention to the stillness the way one returns to the breath in meditation. But then something simpler became clear.

There wasn’t stillness here and thoughts over there.

The thoughts themselves were appearing within the same quiet.

In a strange way, they weren’t interrupting the stillness at all.

They were part of it.

What struck me most was how much I was noticing that I had never seen before. I had walked those same paths for years, yet the patterns of light on the water, the movement of branches, the small sounds of life everywhere seemed newly vivid.

Nothing about the park had changed.

The lake was the same.

The trees were the same.

The geese were the same.

What had changed was simply that there was less thought standing between what was happening and the experience of it.

And when that quieted, the world seemed to come forward on its own.

In that quiet, the usual sense of separation softened. It no longer felt like there was a “me” here observing “nature” out there. The trees, the water, the birds, the sounds — and the awareness in which they appeared — were not really separate things.

Nature wasn’t just something to look at.

It was the seamless movement of one living field appearing as many forms.

When I finally stood up and began walking the familiar trails, the stillness didn’t end. It moved with me. The park, the path beneath my feet, the sunlight through the trees, the distant sounds of birds — it all felt like one unfolding scene.

For a moment it was almost like being inside a movie, except there was no distance from it.

I wasn’t watching the scene.

I was part of it.

Later that night, just before sleep, another image came to me. What I had experienced felt like only a small opening into something much larger — as though my perception had been looking through a narrow aperture.

If that aperture could widen, it would feel less like sitting in a park and more like sitting in the universe itself.

When I left the park, I stopped at a couple of stores to pick up a few things. I noticed my conversations with the woman packing groceries and the woman at the cleaners felt unusually easy and natural — just simple human moments, nothing special, yet somehow very complete.

It was a good day.

[Paul Rezendes]

Jeff,

The park trip sounds wonderful! Sounds like you'll probably go back there soon.

🕊

Paul

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[Jeffrey Angelson]

I was happy that I thought about it. Yes I will go back.  I love walking the trails. I also love just sitting by the lake. 

Jeff Angelson

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[Willow]

Et al,

Just to recap:

Jim, Jeffrey, et al
 
Jeffrey,
 
It may be an artifact of how you have written it, and correct me if I am
wrong but it seemed to me that there was still a ‘you’ there observing the experience, noticing the

“Envelope of stillness”..

That too can fall away…

💜Willow

Jeffrey Angelson Mar 13 02:00PM -0400 

Maybe — though in that moment the stillness seemed to include even the one
noticing it.
 
 Jeff Angelson

Jeff

Please clarify..

💜Willow

[Jeffrey Angelson]

I agree. Then there is just the immediacy of Life. 

I wonder sometimes how helpful these circuitous roots are. I think it depends on where you are in this journey. 

Jeff Angelson

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[Willow]

Et al,

If silence is the absence of noise, can it be said that there is such a thing as silence?

💜Willow

[Jeffrey Angelson]

All

There is no silence if it’s true that there is no noise. That’s technically true. In reality there is always noise. Silence is only experienced in contrast to noise.

Best I can do lol 😂 

Jeff Angelson

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[Willow]

Et al,

It is what happens when we try to express the inexpressible.. often it gives folks the wrong idea and there can be a movement towards seeking an absolute silence which can never be found…

It does make for beautiful writing.. but more often than not it leads to more confusion in someone that is still seeking... 

Could it be that there is neither silence nor noise..?

💜Willow

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[Dan Kilpatrick]

Willow, I  can't see how noise is not simply part of silence. Maybe what is absent is the need to make a distinction...  Of course, making distinctions is still silence moving, it seems to me. But this moving is itself devoid of distinctions, all wordless....

Just my impressions, -Dan

-Dan

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[Jeffrey Angelson]

Dan. Willow, All

I felt that stillness was the container. Silence noise and geese and everything was contained in the stillness. The stillness was a part of the whole and the whole part of the stillness. That’s my direct  experience.  Assuming I know what direct experience means when it means different things to different people. I like explaining things through storytelling. It’s not the desired format for many. Besides there is no me with agency anyway. So it’s just this. 

Jeff Angelson

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[Willow]

Dan, Jeff,  et al

Let me repeat the question: 

Could it be there is neither silence nor noise? 

Or if you prefer, neither stillness nor movement?

Or to put it another way;

If everything is THIS, can there be any particular thing called silence, stillness, noise or movement…?

