Again: Please remember that I'm only reporting and describing MY direct, first-hand, continuous experiences, and the understandings about my Vipassana-based meditations. This is my direct insight knowledge. I'm not reporting on your experiences. I'm not telling you what you are experiencing, or what you should experience, or how you should interpret your experiences. I'm not challenging the truth of anyone's experiences, conclusions, pathways or beliefs. I am not judging or evaluating your first hand experiences, your messages, or your styles of communication.
I'm very happy that you have experiences that might be totally different than mine, and that your direct knowledge might be different than mine. I love that we are unique. I'm in total harmony with that. I encourage you and everyone to keep meditating on the Vispassana-based paths of your choosing.
Please know that in my messages, when I use the words "you" or "your", or talk in the 3rd person, it's only to make my messages flow a little better. Actually, everything that I'm sharing is only about my experiences.
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The experience of emptiness
When a meditator is completely detached from body and external sensations, as well as detached from the ebb and flow of all conscious thoughts, dreams, feelings, imagination ... s/he floats in silence, utterly concentrated on emptiness, entangled with emptiness, being emptiness -- INDEFINITELY.
The experience of emptiness is not a fleeting thing. Emptiness appears to be standing still, while the consciousness that expresses the rest of Creation, arises and disappears on top of it.
Even tho emptiness is sometimes called "the uncreated" by some, it is actually a natural part of Creation that is everywhere -- outside and inside. Emptiness can be experienced. It is part of the Universe. It is part of a meditator's inner ecosystem. It is the most common quality in the human psychic universe ... and it is also the most ignored, the most under-appreciated, and the most undervalued.
Emptiness is experienced by being aware of the consciousness that express it ... and it is expressed with the qualities that we experience: boundless spaciousness, silence, acceptance, timelessness, tranquility, neutrality, infinity ... The reason that we can be aware of emptiness is that consciousness is expressing it ... otherwise we would not be aware of its existence, of course.
The experience of emptiness is not limited to the time spent in meditation. It's experienced everywhere in daily life. It is the fabric, the very foundation of all conscious experience. The meditator experiences it while walking, working, gardening, watching tv and movies, driving, making love, in the unfolding moments of ordinary life.
She experiences emptiness in all so-called "material objects" ... in trees, flowers, the soil, mountains, rocks, animals, insects, stars, trees, the space between objects, in books, pens and paper, computers, her own body, mind, feelings -- literally throughout Creation. It's even experienced as the vast background, while we are listening and talking, and in touch and feelings.
The experience of emptiness is not special. It is utterly normal, common, ordinary, completely natural.
It is not something that is rarely had. It is not a "big wow" experience. It is not the exclusive property of holy people and spiritual-types. It's anywhere and everywhere, and part of the normal, average, daily experience had by saints and sinners ... and all of us in between. Babies, toddlers, people on their death beds are experiencing it. EVERYONE experiences it -- but few there be that focus their attention on it for a continuous length of time, value it, and illuminate the experience.
Again: the meditator can be focused on emptiness, and be emptiness, in an unbroken concentrated, continuous way -- indefinitely.
The structure of the emptiness experience
In my ongoing first-hand experience of emptiness, the 2 main observations as to the structure of the emptiness experience are:
1. The awareness of emptiness, with no observer.
2. An observer is aware of emptiness.
To a meditation researcher like me, s/he allows both experiences to freely exist, and she is unattached from both. She happily experiences emptiness, with and without an observer, again and again -- anywhere, anytime, throughout her life. She does not give more value to one or the other, but is happy to have the experience of both -- millions and trillions of times -- forever.
In the totality of my first-hand, ongoing, eyewitness, direct experience ... #2 is the clearest, most accurate truth.
To the Buddha, he said that #1 is the clearest, most accurate truth.
That's perfectly fine with me. I welcome everyone to have their own experiences and have observations and conclusions that are totally different than mine ... or the same, or completely different than the Buddha's.
You can easily experience both versions ... just stop your mind and observe the experiences. Don't just read about it, and then follow in lock-step with what a teacher is saying, or with what I'm saying -- experience emptiness for yourself -- continually. Be a lamp unto yourself. Again: these are not big-wow moments. They are the most common and ordinary first-hand meditative, and daily life experiences.
Flickering emptiness
In my experience there's a deeper level of concentration within the sphere of emptiness:
As the emptiness is fully concentrated upon (with zero effort, zero distraction, and with absolute relaxation), it is experienced as flickering on and off, countless times a second.
And so there's an awareness of emptiness in a fraction of a second, and nothing in the next fraction of a second. The nothing is like, symbolically speaking, a "black hole". It can be portrayed in a flow of words like this:
... > emptiness > black hole > emptiness > black hole > emptiness > black hole > emptiness > black hole > ...
In my experience, I tunnel into the black hole experience and arrive at these possibilities:
1. The awareness of a black hole, with no observer.
2. An observer is aware of a black hole.
(That is: the observer is aware and it experiences a black hole)
Both experiences exist. I allow both to rise into awareness and disappear, freely -- forever.
In the totality of my first-hand, ongoing, eyewitness, direct experience ... #2 is the clearest, most accurate truth.
Awareness of the black hole only exists on the front end and back end of the experience ... like, when entering and leaving the extremely brief experience.
Again: I welcome you to have the same, or different experiences ... and I consider your experiences to be equally as valid and real as mine.