Seeing Does The Work

[Jeffrey Angelson]

Short. Read or Listen

https://open.substack.com/pub/dailynonduality/p/seeing-does-all-the-work?r=3n3kpy&utm_medium=ios

Jeff Angelson

[Janet Asiain]

Diehards,

Thanks for this little gem, Jeff.

An question immediately arises, like an unwelcome visitor (but see Rumi on this one):

What if a "me" IS in fact required to deal with all the stuff it invented, all the stuff beyond basic existence (appliances, ChatGPT, highways, engines, etcetcetcetc)  --- all the stuff not provided at level one by nature itself?

Paul and Dan will tell me I'm making a category error by asking, but I'm hoping that the question be dealt with on its own terms, as if for the first time, without the already formed conclusions shutting it down from the get-go.

Janet A

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[Dan Kilpatrick]

Thanks Janet. So can we engage this question you posed as an inquiry, not from a conclusion? Meaning in openness, which you were speaking of a short while back?

What comes up for me here, not as a conclusion but questioning it all, is this: is the stuff the me creates separate from me to begin with? Is it just dealing with itself, as if separate from itself?

This doesn't feel like a philosophical question to me, but just looking at what might actually be happening in all this.

Is it possible that the revealing of something like this is its own action? I guess If alll this remains theoretical it really doesn't have much meaning. And nothing is saying it has to have meaning for us at all. This feels free to me, open... 

Sorry if I am not addressing your question as you intended, but what comes up seems relevant from here.

 Maybe another response is that both are true at once: Yes, the me is necessary for its creations to exist. The question might be whether any of it is a tually being "dealt with", except perhaps in terms of circumstances of physical living. But again, is me going to effectively deal with these  circumstances or just create more circumstances? Somewhere along the line a meeting all this not from me seems necessary for resolution.

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[Dan Kilpatrick]

...Forgot to sign off..... -Dan

[Janet Asiain]

Sorry Dan, as usual I didn’t provide context (the poetic piece Jeff sent), which I took to mean that a “me” isn’t required to engage with life as it presents itself without the embellishments of the “me.” (“Life lived the human.”) Which now I see is a total contradiction! A very false chicken/egg scenario! 

So where did the “me” come from, historically? Would a child raised by wolves have one? Because now and for a very long time the “me” is helped into as  part of human conditioning, although of course we are predisposed to go along  

This is dialogue “stream-of-consciousness” style 😂 Kindly ignore if not of interest. 

To your response — I’d say the me and its creations are one and the same, in practical reality as well as metaphysics. And that the me “dealing” with its creations is a closed circle in which nothing can happen but deepening confusion

Don’t (or is it doesn’t?) the me and its creations only exist as a superfluous layer, so to speak? I know some of you don’t like it, but I still feel a difference (not separation) between what nature supplies and what we “improve” on it with. 

I thought that was what the poem was pointing at — in much more effective language

Janet A

On Sat, Jun 27, 2026 at 9:02 AM Dan Kilpatrick <kilp...@gmail.com> wrote:

Thanks Janet. So can we engage this question you posed as an inquiry, not from a conclusion? Meaning in openness, which you were speaking of a short while back?

What comes up for me here, not as a conclusion but questioning it all, is this: is the stuff the me creates separate from me to begin with? Is it just dealing with itself, as if separate from itself?

This doesn't feel like a philosophical question to me, but just looking at what might actually be happening in all this.

Is it possible that the revealing of something like this is its own action? I guess If alll this remains theoretical it really doesn't have much meaning. And nothing is saying it has to have meaning for us at all. This feels free to me, open... 

Sorry if I am not addressing your question as you intended, but what comes up seems relevant from here.

 Maybe another response is that both are true at once: Yes, the me is necessary for its creations to exist. The question might be whether any of it is a tually being "dealt with", except perhaps in terms of circumstances of physical living. But again, is me going to effectively deal with these  circumstances or just create more circumstances? Somewhere along the line a meeting all this not from me seems necessary for resolution.

On Sat, Jun 27, 2026, 8:40 AM Janet Asiain <janet...@gmail.com> wrote:

Diehards,

Thanks for this little gem, Jeff.

An question immediately arises, like an unwelcome visitor (but see Rumi on this one):

What if a "me" IS in fact required to deal with all the stuff it invented, all the stuff beyond basic existence (appliances, ChatGPT, highways, engines, etcetcetcetc)  --- all the stuff not provided at level one by nature itself?

Paul and Dan will tell me I'm making a category error by asking, but I'm hoping that the question be dealt with on its own terms, as if for the first time, without the already formed conclusions shutting it down from the get-go.