💜Willow

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[Jeffrey Angelson]

Dan Willow All

I think we may be pointing to the same thing.

I was describing how it appeared experientially in the park. The sounds of the geese, the wind, footsteps — all of that was moving. Yet the stillness felt like the universe itself, an envelope in which everything appeared.

The sounds were heard in contrast to silence, but the silence didn’t feel separate from them. It was more like the field in which the universe was showing itself in that moment.

Jeff Angelson

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[Dan Kilpatrick]

Willow, All,

We may be pointing to the same thing here. Anything we say, including your words and mine right now, are creating a framework through which we define what is or is not. A sort of defining taking place, this not that.  The whole thing simply collapses into itself at some point, just wordless living undefined..... This can't be turned into anything concrete to be held onto.

So frameworks form and fall away as part of wordless living. Words are simply reflecting where they arise from, which might be wordless noticing of wordless moving......  At least this is what comes up around all this right now.

Again, enough words from me,  -Dan

On Sat, Mar 14, 2026 at 9:29 PM Willow <idd...@gmail.com> wrote:

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[Willow]

Dan, et al

The pointing is not to define or negate but to arrive at the open ended question..

You wrote, 

“The whole thing simply collapses into itself at some point, just wordless living undefined..... This can't be turned into anything concrete to be held onto.”

Yes…

💜, Willow

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[Dan Kilpatrick]

Thanks Willow.

I'm wondering now if the pointing and question are one and the same, reflecting from where the words are arising (without having an intention or direction to go). It all seems to reflect the present moment, now, which is what they are and from where they arise. 

-Dan

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[JIM PETERSON]

All on this thread,

 

Dan, the part of all of this that rings in me is this from one of your recent posts: "We may be pointing to the same thing here. Anything we say, including your words and mine right now, are creating a framework through which we define what is or is not. A sort of defining taking place, this not that.  The whole thing simply collapses into itself at some point, just wordless living undefined..... This can't be turned into anything concrete to be held onto."

 

For me, this goes back to not knowing, to more simply being.  The explaining, describing, and defining seem to fall away, and what remains is what is always being given—vivid, and for me, moving (in at least two senses of the word).  Grace.

 

Jim

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[Dan Kilpatrick]

Thanks Jim. What you shared brings up for me here is that we can look, speak, hear, read in a philosophical way, which may have its place. But it may be another thing for whatever might be going on to be immediate, intimate, now. In this, there are no words, yet neither are words being excluded. But as you are saying, the words can't really define anything, defining in the sense of creating permanence or continuity. Yet, words might still point to this immediacy in an immediate way.....  

In this way, nothing gets in the way of anything else. The very defining or turning into something "permanent" wordfully is itself immediate and now, without words.....(maybe your falling away).  So in this sense, what is here and immediate (now) doesn't depend on anything, on what is moving or not moving. It is all simply here to be appreciated as it is, in all of its various permutations. Immediacy doesn't exclude anything happening, because anything happening is always immediate.

More words, -Dan

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[Jeffrey Angelson]

Thanks Paul and Everyone. 

This is very clear. It’s how I feel. I was trying to think if I was missing something first. 

Jeff Angelson

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[Willow]

Yes Dan, 

What is being pointed to is not negation, which needs something to negate, or affirmation, which needs something to affirm. Like the apparent passage of time ‘it’ is absolutely ungraspable, and yet here it is right now, staring us in the face so to speak..

💜Willow

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[Rob LO]

Dear All

Staring, the staring, in and at the STARING ... all in all ways and always as an unbroken eternal process 

Forever and forever 

🙏💙🙏

Amen

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[Rani Madhavapeddi]

Dan et al,

we are all pointing to the same thing, but from slightly different angles sometimes....these differences are from our minds rather than in Truth? 

My 2 cents? 

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[Jeffrey Angelson]

Dan Rani All 

Dan, Rani, all—

I keep coming back to the sense that there isn’t actually anything to collapse into.

Silence, stillness, noise, movement—it feels like these are distinctions added after the fact. In the immediacy of experience, there’s just what’s happening. No real separation.

Dan, you said a while ago that there’s no possibility of understanding the totality of what’s happening. Sitting with that now, I find I agree.

What’s interesting is how strong the pull is to keep trying anyway—to resolve it, name it, land somewhere.

Maybe that movement is the confusion.

