Everything is nothing with a twist
– Kurt Vonnegut
This is a surprisingly accurate pointer, especially when it’s specified a bit.
To me, everything is nothing with a twist.
In one sense, I am this human self in the world. It’s what my passport tells me and how others see me, and I need to be able to play that particular role in order to function in the world.
And when I look in my first-person experience, I find I am more fundamentally something else. I am capacity for the world as it appears to me. I am what the world, to me, happens within and as. I am what any content of experience happens within and as.
Said another way, I find myself as consciousness. I am the consciousness the world, to me, happens within and as. I am the consciousness this human self and anything else happens within and as.
All that is just to say that I am nothingness that takes the form of any and all experiences.
To me, everything is nothing with a twist.
It’s not a metaphor. It’s not poetry. It’s not even science. It’s direct noticing.
DRAFT
This is a very accurate pointer, especially when it’s specified a bit.
To myself, everything is nothing with a twist.
In one sense, I am this human self in the world. It’s what my passport tells me and how others see me, and I need to be able to play that particular role in order to function in the world.
And when I look in my first-person experience, I find I am more fundamentally something else. I am capacity for the world as it appears to me. I am what the world, to me, happens within and as. I am what any content of experience happens within and as.
Said another way, I find myself as consciousness. I am the consciousness the world, to me, happens within and as. I am the consciousness this human self and anything else happens within and as.
Said yet another way, the world to me happens within my sense fields. It happens within sight, sound, smell, taste, touch, and mental representations. And I am what all those sense fields – and the world as it appears to me – happens within and as.
All that is just to say that I am nothingness that takes the form of any and all experiences.
To me, everything is nothing with a twist.
It’s not a metaphor. It’s not poetry. It’s not even science. It’s direct noticing.
Even logically, I find I have to be consciousness. No matter what I am in a third-person view, to myself, I am consciousness and the world to me happens within and as consciousness.