Help me understand Nothingness

[GabeN]

I've had a few awakenings here and then, mostly on psychedelics, but this Nothingness subject is the hardest for me to tackle, I just can't wrap my head around the intellectual idea, let alone the meta physical aspect of it, I read "God is Nothingness" but i think there is a lot of work for me to do yet, any help would be appreciated.

Edited November 10, 2019 by GabeN

[Sempiternity]

No one can explain it to you. You can only experience it. Keep having more awakenings to explore and discover. Leo has said it can take a dozen or more Awakenings to fully understand. 

[TrynaBeTurquoise]

Think of nothingness being identical to something-ness. God is nothing, meaning it has no defined boundaries, but yet it is still everything, meaning it is a shapeshifter with no set form, so it makes up all form. So that something, or form, really is nothing, its just an appearance, an illusion. 

[GabeN]

33 minutes ago, TrynaBeTurquoise said:

Think of nothingness being identical to something-ness. God is nothing, meaning it has no defined boundaries, but yet it is still everything, meaning it is a shapeshifter with no set form, so it makes up all form. So that something, or form, really is nothing, its just an appearance, an illusion. 

Oh I always loved is analogy of shape shifting , for you to be a shape shifter, you need to be absolutely nothing , nice one

[GabeN]

49 minutes ago, Jed Vassallo said:

No one can explain it to you. You can only experience it. Keep having more awakenings to explore and discover. Leo has said it can take a dozen or more Awakenings to fully understand. 

Yeah I can imagine mate, I haven't had enough awakenings let alone deep ones.

[Forestluv]

For now, I would simple go for the facet of Nothing/Everything awakening. Adding in God realization to Nothing/Everything adds in variables.

The mind has evolved and is conditioned to perceive separate things. It is conditions to form and perceive distinctions. There is nothing wrong with that - things and distinctions are cool too. . . Yet there is also the deconstruction of distinctions to One Nothing/Everything. . . Conceptually, image One Everything. Look around the room you are in. Imagine every thing in the room is One Everything (including you). . .  Now point to one hint that isn’t the One Everything. You can’t. You would need to separate out a “thing” from One Everything. Yet there are no separate things in One Everything. It’s One Everything. So there is No-thing. There is No-thing to contrast Everything with. Thus, Everything = No-thing = Nothing. This is one way to approach it.

The resistance of the mind will be: “But wait! There are things!”. Yes there are also things. The mind creates separate things from One Everything/Nothing. 
 

Psychedelics stimulate nondual awareness and can be helpful for this awakening.

[GabeN]

37 minutes ago, Serotoninluv said:

For now, I would simple go for the facet of Nothing/Everything awakening. Adding in God realization to Nothing/Everything adds in variables.

The mind has evolved and is conditioned to perceive separate things. It is conditions to form and perceive distinctions. There is nothing wrong with that - things and distinctions are cool too. . . Yet there is also the deconstruction of distinctions to One Nothing/Everything. . . Conceptually, image One Everything. Look around the room you are in. Imagine every thing in the room is One Everything (including you). . .  Now point to one hint that isn’t the One Everything. You can’t. You would need to separate out a “thing” from One Everything. Yet there are no separate things in One Everything. It’s One Everything. So there is No-thing. There is No-thing to contrast Everything with. Thus, Everything = No-thing = Nothing. This is one way to approach it.

The resistance of the mind will be: “But wait! There are things!”. Yes there are also things. The mind creates separate things from One Everything/Nothing. 
 

Psychedelics stimulate nondual awareness and can be helpful for this awakening.

Oh wow, that needs some serious contemplation, I did have a non duality experience and I see where you're pointing to, but the Ox is good at hiding I guess

Correct me if I'm wrong , but this is where Not Knowing can be a key.

[Forestluv]

51 minutes ago, GabeN said:

is where Not Knowing can be a key.

Aren’t knowing and not knowing ideas? Are not ideas “things”? And don’t all things collapse into One Everything? 

In our room of One Everything/Nothing, it doesn’t matter if there is knowing or not knowing. There is One Everything. Thought, no thought, pencil, no pencil, knowing, no knowing, space kangaroo, no space kangaroo. There is no separation. No-thing to know or not know. One Everything. 
 

[Leo Gura]

@GabeN Nothingness is not an idea. You will never understand it in the way you're trying to.