And what’s left, if that relaxes even a little, is just this—already complete, even if it can’t be understood.

Jeff Angelson

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[JIM PETERSON]

Jeff, Dan, Willow, and all on this thread,

 

I really appreciate this thread.  I can't say more.

 

Jim

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[Paul Rezendes]

Jeff,

Just reading your latest email here. Sounds very clear to me; however, whenever we try to express this in words, we're bound to fail. Despite those difficulties, at least for me, you seem to do a good job.

Paul

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[Rani Madhavapeddi]

Being is Experiencing all else is mind? 

Coming and Going, silence and noise, good and bad, right and wrong .....all mind stuff////

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[Dan Kilpatrick]

Rani, Willow, Jeff, Jim, all.....

Rani, what occurs to me right now is that there is nothing comparative happening, at least here. Impressions form, and they are evoked in part by what is shared here. So perhaps we can say, as an impression, that there are no particular viewpoints so much as a kind of moving and expressing happening of which we really have no full sense of. We are simply being this flow as are our words......

See, this just came up of its own. It just formed itself. Nothing being compared, yet flowing from the context of what is happening here.....

 

It is so difficult (impossible) to convey the immediacy of this moment, the spontaneity that is all of this, esp. in words (Paul's point). But the words can, perhaps, reflect this immediacy and be received in much the same way. So here is what might be interesting: to suddenly appreciate that I am receiving words here as if from afar, abstractly, not quite sensing their immediacy, isn't this realizing immediate?

-Dan

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[JIM PETERSON]

Dan,

 

Again, I find what you're saying here as close to the "mark" as we are likely to get with words.  The second point about immediacy strikes me as "true," but also moot.  For some reason, whether it is immediate or not immediate has no meaning to me.  Or I could say it doesn't matter to me.  Or I could say that "immediate" is the "problem."  The human mind can't grasp immediate.  It is always late, or early, and grasps only empty space—which also happens immediately.  But the feeling that something is being missed (even though it isn't being actually missed) can drive the mind crazy.  I've allowed myself to follow my thoughts to this last point just to see where it would take me.  It's all immediate, but why does that matter?  Except to the thinking mind.

 

Just exploring...

 

Jim

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[Willow]

Jim, Dan, et al,

Does the pointer, ‘This’ point to This? 

Or is ‘pointing’ another more subtle form of separation?

Useful up to a point.. but ultimately leading to more grasping?

Not that I’m suggesting not pointing or communicating but rather being aware of the limitations of this method..

💜Willow

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[Janet Asiain]

Diehards, Willow, 

Your question about “pointing” being an even subtler form of separation hit me like a thunderbolt. It’s so obvious

There seems to be no  end to what I haven’t understood before someone else says it. Although the “pointing” metaphor always made me uneasy, so maybe I just hadn’t looked closely enough. Careless to the end!

Appreciation for articulating this

Janet A

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[Willow]

Janet,

😁

Big hug, Willow

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[Rani Madhavapeddi]

Willow et al,

Wouldn’t that be Being? Jean Paul Satre called it Etre! I am missing the accent as I don’t know how to add it. 

Rani Madhavapeddi Patel

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[Dan Kilpatrick]

Willow, Janet, Rani, Jim, All,

This brings up a question to me. Is it so much about the medium, or is it from where we are participating in all this that is truly significant? From where we are looking and receiving.....  After all, isn't everything transpiring here a reflection of ourselves, actually ourselves? Can we separate ourselves from what is shared here? 

So in this sense, from where the words arise and are received, which is us in any given moment, determines the whole flow and interaction, it seems to me. This isn't some abstract or philosophical notion to me, this feels quite clear and actual, now. This seems to have to do with openness, which really means openness to ourselves and what is moving in us.

In other words, the medium is not separate from ourselves and from where words arise, either......  -Dan

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[Jeffrey Angelson]

Everyone

I see this a little differently now, even from how I first described the Park.

The questions in this thread actually helped clarify something for me. It feels simpler — there is One Field. Using Bohm’s language, One Field with infinite possibilities.

Everything is affecting everything and changing everything as it occurs. Nothing stands outside of it.

So silence, sound, stillness, movement — even the questions about what is happening — are all part of the same One Field.

And it seems to me that the One Field is experiencing itself.

The natural question is how does that happen. But that question is also arising within the same One Field.