Janet A

On Fri, Jun 26, 2026 at 8:35 AM Jeffrey Angelson <jeff.a...@gmail.com> wrote:

Short. Read or Listen

https://open.substack.com/pub/daily no duality/p/seeing-does-all-the-work?r=3n3kpy&utm_medium=ios

Jeff Angelson

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[Paul Rezendes]

Jeff, Janet, Dan, everyone,

What do we mean by “me”? Are we talking about the self that thought created? In other words: at some point thought might have come up with, “Those are my thoughts. I'm the thinker of the thoughts." Thought created the idea of a thinker with the volition of being in control of thoughts. It seems to me that whole thing is made up and false. Since it's not real, it can't really do anything. But Janet, I'm not sure that's what your question is. There is a sense of me as this organism. There is a sense of me centered in this organism and that is necessary to navigate the world. So what created all this stuff you were talking about? Is it the false self which is not even real? Or is there some creative intelligence moving through humanity that is really doing the creative work? It seems to me the false self is going to try to take credit for all that. It thinks it is what's in control, it's what's doing everything, it is the intelligent factor. It thinks: no me, no intelligence, no creativity. 

The view from here... 

Paul

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[Dan Kilpatrick]

Thanks for clarifying Janet. Your question about a child brought up with wolves (or even folks not caught up in me) raises an interesting question.

Is our consciousness not shared? Are we not born into this consciousness? So the tendency or possibility for me to arise seems present just from our very circumstances. Who knows when/how it might happen. K once spoke of the me arising in him when someone challenged him. It just didn't interfere as it made itself apparent. He also experienced fear etc, but again, it wasn't carried over.

 I guess this is what it means to be human, and to see all this unfolding in openness and freedom. To not be other than what we are.  

Finally, what might be the impact of me revealing and falling away in anyone of us, on our shared consciousness?

-Dan

-Dan

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[Jeffrey Angelson]

Janet

Janet,

I like the question.

From here, the practical answer seems to be yes. A functional “me” is required. Someone has to remember appointments, drive the car, pay taxes, and figure out why the dishwasher stopped working.

The question, though, isn’t whether the functional self exists. It clearly does. The question is whether that functional self is the independent author and owner of life that we usually take it to be.

To me, that’s where the shift occurs. The self remains as a wonderfully useful organizer of experience, but it is no longer experienced as separate from the life it is organizing. It becomes more like an instrument than a commander.

Nothing is lost. If anything, functioning becomes simpler because there is less psychological baggage wrapped around it. The “me” still answers emails and drives the car, but it no longer has to carry the burden of believing it is running the universe.

That’s just how it looks from here.

Jeff Angelson

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[Jeffrey Angelson]

Dan Diehards

Dan,

As for your last question, I don’t know. But if consciousness is indeed shared, then perhaps every instance of clear seeing subtly shifts the whole, just as every act of fear or division does.

At the same time, it seems that if the functional sense of self were to fall away entirely, we wouldn’t be able to operate as three-dimensional beings. So maybe what changes isn’t the presence of the self, but seeing that it is a functional expression of life rather than a separate entity directing life.

Jeff

Jeff Angelson

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[Jeffrey Angelson]

Paul Dan Janet All

Paul,

I’m wondering if we’re making too sharp a distinction between the functional self and the false self.

It seems to me they are both movements of thought. Thought can create a practical representation of this organism so it can navigate the world. It can also create the idea of an independent thinker who owns thoughts, chooses, and controls. Then thought can reflect on that image, creating layer upon layer of self-reference.

The remarkable thing is that thought can observe its own activity without there being a separate observer behind it. The “I” remains the subject of experience, but on looking closely it appears to be another movement within thought rather than an entity outside of it.

Perhaps realization isn’t one self seeing through another. It is simply the whole movement becoming transparent to itself.

The view from here,

Jeff

Jeff Angelson

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[Dan Kilpatrick]

Jeff, All,

The strong impression I had from the initial sharing about me as used here was that of a psychological moving in us that experiences itself as fundamentally real. That's what I heard Janet referring to. 

I/me as a human being is not so easily defined, in my book, as shared before. A strange brew of thought and that which is not of thought, as well as many other ways to express it. Experiencing and not within experiencing at the same time, seemingly local and not, and so on, depending on the framework used.

So me (as used here now) is not a thing but an ongoing experiencing or moving as if there is a thing that is separate. And even the human being is never separate. 

