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@Salaam Let me ask you this first: do you belief that there exists a material outside world, and you are a human inside this world? It is in fact impossible to prove an external world. Any "prove" you might take would be inside your direct consciousness and would then require a causal interpretation between an event outside of you and the "prove". What you describe with the screen is not the visual screen itself, but interpretations of other sensual sources like hearing or feeling that there is this screen even if you don't watch it. That is a belief. In actual experience, the (visual) screen dissolves into nothingness. Yes, every belief is an attachment, because it is the assumption of a concept being true or very probable, or having some judgement over a concept. But I don't agree that every concept is in itself an attachment. Concepts can arise and dissolve in the field of awareness without being attached to them. Just like a tree can arise and dissolve in your field of awareness when you drive through a forest.

First of all I highly disagree with the line "everything you theorize other than that is theoretical speculation that can never be proven". It's much easier to prove that there are very real, solid things outside our immediate sphere of awareness, then the belief that everything in the universe ceases to exists once we focus on something else. How? By the simple fact that I can influence a person's reality, my own reality even by triggering things outside of their zone of awareness that then enters and carries a dominant role in their potential movement forward. What you seem to be saying is that you believe that anything outside of your own field of awareness no longer exists and becomes nothingness? No, offense but that is almost like regressing to how a child see's the world, unable to distinguish that there are things in life outside of it's bubble of awareness, and that those things move and change independent of the child's relatively weak influence on the universe. It completely ignores limitation and inter-dependent cooperation/communication. It ignores containment, coherency, depth, range, and potential. But, what it ignores the most is connective tension, which are the threads or fields inter-connecting everything and relaying communication from one self-contained shape to another. Personally, because I can feel this tension, when I turn on my screen, I can feel the electricity humming and shifting, spreading out from the outlet in the wall, to transfer and spur motion in my pc and monitor. When I turn my head away from the monitor I can still feel the electricity coming off the machines and interacting with the air currents around me. It's the same thing with women, if we have a strong chemistry I can feel them in the air, before I even see them, and after we've connected I can subtly feel them around me even with my eyes closed. I feel the pull, the activating effect it has on my body and mind, and the way it shifts my focus. This points to a very core reality of the universe. That in order to expand our awareness, we must connect and cooperate with other things, forming a synergistic bond that increases our potential. For instance, if we want to see the finger prints left on a crime scene, we must use dust in cooperation with the skin oils left at the scene to make the finger prints more distinct. Did those prints just appear out of thin air? No through the contrast of the dust and oil inter-relating, the prints were made visible enough to surpass the limitations of what the human eye could clearly pick up and distinguish. Just like through the synergy of machine and ink, I have a printed receipt I can hold in my hand that will spur the memories stored in my head of a place that is a store, that is placed at the same address as the one printed at the top of my receipt. Ah, it appears to me that you're idea of attachments might need a bit expansion and differentiation. Good and bad are judgements about attachments, which influence how you are relating to the attachment and are derived from chemistry, but they are steps after the actual attachment itself. Every belief you have is an attachment, every conception that connects a word in a language with a particular configuration of shape (object) is an attachment. When you eat, drink, and breathe something your body breaks it down and attaches with it's part and pieces, literally absorbing what is useful and releasing it's attachment on what is not, to be expelled from your body. Our bodies have different ways and mechanisms of attaching, and so to does our mind, our focus, our relationships... they all involve connection and some configuration of attachment. Every preference, every distaste carries with it a physical response of push/pull that mediates as the different layers and parts of our body come into contact with the potentiality of attraction/repulsion for a given thing. Then there are degrees of attachment, intensities of attachment, configurations and flavors of attachment, and then the chemistry of that attachment as it relates to other attachments or potential attachments. Like, the repulsive chemistry some here have to my assertion's about the flaws of absolutism, in comparison to their attractive chemistry they have for the internalized belief about the "truth" of absolutism.

