The "Illusion of Self" perhaps states the case too strongly, or at least, it's a statement that immediately raises objections, because our sense of self feels so real. Maybe the better place to start would be with the question "Who am I?" If you were to answer that question with your name, or where you work or live, or that you are a teacher or an artist or a father or a mother, these are only partial answers, and do not come anywhere near to describing who you are.
     We have this sense of "this is me" and think of ourselves as being the same person this year as we were last year, and certainly the same person this morning as we were when we went to bed last night. This feeling of “this is me” is unshakeable, even though there is plenty of evidence that we are not the same person we were years ago. Our face and bodies have changed, certainly since we were a baby, and our world view has probably changed significantly since we were in elementary school. Nearly everything about us has changed, yet we feel the same – we look in the mirror and we know it’s us (see the Nasrudin story in the quotes to the right).
     Are we really exactly the same person we were yesterday? And how would we know? Psychologists say who we think we are today is demonstrably different that who we thought we were yesterday in various and significant ways, that our opinions and points of view change from day to day, even from moment to moment, depending on situation and who we are with, but we typically don't notice this. Candace Pert, who wrote “The Molecules of Emotion”, says that we are constantly changing and we are "more like a flickering flame than a hunk of meat".
     This month's discussion is not about proving or disproving whether you have a “self”. This is a futile enough exercise that even the Buddha is said to have gone silent when asked the question directly. The discussion is centered around considering that you may be much more than you thought, much more fluid, much less limited, but that this “who” that you really are may not be limited to your individual body or mind, that in some very fundamental way, we are truly not at all separate from anyone else or anything else. Einstein in the quotes column to the right, called it a delusion of consciousness.
     In Jack Kornfield's video, Sanctuary, he says that we need to recognize both our larger self, which has no boundaries, and our more conventional individual self, and forgetting either one is problematic.

     We are constantly changing; everything is changing, and as long as we live, we are just as we are. So we ask, what are we? What is our unchanging essence? What we think we are, unfortunately, is not what we are, or at most only a very small portion of it. A large amount can't be contained in a small container. Our life is like an iceberg; we can consciously perceive only a small portion of it. The larger portion is under water. If we try to understand our life using our limited knowledge, understanding is impossible. What is our life? As Buddha and all the masters tell us, it's altogether one life. Even saying "one" sounds silly. Since everything is nothing but your life, it's quite all right that some things are big and some are small, some are high and some are low, some are dark, and some are light. But since we find it difficult to accept things as they are, we have to practice, and the struggle begins.
           - from The Hazy Moon of Enlightenment by Taizan Maezumi and Bernie Glassman

    It’s funny—we all pretty much agree that life is in constant flux. Yet we prefer to cling to the illusion that we ourselves are solid things moving through a changing world. “Everything is changing except me,” we tell ourselves.
    But we are mistaken. We are not only the small solid selves we have taken ourselves to be.
    We are not the accountant. Not the schoolteacher. Not the barista. Not the software engineer. Not the writer, nor the reader of this book. At least not exactly as we imagined. Not separate and apart. We are in flux. We are made up of dancing elements. We are, like everything else, at once here and disappearing.
           - from The Five Invitations by Frank Ostaseski

    There is a famous Ojibwa Indian saying, "Sometimes I go about pitying myself, when all the while I’m being carried by great winds across the sky." There is a vastness to life unfolding, and we are a part of it. We’re not separate from it. When we feel this, we know that we too will be carried through periods of difficulty and ease, grief and joy, loss and success, and that we’re part of something so much larger.
           - from Patience is the Wrong Word by Jack Kornfield

    [This] story is about a little wave, bobbing along in the ocean, having a grand old time. He’s enjoying the wind and the fresh air — until he notices the other waves in front of him, crashing against the shore.
    “My God, this is terrible," the wave says "Look what’s going to happen to me!”
    Then along comes another wave. It sees the first wave, looking grim, and it says to him, "Why do you look so sad?"
    The first wave says, "You don’t understand! We’re all going to crash! All of us waves are going to be nothing! Isn’t it terrible?"
    The second wave says, "No, you don’t understand. You’re not a wave, you’re part of the ocean."
           - from Tuesdays With Morrie by Mitch Albom

