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Hey everyone, I first discovered Actualized.org on youtube when I was looking for some self-help videos, and over some time I ended up watching almost all of them. Topics such as healthy relationships, gratitude, meditation, ego, self image, law of attraction, happiness, mindfulness, higher and lower self, building positive habits, etc... I loved learning about every subject, figuring out the right way to integrate them into my life, and generally improving the quality of my life. However, there is one topic that Leo covers in multiple videos that I haven't dived into: Enlightenment. I've listened to the "All Religions Explained in One Video" episode when Leo talks about it for a while, so I kind of know about the general idea behind it-- the nothingness, being created by the conscious, etc. The subject interests me, but to be totally honest, I'm not sure if I am ready to fully learn about it yet. When I heard the "Intro to Enlightenment" episode, I turned it off before getting too into it, thinking to myself "whoa i don't know if this is the right thing for me right now" because I was already working on other parts of myself. I'm still working on those, and I know I will need to continue working on them for quite some time to reach my goals. I truly appreciate Actualized.org and the community for helping me learn more about myself. So naturally, I want to learn everything Actualized.org can teach me. But I'm not sure if learning about Enlightenment is what I need at this time, because it implies reality is radically different from how I understand it now. I worry i will feel conflicted, because everything I'm working on right now is for this reality as i currently understand it. Will I still care about my worldly goals after learning about enlightenment? i guess my question is, is it advised that people wait until they are pretty well actualized (better version of self, got life handled) before trying for enlightenment? But, if I work on self actualization and become my best self, wouldn't it be harder for me to reach enlightenment later because I will be so much happier with what I have at that point as an actualized person? Wouldn't my ego resist it even more at that point, to protect what it has?