Hello. I just want to inform everyone that Magic Truffles can be a powerful tool for conciousness work. Sorry if I make grammar mistakes, English is not my main language. The shops where Magic Truffles are sold are named Smartshops, not Coffeshops. I went to one located in Red Light District. I told the clerk that I wanted truffles for meditation practice, and he recommended 10 grams of "Atlantis" tuffles. 15 grams is the recommended dose for full effect, but better start with 10, trust me. A friend was taking care of me while tripping. I took them without empty stomach because I made the mistake of having a big breakfast before, and I was in a time constraint. I should have only drink a juice. After 1 hour, my body started to relax. I started to notice colors way more vivid and I developed more visual acuity. I also noticed more sounds with my hearing. I had a small visual hallucination when looking to the ceiling of the room. I saw a lot of small bones and skulls. I understood that I don't have to be afraid of bones and skulls, because some day I will be part of them as it should be. I started to talk with my friend. I noticed how I didn't have any worry or anxiety. I was happy as I was in that moment. Then I understood how worries and axieties are toughts, and also my sense of self was also a tought. So we were just nothingness. We stayed silent for 20 seconds. We couldn't add anything to the conversation. I dind't have a non-dual experience, but now I understood way more deeply what Leo and Eckart Tolle talk about. I have 2 friends that are great examples on how to live life. Free of fears and anxieties, having a lot of experiencies and enjoying all the range of possibilities that life offers. My life has no rational meaning, but I'm here to grow and blossom as best as I can, as these 2 friends do. There is no sense on living a life with fear, anxieties or anger. As I said, all these things are nothing new for me, but this time it hit way more deeply. I wanted to live my life to its fullest. I also cried when I realized how insignificant is my life. But I cried because I was having compassion of myself. On how much I suffer, trying always to do my best, taking my problems so seriously. This deep realization lasted 1 hour (cried for 5 minutes :P). After that, my body keep in a relaxed state for a few hours more, until the effect of the drug finished. By the way, I have taken MDMA some years ago, and I think the effect is pretty similar. The problem is that I mixed them with alcohol and partying, so I din't experienced these things before.

To be aware of everything that presents itself. You don't need to know the answer you need to be aware of the question. Hold awareness on that single question. Who am I? To be aware of everything around you that is presenting itself. Take a step back and become aware of your surroundings. Just some thoughts. Become aware of who you think you are and cut the roots. It's all about being normal. And everyone is normal, because we all come from the same nothingness. Ego is the denial of that fact. Everyone is equal, because we are all 0. The Truth has no opposite. We are the surroundings. We are bubbles of possibilities.

id like more discussion on this, to be no-thing. to not be a thing, well what is a thing? an object, a form, a body, a thought, I think what describes a thing is that it can perish. Temples get destroyed ,bodies age and die, emotions pass, thoughts pass,people come and go...I think the nothingness is what remains unshaken throughout all this. Our perception, our awareness is the only thing that is persistent. We've never not been aware. It's who we are. So to identify with simply being aware of things is to be nothing. To identify is to be content, to feel completely fulfilled just being aware, which requires the emptiness of ideas and desires we think are a part of us, but are not. Desires are an outward motions, ideas are expressions of ourselves, both are creations of ourselves,but if one wants to be happy he should not identify with his creations, but with himself, the creator. The awareness that creates. Ironically to ascend you have to let go of the creations you love and desire so much. It's sort of counter-intuitive because we want to create, we want to fulfill our desires. But perhaps before we can do that, we should first realize our identity as a creator, and that means putting ourselves before any sort of outward desire. To be nothing.

To be aware of everything that presents itself. You don't need to know the answer you need to be aware of the question. Hold awareness on that single question. Who am I? To be aware of everything around you that is presenting itself. Take a step back and become aware of your surroundings. Just some thoughts. Become aware of who you think you are and cut the roots. It's all about being normal. And everyone is normal, because we all come from the same nothingness. Ego is the denial of that fact. Everyone is equal, because we are all 0. The Truth has no opposite. We are the surroundings. We are bubbles of possibilities. Do you love life or no. Think hard and decide. Be yourself, peace. We are all human and we understand each other. This is a pleasant experience in itself - to understand how your surroundings work. Walking meditation.

