Morning Thoughts

[Jeffrey Angelson]

Thought, Reality, and Fullness

I’ve been reflecting on why I sometimes say that thought obscures reality, and why others may not agree.

I think I finally see the disconnect.

When I say thought obscures reality, I’m not suggesting thought is outside of reality. Thought is clearly part of reality, as much a happening as birdsong, grief, joy, or the wind moving through the trees.

So perhaps a better way to say it is this:

Thought doesn’t obscure reality. It can obscure our appreciation of it.

The birds are still singing whether I’m lost in thought or not. The lake is still the lake. Life is still overflowing.

What changes is how much of that fullness is being noticed.

This is why I’m becoming less interested in ontology and more interested in direct seeing. Not because ontology is unimportant, but because understanding reality and appreciating the richness of life are not necessarily the same thing.

I’m not trying to solve the mystery. I’m not sure the mystery can be solved. I’m more interested in how we meet it.

For me, there seem to be what the Greeks called Kairos—ripe moments. Not special states. Not something achieved. Just moments when the noise quiets and the obvious becomes obvious.

A walk in nature.
A piece of music.
A conversation.
A moment of grief.
A moment of love.

Nothing new is added. Nothing mystical appears.

Yet somehow the fullness that was always present is no longer overlooked.

Maybe that’s why we humans often feel something is missing when each moment is already overflowing.

What do you notice?

Jeff Angelson

[Paul Rezendes]

Jeff,

Just wondering: can one directly see thoughts like directly seeing the birds or hearing the birds? If so, what's the difference? It seems to me that thought can't see itself identifying as the thinker of the thought. It's creating a division it doesn't see. Can that directly be seen like seeing or hearing the birds? Will that seeing change things? Seems to me you've come across this understanding somehow.

Just wondering,

Paul

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[Jeffrey Angelson]

Paul,

It seems to me that thoughts can be directly noticed just as birds can be directly seen or heard. A thought appears and there is a simple recognition: there is a thought.

What I hear you pointing to, though, is something subtler. When a thought arises, ownership is claimed, a thinker is implied, and identification happens. Thought itself can’t seem to see this movement — the thought “I am thinking” already assumes the very thinker it’s trying to examine. The division is baked into the question.

What can be noticed, if there is enough presence, is this whole process of selfing as it unfolds. When I look directly, I find thoughts, sensations, emotions, perceptions — and among them, the thought “I.” What I don’t find is a separate thinker standing apart from the thinking.

For me, that seeing doesn’t stop thoughts from arising. It simply means they don’t have to be automatically believed. They can be welcomed the way birdsong is welcomed — no need to resist them, and no need to sit down to dinner with them either.

Whether this is what is meant by direct seeing, I don’t know. But it seems less like acquiring a new understanding and more like noticing what was already happening.

Jeff Angelson

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[Paul Rezendes]

Jeff,

Yes, I think we're on the same page. Thought can't see itself separating itself. But there is a seeing that thought itself can't do. The seeing of how thought is dividing itself and can't see itself is understood, but not by thought itself. That direct seeing is the understanding that puts thought in its place. I think we're on the same page with this.

Paul

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[Rob MacDonald]

One observation, or at least a personal truth for me, is 'nature as teacher'.  Perhaps this is because nature is often 'matter of fact', while also possessing immense beauty in the changing seasons.

Along the lines of what you wrote, Jeffrey, I look at a body of water - a bay, a pond, a lake, or the ocean.  It is not static.  Even when the surface appears still and serene, there is movement below from a current, a spring, or swimming fish.  

These bodies of water evolve.  During a storm waves are created.  Every wave is different.  Some foam with whitecaps and froth.  Others rise and fall, never cresting or breaking.  In all of this, is the water any less what it is?  Is the placid lake different from the churn it becomes when a violent storm arrives? 

And, at least for me, the analogy goes deeper.  It's not just the water and waves, it is the interconnectedness between them. Sometimes the cause is the storm overhead, sometimes it's a storm hundreds of miles off shore, further emphasizing that ALL of this is interconnected.

I definitely hope my previous comments were not taken as objections or points of disagreement, just more of my humble observation that while I'd love to believe that one day I'd be freed from these thoughts - who knows... maybe one day - they will remain a feature of THIS, thisness, this-ing.... 😁.  Like the ocean or the lake, perhaps conditions arise where stillness sets in and there are, for a moment, no waves.  However, much like everything in this experience, it seems to be a momentary arising that evolves with the multitude of conditions creating these moments of reality.

Peace and Happy Friday All,
Rob M.   

