I’ve realized there’s some irony in trying to rid yourself of the notion of “self.” You have to step back from your own mind and observe it as a third-party, like you would consider a good friend. When you see a friend falter, you don’t scold them or condemn them; you sympathize, help them out, encourage them to keep trying. When a friend suffers a minor setback, you don’t wail and moan and predict their demise; you shrug and say, “It happens, you can handle it,” and move on.
We have to treat ourselves–our minds–as a close friend we care very much about, but as separate from ourselves.
And yet, it’s also true that there is no observer inside our heads. There is no self. Consciousness isn’t magical, ethereal, outside the rules that govern the universe. It arises from the same atomic matter that everything does. What we think of as “me” isn’t really there, not in the way we think it is.
It’s like being a self-driving car (if it’s possible to imagine being a self-driving car…). It’s possible that a Google car thinks it’s a driver driving a car, when of course the truth is that the car and the thing driving the car are one and the same.
And yet in order to effectively drive the car, the care has to behave as if it is a separate driver.
That metaphor is a bit thin, I’ll admit, and I’m tired of typing the words “car” and “driver” over and over, so I’ll just leave it there. The important takeaway here is: Treat your mind like it’s a good friend, or a car that you really care about. Or something.
The Vulcan Buddha 