@LetTheNewDayBegin Why should attachment be required for interaction? This is a thread about nothingness where we have a discussion about something we disagree with. What do you expect me to say? To agree with something I don't agree with to prove that I am not attached? Possible it is. Care to show me these examples of the fallacies that describe my mind in perfect detail? If you can I would be grateful.

How else can one interact if not by transient attachment, @Echoes ? I have an observation:, you keep saying non-attachment is the recipe, yet you stay so attached to this "nothing". Why is that? Basically, all you're the fallacies of Salaam that you're exposing here, seem rather to describe your state of mind in perfect detail. Investigate, maybe your ego got attached to the concept of things coming out of nothingness?

Hey! Chill out mate. What you had there sounds like a semi-ego-death experience. The illusion (the ego/'that which you ordinarily experience yourself to be') wasn't fully killed, only stabbed a little by a sharp knife. After that you had/still have an existential crisis. That is to say, your ego got bothered by a taste of truth. Why bothered? Because the truth is that there really is no ego to be found! The ego is a hoax! And the ego doen't like that, initially, because it still *FEELS* it's a real thing (and thus the actual, real you -- which is a no-thing -- also feels that, who/what else could feel it but you? ) BUT! There is no "you" (ego) to be found anywhere! "You" don't exist as a separated individualized person - that's a hallucination fabricated by the mind/brain, which in turn is fabricated by 'the real you' (= consciousness/nothingness). "It is a truth that there would be 'no one' to experience the bad stuff but it is also true that there would be 'no one' to experience any joy in life" Of course there IS someone to experience all the bad and good stuff in life! And that's you! The 'no one' IS YOU! It is the fundamental nature of reality and it IS you! The real you! And you know this very well! Only you currently won't acknowledge it, but will seemingly rather choose to believe that you are an ego (=a person/soul) inside af a bag of skin (the body). Listen to this music to calm you down: And here are some words of wisdom from Alan Watts cherry-picked for you:

I don't agree that nothingness is the ground or the start point or the beginning. Personally, I don't tunnel vision on a single thing and say that's the start. Instead I see superposition, which is particle, wave, field, void, etc all superimposed and happening at the same time, rather than one being replaced by another. That's why I push so hard against the ABSOLUTE appellation being thrown around, because it's extreme to me and breaks the delicate balance of superposition by discarding the other stuff. I don't discard, I add and transform, maintaining space for the foundational things that are all inter-connected and can flow and access and transform into each other. All the while interacting and having chemistry with each other, because it's that chemistry, that activation that courses through and outside my body alongside normal human feelings. Well, there are different kinds and flavors of attachment. Every time you focus on something and come to a conclusion about it, you are attaching to it and creating an internalization about that particular focus that gets stored in your body and carries with it a particular chemistry that will then influence how new things you come across and attach to that are associated with that internalization will feel in contrast. This particular process is a mix of mental and physical attachments. It is the fields that are responsible for the push and pull to attach and it's their tension that intensifies the closer something is to the cusp of attaching, but fades when something completely attaches or is to distant for it's connecting fields to activate with their chemistry. I have the ability to consciously pull and release on those fields as needed. (This is all information derived from direct experience by the way. I can literally feel and observe that whole process unfold inside me) Nope, superposition is way more preferable, healthier, and creates way more evolution for me. I don't mind effort and I don't suffer. Lol, man when I was writing some of this stuff earlier it felt like breathing in pure ecstacy. It's not always the case of course, the fields I feel can bring horrible pain as well, but that's because it's honest and I'm not a victim from it (pain isn't all that bad, I even enjoy it in certain contexts and appreciate it in even more). If I fuck up or over-extend and violate the balance it will hurt me and make me sick. But, if I take my time, protect the integrity and fidelity of things, then I grow stronger and feel things that before I could never have imagined. Honestly, most of my nights I spend trying to ignore and not get pulled into all the pleasure my body has access to. It's got a gravity to it and it's amazing, but if I over-indulge it tires out my body. Lol, same thing with sex, my orgasms are so powerful with my wife, that I have to slow down and keep myself from over-indulging in my sexuality so I don't overheat when the climax rips through me. My energy is like a nuclear reactor. Almost literally, in that they share similar principles of volatility encased in cooling stability.