The sun doesn’t need something outside of it to illuminate it — it is self-illuminating because of what is happening within it. In the same way, this One Field seems to be illuminating and experiencing itself through its own activity.

Do you see it as One Field? if so, how does One Field experience itself if there is only One?

Jeff Angelson

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[Dan Kilpatrick]

Jeff, All,

Jeff, briefly. I don't know what One Field is. I can conceptualize or frame it in this way, but that does not mean I know in the way that I can describe it, give it properties and so on. To me, One Field seems to be an approximation reflecting the fact that nothing is nor has ever been separate, full stop. In other words, there doesn't appear to be something we call the Undivided, Ungraspable, Oneness and so on. These are descriptions (not nouns or things) that reflect the absence of anything being separate, imho.

As to experiencing itself, might be that all experiencing taking place right now, down to the finest energies, electric, magnetic fields and so on that are being influenced/influencing, is this experiencing all at once? All the seeming frameworks happening right now. All the frameworks all at once seem impossible to capture in a single framework, because they are each frameworks already. Nothing is missing or being missed...... 

Just how it appears from this framework, right now,  and I bet I am missing something....  -Dan

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[Jeffrey Angelson]

Everyone Dan

Dan,

I resonate with a lot of what you’re saying, especially not turning One Field into something graspable or a “thing.” That feels important.

For me, when I say One Field, I’m not trying to define it or give it properties. It’s more a way of pointing to what you’re also saying — that nothing is actually separate.

Where I might see it a little differently is that it doesn’t feel like just a conceptual approximation. It feels more immediate than that — not something to be captured, but what is already happening as all of this.

So when I say the field is experiencing or reflecting itself, I don’t mean that as a framework or explanation, but more as a way of pointing to the fact that there isn’t anything outside of this. The experiencing and what is experienced aren’t two.

But I agree — the moment we try to capture it, it turns into another framework.

Jeff Angelson

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[Dan Kilpatrick]

Jeff, All,

Jeff, thanks. Nothing outside and nothing separate sound the same. Everything is itself. And from my vantage point, nothing out of place in having a framework, it is part of what we are. Otherwise, I'd have nothing to say! Frameworks seem free to arise and move, ever-changing as this flux that we unavoidably seem to be. But never static.....

I see nothing wrong with words. They help to see how we are looking at everything, for example, like a gift.....  -Dan

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[Jeffrey Angelson]

Dan, everyone—

I’m with you—nothing is outside of this, including words and frameworks.

What I notice, though, is that these conversations can become more and more elegant… but not necessarily more real.

At some point, there’s not much to say about what this is—it’s already fully the case.

What feels more alive to me is how this shows up in lived experience—relationship, reactivity, daily life.

It also seems we don’t have to stay in the same conceptual place for this to be true—there can be movement, not just refinement of the same descriptions.

Otherwise, it can feel like we’re just refining descriptions of something that was never in the words to begin with.

And I also see that what I’m pointing to here may not fully resonate in this kind of dialogue—because it shifts from describing what is, to exploring how it’s lived.

Jeff

Jeff Angelson

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[Dan Kilpatrick]

Jeff, again briefly. to your last statements, not at all from my standpoint. This is all playing out in our daily living, where the rubber meets the road. If these discussions are divorced from our actual lives, not sure what it all means.....  But this might also be the point: what transpires here might also be impacting our lives in ways that we can't necessarily appreciate. If not, it would mean that this is separate from everything else it would seem........  -Dan

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[Jeffrey Angelson]

Everyone—

I’ve been reflecting on our dialogue and the direction of the group.

What feels important to me is not changing what we’re doing, but expanding it slightly. The pointing, the clarity, the shared understanding of what this is—those all feel valuable.

At the same time, I find myself increasingly curious about how this shows up in actual lived experience. Not just what this is, but how it expresses in real time—especially in moments of reactivity, relationship, or tension.

For example:

What happens in the moment when something is triggered, if there’s no separate self to manage it?

How does this understanding show up in relationship—not conceptually, but as it’s happening?

Where do we still feel contraction, even when it’s clear there’s no one there?

This isn’t a shift away from what we’re doing—it’s an extension of it. If this is truly not separate from life, then it must already be showing up in how we live, relate, and respond.

I’m interested in exploring that dimension together, alongside the clarity we already have.

Jeff

Jeff Angelson

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