I think you nail some concepts. I am quite on the opposite side of your and many others' vision. Let's make an example. You are a character in a videogame. Somehow you become sentient. You start observing the videogame world and find some glitches. From those glitches you start postulating how things really are. Eventually you hypothesize there must be some machine doing calculations that result in the videogame world. Eventually you manage to get things exactly right, and your model reflects the actual machine, and you correctly guess the will of the programmer who built the whole thing. So, my question is, did you discover the true reality? No. The true reality for you is the videogame. In the videogame you are a character, in the true reality you are meaningless, some electrons through wires. Your meaning is in the videogame. Sure, the programmer can save you and make you part of his reality. But until that happens, the true reality for you is the videogame, because there lies the meaning.

What does that mean for me? basically, I don't consider myself an entity trapped in a body. I consider myself a character in a world. Till game over. I believe in a higher level of existence beyond the world, but until game is over, the meaning is here. HTH.

BTW, John:1 in the beginning there was the word. But the word in greek is Logos. And Logos means meaning. I find that fascinating.