https://www.sciencealert.com/after-a-century-of-debate-cooling-to-absolute-zero-has-been-declared-mathematically-impossible "After more than 100 years of debate featuring the likes of Einstein himself, physicists have finally offered up mathematical proof of the third law of thermodynamics, which states that a temperature of absolute zero cannot be physically achieved because it's impossible for the entropy (or disorder) of a system to hit zero." "This explains why, no matter where you look, every single thing in the Universe is moving ever so slightly - nothing in existence is completely still according to the third law of thermodynamics." Hopefully, people can take the article and evidence above and apply it to their philosophies on life. Understanding that the seeking of absolutes is a flaw humans have yet to evolve and expand from due to our brains compulsion for tunnel-vision and propensity for choosing extremes rather than nuance and diversity, as well as foregoing balance through contrast rather than this blind reaching for balance through homogeneity. The void as an absolute is nonsense. Life is always a mixture of diversity to one degree or another and efforts to reach some idealized state of nothingness will always eventually lead you out of step with reality and how the world truly moves. Motion is the most honest thing in the world. Motion is life and understanding that, the elements of motion and how they provide shape and distinction and potentiality will do more for your development then chasing a void.

@Salaam Well if you are stating that what another is saying is ignorant, below your level, is twisting things to make them feel better, thats per definition a degradation of the things being said. Not necesserily of the human being. So where exactly are we disagreeing? When you know that there is this nothingness, you should also know that it is the ground in which everything is arising and dissolving. Why would you attach to something if you are at peace and happy if you are non-attached? That doesn't make sense to me. Thats like saying "What's better not needing an orange, needing an orange, or having the ability to choose when and where you need an orange" You can enjoy the same things non-attached, and an attachement is always a illusory mental fabrication that is only real when you think it is. Why would one attach to transient things? I'm not saying that your 13 different compound patterns or whatever isn't true, but I am saying that they are existing and arising in empty awareness. Yes, there are many modulations and things one can do with consciousness, but that doesn't change the background in which all this takes place.

Ah man, that's the thing though. I'm not doing it blindly. I know the experience of nothingness. I went years where I had compete silence in my head as a rest state. Some would even call it enlightenment. I've been there already. I can bring about that nothingness or no-mind state whenever I want. It's effortless. I've done the attachment and non-attachment thing and can choose what I attach to and modulate the nuanced degree of attachment. What's better being non-attached, attached, or having the ability to choose when and where you attach or don't and the degree? I choose the latter. Buddha seems to have chosen the former. I have 13 different compound patterns of foundational movement that exist and are occuring at all times at the same time that I am using to discern capability. There is a kind of goldilocks zone that has certain characteristics of feel when all 13 of those foundational elements are harmonized and synergized within that zone. Leo is missing some of those and I call him out on it if I come across that missing in a context that I feel will do a person harm, just like I do to anyone else. It's not about my approach, it's about these elements of movement. I didn't create them. I'm not even saying those 13 elements are all that is out there, in fact I'm saying the complete opposite when a person realizes that those elements encompass uncertainty, potentiality,mystery, and ignorance. Again we all have ignorance, it's the degree and context of ignorance that matters and how it inter-relates with every other part of us. Having a different level of development is not a degradation to me. We can still be relationally equal in humanity, despite what flaws we may or may not have. We are discussing views and approach and what we trust, not who is more valuable as a human being. At least that's where I'm coming from, in case you felt differently from my writing.

