What is ‘The Self’?

First thoughts on the Self

We are a humunculous of different parts interacting with one another. We have a part that remembers, a part that observes through the various senses, one that thinks about things (e.g. likelihoods of things happening), an emotional part, and so forth.

The imagining part of us is the one that constructs the summary of our “self”, but it is bound to be but an approximation. For example, by definition we may not know about unconscious drivers of our emotive responses, and the fact that emotions will arise over certain conditions (e.g. things we call “ emotional triggers”), which may only pop up occasionally, meaning we forget about them until the triggering behaviour or incident occurs.

The above ‘imagined self’ feels more concrete, but it is not “in the moment” -> it is assembled in the mind but without attention to the immediate present being experienced, for while it searches to create the concatenated string of elements that it wishes to unite as one being, it does not have the capacity to do that and be present in the moment. In meditation we can become aware of our own awareness (of our own awareness), but such awareness is very fragile and quickly dissipates.

So, is this awareness, then, our “true self”? Both the being that is aware of the awareness, and the awareness itself? If not, it is probably the closest to access to our own conscious experience we have, and at least seems that it may be one element of our self. I do agree with Derek Parfit and meditation teachers, however, that this consciousness-of-the-present-awareness is not the same everytime, and thus the “Self” is not monolithic and stable like a rock, but rather continuous and changing like a stream.