If Everything is Energy, Why Do We Feel So Solid?

Outline

• A personal starting point: the strange moment in meditation when my body stopped feeling like a body
• What physics actually says about matter, atoms, and empty space
• Why our senses build a solid world even though there is almost nothing there
• The brain as a prediction machine, and how it constructs "solidness"
• What Buddhist teachers noticed about this thousands of years before quantum physics
• How trauma locks us into a heavier, more solid sense of self
• Practical ways to feel the truth of this, not just think about it
• What changes when solidness starts to soften

Facts & Statistics

1. An atom is about 99.9999999999996% empty space. If you removed all the empty space from the atoms in every human being on Earth, the entire human race would fit inside a sugar cube. (Source: Fermilab, Don Lincoln, 2016)
2. The mass of the proton comes mostly from energy, not matter. Only about 1% of a proton's mass comes from the Higgs field giving mass to quarks. The other 99% comes from the binding energy of the strong force. (Source: CERN, "The Higgs boson and the origin of mass")
3. The human brain generates its perception of reality with roughly a 100 to 300 millisecond delay from the actual event, meaning what you feel as "now" is already a prediction the brain has constructed. (Source: Eagleman, D., "The Brain: The Story of You", 2015)
4. In a landmark 1998 experiment at the Weizmann Institute, researchers showed that the mere act of observation collapsed the wave-like behavior of electrons into particle-like behavior, suggesting reality at the quantum level depends on measurement. (Source: Nature, Vol. 391, 1998)
5. Vipassana meditators show measurable changes in interoception and body perception, with studies indicating altered activity in the insular cortex, the brain region responsible for the feeling of "having a body". (Source: Farb et al., Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 2013)

Quick Answers (TL;DR)

• Matter is mostly empty space held together by fields of energy. Physics has known this for over a century.
• We feel solid because our brain builds a simplified model of reality based on what is useful for survival, not what is true at the deepest level.
• The sense of a solid, separate body is a construction, not a fact. You can feel this shift in deep meditation.
• Ancient contemplatives noticed this long before physicists did. They called it emptiness, or anatta, non-self.
• Solidness is not wrong, it is functional. But when we mistake it for the whole truth, we suffer more than we need to.
• You can loosen the illusion through attention. Not by thinking about it, but by feeling the body as sensation, as vibration, as change.

Full Content

The Moment My Body Disappeared

I remember one long sit during a Vipassana retreat. Maybe day seven or eight. I was scanning through my body slowly, feeling each part, when something strange happened. My hand stopped feeling like a hand. It felt like a field of tiny movements. Tingling, buzzing, changing. I could not find where the hand ended and the air began.

I did not do anything special. I was just paying close attention. And when attention got fine enough, the solid hand I had known my whole life was no longer there. What was there instead was activity. Vibration. Something happening.

For a moment I was scared. Then curious. Then quiet.

Later I read physics books and Buddhist texts and neuroscience papers. All of them, in different languages, were describing what I had felt on that cushion. The solid world is not as solid as it looks. My body is not as separate as it feels. What I call "me" is more like a process than a thing.

This article is about that discovery. First I felt it. Then I looked for it in books. That is the order for me. Always.

What Physics Actually Says

Let me start with what science tells us, because it is genuinely strange.

An atom is almost entirely empty space. If you scaled up a hydrogen atom so that the nucleus was the size of a marble in the middle of a football stadium, the electron would be somewhere out in the parking lot. Everything in between is empty.

"If you took all of the space out of the atoms that make up every human on Earth, the entire human race would fit into the volume of a sugar cube." — Don Lincoln, Fermilab physicist

But it gets stranger. That "empty" space is not really empty. It is full of fields. Electromagnetic fields, quantum fields, the Higgs field. What we call a particle is more like a stable vibration in a field than a tiny ball of stuff.

And the mass of a proton, the thing that makes matter feel heavy, comes mostly from the binding energy of the strong nuclear force. Not from any solid substance. Energy, held together in a stable pattern, is what we call matter.

So when you touch a table, what is really happening? Your electrons and the table's electrons repel each other through electromagnetic force. You never actually touch the table. You feel the resistance of energy fields pushing against each other. The solidness is a sensation the brain creates from that resistance.

Matter is energy in a slow, stable pattern. That is what physics has been saying for a hundred years.

Concept	Everyday Experience	What Physics Says
A solid table	Hard, still, made of wood	99.9999% empty space, atoms vibrating, electromagnetic fields
Touching an object	Skin meets surface	Electron clouds repelling each other, no actual contact
Your body	A single solid thing	Trillions of atoms, mostly empty, constantly exchanging matter with environment
A rock	Permanent, unchanging	Atoms in stable vibration, slowly changing over time
Weight	Amount of stuff	Interaction of energy with the Higgs field and gravity

So Why Do We Feel Solid?

This is where it gets interesting for me. Because if physics is right, and it is, then the felt experience of solidness is not the truth of what is happening. It is a useful story the brain tells.

