Need help with self-inquiry question

[Cepzeu]

When I first heard about the true self being infinite, I imagined how I was everything I experienced but also all these places around the world and different galaxies etc. 

Recently I broke through the distinction that reality is what is happening right now in the present moment. Thus the past and the future are not real.

I have this new understanding which I think is correct conceptually but could someone confirm this please?

When you're experiencing the present moment, everything that you don't see does not exist. is that correct?

For example, if you're sitting in an empty room with 1 door and no windows but you also hear sounds (such as music or conversation) from outside the room, does that mean that the source of that sound (which you can't see) doesn't exist in the now? The possible source of that sound (even if you "know" 100% what it is, say one of your parents talking) is just an idea, right? In fact is it wrong to attribute a source to a sound? Is a sound just a audible phenomenon and a sight just a visual phenomenon and we falsely attribute that they are linked (i.e. a person is visual, voice is audible, but we attribute the voice to coming from them) or is it all combined experience?

Similarly, if there is a couch in front of a wall, and you don't see the wall behind it. Even if you can intuit that there is a wall there, would it actually be truer that you don't know there is a wall there. In fact, to the observer there is nothing behind the couch?

Thanks

[tecladocasio]

The reality is that even if you see that thing doesn't exists , there is only the sense of vision , the ''thing'' that you are seeing is just an idea

 

 

[Nahm]

@Cepzeu that’s sometimes referred to as the copenhagen model, or the ‘collapse’ of reality contingent on observation / measurement, but the only reality is nothing. 

[Cepzeu]

3 hours ago, Nahm said:

@Cepzeu that’s sometimes referred to as the copenhagen model, or the ‘collapse’ of reality contingent on observation / measurement, but the only reality is nothing. 

Could you please elaborate on the only reality is nothing. (I understand this is the end paradigm, but I'm still working towards it). Does it mean that the visual detection of an object is itself an idea? For example, say 'I'm' meditating and 'I' look at a couch. A couch is seen by ('my') awareness. I should say: a couch enters the field of awareness. Is the awareness of the couch an illusion? (not by me or the body or the mind but by awareness). This is what it sounds like when you say reality is nothing. 

Apologies for the language, I realise this stuff is hard to articulate.

[Leo Gura]

@Cepzeu As they say in Zen, nothing is hidden.

Perception is reality. If you are not seeing it, it doesn't exist, so to speak. But even more of a mindfuck is to realize that even that which you are seeing, also doesn't exist!

Existence and non-existence are a conceptual duality.

But since you're new to this, just start off with becoming aware of perceptions coming in and out existence (your awareness) every second.

Mindfulness/meditation is all about starting to take your perceptions literally, and not figuratively like most people do. Which means, if you don't see the chair, stop assuming it exists.

And if you want to take it one step deeper, when you look at a chair, notice it doesn't actually exist! The chair is made of nothing, like a hologram or an object in a video game. It's a virtual chair, so to speak. A hallucination. But that's not easy to see without crazy focused awareness skills.

[sgn]

@Leo Gura But Leo! Isn't the chair something existentially?
For example:
If I have what I label as a coin in my hand. Isn't it more of something (or nothing, whatever)  in my hand than it is if I remove it from my hand?
What is it that I'm feeling there?

Edited December 30, 2017 by sgn

[Greatnestwithin]

3 minutes ago, sgn said:

@Leo Gura But Leo! Isn't the chair something existentially?
For example:
If I have what I label as a coin in my hand. Isn't it more of something (or nothing, whatever)  in my hand than it is if I remove it from my hand?
What is it that I'm feeling there?

Notice that even whatever you feel when you hold a coin is in relation to your soft skin.

Even that feeling itself is relative.

[Greatnestwithin]

Perception is creation literally so. The feeling of holding a coin it's there cause it's created in relation to your skin. 

Same with all the senses. You are you as much are you are your enviroment. You do define your enviroment as much as it defines you literally so.

Edited December 30, 2017 by Greatnestwithin

[Nahm]

5 hours ago, Cepzeu said:

Could you please elaborate on the only reality is nothing. (I understand this is the end paradigm, but I'm still working towards it). Does it mean that the visual detection of an object is itself an idea? For example, say 'I'm' meditating and 'I' look at a couch. A couch is seen by ('my') awareness. I should say: a couch enters the field of awareness. Is the awareness of the couch an illusion? (not by me or the body or the mind but by awareness). This is what it sounds like when you say reality is nothing. 

Apologies for the language, I realise this stuff is hard to articulate.

