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Dan Kilpatrick

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May 25, 2026, 12:30:17 PMMay 25
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Everyone,

I'm sharing some impressions around something that comes up at times in inquiry discussions, and did so yesterday. I don't know for sure where this is going.

We often feel that if our conditioning would just get out of the way, we could see and live clearly and freely. Implicitly this is saying that x or y gets in the way of our living, as if x or y themselves are somehow not part of living. So separating is taking place without realizing it perhaps...

But more to the point here, what about the very nature of this way of seeing things as it arises? Is this way of seeing x or y as obstacles etc, living itself? How can anything be getting in the way of living when this itself is living?!!!

What this really seems to be bringing out is that living has no obstacles, and yet more so, it is really all possibilities. As our conditioning might be moving, maybe in deeper and deeper aspects, it is all here to appear for us as it unfolds. So really, our conditioning simply is the opportunity for living to be revealed as it actually unfolds.

So conditioning is not an obstacle, it is all possibilities in any given moment. Conditioning is always now, which is all possibilities (infinite potential). So even as we move in (psychological) time, time (in whatever form) may suddenly fill all the space with nothing intervening/no distance, just as it is....

I don't know if this is making itself evident here, but do you sense where this brings us? Suddenly living is not about getting somewhere etc or something needing to get out of the way, or even being certain about anything. None of this holds meaning. All possibilities are right here, not as something to imagine or wait for, there is simply nowhere to go. 

Implicitly this is openness, but openness that is not something missing to be attained, an attitude or approach, a "thing", just in the nature of living, naturally. It is not in the realm of certainty or uncertainty, these simply have no place or relation to openness. 

Yet, needing to be certain etc may arise, openly.  This is all possibilities in action, nothing is getting in the way of now (now is the getting in the way!). So when we are, perhaps, wholly embedded in our conditioning, to the hilt, maybe all possibilities might really have something to reveal. Nothing gets in the way of openness....  

And this is not a justification (or invitation) to go off into never-never land! (oh how the mind does move.....).
-Dan

PS   Ah, here is the interesting thing about conditioning, it seems. It is saying living (or we) is this, or that, or this way or that way. All possibilities shatters this whole movement even as it arises. Nothing can cage all possibilities, and all possibilities never conforms to our ways of picturing living. All possibilities is not within what we know, yet revealing our knowing is all possibilities. So revealing as all possibilities is living itself.... -d.

Jeffrey Angelson

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May 25, 2026, 7:14:34 PMMay 25
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Dan,


Something that comes up for me reading this is conditioning and whether anything actually gets in the way of living.


What resonates is your pointing that conditioning itself is not the obstacle. Conditioning is life. Fear is life. Grasping is life. The need for certainty is life. None of it stands outside THIS.


Yet Buddhism points toward something that feels important here: shenpa — getting hooked. Tightening around thought. Pulling toward certainty. Grasping. Resisting.


Perhaps conditioning itself is not the obstacle.


Perhaps becoming completely identified with conditioning deepens suffering.


There is an expression: getting out of our own way.


Not getting out of life’s way.


Not removing conditioning.


Seeing conditioning.


A thought arises.


Fear arises.


Need arises.


Awareness may arise too.


Not making thought wrong.


Not standing apart from life.


But perhaps becoming aware enough of conditioning that we are no longer completely run by it.


Not freedom from life.


Freedom within life.


Peace,


Jeff




Jeff Angelson

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Dan Kilpatrick

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May 25, 2026, 7:19:49 PMMay 25
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Thanks Jeff for responding. A quick question comes up: is identifying outside or separate from conditioning?
Or is this how we tend to see it, conditioning as a thing being identified with.....
Gotta go, -Dan


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Dan Kilpatrick

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May 25, 2026, 7:29:31 PMMay 25
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Jeff, All,

Just adding a PS: if identifying is always moving now, how can there be anything outside it? It feels undivided, wordless, alive, filling the room....
-Dan

Paul Rezendes

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May 26, 2026, 7:26:11 AMMay 26
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Jeff, Dan,

I hope it is OK to jump in here. Reading your emails, the question comes up: is there human conflict and suffering from a human perspective? Do we understand that that can come to an end? Yes, it's all part of the whole; it's not outside of life itself, but can we work towards peace? Or does nothing matter since everything is what it is, and there is nothing to do about it? Or is compassion for human suffering also the universe moving and working for peace?