On Fri, May 29, 2026 at 10:11 AM Paul Rezendes <pho...@paulrezendes.com> wrote:

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[Paul Rezendes]

Rob M.,

Maybe I'm missing something here. It seems to me that we are basically seeing or understanding the same thing, but articulating things differently.

???

Paul

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[Jeffrey Angelson]

Ron Paul All

Everyone,

For much of my life I stared into the void.

I wanted answers.

What is THIS?
Where did it come from?
What is consciousness?
Is there a beginning? An end?
What exists beyond space and time?

I still find those questions fascinating. I suspect I always will.

But something has changed.

I no longer stare into the void hoping to see something other than the void.

The mystery remains.

Perhaps it always will.

What has changed is my relationship to not knowing.

It takes a willingness to let go of needing answers.

To stop demanding that life explain itself before we can fully live it.

Nature has become one of my greatest teachers. The birds sing without knowing why. The lake reflects the sky without understanding reflection. The seasons come and go without a theory of seasons.

Life simply lives.

And perhaps the urge to constantly seek “more” is itself part of the mystery.

Only the ocean cares about more ocean.

Meanwhile, the wave is already water.

The mountain is already the mountain.

This moment is already complete, even with all its unanswered questions.

The mystery remains.

And somehow, that feels less like a problem and more like a wonder.

Jeff Angelson

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[Rani Madhavapeddi]

Jeffrey,

Your post reminded me of this song I think the movie stars are Sidney Poitier and ….

Why does the Sun go on shining

Why does the sea rush to shore 

The rest of the lines don’t apply on this para 

Why does the birds go on singing ….

Rani Madhavapeddi Patel

On May 29, 2026, at 9:46 AM, Jeffrey Angelson <jeff.a...@gmail.com> wrote:



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[Jeffrey Angelson]

To Sir, with Love

❤️

Jeff Angelson

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[Dan Kilpatrick]

All,

Coming in here quite belatedly, only because this seems like familiar territory as part of earlier threads here. I want to see where this goes....

When we speak of identifying with thoughts, are the thoughts separate from identifying, or is this how we are looking at it? Is it possible that there is identifying moving in the moment, full stop, without a "with" etc? 

By identifying, what this says to me is we are moving in the reality that thought is creating, as if this is "the" (only) reality....... This reality is the same as taking it all as true/real, like "me". IOW, the sense of it all being real is embedded in its very moving, not as thoughts or "content" separate from this sense of reality. It seems to be an unconscious assuming that all that is moving is fundamentally actual or true, a virtual reality taken to be as solid as the wall and the avalanche (or more so). When this sense of reality is penetrated or questioned (as with an actual avalanche!), there is already a waking up out of this seeming reality.

Not sure this clarifies anything, and this is not about coming up with descriptions, at least for me. It is noticing what seems to be happening when we slip into thought's reality. There seems to be a taking it all as if true, a fundamental assuming....  

Some impressions, -Dan

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[Jeffrey Angelson]

Dan All

Dan,

I like how you're pointing beyond the idea of a separate thought and a separate act of identifying with it. In direct experience, it may be one movement.

What stands out for me is your phrase, "a taking it all as if true." That feels very close to what I've been calling selfing—not the thoughts themselves, but the automatic creation of a center around them and the assumption that the whole story is reality.

For me, the issue isn't thought. The brain thinks; that's what brains do. It's seeing the selfing process as it happens. When that movement is noticed, the thoughts may continue, but they often lose some of their solidity and pull.

The virtual reality loosens its grip.

Jeff

Jeff Angelson

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[Dan Kilpatrick]

Thanks Jeff. Yes, the wordless singular moving, without distance, immediate, now, directly....words fail. This, to me, is its own action. This is not apparent as we are looking through thought.

Thought can't see it's own moving now, as it is time as it moves.

-Dan

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[Rani Madhavapeddi]

Dan,

I love that you say wordless singularity. Can anything move without a distance however small? What is moving? Is movement not thought? If there is no thought is there a sense of time? If thought is not what you say what is it that  moves with wordless singularity?  Immediate is in the now so i get it. 

Thank you

Rani Madhavapeddi Patel

On May 29, 2026, at 4:15 PM, Dan Kilpatrick <kilp...@gmail.com> wrote:



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[Dan Kilpatrick]

Rani, Everyone,

Thanks so much for coming in and sharing your impressions on moving etc. Yes, I think I get you too. I have the sense that the word moving can be taken in different ways based on its context. For example, moving can refer to never being static, and so on. 

I remember coming across a quote from K saying that which moves is alive. This was clear to me. In this way, anything actual is moving, alive, not fixed in place. This includes thought itself, thought not as a noun but as part of being alive, moving.