The only reality is nothing; everything is not actually anything, it’s illusionary / appearance. What we can’t see or hear, what we traditionally refer to as nothing, is actually reality, as in real and eternal. It’s there, which is actually nowhere, right “under” or “behind” everything, though it’s all there is, so ‘nothing is hidden’ - It’s “within” or “behind” and is, what your person is, similar to how you are “behind” everyone in your dreams, though in the dream it “appears” other people are “there”. As I experience it, I refer to it, as love, and I could not be without it no matter where I go or what I do, because everywhere I go, and anything I do, is actually, in reality, more illusion of ‘me’.  Every ‘thing’ takes place as the illusion of this love / nothingness, which is what I am. It can be experienced, but not by you, because it is you. Experiencing no “you” (human / person) is experiencing actual you.  When experienced, the traditional “you” is revealed as no more ‘you’ than a tree, as everything sensing, and everything sensed, is the illusion of the real you. To use science jargon, what’s on the other side of the wall in front of you, is still in superposition / uncollapsed / the real you, everything that is not yet any thing, because it’s nothing / all things in actuality, and no thing yet in appearance. In spirituality terms, it’s God, and it’s you, in actuality there’s no term for it, because it is “behind” any thing which thinks and says any words. So a word always “points” or suggests what it is, never actually describing it. The words God / everything / nothing / self / etc, are words used in an illusion intended to describe what is not the illusion, so they don’t actually describe any thing, they just reinforce the relative point from the illusion.  “It” is the ‘space’ between the words. “It” is silence. Just my thoughts / experience / opinion on this everybody, don’t get your panties in a twist on “me”. ?❤️

[Leo Gura]

3 hours ago, sgn said:

@Leo Gura But Leo! Isn't the chair something existentially?
For example:
If I have what I label as a coin in my hand. Isn't it more of something (or nothing, whatever)  in my hand than it is if I remove it from my hand?
What is it that I'm feeling there?

This is not a thing you can resolve with your mind -- not even close.

Something is nothing, and nothing is everything. But this cannot make any sense to you while in your present state of dualistic consciousness. You have to collapse the distinction between something/nothing.

Who said there is a difference between something and nothing? Start questioning that assumption.

[sgn]

@Leo Gura I see.

[tecladocasio]

@sgn Your hand is just a sensation and a sight perception , tell meu , why the sensation of your hand is you and the sensation of the coin is not you ? What tell that the sight perception of your hand is you and the coin is not ? 

[Cepzeu]

15 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

@Cepzeu As they say in Zen, nothing is hidden.

Perception is reality. If you are not seeing it, it doesn't exist, so to speak. But even more of a mindfuck is to realize that even that which you are seeing, also doesn't exist!

Existence and non-existence are a conceptual duality.

But since you're new to this, just start off with becoming aware of perceptions coming in and out existence (your awareness) every second.

Mindfulness/meditation is all about starting to take your perceptions literally, and not figuratively like most people do. Which means, if you don't see the chair, stop assuming it exists.

And if you want to take it one step deeper, when you look at a chair, notice it doesn't actually exist! The chair is made of nothing, like a hologram or an object in a video game. It's a virtual chair, so to speak. A hallucination. But that's not easy to see without crazy focused awareness skills.

I always found that quote funny as in 

A: there is nothing hidden from you, it's right in front of you.

B: nothing is hidden, so you have to go on a journey to find it, eventually realising (A).

 

Ok, when you say even what I am seeing doesn't exist does that mean the visual phenomena that is experienced doesn't exist at all or that the visual phenomena exists but the "objects" depicted don't exist. The latter makes more sense to me in the following way (referring to objects in a video game as you described):

(assume for the sake of this analogy that visual phenomena are occurring for a perceiver located in the alleyway looking at the building with the shadow)

So a visual phenomena of the surface of the building and the surface of the ground would enter awareness but, in reality, since no visual phenomena "behind" the building exists there is actually nothing there. So the building and ground are a 2D visual phenomena that is backed by nothing, a hologram. But also there is nothing between the two buildings in the alley, we might call it a gap of air. So the true self is the nothing that backs everything. Meaning the buildings and road don't exist, they are made literally of nothing. 

(ignore the clouds and the horizon, its the best image I could find to support this analogy).

A similar analogy is that there is an infinite black void of pure darkness and a flashlight is aimed into it and "objects" or visual phenomena appear but they are actually backed by nothing and everything the flashlight doesn't shine on doesn't exist in the now. You are the nothing that is all the phenomena and the infinite void.

That's what I'm getting at from a very literal point of view, does it make sense @Leo Gura?

12 hours ago, Greatnestwithin said:

Perception is creation literally so. The feeling of holding a coin it's there cause it's created in relation to your skin. 

Same with all the senses. You are you as much are you are your enviroment. You do define your enviroment as much as it defines you literally so.

This is a great point!