Lol, nice way to characterize me. I disagree with it of course, but whatever, enjoy yourself. What's your motivation here? Do you really want to understand me or are you entrenched in your own view and see mine in an adversarial light? Quantum Superposition is within and among and on top of, all at the same time. Personally, I can feel the shifts when my brain moves to send activation to my thoughts to start narrating and when the energy shifts elsewhere. I literally feel the subtle ways my magnetic lattice or whatever inside my head bends. I can feel which part activates when I'm thinking about numbers for instance versus thoughts of my wife. It's not about creation or arising but a different pattern of movement coinciding with different levels of activation across my body. I feel energy or fields or the shift of magnetism on top of my normal senses at all times, so my experiences and content of information will probably be different from yours. The thing is when I shift into that pocket of nothingness that you feel to be absolute, it's not an empty void for me. I feel those energy fields all throughout it, and feel at its edges all that is containing and being restrained around it as well. But who cares right? If you have no reference for it yourself and a predisposition to believe in something that conflicts with what I'm saying then these words mean nothing to you.

@Salaam I don't see your disagreement as a degradation, but your constant labeling of other opinions as ignorant, and not on your level of development. Those are just blind assumption you make about people you don't even know, and you are doint it just because they have a different view. If you label Nothingness a paradigm, your "cognitive development" is also just that. You don't even know what the nothingness "paradigm" has to offer or how the actual nothingness feels, yet you are comparing it to your paradigm and saying that it is a higher developed one. What makes you think that the things I talk about are not things I experienced for myself? Again a blind assumption to validate your own viewpoint. That's the exact same thing that Leo for example is saying about Enlightenment too. See? Yours isn't the one and only true approach.

Well, remember ignorance isn't a "yes or no" binary thing. There are degrees and areas, levels and layers. Ignorance is a very deep topic. Agreement is not the fulcrum upon which ignorance is being decided upon here. But, capability and how that capability expresses is (at least on my side of this discussion). It's interesting that you see my disagreement as a degradation. I guess you could call it that, but that's a little extreme in my opinion. It's more so an invalidation and rejection, due to the fact that I have a better view and grasp on reality, again according to my experience and awareness of the world around me and within me, compared to your absolute nothingness paradigm. Yea, you could say the same exact thing to me, in fact you are and have been since your initial reaction to becoming aware of my words. You can say and choose to believe whatever you want, but that won't change the fact that most of the things I've talked about and experienced and capabilities I've gained, you have yet to experience and manifest for yourself. Most people haven't and most people won't, because it's fucking hard and requires at least a decade of dedication constantly exposing yourself to the edges of all that nature has awaiting us. A couple years of hourly meditation and some visits to a retreat are not up to par. Will that rub people the wrong way? Maybe, but maybe that just means they need to work on their humbleness more. Once you balance and anchor into both confidence and being humble, you don't fall that often into either superiority or inferiority when you become aware of others differences in relation to yours. It's that swing to the extremes that people bitch about when it comes to ego. Eh, at least I tell you why I'm rejecting it and provide counter-points of what I think are better ways and myriads of examples all across the universe that show that reality is moving in harmony with my chosen paradigm. Man, I fucking love the universe. Just feeling it move through me is like breathing in ecstasy right now. I wish more people could feel the fields permeating the universe at all times. Y'all are missing out

@Salaam What makes you think that I have not faced my own ignorace? Is it because I am not agreeing with you? So everybody who is not agreeing with you hasn't faced their ignorance, is "arrogant", and is twisting things to make them feel better? You assume other opinions are merely "internalized beliefs" and they are triggered from your perspective. Have you considered that all this maybe is not the case? That you are projecting your own mentality onto others? Why the need to degrade other opinions? See, I could say the exact same thing to you. You haven't yet realized absolute nothingness and the background in which all of your cognitive dynamics are arising, and therefore I don't trust in the conclusions you have come to. All of what you have said plays in the relative realm of experience, you haven't yet touched that in which all this plays.

