The definition of 'Who' you are, can only be relative to others. It is the distinction that exists between you and everyone else that defines 'you'. The areas in which those distinctions exist, define the boundaries of the definition of you.
The self-comparative mechanism which the brain produces to achieve this identification is called the ego—the Latin and Greek word for 'self'. The ego could also be defined as the conceptualised self, as opposed to the purely existent self. The conceptualised self comprises what has happened in the past and what you might be in the future, all wrapped up into a fictional present. The existent self is who you actually are at that present moment, without any judgement being made to quantify or qualify that self—the true self or First Self. The true self by this definition, is beyond description, as any attempt to do so is fraught with judgement and belief systems, which end up making it subjective and ultimately untrue.
So, if for the purpose of definition we divide ourselves into our true selves and our false selves, then the false self will be the part which has become habitualised into following patterns influenced by an unknowing society, and the true self will be the divine entity that is just existing and observing. The true self is the natural self, the part unsoiled by silly games.
If you are cognisant of yourself, that self is ego (false self). When you are your true self, that god cannot even see the fool ego. Higher awareness is just awareness without the ego. The ego dulls us like a dark filter laid over the pure brilliance of our true selves. It is this true self that we truly want to be, because that is when we are just being the universe, and the universe doesn't have any problems. All problems come from ego and society and the expectations inculcated by it. Ego is a social conformity mechanism and is rooted in caring about the opinions of others. This caring is insecurity by definition, even if you are puffing yourself up by putting others down.
You can't have an accurate concept of yourself; it always involves the perspective from another, even if that another is you. Ego always involves another's perspective, a seeing of oneself from the perception of oneself or another. It is never real.
You could look at it so that the First Self is the same as the ego but without the affectations that have been picked up along the way, because the detached observer is also the lost in it reveller, just without these patterns attached. It is these patterns that are the ego. Having no affectations is the encapsulation of the pure self; the affectations are mostly from the society and are created by the mind.
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If the ego is the false self, then the true self without its help would have long ago stumbled over a cliff and died on the jagged rocks below, as you are your true self when a baby, which is totally trusting and free from care, but vulnerable in the world. The care of the mother and father can of course prevent the cliff fall, but as the baby grows up it needs an internal parental care for the occasions when they are not there. This self-caring mechanism is the ego; this is its purpose. The mothering aspect of it will boost self-opinion, keeping it safe from the derogatory opinions of others, while the fathering aspect will not allow social suicide and keep behaviour in line with what is acceptable in society, (or the other way around).
The ego is a protective mechanism, and by so being it is also inevitably a restricting mechanism. Just like real parents and our social indoctrination, it needs to be transcended.
The conceptualising of this 'self', is a judgement subject to comparative observations involving others, and necessarily focuses upon certain aspects and overlooks others. The aspects that are focused upon are often those that the society has deemed desirable and are therefore relative to the development and maintenance of that society. The concept that is formed, because of the generalisation, is apt to be false and hence the term false self. Conversely the true self is where no self-judgement is being made, and the natural processes are free to be expressed without the hindrance that self-observation brings.
My ego is always trying to be what I was in the past, or what I can be in the future. To be what I am in the present requires no defence. To be what I am now is the unassailable truth. The justification of myself now is simply a story of the past and my hopes for the future. All conceptualization is the mind using past and future; truly being in the present allows freedom from the ego.
The ego of a person is often meant to refer to the over evaluation of themselves, while the under evaluation may be called timidity, but both are forms of insecurity and both of these are the wrong concept of ourselves. Our self-doubt will inhibit us and prevent us from utilizing our true selves, slowing down our progress. Over-evaluation tries to quicken things up, eventually producing frustration and dissatisfaction; and hence, the correct concept is always now, here in the present without any concepts, because they are either going to be too little or too much, slowing it down or speeding it up, neither of which are true. Therefore, the correct concept of oneself is no concept. The true ego is no ego. The true self is no self. No story will set you free.
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One of my first memories of ego was walking down the corridor of my infants school, at the age of 4 or 5, to go to my mum's class where she was teaching some older children. I remember getting to the door and not being able to reach the handle, and so when I knocked and was told to come in, all I could do was stand there and wait. I then used to sit on mum's lap while she read a story to the other children, who all thought I was adorable.
The awareness that the children were looking at me, made me self-conscious which made me want to avoid this ego producing situation which made me try and hide from it, eliciting "ahs" from the children and the appellation of being shy. But I wasn't trying to hide from the children's attention on me, I was trying to escape the ego arising within me. It made me squirm with uncomfortableness; I disliked it intensely and wanted to run away.
On my way to the classroom, I had met a teacher coming the other way, who stopped me to ask where I was going, as classes had already started. Before I was stopped, I was aware that I was doing something that was not normal and became self-conscious when I saw the teacher. I remember that I had had this experience of self-consciousness before and that I didn't like it. I remember actively trying to dismiss the experience and knew that it wasn't good. I think I can remember knowing a previous life where this was the norm and that I vowed I would not be like that this time, but this might be retrospective overlaying, or it could be a mix of memory and future projection formed in this life, or even knowledge of the future seeping in. But I was aware of how overwhelmingly caught up in it you can become and how unreal it was. I was aware of how affecting of your life it was. I was aware of how it should be avoided at all cost. I was even frightened of it.