     The [third] mark of existence is egolessness, sometimes called no-self.  These words can be misleading.  They don’t mean that we disappear – or that we erase our personality.  Egolessness means that the fixed idea that we have about ourselves as solid and separate from each other is painfully limiting.  That we take ourselves so seriously, that we are so absurdly important in our own minds, is a problem.  Self-importance is like a prison for us, limiting us to the world of our likes and dislikes.  We end up bored to death with ourselves and our world. We end up very dissatisfied…
     In the most ordinary terms, egolessness is a flexible identity.  It manifests as inquisitiveness, as adaptability, as humor, as playfulness.  It is our capacity to relax with not knowing, not figuring everything out, with not being at all sure about who we are, or anyone else is, either.  Every moment is unique, unknown, completely fresh.  For a warrior-in-training, egolessness is a cause of joy rather than a cause of fear.
           - from Comfortable with Uncertainty: 108 Teachings by Pema Chodron

    The moment you have an individual, you have separation, and the moment you have separation you have the longing to end that separation, to heal the divide, to come home. It's the wave longing to return to the ocean. And of course on some level the wave knows that it was never for one moment separate from the ocean - that the sense of being a wave is merely a temporary contraction of the whole.
    The little wave is inherently a seeker, and he runs around the world like a headless chicken, trying to find something which of course he never lost in the first place. And he never lost this because he never had it. He always was it. The wave was always, always, a perfect expression of that which cannot be expressed. You - the character, the person, the individual - were always the divine expression, expressing itself perfectly, completely, and exhausting itself in that expression, leaving no trace, no residue.
           - from An Extraordinary Absence: Liberation in the Midst of a Very Ordinary Life by Jeff Foster

    We don't want to see ourselves as simply a temporary formation, a whirlpool in the river of life. The fact is, we take form for a while; then when conditions are appropriate, we fade out. There's nothing wrong with fading out; it's a natural part of the process. However, we want to think that this little whirlpool that we are isn't part of the stream. We want to see ourselves as permanent and stable. Our whole energy goes into trying to protect our supposed separateness. To protect the separateness, we set up artificial, fixed boundaries; as a consequence, we accumulate excess baggage, stuff that slips into our whirlpool and can't flow out again. So things clog up our whirlpool and the process gets messy. The stream needs to flow naturally and freely... We serve other whirlpools best if the water that enters ours is free to rush through and move on easily and quickly to whatever else needs to be stirred. The energy of life seeks rapid transformation. If we can see life this way and not cling to anything, life simply comes and goes.
           - from Nothing Special: Living Zen by Charlotte Joko Beck

     When we first hear them, the Buddhist teachings of non-self can arouse confusion or even fear. We might fear that non-self means the loss of our self, as if we were going to die. But the psychology of non-self is quite different. In practice, we don’t have to change or get rid of anything. We merely learn to see through the false ideas of our self. We discover that we can let go of the limited sense of self, that grasping and identification are optional. We can shift our identity and learn that we are interconnected with all things.
     To examine the process of identification, let yourself play with it as you read. Imagine you are a book. Identify with it. Pretend it is you. How do you feel as a book? I am a new book. I have a nice cover. I am full of words and understanding. Some people are interested in me. I like to be read. Maybe I’ll become a big seller, famous. Maybe not. Now notice what happens when you close the book. Close it gently. I like to be respected. Open it again and slam it shut. Toss it under a cushion or hide it among other books. How does this feel? I don’t like to be slammed shut, I don’t want to be put away and lost, I don’t like being dropped or hidden. Now stop identifying with the book. Now it is just a book. Open and close it again. Put it away or hide it. Notice how differently this feels. The book is not you.
     This process of identification happens all the time. The Indian guru with whom I studied, Sri Nisargadatta used to laugh, “You identify with everything so easily, with your body, your thoughts, your opinions, your roles and so you suffer. I have released all identification.” He would explain by holding up his hand. “Look how my thumb and forefinger touch. When I identify with my forefinger I am the feeler and the thumb the object that I experience. Reverse the identification and I am the thumb, feeling this forefinger as an object. I find that somehow by shifting the focus of attention I become the very thing I look at . . . I call this capacity of entering other focal points of consciousness love. You may give it any name you like. Love says ‘I am everything.’ Wisdom says ‘I am nothing’. Between these two my life flows.”
           - from Love Says We Are Everything by Jack Kornfield

    At some time in your life, you've probably had the experience of falling in love. Suddenly, in the presence of another person (or a work of art, a flower, a piece of music, a sunset - you can fall in love in all sorts of ways), there is simply wonder, fascination, awe. Past and future fall away, the illusion of time collapses, and there is only what is - and it's an unspeakable miracle. You really see who and what is in front of you. It feels like you've finally found what you were looking for. What you were always seeking is right here in front of you. It feels like coming home, as if something in you has eventually come to rest.
...Love is as good a word as any for what remains when the separation between us and others dissolves. Love points to the intimacy at the heart of present experience, an intimacy that is always there, but so rarely noticed.
           - from The Deepest Acceptance: Radical Awakening in Ordinary Life by Jeff Foster