Here an excellent one: All Of Religion Explained In One Video Summary Surpassing The Dogma So, the core problem here, between this religion vs. science debate, is that human beings are extremely, extremely dogmatic. Dogmatic, that’s the key word here — dogmatic. What does dogmatic mean? Dogmatic doesn’t pertain to religions, or to science, or to any particular thing. Dogmatic means that you cling to a particular world-view or belief. When you do this, you don’t tell yourself that you’re clinging to a world-view or to a belief. What you tell yourself is that you have the facts and that this is just a fact and it’s true. It doesn’t feel like you’re clinging to anything. But, in fact, what you’re doing is you’re clinging. And this closes your mind down and doesn’t permit you to do a very exhaustive, open-minded search, right? So, the trick here is not only — are we dogmatic? — but we lie to ourselves about being dogmatic. We don’t honestly tell ourselves that we’re dogmatic. We just behave dogmatically and we do this unconsciously. And we will defend, often to the death, our dogmatism. Deny that it’s dogmatism. So, this is not a problem of religion. This is a problem of the human psyche. Because, when the human psyche takes on a core assumption or a belief, no matter what it is, whether it’s a religious one or something totally different, it doesn’t really matter — you cling to it, you make it a part of your self-identity. You make it a part of your self image. And when you do that, you identify with it and you feel like you need to defend it This is a very common mistake that I see atheists making. They think that, just because they are an atheist, they are not dogmatic. Well, what I find in practice is that most atheists are actually very, very, very dogmatic. And this upsets them to hear because they like to use it as a separation between themselves and religious people. But, actually, you’re on the same side on that point. The difference you have with religious people is that you have a different kind of dogmatism. Ideas Behind Religions: Why does religion exist? Not just one, but many, many religions? They seem to have a lot of common elements and threads between them. Even though superficially they might look very different, also, from a big-picture point of view, they all sound, and start to converge, and look very similar. one explanation, you might think, well, religion is just primitive stupidity. Primitive cultures, thousands of years ago, they really didn’t understand life, they didn’t understand themselves, they didn’t understand how the mind works, or science. Nor do I think that tradition is a good explanation for what religion is and why it originated. Nor do I think that this explanation of religion as a social, political, controlling mechanism is a satisfactory explanation. while I think that that’s definitely been done in the past, that political leaders and religious leaders have used religion as a controlling mechanism for social engineering, and to profit themselves and other such things — to gain power, to maintain power over people — that certainly happened. But it doesn’t make sense that that was the origin of religion. there is an absolute truth and this absolute truth is accessible to human beings. And here’s the really nasty bit that you’re not going to like: it’s not accessible to the rational mind. It is not accessible to the rational mind. The scientific, rational mind, hates this. It hates this idea. This idea is not something it wants to accept. So, what I submit to you is that, if your mind is rejecting this idea and it’s not even open to this possibility, than what you’re being is dogmatic The Sense Of Self You’ve got a sense of self, of personal self. You believe that you are a body, and you believe that [you're] this mind and the brain inside the body. And you’ve got this personal story: you can remember the time that you were born and the way that you grew up, and where you are now. And you believe that you’re going to die, and yada, yada, yada, right? And that all makes pretty good sense. Except there’s one problem. And that problem is that, if you look really carefully and really deeply, what you’re going to realize is that this sense of self that you have is an illusion. And that there is no such thing as a sense of self. Thing that you call you, the thing that you think you are most certainly, when we say your name — the thing that points to — well, that thing is actually a big confusion and a big mistake in your mind. So, what’s possible then is that it’s possible to, basically, jail-break your brain. the self that you believe that you are, everything you believe that you perceive, is actually not being perceived by a “you” the true self is nothing. And this nothing is a very special thing. This is not something to be dismissed lightly. Nothing, here, I mean literally. You are literally nothingness. This cannot be believed or logically understood. It has to be directly experienced. You are the nothingness, so you are it. Once you realize it, you can actually be it. And that is, answering existentially: what is existence? Have you ever wondered about that? What the hell is existence? How can existence even exist? Ever wondered about that? What turns out is that you can have an enlightenment experience that will reveal to you the absolute nature of existence. And what that absolute nature is — is nothingness. Existence and nothingness are the same. They arise out of each other. Or, more accurately, existence arises out of nothingness. And that nothingness doesn’t go away, it’s always there. This is referred to as the Void in certain Buddhist traditions or, maybe, Zen traditions. They call it the Void. And the absolute truth is, basically, that existence arises out of nothing. This nothingness, this ultimate void, is God. The word “god” refers to this nothingness. Because it’s the source of everything, right? It’s not a personal god. It’s not a god with a beard. It’s not a god as “him” or “her”, but it’s god in the sense that it’s the source of all reality. And this nothingness is a unity, it’s a One. And it has no space, it has no location, it has no distance, it has no size, because nothingness doesn’t have any of those qualities. What we’re talking about here is not an idea of nothingness, which is something. But we’re talking about, literally, nothingness. And what you discover is that you are nothing, and God is nothing, and so, because of this — you are God. That right there is the core of every major religion. All major religions are grounded in the truth of no-self. Christianity is founded on this, as is Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Zen, even Sufism and yogic practices in India and in the East. All of these different religions