So yes, moving from point A to point B involves thought, as distance and time, unavoidably. But the very arising or moving of thought itself in this way is alive as it moves now, as it is happening. This is the seeming conundrum that is not a conundrum, there are simply different contexts being reflected simultaneously. One context is also the other, never separate.

So thought moves as time, as the experiencing of assumed time within itself. Yet this very moving as time is itself timeless and without distance, because it always moves now (not of time), which has nothing outside it to measure itself (any measuring is also now). Thought's very moving is always alive, now. In this sense, thought moving is no different than the sun setting.  It seems we are either looking through thought (as if there is distance), or thought's moving is apparent (without distance), if it is actually moving.

At least this is how it comes up for me. Thanks again, -Dan

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[Rob MacDonald]

Sorry, for the delay in coming back to this thread.  

Most importantly, Paul, I hope what I wrote wasn't seen as in conflict with what you were pointing to, definitely a compliment to it.

It's funny, Friday night I was in a hospital bed and there was a part of me that really wondered if I'd be on the verge of 'seeing more', and all that was really made clear is that we see what we can see in any given moment.

Then Saturday I was sitting at my desk, window open listening to the rain and the window, and BOOM!, I hear and feel what was allegedly a meteor exploding in the sky above our heads.  No preparation for it.  A chance encounter with the universe, anxiety inducing, and it was just what was happening in that moment.  The fear, the confusion, the anxiety.... all of it.  And even within our town many heard it, while others heard and felt nothing.  

It's interesting, laying in the hospital bed, or having a panic attack after the meteorite experience, I wanted answers.  But in both cases, what was real in that moment was completely subjective to this lens, and it wasn't mystical at all, it simple was what was happening.  To a brain wanting knowledge and answers, this is very tough to accept.

But here we are, still living, L-I-V-I-N. 😁

Peace,
Rob M.

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[Jeffrey Angelson]

Ron Paul All

But here we are, still living, L-I-V-I-N. 😁

That’s pure Rob.

Almost Camus-like.

Not solving the mystery.

Not transcending the human condition.

Just finding yourself back in the middle of life.

Rain on the window.

A body in a hospital bed.

A meteor in the sky.

And somehow, despite all the questions…

Just LIFE.

Just ENOUGH.

Jeff Angelson

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[Willow]

All,

The more you try to pull reality apart, the more the pulling apart unravels...

❤️Willow

[JIM PETERSON]

Willow,

 

That sure does seem to be the case, Willow.  Thanks for putting it out there.

 

Jim

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[Janet Asiain]

Would add one word to the end of your pithy sentence, Willow: “reality” (unless it’s already implied!)

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[Jim Peterson]

I might be wrong Janet, but I think Willow means it’s the “pulling apart” that unravels.  Maybe reality can’t be pulled apart.  Just speculating.   Jim 

Sent from my iPhone

On Jun 2, 2026, at 3:15 PM, Janet Asiain <janet...@gmail.com> wrote:



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[Janet Asiain]

You’re probably right Jim! Just trying to be clever about how logical analysis can’t do much besides “pull apart” the seamless whole that people are trying to 

comprehend in its totality. Actually I appreciate your interpretation more than my own —

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[Paul Rezendes]

Jim,

I interpreted what Willow was saying in the same way you did Jim. It would be interesting to see what Willow has to say.

Paul

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[Dan Kilpatrick]

All,

Just coming in briefly from left field once again. Is reality the pulling apart and unraveling, itself? Is the pulling apart trying to pull itself apart without realizing it, as if it is separate from its very moving?

This might come off as saying all of this endeavor is moot. But it does seem to me that there is exploring, which in a certain way is alive to itself, not knowing where it is going and without needing to realize itself. Even the pulling apart is unfolding itself in this way, it seems to me, otherwise how else would any of us be responding here at all. 

No idea how this fits into the flow of the conversation here.....  -Dan

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[Jeffrey Angelson]

All

Maybe what unravels is not the exploration itself, but the assumption that the explorer stands apart from what is being explored.

Just wondering out loud.

Jeff Angelson

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[Willow]

  All,

Jim and Paul have it... 

But yes Janet, if the exploring is an attempt to understand it all, it will prove fruitless because the mind cannot separate itself from the understanding it seeks..

The idea that there is an explorer and something to be explored is a red herring.. an endless unravelling.. 

Hugs, Willow

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[Dan Kilpatrick]

Janet, Willow, Jeff, Jim, Paul and Everyone,

Just wanting to express appreciation for all the comments and impressions given here, all seem to be the larger picture intermingling. And it occurs right now that what really stands out is the unravelling itself, making itself apparent, as its own significance.

Thanks, -Dan

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