Dwelling Upon Seeming Levels of Emptiness?

Your understanding is standing in the way of your progress.

In “Form is emptiness and emptiness is form” for example, the word “emptiness” has two different referents. The first one points to the direct meditative insight of the emptiness of all manifested form. The second refers to your understanding that the insight provokes. It is the discriminating mind getting in the way, extruding the direct meditative experience through your conceptual understanding, so to speak.

Please note that I am not saying that the normal understanding of that expression showing an equivalence between form and emptiness is wrong. I am pointing out that there is a subtler meaning at the juncture you’ve reached.

In addition, [the instructions] on clarifying doubt and subduing hinderances are as follows. While maintaining the continuity of the great, indwelling fundamental nature, if one thinks that the nature of this awareness is empty, the one ascribing emptiness to this is the intellect, which has a focal point. The way the meditative concentration with a focal point does not produce Buddhahood is as stated in the “Perfected Skill of the Lion” tantra: “The meaning of the nature of phenomena cannot be seen through meditation with concentration. The samādhi of one’s own appearances eludes the direction of concentration. Free from elaboration, the nature of phenomena is equal to the limits of space. All mental considerations are devoid of conceptual fixation with objects. The dharmakāya Buddha free from the four extremes, such as existing or not, is one's own awareness.” (“The Yeshe Lama,” by Jigme Lingpa, translated by Lama Chönam and Sangye Khandro, 2008, page 57)

To which I will add: ... in leaving behind the idea of independent inherent natures in all things, we must not lose sight of the fact that reality is nondual, and thus, the appearances are not something separate and apart from the naturing and its essential cognitive role, i.e., knowing is the activity of manifesting, not understanding what is manifested.

Accomplishing this through a direct insight is the threshold of full enlightenment, and thus, this is the final step in the direct and universal path to enlightenment. However, the difficulty in this last step is that all mental formations must be left behind, all impulses to do anything whatever must be left behind, all perception and apperception must be left behind, so that all limitations are sublimated into absolute freedom.

In practice, this is a state in which there is just spaciousness. No thought of a meditator meditating, or of accomplishment, enlightenment, wisdom, perfection, nor anything else. No thoughts arise. Sensations are no longer attended to, not because one stops attending to them, but because that discriminating response is simply no longer functioning. If you turn your mind toward such a sensation, it will be actively apperceived as a sensation of a particular type, so the mind must rest as it is: spaciousness —but not just empty dead space. Instead, one reaches a stage where there is just clear lucidity, in the sense of reflexive knowing that we can also call clarity. This means our normal perspective evaporates. Time no longer passes. There is not even a need for the concept of "now." Just illumination without limit. Beyond this, there can be only poetry.

One final suggestion. Ok, a few... You have to stop looking for answers in texts, because that just provides conceptual understanding, and as I said, that is no longer helping you. You have to have faith (or trust, which is the same thing) in your path. Stop knowing what everything is in that limiting way and realize the necessarily true meaning of knowing. Perhaps look into where that “claimant” you mention is. You might be truly surprised.