See if a person actually makes deep progress with awareness and internalization, they experience that there are many layers of consciousness and sub-conscious automation that require particular flow states which also have to do with different types of brain waves and chemical cascades within our body that need their time of activation and expression. When I sleep, those are the processes working and I have trance states that occur as I transition from those layers so the depth of my awareness and ability to observe doesn't disrupt or collapse their process. I can actually have half of my brain awake and the other asleep much like seals do as I transition, which protects the flow and activation of other parts of my brain as they come on line. So, no I don't arise out of nothing when I wake up in the morning. Why? Because I've expanded my awareness and sensitivity to deep layers of my sub-conscious, while still being delicate enough to not disrupt their integrity and coherency. This allows me to feel all the other things going on, that other people without this connection to deeper layers won't have access to. I get it, this absolute stillness/nothingness is a belief you're highly invested in and attached to. But again, based on my years of experience and success you're basing that belief on a level of cognitive development that is not reliable for making absolute conclusions. If you can't see that or don't want to see that, can't admit and humble yourself to the further development needed then...

Actually no, You are assuming what I'm doing is imagining theoretical constructs, when in reality I am honing my observational skills and capabilities with years of dedicated training that allows me to have a deeper and more nuanced direct experience. The observations science have made are a supplement to my direct experience, not a replacement. It's a corroborator just like my direct observation of nature and how it mirrors the movements inside me is a corroborator and reference. People are so dunning kruger with direct experience and too ignorant to realize how much more our bodily processes need to develop and evolve. In essence what I am telling you people is you THINK/BELIEVE these things about absolute nothingness because you are jumping to conclusions about the direct experience of reality before properly developing the multitude of capabilities humanity depends on for interacting and communicating with life via direct experience. "How can you discover a potential change if you're not aware of it or sensitive to it? How far can potential take you if you can't trust it? How well can you internalize a group of sensitivities if they're not coherent and able to create a story to build upon? What good is the story if it's rapport's are off, if it's chemistry is adversarial and in conflict? How far can you take a story if it can't flow and dance? How can you share it if you can't simplify it? What good is simplification if it get's so simple it becomes one-dimensional and it's connections collapse? How can you even build any story, or create any change of length, if you are not resilient enough to handle the pressures of it's development? If you haven't given yourself the authority to choose to do so?" Each of the above points to a specific capability we employ during direct experience. If they are not developed, not connected and synergized our experience of direct reality will be limited and flawed. We will fall prey to delusion, over-certainty, superiority, tunnel-vision, and derail our growth. We have to train them physically via life and it's resistance, much like weight training. Not just from sitting in some safe little space on a cushion for an hour and asking ourselves a couple of questions. Life demands way more then that for evolution.

@MochaSlap Only nothingness can be infinite; somethingness is bound to be finite. Only out of nothingness is an infinite expanse of life, existence, possible - not out of somethingness. It is not empty, it is overfull. Things have disappeared... and what has remained is inexpressible. We try to express it as blissfulness, as ecstasy, as eternal joy, but these are just faraway echoes of the real thing. God is not somebody: He is nobody or, more correctly, nobodiness. God is not something: he is nothing or, even more correctly, no-thingness. Never for a single moment think that nothingness is a negative state, an absence, no. Nothingness is simply no-thingness. Things disappear, only the ultimate substance remains. Forms disappear, only the formless remains. Consciousness is a quality of your mind, but it is not your total mind. Your mind can be both conscious and unconscious, but when you transcend your mind, there is no unconsciousness and no corresponding consciousness. There is awareness. Awareness means that the total mind has become aware. Now the old mind is not there, but there is the quality of being conscious. Awareness has become the totality; the mind itself is now part of the awareness. We cannot say that the mind is aware; we can only meaningfully say that the mind is conscious. Awareness means transcendence of the mind, so it is not the mind that is aware. It is only through transcendence of the mind, through going beyond mind, that awareness becomes possible. Consciousness is a quality of the mind, awareness is the transcendence; it is going beyond the mind. Mind, as such, is the medium of duality, so consciousness can never transcend duality. It is always conscious of something, and there is always someone who is conscious.

