Emptiness = Experience

[Visionary]

Guys, 

So i've reached a point where i feel completely empty when meditating. As if i'm the empty moment where all experience takes place. But i was wondering. Isn't emptiness the experience itself? Think about it: without experience there can be no emptiness. Without emptiness there can be no experience to take place. Isn't this another dualistic game our ego tends to play with us? I've contemplated these questions for half an hour and had some amazing insights. Emptiness is exactly the experience itself. Every experience or qualia has that knowing intelligence itself. The experience is the knowing. Not the emptiness. 

What do you guys think?

Edited January 24, 2017 by Visionary

[rebecca]

Yes , emptiness is itself experience. All and nothing

[Dodo]

36 minutes ago, Visionary said:

Guys, 

So i've reached a point where i feel completely empty when meditating. As if i'm the empty moment where all experience takes place. But i was wondering. Isn't emptiness the experience itself? Think about it: without experience there can be no emptiness. Without emptiness there can be no experience to take place. Isn't this another dualistic game our ego tends to play with us? I've contemplated these questions for half an hour and had some amazing insights. Emptiness is exactly the experience itself. Every experience or qualia has that knowing intelligence itself. The experience is the knowing. Not the emptiness. 

What do you guys think?

If you feel completely empty when meditating and it feels amazing, you should meditate every action! This is a formula to Enlightenment (Peaceful and Joyful living). 

Every action is meditative action when you pay full attention to the current step, now, and do not divide your attention (treat the current action as if it's the most important thing that you could be doing at this moment). 

Edited January 24, 2017 by Dodoster

[cetus]

40 minutes ago, Visionary said:

Guys, 

So i've reached a point where i feel completely empty when meditating. As if i'm the empty moment where all experience takes place. But i was wondering. Isn't emptiness the experience itself? Think about it: without experience there can be no emptiness. Without emptiness there can be no experience to take place. Isn't this another dualistic game our ego tends to play with us? I've contemplated these questions for half an hour and had some amazing insights. Emptiness is exactly the experience itself. Every experience or qualia has that knowing intelligence itself. The experience is the knowing. Not the emptiness. 

What do you guys think?

@Visionary Yes, it is an experience of the observer, observing an empty mind. Which in itself is a beautiful thing. But it can go deeper than that.

When it does, even the observer is gone. There is no experience to be had at that point. No-one remains to experience anything.

 

[Tancrede Pouyat]

No. Just no. Emptiness does not equal experience. Emptiness gives rise to experience. Be careful here, I'm not just playing with words. 

[Visionary]

22 minutes ago, Tancrede Pouyat said:

No. Just no. Emptiness does not equal experience. Emptiness gives rise to experience. Be careful here, I'm not just playing with 

[Visionary]

@Tancrede Pouyat isn't this a dualistic point of view? Try contemplating that. 

[Visionary]

39 minutes ago, cetus56 said:

@Visionary Yes, it is an experience of the observer, observing an empty mind. Which in itself is a beautiful thing. But it can go deeper than that.

When it does, even the observer is gone. There is no experience to be had at that point. No-one remains to experience anything.

 

Exactly! Once i tried to view the experiential content as the source of knowing (counsciousness itself) it looked like i, as the observer, was gone. I stopped right there because it was a bit too much for me now.

[Tancrede Pouyat]

21 minutes ago, Visionary said:

@Tancrede Pouyat isn't this a dualistic point of view? Try contemplating that. 

No, it's not. It's Nothing. And Nothingness is the one eternal constant. Experience is Everything, and it's impermanent and ever changing.

[cetus]

13 minutes ago, Visionary said:

Exactly! Once i tried to view the experiential content as the source of knowing (counsciousness itself) it looked like i, as the observer, was gone. I stopped right there because it was a bit too much for me now.

@Visionary It sounds like you know exactly what I'm talking about. I was about to experience this again yesterday and I backed off. It was right in front of me and I guess my subconscious refused to let me go after the other experience. Or should I say the non-experience of not existing. I didn't see it as negative thing at the time. I didn't even know I was completely gone until I returned. But something in me now breaks that before it happens, if it knows it's coming.

[Visionary]

10 minutes ago, cetus56 said:

@Visionary It sounds like you know exactly what I'm talking about. I was about to experience this again yesterday and I backed off. It was right in front of me and I guess my subconscious refused to let me go after the other experience. Or should I say the non-experience of not existing. I didn't see it as negative thing at the time. I didn't even know I was completely gone until I returned. But something in me now breaks that before it happens, if it knows it's coming.

Yes! I immediately got panicky and anxious. This is a good sign. The ego doesn't like it Did you also experience that the qualia did not gravitate in a way it normally does around your ego? As if everything remained where it was and your egoic center disappeared.  Got a glimpse of it today. Was not a very pleasant feeling.