are, really, different ways, very roundabout ways often, to explain what I just explained to you. Now, there’s an additional, really big wrinkle in this whole thing: what I explained to you is just like a vague, vague, vague, story. Still a story, not reality, about what reality is. Different Approaches when you think about nothingness, it’s already something. What is the one thing that you cannot intellectualize about? It’s nothingness. You can’t intellectualize nothingness, because when you’re intellectualizing, that’s something. So, the problem here becomes that, if you want to get at the nothingness, you can’t do it through your conventional, practical, every-day logical thinking. You can’t do it through scientific thinking. You can’t do it through language. And, by the way, science is language. You can create a model of how reality works, and that’s what science loves to do, and that’s what we do with even non-scientific pursuits. We create models. Religion creates models, too. We create models in our everyday life. We create maps of reality and all this kind of stuff. It helps, creating these models. So, you can create models and concepts, and you can think about reality. That’s one way to understand reality. A second way, arguably even better and more direct, is to actually experience it with your own senses. First-person experience. Who can doubt what they actually see? any model that you want to create — otherwise, that would be a fairy tale — it’s actually a model that’s pinned down by experience, right? So, it’s limited, it’s constrained. There’s a verifiability built into it. So that’s really cool. And then what we do is we say, well, that’s pretty much all we’ve got, right? You’ve got experience and you got your conceptualizing of experience. That’s how we know stuff and that’s the end of the story, right? Well, what if it wasn’t? The Third Way Well, what if you could actually be the thing itself? Because, the problem is that, when you’re identified with yourself, and you believe that you are this right here, this body, this mind, and these thoughts, then you’re stuck. And you can only be this, you can’t be anything else. Now, though, if you jail-break your brain, if you really dis-identify from everything in your experience, including your body, and your thoughts, and everything else, this gives you the freedom to be everything and anything. I’m not saying this figuratively, I’m saying it quite literally. So, this sounds pretty crazy, and it sounds like, well, some sort of myth or something like that. But what I’m saying here’s that you can actually do this in your own experience. It’s not a myth, you don’t need to go read a Bible, or whatever, to do this. It can be done. Now, the trick, though, is that it’s difficult to do this. It’s not quite easy. And why is that? Well, because you’re extremely attached to your self, to your self-hood, to your self-image. And so, this process of jail-breaking your mind from the brain, this is a very serious physiological undertaking. This does not happen easily, because everything in your psyche resists. – so the only way to get and use this third alternative of being is to actually do the being yourself. See, the problem is that it’s so difficult to actually jail-break your own mind. When you talk about these things to other people, what they do is they construct stories, and they turn this stuff into belief systems, right? And then, those beliefs, they turn into myths. And a lot of times, the way that people talk about these things is true analogy, because that’s the only way you can talk about it. You can’t talk about it directly. To talk about it directly would be to be the damn thing yourself. For example, if you want to write about mathematics, you can write some formulas in a book, and you can explain everything, and then you can print a million copies of this book, and send it around the world, and create classrooms full of calculus books, or whatever, that will teach calculus . And problem solved. Now, how do you communicate the truth of no-self? Well, you can write it in a book. But the problem is that the person reading that book, just by reading that, that doesn’t jail-break his mind. So, he still believes he’s the self. And he’s so dogmatic he doesn’t understand he’s dogmatic. So, what he does is: he conflates reality with a belief system. And he thinks that just believing it is enough. And so, the only way that you can mass-spread the truth of no-self is by turning it into a belief system — which makes it necessarily false. You can turn it into a myth. If you want to stay true to the truth of no-self, the only way to do that is through silence. You can’t say anything. So, this presents a really big problem because it turns out, then, that you can’t mass-distribute the truth of no-self. This is one of the few truths that cannot be mass-distributed, unlike most of science and all the other stuff we know. Historical Perspective therefore, people resorted to mythology, and story-telling, to talk about this truth of no-self. Now, how did this work in practice? Well, you have some extremely, really fucking hard-core guys, maybe one in a million, or out of ten million, that will breakthrough and see the truth of no-self by jail-breaking their mind. These were the mystics, these were the yogis. These were the Jesus Christs and the Buddhas. These were the sages, these were the swamis. There are so many different names for these kinds of people, right? These were the Zen masters, before there even were the Zen masters. some of them remain silent and say nothing. But some of them want to share with others, because it’s like: “Oh, my god, you’re living in a fucking dream. You’re living in a fucking dream, you’re mistaken about how your whole life works and you don’t even know it. I’ve broken out of the matrix. I want to help some other people break out of the matrix.” And so, what I do, is I try to explain it to you in the way that I can. But again, I can’t explain it directly. I need you to experience it. But the problem is that it’s pretty difficult for you to jail-break your own mind. And if we tell it in Europe, it has to be told in a European way, and if we tell it in the Middle East, it has to be told in a Middle-eastern way, and if we tell it in India, it will be told in an Indian way, and in Africa it will be told in an African way, and so on. The Sugar Coating So, if you want to explain this stuff to them, you have to really tailor it in such a way that their mind, their limited mind will find it palatable. Palatable, right? It’s like giving someone a pill that tastes bitter, but to make them swallow, you have to coat it in sugar. Sugar-coating the pill. So, in a sense, that’s what religion tries to do. And also, in a sense, no matter what