Emptiness, Ego and the "Self"

Trying to grasp some concepts that I'm clearly not capable of understanding. I keep hearing words like "spacious awareness," "awake awareness," "formless invisible life force" and their contrasting concepts "ego," "false self," "persona" and the like. We are supposedly all interconnected and are One on some vast level and are not independent entities.




This space represents the fact that I haven't grasped it yet.



I can't even describe what I'm confused about, I'm so confused. I don't even know what I don't know, or if I'm capable of knowing even that much. I would like to "wake up" or become "enlightened" but I just keep waking up into another dream. Is a tree a tree? What kind of dumb question is this? "Form is emptiness and emptiness is form." What?! I'm pretty sure that's a paradox. So non-duality recognizes its inherent inability to describe absolute reality?

Sorry, I'm listening to: "Shift into Freedom: The Science and Practice of Open-Hearted Awareness" and I'm having so many issues with the concepts being described. I'd like to experience whatever is the end result from this teaching on a visceral level. Peace, love, compassion, understanding are all held out as promised benefits. So far I am still having a hard time even accepting it intellectually, although the author is using pretty plain language. It's just that I'm not feeling any of what he's talking about.

Waiting for the "aha."

I'm trying the exercises, but I can't seem to unhook my local awareness and move it even one inch from my current physical location. I'm not feeling the spacious awareness, interconnectedness, pure awareness, or any other subtle aspects of my supposed totality. I have to pause the audiobook every couple of sentences or so and say, "Nope. Haven't gotten that far yet."

I'm just me. I'm stuck in "ego identification." Sure, there is an awareness of sorts. But it is very stuck in its locality. I can think about things outside of myself, but they are just thoughts, not any kind of accurate awareness of reality. Surfing the cosmos in a state of non-stuck awareness sounds great, but I can't get past the awareness of my ass, sitting in my chair, listening to mumbo-jumbo.

Maybe in another lifetime. Oh, wait, only NOW exists. No procrastinating or postponing to a future time. All future times exist NOW, allegedly. Kinda throws free will out the window, another paradox. If the future already exists then all decisions have been made, therefore I can't affect the outcome one whit. I can only go through the motions and watch as the illusion of a person making pretend choices plays out.

Or are there multiple futures? Which one is real? Do any of them exist, really?

In the present moment I can set all kinds of things in motion. Those things play out in an ever changing motion picture of present moments. I'd like to have stop, rewind, re-record, splice and erase features but apparently they aren't available in this year's model of reality.

No, I'm not on drugs. I probably need to be, though. This thinking shit is really for the birds. Better off watching mindless tv.

People have been thinking about this stuff for a long time, explaining it in terms that make sense to them. For example:

https://www.facebook.com/IAmSamLongSamIAm/posts/10215352352140176

 https://www.facebook.com/adyashanti.org/videos/249233965738440/UzpfSTExNzcyNDU4MDU6MTAyMTUzNjEyNzg4MDMzMzc/