[Dustin]

Originally Posted by Shivani Devi

I'm still stuck on how nothing is 'real' outside my mind when my senses say otherwise

How this part of it works is that is how the brain basically functions. When you see light passes in through the eyes and is translated into other signals. When you use your other senses take in things they work in a similar manor. The issue with sensory information is that it is difficult to say if a stimulus such as the light you see is actually coming in or is does it just seem as if it is; such a thought is how the idea for the matrix was created.
For me I can not or haven't tried to disprove the thought but other models of reality I find just as good for describing observations and these other models feel better to me.
In the first paragraph I described a hypothetical situation in which the sentence you wrote could be explained. The second paragraph was my thoughts on the subject. The subject however was relational to the video and I was only able to get myself to watch 34 minutes of it before too many issues in how it related to me had developed, but in this paragraph I well attempt to address the thought in relation to the video. I think for the video the real thought was that nothing was just as unreal as it was real. The video was describing the mechanics of consciousness and in doing so it exposed various pieces and chose to call them illusionary. I think the word illusion was a mistake; the basic thing with the word illusion was, in think, not that reality was fake but that our common experience of reality is not as limited as we would imagine it to be. Penny Pierce is an author who writes about such things, her book Leap Of Perception would be helpful; it helps to develop such abilities. From what I got from the video it was saying that the outside (ones body, other people and their reactions, and the world) is a solidified frame which exist in an infinite variety; consistency in frame transition is a common experience but not a limitation of consciousness (the inside, the observer). For me I don't like the idea of infinite realities but it is a possibilities that needs to be eliminated in coming to understand things. The system of the video was dealing with causal rules; effecting such rules means, if you believe that the body and universe is made of layers, means getting in touch with one of your most subtle layers and effecting change through it. Other layers function on an energetic or on a physical level.

Originally Posted by Shivani Devi

and also how many people can perceive the same thing if nothing really exists outside the mind.

what exists outside consciousness in the video is the solidified frames. Imagine that all possibilities have already occurred, the frames are moments in time too short to include time, time is produced through frame transition, so the frames already exist but consciousness choices which to experience next or which to link into a chain of frames. The idea about other people in relation to the frames is aether that no one else exists or that there are infinite realities so that for each individual consciousness the sequence of frames are past through in a different way without effecting causality or effecting individual free will. Personally for various reasons I believe that other people exist and reality in singular not infinite; the way I preserve causality and free will in a consciousness based model of reality where in individuals can impact manifest is by employing levels of awareness, levels of consciousness, a process of unity, and through a more ambiguous definition of personal self.

Originally Posted by Shivani Devi

As a spiritual person, I can understand how everything is connected at the atomic or sub-atomic level

I agree but I don't know if the video would agree in the same way to such a statement.

Originally Posted by Shivani Devi

, but there are still distinctions between 'self' and 'other' and between 'subject' and 'object' and about existing and orienteering my position within space and time, when all of that is just a product of my mind...and I cannot explain to myself how that can possibly be....and lordy, how I have tried because I want to know...I want to feel this.

in the video other would be the frames which exist in all time. Self in the video would be the individual point of consciousness which choices frame sequence. The connection in self and other through unity is usually a concept relational to a different point in space-time ie. the frames exist in all time in this dimension of space-time but in a different one they must have been imagined into existence by consciousness which can at some point be divided into multiple points of consciousness or could be considered for all time and dimension as singular; because I did not finish the video I can not say for curtain what it was stating.

Originally Posted by Shivani Devi

Now I am wondering if this is basically only me, or do others also struggle with wondering if things exist ONLY because we see them or they wouldn't exist otherwise?....nope, don't get it.

It's a common experience. Einstein rejected quantum physics, which we now know to be true, because he didn't like the idea of uncertainty, of a things ability to collapse into wave form when not observed. For me I would resolve the issue by saying that other observers exist beyond myself in the same singular reality which helps to keep things from collapsing into non-manifest.

Originally Posted by Shivani Devi

So, if there are simple explanations for this, I am all eyes.

the matrix movies would be the first example; another would be the many worlds theory, parallel universes; another would be a movie real. A movie real is made of images; multiple movie reals exist; when a movie was played in a theater in the old way it came on multiple reals which had to be linked together; it is not necessary to link the same similar reals together, one could even cut all of the images in the real apart and then randomly link them together; consciousness watches the movie and control the order of images.