explanation you give of no self, it doesn’t really matter because every explanation is wrong. It’s not like there’s one right explanation. The only right explanation is to actually have the person become the truth themselves and get it for themselves. Everything else is already wrong. the truth of no-self is very radical and it’s very mainstream. You can’t mainstream it by definition. It’s completely individual. It makes the spread of religion impossible, it really does. That nothingness can’t be somethingness. That you can’t perceive nothingness because the perception of nothingness would be something and not nothing. When you start to learn about the problems with conceptualization and the fact that, to think about something, you have to use a language system to think about it, and that language systems inherent biases and problems and challenges. When you start to look at this stuff, you start to se from a very, very clear perspective: “Oooh, of course! Of course there are these religions! Of course they work the way they work! Of course people buy into them!” Of course. And the reason you say “of course” is because you recognize in yourself that dogmatism, that dogmatism that a fanatical, religious person has. That dogmatism is in you, it’s in you, you just deny it. Maybe you hide it a little bit better than that person. Maybe you don’t take it to some really far-fetched extreme. Maybe you don’t act on it as much, but it’s still there in you. And the way you can recognize it is just by actually feeling it, right? You can feel that dogmatism when someone starts disturbing your world-view or your beliefs, maybe with a video like this one. What starts to happen is that you actually experience emotions, strong emotions. Distaste, fear, anger, bitterness, feelings of discomfort, demonizing of the other person, burning the person at the stake, or whatever. Creating a straw man argument out of what they are saying. Closing your ears. Clicking the “off” button. Telling your friends how stupid the idea was that you heard. Or writing a nasty comment. Or whatever means you use to protect your world-view. You notice inside, though, that this is a like a dirty feeling. Sometimes, it’s hard to pinpoint it, but if you’re very self-honest, you can say: “yup, there it is, there’s that dirty feeling inside me.” It’s inside you. Atheism if you take that atheist and you actually give him an enlightenment experience for real, and you get him to feel directly, to be the nothingness, he is going to have a real difference of opinion. A real difference of attitude. A real difference of perspective. Things are really going to change for him. And it’s not going to be a typical kind of atheism that you see people talking about. there’s a really big problem at he core of science. Yes, science is very practical, but there’s a real big, core problem. And that’s the matter-qualia problem. And this is a problem that science has never addressed, it’s a problem that, really, science skirts all the time. And my current understanding is that science will never ever — ever be able to rectify this problem. science has nothing about our perceptions. So, the things that you are considering most real in your life: your feelings, your emotions, the colors that you see, the smells that you smell, the tastes and the sounds, and the qualitative aspects of all that — those things are not atoms, or energy, or strings, or quarks, or molecules, or anything else like that. If we cut-open your brain, we are not going to find the color orange in there. If we cut-open your brain, we are not going to find the feeling of love or happiness in there. And if we cut-open your brain, we are not going to find the sound of a guitar in there. And yet, these entities, these experiential entities are very, very real to us. The thing that science does with this problem is that is really skirts it under the rug, doesn’t like to look at it. Sometimes, it will deny the existence of qualia altogether. Or sometimes, it will come up with some ham-fisted way of taking matter and qualia, and somehow combining them together and explaining something away. But in the end, it doesn’t really resolve this issue. The Key Concepts Hell is where you presently live, hell refers to your current existence of being stuck and identified with your body. Heaven is the dis-identification of your self and your body, and becoming absolute nothingness. what faith is, is your ability to open your mind up to the third possibility. So, we have concepts, and we have experience, the third possibility is being. you can have the faith to take that leap of faith and try to go for the direct experience. And actually get the direct experience. Actually be the thing and then see what I’m talking about for real, for you. Evil is selfishness, evil is that identification with your body and all the actions that you do to live and perpetuate you ego. The devil refers to you. The way that you’re presently living your egoic life. So, you are the devil, right? Because you’re tricking yourself. The devil is deception. Good is everything you do from a selfless state. Good is when you become God, when you see that you’re nothingness. And therefore, you also see that you’re everything. And you start behaving in a good way. Why? Because, when you see that everything is you, you want to treat it well. afterlife means understanding the absolute truth of nothingness, because when you understand the absolute truth of nothingness, then you are in the afterlife already. Why? Because you can’t be destroyed, you’re untouchable. Nothingness lasts forever. Salvation means being saved from your wicked state. So, metaphorically speaking, if we say that you’re the devil right now. The people who are the most religious are the furthest away from God. That’s the whole irony of this thing. But, of course, that means that, if you just become atheistic, like the typical dogmatic atheist. That also puts you far away from God. So, if you really want to understand this stuff, and you want to be one with God, and you are God, then what you can do — because you’re nothingness — is that you can attempt to attain an enlightenment experience or two. And then, in that process, you will become religious, but in a non-religious way. In a very non-dogmatic way. You are not going to hold a single belief. You’re not going to need to have any theory. You’re not going to need to partake in any ritual. You’re not going to need to pray, or to meditate or to do anything at all. Because your absolute nature is nothingness. And that absolute nature is the same forever. And always. And it has no place, it has no space, it has no time boundaries, it has no problems whatsoever. And it’s the most beautiful truth that you can discover in this life.