The brain did not evolve to show us reality. It evolved to keep us alive. If our ancestors had perceived the world as fields of vibrating energy, they would have been eaten by tigers. They needed to see solid tigers, solid rocks, solid food. So the brain built a simplified model. A cartoon of reality that works well enough for survival.

Anil Seth, a neuroscientist I read after noticing this in meditation, calls perception a "controlled hallucination". The brain does not passively receive the world. It actively predicts it. It sends predictions down, then compares them to sensory input, and updates the prediction. What you experience is the prediction, not the raw data.

"We do not experience the world as it is. We experience the world we construct." — Anil Seth, "Being You", 2021

This means the feeling of having a solid body is a prediction. A very consistent one, made billions of times a day, but a prediction nonetheless. When you meditate deeply, you can catch the prediction in the act. You can feel the model being built. And sometimes, if attention gets fine enough, the model dissolves and you feel closer to what is actually there. Vibration. Change. Process.

What the Contemplatives Knew

The Buddha, 2500 years ago, taught something called anatta, usually translated as non-self. He was not doing philosophy. He was reporting what he saw when he sat still and looked carefully.

He said if you look for a solid, unchanging self, you will not find one. You will find sensations, thoughts, feelings, perceptions, all arising and passing. But no solid "you" behind them.

He also taught impermanence, anicca. Everything changes. Nothing stays still. The body you have now is not the body you had ten years ago. Most of your atoms have been replaced. And even in this moment, at the level of sensation, nothing is holding still.

"Whatever has the nature of arising, has the nature of ceasing." — Traditional Buddhist teaching

When I first heard these teachings, they sounded abstract. Philosophical. But when I sat and watched my own body carefully, I understood. They were not making claims about metaphysics. They were describing what anyone can see if they look closely enough. My body is not a thing. It is a happening.

Physics arrived at the same insight through math and experiment. Contemplatives arrived at it through direct observation. Both are looking at the same reality, from different angles.

The Brain That Makes Us Heavy

Here is something I noticed in my own life. When I am stressed, tense, or afraid, my body feels much more solid. Heavy. Dense. Like a rock.

When I am relaxed, or after deep meditation, my body feels lighter. More like a cloud. More like something happening than something existing.

This is not just poetry. It is neuroscience. The insular cortex, a region of the brain, generates the felt sense of the body. When trauma or chronic stress is present, this region gets locked into patterns of hypervigilance. The body is scanned constantly, and it is scanned as a defended object. A fortress. Something to protect.

Bessel van der Kolk, in "The Body Keeps the Score", describes how trauma survivors often lose access to interoception, the felt sense of the inside of the body. The body becomes numb, or frozen, or reactive. The natural fluidity of sensation is replaced by a heavy, defended sense of self.

Trauma makes us more solid. Not because our atoms change, but because our brain's model of the body becomes rigid.

So the felt solidness we take as the baseline of reality is partly a product of nervous system state. A regulated, safe nervous system feels lighter. A chronically activated one feels heavier. This is not the truth of matter. It is the truth of the observer.

[Link to related article on trauma and the nervous system]

The Practical Question: Does This Matter?

Someone might read all this and say, so what? I still have to go to work. I still stub my toe. The solid world is what I have to deal with.

Fair enough. And I agree. The relative reality of solidness is not a lie. It is a useful truth. If you jump off a building, gravity will treat you as very solid indeed.

But there is another level. And knowing about it changes things.

When I understood, felt, and confirmed in books that my body is not a solid separate thing, something shifted. I started to hold myself more lightly. My sense of "me versus the world" softened. My grip on identity, on being someone, loosened a little.

I still have an ego. I still have a name, a business, opinions. But underneath, there is a quieter knowing that all of this is a temporary pattern. A guest in this body and mind. Passing through.

This is what the Buddha called liberation. Not escaping the world, but seeing through the illusion of solid separateness while still living in it fully.

How to Feel It, Not Just Think It

Reading about this is useful, but it does not change much on its own. The mind will just add "everything is energy" to its collection of beliefs and go back to feeling solid.

What actually changes things is direct experience. Here is what has worked for me and what teachers I trust recommend.

Body scanning. Sit still. Move your attention slowly through the body. Do not label what you find. Just feel. Notice how, when attention gets fine, what you thought was a "leg" is actually thousands of tiny sensations, all changing.

Following the breath. Feel the breath as pure sensation. Not "my breath" but sensation of air, of movement, of temperature. Watch how nothing about it stays still.

Feeling the edges. Where does your body end? Try to find the exact edge. In careful attention, the edge becomes fuzzy. Where does skin end and air begin? The brain has drawn a line, but the line is a construction.

Watching thoughts. Notice a thought arise. Notice it change. Notice it pass. See if you can find the thinker. Look carefully. Report back.

None of this is about believing anything. It is about looking. And looking honestly, patiently, without agenda. The solidness will start to loosen on its own. You do not have to force it.

What Changes

When solidness softens, a few things happen.

The fear of death lightens. Not because you have solved anything, but because you see that what you thought was "you", a solid separate thing, was never really that in the first place. Something continues to happen. Something arises and passes. The story of "my ending" becomes less gripping.