I have noticed this in my cat too. When I played with her, she would invariably become self-conscious at some point, and then distract herself from it by stopping playing and vigorously cleaning herself instead. It is a good tactic and I copy it by distracting myself by focusing strongly into sensation, usually my breathing. Licking myself really doesn't do it for me!
But this self-consciousness was a bit like cheating the true reality, and felt wrong, as if I was fouling my divine self. As the teacher was talking to me, I was thinking how does he manage to control this state of self-awareness, and can he see mine? But of course, he wasn't controlling it at all, and had spent almost his entire life in that state, to the point that he didn't even realise it, and this is the norm for nearly everyone. It is the social conformity mechanism at work, the thing I have been trying to avoid all my life.
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The actual self is relative to its environment. You behave differently according to your circumstances. Your mother, a baby and a mate are all interacted with differently, with you assuming a mode of interaction different to each. Your modal response can be humble and contrite in one situation, and arrogant and obnoxious in another. All these 'selves' are mechanisms to allow you passage through a particular social event, with the ego reacting to the environment it is in and producing a state of operation which is moderated by the particular aspects suited to it, or previously performed in it, and so is effectively a modular of characteristics. These characteristics may persist beyond the event to become an acquired personality, a habitual affectation gained from adapting oneself to its environment. It also happens with ageing, with the adoption of certain types of behaviour and mannerisms which you didn't have before; the ego of old age.
Each environment will produce an ego capable of maintaining its survival, acquiring attributes that favour that circumstance and creating a character to which you can be bound to in that circumstance. Ultimately, we have to pay homage to society, but in every environment a different ego emerges according to the different needs to survive in the new rules. The organism will find its easiest path to accomplish what it sees as its goal, which is always a form of survival.
The ego could be seen as a pattern of previous habits which the mind forms into a definition of oneself. Aspects of your life that can be encapsulated. They usually include future extrapolations too. Your very core self—the First Self, isn't yourself at all; it is everyone. What becomes identifiable as me or you, we can then later deny as even being the real us.
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This word 'self' is reflexive and refers to person, but it is not consciousness. The consciousness that lies at the base of each person has no judgement or concept forming; it is the witness or observer, and before any mental processing, and it is only upon the activity of the mind does identity of self occur.
Consciousness is created just by the brain being there; it is the result of the brain existing. The idling engine before it is put into gear by the mind. It is the activity of the base neuronal exchanges that produces it. Recursion without data.
The extrapolation of consciousness to non-sentient objects is a fantasy of the mind, a construction by the mind, and not verifiable experience. It comes from the observation of limitlessness due to lack of boundary in the experience, and then retrospectively applying this to the universe as it is also a boundary less base, and then extending this concept to everything within it. Core consciousness is at the base of experience, and it is an assumption of the mind that makes it the base of the universe too. It does feel like this when everything is experienced as one, and I understand why the paradigm exists, but this concept may be better applied to a base functioning of the planet rather than of the universe itself, which I expound upon later.
There certainly cannot be any experience or awareness without the accompaniment of this substrate of core consciousness, but to equate it with the underlying universe and call it eternal is entirely without qualification even though it may seem like it. This might be conceived of as the mind of God, but it is our own mind that we are experiencing as it produces a fiction of our experience. There is an impossibility to verify the origin of consciousness empirically due to the fact that as soon as any concept is produced, that will be the mind doing it. As soon as you zoom in to take a closer look, there is something else there then. This is why it cannot be described—there is an uncertainty principle at work.
The core substrate of the universe is energy, not consciousness. The quantum fixing of reality by observation cannot be the method that has created the universe up to this point of there being observers in it to do that observing, and that process of creation is still happening. Consciousness is the root of the creation of experience, not physical reality. Consciousness is the root of the story telling, not the 'One Story'.
After you die, reincarnation states that you carry on in the form of another being. But that being is any of the beings that are actually alive now, because this part that carries on, is already there. The only way you can really die, is if every being dies. You carry on through the lives of others because the base of you is the same in everyone—consciousness. The individual base you, that you consider to be the true foundation of you—the First Self, is also in everyone else—right now. The individual and its character traits that accompany this are engendered by the process of living, and are part of the physical being that dies, and die with it. The consciousness that survives, survives because it is already existing in others—it doesn't travel like an entity; that is pure fiction. This core consciousness is what we also call the soul, and everyone has the same one. Here we have the overlapping of the term's soul, consciousness and self.
The creation of experience is the product of the bodies sensory mechanisms morphed into concepts by the brain. The creator is the mind, and the formation of this creator is a story that separates what the mind makes up from what has made up the mind.