Just trying to clarify what I meant earlier. Thanks, -Dan

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[Paul Rezendes]

Jeff,

I'm thinking that I'm missing something that you said here. Maybe I didn't make myself clear. I'm not sure that thought is intelligent. I'm not even sure it's making the measurements. Where does thought come from? I think we would both agree that it's not coming from the thinker of the thought. If so, where is it coming from? If there is a seeing or a universal creative intelligence when the thought process is put in its place by the universal creative intelligence, what then is using thought? Is thinking the intelligence, or is universal creative intelligence using the brain and thought?

Paul 

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[Paul Rezendes]

Jeff,

I'm thinking that I'm missing something that you said here. Maybe I didn't make myself clear. I'm not sure that thought is intelligent. I'm not even sure it's making the measurements. Where to start come from? I think we would both agree that it's not coming from the thinker of the thought. If so, where is it coming from? If there is a seeing or a universal creative intelligence when the thought process is put in its place by the intelligence what den is using thought? Is thinking the intelligence or is something using the brain and thought that is the intelligence? 

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On Jun 27, 2026, at 1:57 PM, Jeffrey Angelson <jeff.a...@gmail.com> wrote:

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[Jeffrey Angelson]

Paul Diehards

Paul,

Here’s how it appears from here.

Nothing seems to arise outside of awareness. What we call “my mind” is a localization of awareness, alongside billions of other human minds. Within this localization, thoughts, sensations, memories, and perceptions arise together, and from them a sense of self emerges.

Then another thought appears: I am this self. I am the thinker. I am the one choosing and acting.

That is the illusion—not the self, but the thought that claims ownership of thought and experience. And that claim is itself just another thought.

The beautiful part is that all of this can be observed. By simply watching thought, we begin to notice thoughts arising, thoughts commenting on other thoughts, thoughts claiming ownership, defending, comparing, remembering, and imagining. The entire movement becomes visible.

This is why I don’t think thought is the intelligence. Thought is an extraordinary tool, but it is also being known. The intelligence seems to be in the awareness that knows thought.

So from here, everything appears to be happening within one indivisible whole that I call awareness. Thought, the sense of self, the claim of ownership, and the seeing of all of it are not separate events. They are one undivided movement.

Just looking

Jeff Angelson

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[Jeffrey Angelson]

Dan 

The strange brew is the ongoing arising of sensations, perceptions, emotions, and thoughts. None of these are separate from one another. Together they give rise to the experience of “me.” Then thought claims ownership of the whole process

One important question remains…

When you wrote “a strange brew,” were you thinking of the Strange Brew song, or did that just arise on its own? 😄

Either way, now I’ve got Eric Clapton playing guitar in my head.

Jeff Angelson

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[Paul Rezendes]

Jeff,

I'm with you…

Paul

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[Dan Kilpatrick]

Jeff and Everyone, 

 Thanks Jeff, I can see the meaning in what you described. For me strange brew refers to this inconceivable coincidence of form as formless (and vice versa), nondual duality, and so on. Paul was touching on this in his recent email about intelligence moving seamlessly with thought (or vice versa). 

As to Cream, I was definitely a big fan back in the day (along with Jimi Hendrix). I'm sure this had something to do with "strange brew" arising in this situation, at least as a familiar phrase. And yet it just came up spontaneously. Spontaneous and familiar moving as one, it's showing up again.....

-Dan

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[Jeffrey Angelson]

Dan All

Dan,

Maybe we’ve been looking at Strange Brew all along.

“Strange brew, kill what’s inside of you.”

Perhaps what it dissolves is the sense of a separate self. Not the practical, everyday self, but the idea that it exists apart from life itself.

Then there is no intelligence here and thought there. No observer and observed. Just one continuous movement appearing as memory, thought, silence, creativity—even an old Cream lyric.

Maybe that’s another way of pointing to the strange brew.

Jeff Angelson

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[Rani Madhavapeddi]

The brew analogy is nice ! 👍 

If we take milk there is butter or cream in it. No separation. We churn it and butter reveals itself. 

Seeing reveals how the mind has created via thought a solid person like me. That is what is lost as I think Paul was pointing to. 

If that thinker is lost it does not necessarily mean the body’s native intelligence will not act spontaneously? 

Example when we are about to have an accident the body bypasses the mind to act quickly as it cannot have the luxury of thought coming in to tell us what to do isn’t it? In catastrophic cases there is a spontaneous action. Then thought sneaks in and say I don’t know how I acted so quickly or some such story. 

So it’ appears that by not thinking action does take place? Action occurs but there is no actor to identify with the action?

Just my 2 cents!

Love peace and joy ! 

Rani Madhavapeddi Patel

On Jun 27, 2026, at 3:12 PM, Jeffrey Angelson <jeff.a...@gmail.com> wrote:



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