Only awakening. No other way.

Any attempt you make at trying to understand Nothingness takes you further away from it.

Just stop and sit in silence. Look at your hand. Do not talk. Do not think. Do not move. Do not try to figure it out. Do not ask questions.

[Nahm]

@GabeN I’d suggest framing the experience of being you as a human up as a ‘your bubble’ of experience and your vibrational offering, getting it sound & high on the emotional scale. On a future trip, you might find yourself, in defiance of what is possible, outside this “bubble”...in, and more accurately as, nothingness. Not sure if this adds sense or takes away by adding more to concept, but that is a step to collective consciousness, which also is only experiential. 

[cetus]

@GabeN Nothingness hides in plain sight. It is all around you. It is inescapable.

[SoonHei]

 

I belong to no one,  I have no ties in this dream of others , the music plays and thoughts dance in the direction of love.

 

-Erik Reutzel

Edited November 11, 2019 by SoonHei

[erik8lrl]

You can't understand nothingness because you are it. You can only know it after you realize that. Beingness will lead you there.

[The Lucid Dreamer]

First, instead of trying to conceptualize nothingness, try to contemplate somethingness and what it means for something to be something.  We go throughout our lives sort of tacitly assuming that we understand what it means for something to exist as a thing. But seriously think about that.   What does it mean for something to be something?  Is that even a coherent notion?  

Notice that no matter what kind of answer you might try to give to this question, you will always run into an infinite regress. No matter what label you want to slap onto an apparent surface when trying to describe the substance of reality, you will get no closer to actually “knowing” what the substance of reality is.  For example, look at any object in your surroundings and ask “What is the ultimate substance of this object?” Well it’s made out of atoms, right? But of course, in the face of this explanation, you can simply ask “Okay and what exactly are atoms?” Well, they are made out of an electron orbiting a nucleus of protons and neutrons.  “What are those made of?” Weell, they’re made out of dual particles called Quarks.  “And what are those?” Weeellll they’re made out probably even smaller fundamental particles. “Aaaannd what are those made of?” Weeeeelllllllll let’s just assume that string theory is true and say that they’re ultimately made of vibrating strings of energy.

 And with this, you might be tempted to think that that’s it.  That’s the ultimate substance of the object you’re questioning. But notice, all these labels that you slapped onto all these apparent surfaces did not get you any closer to actually “Knowing” anything about the true substance of that object.  Because you can just ask again. “What is energy?”  And even if you can get further down than that and say that energy is made out of X.  You can just ask again, “What grounds X?” And this will go on ad infinitum.  

No matter what ground you propose for an apparent surface, you can just always ask “What grounds that?” And this can never end, even in principle as long as you are taking a rationalist reductionist approach to this question.  Even if you could somehow definitively prove that it bottomed out somewhere, you still couldn’t find an actual reason for that bottom.  Because to find a reason would be to reduce it even further down, which is exactly what scientists don’t want to be able to do.  

At some point, you’re just going to have to say, “It just is.” And this is tantamount to saying that reality has no reason for it’s existence, which is tantamount to saying that reality is made out of nothing at all.  Now the question becomes, “If reality is made out of nothing at all, then why does there appear to be something here?  This is a paradox!  You know what else is a paradox?  The concept of... infinity.  Infinity and paradox are one in the same.  So to say that reality is a paradox, is to say that reality is infinite.  So reality is simply Infinity.  And so the reason why there appears to be something here, is because infinity requires that all possibilities, finities and forms manifest and be experienced within itself, even though the ultimate substance of those forms has to be nothingness.

 So the way you can think about reality, is that it is nothingness inverted into everythingness through the strange loop that is consciousness.  

Edited November 11, 2019 by The Lucid Dreamer

[VeganAwake]

Its pregnant nothingness

It's the center of the Spiral

It's zero and it's Infinity

It's nothing and everything

It's pure potential

IT IS YOU... SURPRISE!!!

[montecristo]

i kinda thought it had something to do with what is experienced (or not) when you ARE NOT aware of something.

for example looking at a horizon and knowing there is something beyond it but not experiencing it in any way. just NOT in your awareness.

sometimes when i contemplate "nowhere" and it hits me that i'm really nowhere I get this feeling of fear that washes over me and makes me want to shit my pants