Insights into this work in the last week make me want to share & to see if anyone resonates with these thoughts. Do they hold any truth for you? Awakening, realising, becoming your true being. What a lonely, beautiful, fulfilling, selfish self-less way of being. It's the ultimate escape that the ego despises, resentful it isn't getting its ultra-humanoid way of operating. Giving up all that you've worked for, for nothing. Absolute nothingness. I see and continue towards this beauty of being, but the ego must bend under the pressure to let go, but also work with you to provide the life you're searching for. How twisted, it's magnificent.

Day 37 Had a 30 minute meditation session today. I'm trying to get rid of the notion of self. I want to experience the nothingness that Leo talks about. It's very hard to push through the resistance. I think I need to do a lot more before I can get the feeling of being nothing.

@Mal that was beautifully written, and a much much better explanation. your post needs to be read by everyone on this forum that has issues with nothingness and enlightement. This understanding is so important while actualizing. Thank you!

What is true art really? I'd argue it's an expression of being. Everything is an expression of 'being' really, except it can be heavily distorted by ego. You don't need ego to create art. The ego can't do or create anything, the ego is a creation in itself, not a creator. Creation comes out of the void, or nothingness. Doing art or not doing art. It doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things toward enlightenment because it's not the do-er that becomes enlightened. What you might try is to bring more spontaneity into your art in stead of trying to plot everything.

I was in your shoes after my first "little awakening/enlightenment". These are symptoms of becoming more aware than usual, but at this point your ego is still going full speed. It causes a negative misconception about this whole subject. It feels like you are at loss, and you wish you could do anything to go back to being ignorant and blissful. At this point, after "knowing" all, you will feel like there's nothing left to live for. What's the point? I'm nothing but a empty nothingness without a purpose! I smile as I type this because you are in for a very pleasant surprise as you continue down your path. You can't lose anything because you never had anything to lose in the first place. A "purpose" as you describe is something your ego needs to be motivated. When the ego subsides, you won't need a purpose. The very existence you are experiencing will be plenty purposeful. This journey doesn't cost anything. It will give to you more than your ego will ever be able to repay. There is simply nothing more than false beliefs to give up, which were worthless to begin with. You must ask yourself for the source of this loneliness. In what ways do you depend on others to fill emotional voids in your mind? When you have time to sit in peace and be alone, what thought comes first: I need to find someone to keep me company? Or Now that I'm one with my thoughts, what can I do to grow and improve myself? Before you delve into subjects relating to nothingness, enlightenment, purpose, and actualization, you must slow down. Take time to really learn more about yourself. Research things you are feeling in this moment. Learn how to overcome loneliness, no purpose, depression, negativity. After you overcome these hurdles, you'll have a great base foundation to really start self-actualizing. I promise you, there is nothing to lose. Logically, you have everything to gain. Don't feed into ego produced negativity. Lastly, understand that you can't understand. You're taking very deep and complex experiences capable of obliterating an ego, and asking what the ego thinks of it. What do you think it will say?