Can you find fault in this logic? I know logic is not the experience but it can be helpful I think on the path to it. If the I is not located anywhere, then it is either is nothing or everything(infinity). Since the I feels like something, then it is not nothing, so the only possibility is that I am the no-thing that is God/infinity and not Death(absolute nothing). But since infinity is made out of nothing, I essentially am nothingness, but the nothingness is aware of itself, which makes it infinity/God. Where is nothing located? Everywhere

@Shin I'm finding that it's the little things we can do throughout our day that often get us closer to our core and further away from our monkey mind. So thanks for the tips on the everyday methods that move us along the path, or even keep us on it. Sure, the longer sits, meditations, contemplations & concentrations can reveal deep insight and larger-picture thinking, but I find to go past intellectual to experiential can also be achieved, to different degrees, in all those moments we remember to remember during our day. Once we understand 'what', it's pretty awesome to start understanding and practicing the 'how'. @Dodoster I'm often contemplating and working on just this. I seem to progress a little on the intellectual side, and a little on the empirical evidence side, whenever I remember to remember. Fun huh? How much simplicity can we use to unpack and become aware of what we are (and ALL that we are and are not)? How much wisdom can we pack into one sentence. Okay, maybe not wisdom, but for sure the careful and wondrous contemplations we post begin and fuel the processes that leads to wisdom. Thanks, cool. I tend to think (think.. *sigh*) that there might not need to be an 'either' in your first sentence. I'm imagining that we are everything AND nothing. By always having been nothing (no-THING), I am actually everything that appears in the no-THINGness and... well, no 'and'... I'm just everything! ...and I made it all. Just by 'BEing' and intent. And there's only me. I made me and I made you, in order to begin to 'know' the I that I AM. I knew nothing, only myself. I 'knew', or was aware of, no-THING. But was aware that I was aware. That makes 'me' awareness itself. Nothing. Nothingness. I don't seem to remember if I, Infinity, created all of everything and everyone in order to become less than infinite in order to know myself by a conscious attempt, or if I inadvertently sprang all of the YOUniverse and Nature into creation just by fluke because I am so awesome just by default? Oh, hang on, that may be ego creeping in there now. Sooo... to make a nice short response into a convoluted mess, & then back into a of well-thought out ponderence on the essential nature of our life in a few sentences like you did; I think we may be NO-THING, and by virtue of that, EVERYTHING. I guess when that realization makes it harder and harder to be pissed off at our asshole neighbour, or the dummy standing on your foot on the bus, or some sleeping dipstick that thought being President might be fun... we're on our way. I'll shut up for a bit, lol... didn't mean to hijack your cool thoughtful thread...

Meditation is the way to find yourself, but you shouldn't be opposed to noise or other opinions. Everyone loves a circlejerk, but if you have the truth of silence / stillness/ your true self, nobody can say anything that will bother you. SO those characters in your life, the haters, the noise makers, the doubters- they offer you the opportunity to see meditation, your true self in the midst of experience. No, you cannot control others and they will never 100% do as your Ego wants so it can be happy and at peace. They are showing you there is deeper to go. If you can only find peace when doing a formal meditation, you have not found the silence behind the noise, or the nothingness behind and within everything! Also, haters gonna hate and fate is gonna fate

Mind doesnt need to know anything, what You need to do is sense the presence of nothingness with Your (Nothingness') Awareness, which is the same as awareness becoming aware of itself. That's tricky, at least for me, but my practise is clearer now with this understanding (ok maybe its good for the mind to know something hehe :D). So Nothingness becomes aware of nothingness, but this is the realm of nonduality, so to answer your question awareness, nothingness, God, presence all are one no-thing that is you, consciousness, absolute infinity. It's tricky (impossible for the mind to become aware of true nothingness) so thats why disidentification with mind/Ego is needed, so you can increase the faculty needed to sense that nothingness - that faculty is awareness! Only awareness can sense awareness (nothigness); only infinity is big enough to hold within its sight infinity; Only nothingness is small enough to see nothingness; Only you can discover your true self! I am not enlightened, but this is my understanding so far.

So just to confirm one more time. The theory here is that every single micro thing that happens in the universe is on Automatic? It sounds logical for my ego and to contemplate it, I'm guessing it's a matter of experiencing whatever 'nothingness' is to see for oneself. But isn't that 'I' that I think is willing myself into things and choosing what to pay attention to just an illusion and there's no real 'I' controlling it, even though it feels real? Or am I real, and I am the thing controlling it?