Thank you for asking me this and the feeling of acceptance I now have. I began this response more than once before. ...and please forgive me being long winded. I'm doing my best to be clear but efficient.

My most essential response is: I can report both experiences.

I am finding that what I am now calling "source objects" (for Sourcery), are things which have facets or sides or dimensions. Whatever... Because it is so, or actual and not fantasized, it can be perceived or implemented from more than one perspective or angle, etc. The tumblers roundness and striking-ness could be (thought of as) two sides or perspectives available to the seer. I am aware of some things which have ten sides.

Again, speaking only from my personal experience I find several permutations with/for silence. I have been interacting with it for several years now.

While the initial shift of the AP allows for dialog from the observer, clearly a further shift brings that to an end. No talk is necessary for being as directly/fully as possible. Said another way, being as directly as possible means (it is necessary for) no dialog. For clarity around this we refer here to the inner critic and one who tells us we are what we are and reinforces the consensus BS. eg - the label of each item we see in ordinary reality may come into our audio track, on bla bla bla...

There is an objective and experiential silence. That is two.

Observe silence.
Be silence.

My experience can be:

Silent, with the river of thought only observed. To my knowledge, this is beginning Second Attention. With the river of thought yet flowing, one is not fully present to the experience of being one with what is so. (wow, I now realize what is, and what is so are not the same! What is, changes, what is so, doesn't.)

Silent but present. With stillness. No river of thought. My waking experience is very full as I keep/grow my attention focused on the most slim present-moment focus. Here I stretch to be as totally as possible while silent. It is like the hole of a doughnut growing larger, to me.

Silent and not present. It can be a case where no intent is established. Also, possibly a case where I have simply chosen to be the void and nothing from without may penetrate. Unless it does. Nothing may penetrate nothing. Hm, I like that... Love paradoxes!

Also, I found a little more to say about that. I will also share that I am able to essentially throw my consciousness into the void, without otherwise holding anything. When I do that, I am silent in my experience. I find my return to be an experience rather like popping back. In the past when doing this, I was able to manifest ball lightning about 30 feet away. It was ear-splitting and fantastically satisfying. I was on top of a parking structure with another person in Ann Arbor Michigan many years past. Anyway...

There is silence with stillness. There is also silence with motion.

I am able to report the phenomenological experience of oscillating silence and of others FEELING that at a distance. That happened over this last weekend at the retreat. I am excited about that astounding result.

FA