Covers a few ideas that link quantum physics to nothingness, quite interesting to watch

I guess the reason you are getting frustrated is because there is no you to find. Whenever you are 'seeking' then you are acting from the standpoint of your ego. With the self enquiry it's a little different to the normal meditation as you are using your ego to come to the realisation that there is no you, and sometimes what happens with this is that all of a sudden the rug is pulled from beneath the ego and all that is left is awareness. So the intellectual realisation can trigger the experiential realisation. It's not going to happen over night though so I wouldn't get frustrated with it. Regarding the frustration during normal meditation, if this is happening then you are still identifying yourself with the ego. You have to let go of 'you'. A way to make this happen automatically which works for me is by practising the strong determination sits. Once things start to get really painful I accept the pain and the situation I am in, basically the ego surrenders, it takes a while for this to happen but when you do this the pain goes and so does your ego and you are left in a state of kind of nothingness where your vision goes strange and the pain is not there either. You also have a sense of not being in your body. Its pretty cool. One thing I would say is that sometimes I will have really bad meditation sessions where the monkey mind is on full whack, but then afterwards I will feel very relaxed. I think there is a saying that goes something like 'with meditation you notice your gains off the mat'

@Parki enlightenment says there is no you, or that you are Nothing, because Nothing is nothing, it cannot be a thing, and so it can't be localised, because space and time are things, nothingness is outside of space and time, so it doesn't have a location The second point is something that I struggled to understand too, I think because as organisms we are structured as points of consciousness, we are only aware of our own body because that's where as organisms, our consciousness is located however, I remember Leo's video about his enlightenment experience he said it felt like he was outside his body looking at himself, so maybe it takes enlightenment to stop being stuck inside your one perspective

@SkyPanther I am not the self-aware nothingness? is that what you say? than what am i?

what this issue with is this is that you are infesting your mind with theories and believes. Its a lot harder to get to an experience by creating a map of enlightenment and its easier for your ego to mask the experience - meaning that you might not even believe it happened after. If you have an experience your ego will probably mask it with language: "is this eternal, is this nothingness , is this it, is this what i am looking for etc". Be careful , just do the work. I am saying this because this happens with me a lot. As a scientific/rational thinker I have built a model on enlightenment in my head. I wish i never did and it hinders you practice.

You are not exprience nothingness, you are the Nothingness. And I said IF you are enlightened, you may still have consciousness after you die, no one know for sure because there's no way to communiate and no one know what after death Like I said above there are very few people still have consciousness in deep sleep.

@7oo13ad wait a sec. are you saying that when i become enlightened, then im going to experience nothingness even after my death?

Yes that Nothingness is eternal and you can't experience anything until you are AWAKE (enlightened). Else you gonna sleep forever again when you die, just like before you were born.

@7oo13ad and isn't it so? doesn't leo say that nothingness is eternal, it cannot die, so in a sense it turns out that im immortal, but why the fuck do i want immortality if i cant experience anything? how am i immortal than?

@Natasha I wish it was true, but why does that all seem like a wishful thinking and unreal? I really want to put my mind around this, but i just cant get dedication, im too sceptical, i started strong determination sittings, i was doing it for one week and then i quit. oh man. now i have watched this neti neti method two times and im doing that guided meditation a lot on my own, but i dont know. Like once again as leo said i am nothingness that is self-aware, im not self-aware when my body is asleep. I just cant grasp it.

@stephanie If you took an EEG, all you would have is an EEG, you would have no idea whether that person was actually experiencing nothingness.