Wei Wu Wei, 

Paul

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Jeffrey Angelson

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May 26, 2026, 7:40:24 AMMay 26
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Paul Dan
I starting writing something earlier that I think fits here. I was thinking of Viktor Frankyl when I wrote it. 

Meet You in the Gap


Paul,


Yes — this feels like the living question.


From one view, everything is already part of the whole. Nothing is outside of THIS — not conflict, not suffering, not confusion, not even the impulse toward peace.


But from the human view, suffering matters. Conflict matters. Compassion matters.


So I don’t hear “nothing to do” as indifference. I hear it more as: stop acting from fear, separation, ideology, or resistance — and let action arise from the gap.


That gap between stimulus and response.


That is where awareness comes in. That is where Frankl becomes so profound. Even in the most horrific conditions, something remained available: not control over circumstances, but the freedom of how one met them.


Maybe compassion is exactly that — the universe recognizing suffering through us and moving toward peace.


Not outside the whole.


As the whole.


Maybe I’ll meet you in the gap.




Jeff Angelson

Dan Kilpatrick

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May 26, 2026, 9:35:04 AMMay 26
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Paul, Jeff, Everyone,

Paul, thanks for your comments and questions. I feel it indicates I'm not doing a good job of articulating what all this that is coming up reflects. For example, that identifying is not separate from conditioning is revealing the movement of identifying itself, its actuality in real-time (at least from here). No words for this, but its very revealing is its own action, as you pointed out. It's about coming to this each for ourselves, which is quite wordless..... So wei wu wei, in this situation is implicit throughout all this. It's taking care of itself, without our need to be concerned about outcomes.

There is freedom for all of this movement to appear as it is without distance, which is its own action. From the perspective of this movement, there seem to be obstacles to being free, which then must be somehow overcome or bypassed. It seems an impossibility for these obstacles to not be in the way. But all possibilities is the impossible, coming in to reveal this movement that is looking at all this in this very moment, in whatever ways this might occur or be expressed.  So for me, all of this is very human, this is the point of going into it all.  It is difficult to communicate about all possibilities.

Thanks, -Dan




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Paul Rezendes

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May 26, 2026, 9:54:05 AMMay 26
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Dan,

I didn't have a problem with how you were articulating things, and I didn't have a problem with what you were saying. I just wonder how people are hearing it. So I asked some questions.

Paul













Dan Kilpatrick

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May 26, 2026, 9:57:06 AMMay 26
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Thanks Paul, no worries. I appreciated your comments.
-Dan

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Jeffrey Angelson

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May 26, 2026, 10:46:15 AMMay 26
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Dan Paul Everyone

Paul, Dan, Everyone,

Paul, I get that you are questioning how all this lands.

Where it lands for me is that we can explore ontology, conditioning, no separate chooser, and the metaphysics of how all of this works. Those are interesting questions.

But for me, that feels like detail.

It doesn’t change the lived experience that compassion matters. Kindness matters. Happiness matters. Suffering matters.

Whatever the nature of choice ultimately is, there remains the felt sense that how we meet life changes our experience of life.

For me, that feels closer to direct seeing.

Jeff



Jeff Angelson

Jeffrey Angelson

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May 26, 2026, 10:56:41 AMMay 26
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P.S. Paul, your point on compassion also brings to mind Thich Nhat Hanh. He often pointed toward compassion for others beginning with compassion for ourselves.


Perhaps that too is part of direct seeing — not separation, but meeting suffering here so we can meet suffering there 




Jeff Angelson

Paul Rezendes

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May 26, 2026, 11:40:48 AMMay 26
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Jeff,

Yes, it seems to me where this lands for some people is that nothing matters. It seems to me that everything matters.

Paul





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