This is an interesting topic in an awakening process.
How do I experience matter?
In my experience, matter is consciousness. It happens within and as consciousness. All I experience – all the content of my experience – happens within and as consciousness.
It cannot really be any other way. I am consciousness. All experiences happens within and as this consciousness. So matter and anything else appears to me as consciousness.
What does this mean for my daily life?
In daily life, I operate within matter as anyone else. I sense. Touch things. Move around. All this is ordinary.
At the same time, there is an experience of oneness since all happens within and as consciousness. Sometimes, there is more attention on this oneness and it’s more in focus. Other times, attention is on something else – for instance a daily life task – and the oneness is more in the background.
And yet other times, I may get caught up in emotional issues triggered in me, and my perception goes more into separation consciousness. All is still consciousness and one but this goes even further into the background, at least for a little while.
How can we explore this?
For me, one of the most helpful approaches is Living Inquiries (based on traditional Buddhist inquiry.) Through Living Inquiries, I can explore how my mind creates its experience of anything including this body, my surroundings, this table, this keyboard, a tree, and so on.
What’s the connection between this and science?
Current science tells us that matter is mostly space interspersed with small fields of energy (aka particles).
That generally fits my direct experience. Matter – this body and its surroundings – happen within and as consciousness, which means within and as space. Matter appears as space. (And all of it happens within and as void.)