Compassion grows. If I am not solid, and you are not solid, then the wall between us is thinner than it seemed. Your suffering is not so far from mine. Kindness becomes more natural.

Grip loosens. Possessions, achievements, opinions, all the things we try to hold onto, start to feel like sand in a fist. The tighter you grip, the more it slips. Letting go becomes easier.

And there is a strange kind of joy. Not happiness in the usual sense. More like a background aliveness. A recognition that being here, in whatever form, is remarkable. Improbable. Precious.

"When you realize nothing is lacking, the whole world belongs to you." — Lao Tzu

I am not enlightened. I am not a guru. I am a student, a few steps ahead on the same path many others are walking. I still forget. I still get caught in the story of solid self. I still suffer.

But I have felt, more than once, the ground shift. I have felt the body become vibration. I have felt the separation between me and the world go quiet. And each time it happens, I trust a little more that what physicists and contemplatives have been saying is true.

Everything is energy. And we feel solid because that is what the brain builds for us to survive. Both are true. And the deeper truth is worth touching, again and again, in whatever way you can.

FAQ

Q: If everything is energy, does that mean the physical world is not real? A: No. The physical world is real, but it is not solid in the way our senses suggest. It is real as a pattern of energy in stable form. The illusion is not that the world exists, but that it exists in the fixed, separate way we usually feel it.

Q: Is this the same as saying "we create our own reality"? A: Not exactly. Physics does not say you can think a rock into a cloud. It says the rock, at the deepest level, is not what your senses tell you. The brain constructs your experience of reality, but the underlying physical laws are not up for negotiation.

Q: Does quantum physics prove Buddhism? A: I would not say prove. But there are interesting parallels. Both point to a reality where things are not as separate or solid as they seem. I stay cautious about mixing them too closely, though. Physics is math and experiment. Buddhism is direct experience. They speak different languages about, perhaps, the same territory.

Q: Can I experience this myself without years of meditation? A: Yes, in small ways. A few minutes of careful body scanning can reveal that what you call your hand is really a field of shifting sensation. Sensory deprivation, deep rest, or moments of awe can also open a crack. Long practice deepens it, but the door is always there.

Q: Is feeling the body as vibration dangerous? A: For most people, no. It is a natural shift in perception. For people with severe trauma or dissociation, deep body work should be done with a trusted teacher or therapist, because the loosening of the usual sense of self can bring up strong material.

Q: Why do we feel heavier when we are stressed? A: The nervous system tightens muscles, restricts breathing, and focuses attention on threat. The insular cortex, which generates the felt sense of the body, gets locked into a rigid, defended state. The body then feels dense and heavy, because that is the pattern the brain is running.

Q: If matter is mostly empty space, why can't I walk through walls? A: Because the electromagnetic force between the electrons in your body and the electrons in the wall is very strong at short distances. Emptiness at the atomic level does not mean nothing is happening. The energy fields are what make things feel solid.

Q: Does this mean the self does not exist? A: The self exists as a functional pattern, like a whirlpool in a river. The whirlpool is real, but it is not a thing. It is a process. Same with the self. It exists, but not as the solid unchanging entity we usually take it to be.

Q: How is this useful in daily life? A: For me, it lowers the grip. I take myself less seriously. I hold things more lightly. I am kinder, most of the time. When I remember that everything, including me, is a temporary pattern, it is easier to be present with what is here.

Q: Do I have to believe any of this? A: No. Do not believe. Look. Sit still and pay careful attention to your own body and mind. Whatever you find will be more valuable than anything I or anyone else tells you.

Author Bio

Paweł Sokołowski is the CEO of CONTADU and NEURONwriter, where he builds AI tools for content and search. Outside of work, he is a Vipassana meditator, a traveler through more than fifty countries, and a doubting Buddhist exploring the intersection of biology, trauma, Eastern wisdom, and consciousness. He writes at sokolowski.in about what he finds when he sits in silence, and then goes looking for it in books, science, and the teachings of others. He is not a guru. He is a student, a temporary guest in this body and mind, sharing what he learns as honestly as he can, in the hope it might be useful to someone walking the same path.

References

1. Lincoln, D. (2016). "The Inner Life of Quarks." Fermilab public lecture series.
2. CERN. "The Higgs boson and the origin of mass." home.cern
3. Eagleman, D. (2015). The Brain: The Story of You. Pantheon Books.
4. Weizmann Institute of Science (1998). "Quantum theory demonstrated: Observation affects reality." Nature, Vol. 391.
5. Farb, N. A. S., Segal, Z. V., Anderson, A. K. (2013). "Mindfulness meditation training alters cortical representations of interoceptive attention." Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 8(1), 15-26.
6. Seth, A. (2021). Being You: A New Science of Consciousness. Faber & Faber.
7. van der Kolk, B. (2014). The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma. Viking.
8. Goenka, S. N. (2000). The Discourse Summaries: Talks from a Ten-Day Course in Vipassana Meditation. Vipassana Research Publications.
9. Rovelli, C. (2017). Reality Is Not What It Seems: The Journey to Quantum Gravity. Riverhead Books.
10. Lipton, B. (2005). The Biology of Belief. Hay House.

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