What to do next? Detach from the experience and be aware to not conceptualize anything right? Egoic traps.

[cetus]

1 hour ago, Visionary said:

What to do next? Detach from the experience and be aware to not conceptualize anything right? Egoic traps.

@Visionary Looks like that's about all you can really do. Yesterday while meditating I was in the usual emptiness of mind and everything was cool. Than suddenly it was like a black hole appeared in front of me within that emptiness. It was so dark and empty I can't even say it had a color to it. Even black doesn't describe it. Really weird!  But that's what snapped me out of a nice deep mellow meditation. Now I don't know if that's just my mind playing games with me or something else? Whatever it was it startled the shit out of me. Hopefully I'll be ready next time and it won't catch me off guard. If it happens again I'm just going to let go and fall through it.

[Visionary]

4 hours ago, cetus56 said:

@Visionary Looks like that's about all you can really do. Yesterday while meditating I was in the usual emptiness of mind and everything was cool. Than suddenly it was like a black hole appeared in front of me within that emptiness. It was so dark and empty I can't even say it had a color to it. Even black doesn't describe it. Really weird!  But that's what snapped me out of a nice deep mellow meditation. Now I don't know if that's just my mind playing games with me or something else? Whatever it was it startled the shit out of me. Hopefully I'll be ready next time and it won't catch me off guard. If it happens again I'm just going to let go and fall through it.

Maybe that's what they call "the void" ?

[30secs]

12 hours ago, Visionary said:

Emptiness is exactly the experience itself. Every experience or qualia has that knowing intelligence itself. The experience is the knowing. Not the emptiness. 

True, but as Leo always said keep working because we dont know, maybe theres a twist, much surprising things to come.haha.dont know

[30secs]

11 hours ago, Tancrede Pouyat said:

No, it's not. It's Nothing. And Nothingness is the one eternal constant. Experience is Everything, and it's impermanent and ever changing.

try always to consider that even duality is part of non duality or oneness...exactly its a large spectrum

[Visionary]

@30secs exactly. Aren't we missing out on the ultimate illusion? Is it not the ultimate paradox that Nothing really is Everything? The "crack" in my head has never been opened as much when focusing solely on emptiness as a pure, somewhat seperate, cosciousness. But indeed. Let's work our asses off.

[cetus]

10 hours ago, Visionary said:

Maybe that's what they call "the void" ?

@Visionary Yea, that's what I was thinking too, but I'm not sure. And I have experienced something that could be considered "the void" before on two occasions. It was empty, timeless and infinite. But it had a quality to it that is indescribable in words and it seemed to be the source of all things..

But since this 5meo experience of infinity and God came along that leo talks about, where does the void fit in? I posted a picture once of what I thought infinity looked like (from my direct experience) and Leo shot that right down saying that no way is infinity like that and it was full of colors, and infinite and anything but empty and it was god. So what's the truth? I'll post that picture of what I experienced as "the infinite void". It's called the "shiny black nothingness" and that describes it perfectly.

 

[cetus]

I know to the mind's eye this picture looks bleak, But it wasn't that way at all. Like I said it felt as if it was the source of everything. It felt like home.

I remember when I experienced this void or nothingness that all questions fell away. It was if it knew everything and everything was taken care of.

It was the most blissful thing I ever experienced. It was communicating with me without saying a word. What was it saying to me? "Don't worry, I got this"   "I always have and always will"

[Visionary]

14 minutes ago, cetus56 said:

I know to the mind's eye this picture looks bleak, But it wasn't that way at all. Like I said it felt as if it was the source of everything. It felt like home.

I remember when I experienced this void or nothingness that all questions fell away. It was if it knew everything and everything was taken care of.

It was the most blissful thing I ever experienced. It was communicating with me without saying a word. What was it saying to me? "Don't worry, I got this"   "I always have and always will"

Incredible man. That's absolutely beautiful. I've had a very small taste of absolute infinity 5 years ago after a shroom trip. Did not know anything about spirituality or whatsoever. Hope to experience the same again once. This shiny blackness you speak of. Check this out. 

the dude (David Icke) starts speaking around 7 min. He also speaks of this phenomenon.

[cetus]

 

@Visionary It sounds like David Icke had quite a long conversation with the universe/consciousness.  "Anything that vibrates is illusion" He also says he was "taken away to another place" ( as a word description only). That too relates to the experience I had  b-c it felt as if I had entered another dimension or something. Yea, the shiny black. Exactly! Everybody must experience the same basic thing but in different ways and no one way is any more (or less) valid than another. Some could experience infinity as colorful streaming lights. and someone else experience infinity as a shiny blackness that  has no color to it. Thanks for posting that! It really helped me a lot! And I can't say for sure, but I'm thinking now that was the void that appeared in consciousness the other day during meditation and not just my mind playing tricks on me.