So after Leo’s last video I’ve been having lots of questions. I don’t see lots of posts here and assume it's not what people want to talk about. But still I want to get it out, even if it's just for my own relief! 1. The realization that there is nothing I’ve had many times in my life, starting when I was 16. Not being able to talk to anybody about it, it contributed to depression for sure. So that nothing part is pretty easy for me to comprehend nowadays, because looking at evolution it only seems natural that there can’t be an “I” or third entity. 2. However since yesterday I’m questioning if the realization of nothingness can be aqurate. Because after all this realization is a thought/feeling/word appearing. What if there IS something but we can’t detect it because we only have 5 senses? 3. Leo describes nothingness as an endless field. I’d be curious to know why. If it’s nothing it’s nothing or? How can nothingness be a field? Please correct me if I misunderstood. 4. Leo says the nothingess has falsely identified with our body. If so, what would the alternative be? We would be born and our parents would tell us what? That we are nothingness and shouldn’t take that body we are going to identify with too seriously? Ultimately it would mean (physical) death. Of course it’s important to ask questions about oneself and existence, but we shouldn’t forget that life is to be lived. Because after all we can be nothing when we are dead. Gee, at least I hope so. Or can the nothingness continue to falsely identify with new life by default?

@Shiva Thank you for your input. I get it, it's one "theory" Leo has and it's cool to check it out and look into it. But for myself speaking, I remain open to all possibilities, not just following one. As fas as depression and realizing the nothingness - I didn't mean enlightenment, just that there is nothing special to me except for being part of evolution, and no soul, spirit etc.

@Mutupo Ok, so it would be interesting to do an EEG on someone who realizes the nothingness.

I just watched the Neti Neti video and it was extremely helpful. So much so that I really felt something towards the end close to an enlightenment experience and it got me thinking. So what happens when I die? And what was before I was born? If nothingness has awareness, does that not make it a thing? How can it really be properly aware if it has no senses? If a robot was to be created capable of all the senses and thoughts a human can have, would it also be this empty nothingness existentially? And would that imply then that all things, rocks, cars, trees are also this empty nothingness? I kind of understand this truth of no self and empty nothing but I just couldn't help but ask these questions. Then again, if I have to ask these questions, maybe I don't understand it at all. Can this please be moved to the enlightenment section? I put it here by mistake.

You're trying to do something that goes against everything you've done in this life. I think the concept you bring up is to be used more as inspiration. In your present state of consciousness, it probably is incomprehensible. You can understand what it means by what Skypanther said but this is only the brain trying to understand itself within the limits of the brain. In order to experience it you need to start transcending limits of the human mind, which can take a lot of work over a long time, but with consistent practice its almost inevitable. I feel like its rare for a person to even ponder the possibility of consisting of nothingness, if you can do this, which you have, you've already cleared the first hurdle. I think trying to understand that you're nothing while being a human being can take a lot of passion out of living. Be careful not to use this as an excuse to be depressed! If you don't become depressed while accepting a truth you don't fully understand, then you may find an abundance of passion and purpose for this existence. I hope you can find it on your journey.

You can't understand nothingness, because it is nothingness. You can accept nothingness but it can't truly be understood. It's impossible to understand nothingness, because it's nothingness.

Ok, so in Leo's video on the Neti Neti method I noticed this trend of dismissing any thought about what you are, on the basis that you are not that thought itself. But obviously when you have some thought regarding your nature you are never claiming to be that thought, you are simply claiming that the thought describes or points to you true self. You are claiming that some thing exists which you are but you don't know much about it. This whole method seems to just create a strawman and defeat it. If it's said that any thing you identify with must be a thing you have experienced, and not just experienced for a while but experienced non-stop throughout your life you are bound to fail to find such a thing. Meanwhile, this nothingness did not have to be experienced all throughout your life. I hope it is somewhat understandable what my problem here is. I'm sure there were many people that did the Neti Neti method and it worked for them but I just felt cheated. Can anyone explain?