UnbornTao

First clarify what you want to communicate. Why are you going to talk in the first place? The shortcut is to simply get clear.

Take away the rhetoric and hype and look for genuine experience. Are they trying to facilitate you in grasping something, or are they selling you beliefs? This will leave most people out.

Uses hype and superficiality. There are other effective teachers out there such as Adyashanti.

It is a conception of it, not a direct experience of its nature. It is an indirect encounter so to speak. As an inaccurate analogy, a map represents, models or symbolises a piece of land, the experience of standing in that land is "it." At this point it'd be better to call it something else, like concept or thought rather than map. Map seems to be a specific thought that models what something is or how it works so that a workable relationship can be established between you and what the model tries to represent.

The premise of the question is mistaken. Get who and what you are.

Then your questioning should be open, based on nothing, rather than on preconceptions. The matter is up for graps. We're good charlatans in here. Ignore what you're told and contemplate from scratch. "Who am I?" Stay with that, intending to have a direct consciousness into you now.

Who are you? Start contemplating that afresh, that is, without presuming anything. You might as well be a pencil or a banana, so hey, stay open. Then you can say who you are and move on to inquiring "What am I?" It's okay that you don't know, don't assume we're less ignorant here than the average folk.

One definition of thought could be: "a concept about the reality or experience of, something." Key difference would be that a concept is about something, not it. The it is unknown.

David Loy.

Alan Wake II is surprisingly good and well-made.

Whatever's the case. Start with what you've got and keep moving towards what's most true according to your estimation. A chair is a chair, don't call it a sofa. Call things by their name and get at the root of your experience. Acknowledge your experience and go from there. Nobody here knows what anything is.

Okay good, now dig it. For example, what is this nihilistic sense about?

Look into it. Don't wait for others to simply validate something for you. Even if it were true, what difference would that make for you? You'd be taking up the communication as a belief without having grasped the truth of the matter yourself.

Yes. On this note, I like to consider poetry: its aim is communicating an experience in a condensed form. Consider how very few words can sometimes elegantly express something not necessarily easy to get across.

This is solid. It might relate to showing up authentically, too. I would replace point 2 with be honest. Intent to get across your experience as it is without concern for good or bad.

@Yimpa What? It is directed at OP.

But is that true? Are you being honest?

I had some deep experiences of not-knowing myself accompanied by a sense of wonder. I may had been walking down the street with a spontaneous sense of "What is I?" "I am me, what is that about?" Not sure whether that's considered mystical or not, I saw it as a profound questioning.

Doing nothing and being lazy are not the same thing.

It works for me.

No, as a kid I didn't really care but thanks for asking.

I'd say math's a human invention, a language.

Grasp experientially the bottom line underlying the behavior. Go where you're doing it, so to speak; get it as an assumption that you're holding about yourself. Once done, getting free from it occurs naturally.

Forward. It will empower your learning and expose you to subjects and avenues you haven't even considered.

Useful for what? When it comes to enlightenment work, religion is in fact an impediment and totally unneeded. This isn't to say value can't be found by following a religion, but why would you want that? You can pursue whatever value or principle that's empowering in a particular religion and leave the dogma and rituals aside. Why do people fall into religion in the first place?