We may think of ourselves as Never-Changing Core in the Environment, and Being Self as Sticking to the Core and Ignoring the Environment but this is a false idea.The feeling of self is not constant. It depends on the time of day, on the day of the week, on your mood, on your job, on your relationships with neighbors. They all affect the feeling of self. The Self is not Directly Observable, like Nothing is truly Directly Observable, so the Feeling of Self is our closest proxy to Self like the Vision is our closest proxy to knowing what's around us.
The scary thought here is that if we may see things that is not there, then we may also feel things in Self that are not "there". But there's no such thing in Self as "there", because it's not that singular core from which you scoop out the Selfness when you need to just apply a little bit of Who You Really Are. Self is a concept, a ∑ of memories and habits and your Current State. And your Current state and memories and habits are a part of the environment. How? Merely perceiving the environment alters your working memory (aha, I'm in the living room, it's cold here and I want to pee). This is a part of Self now, because this is You, you don't perceive Mike-The-Other-Guy, you perceive your internal state; in a sense your internal state does not differ in any way from the environment, they are the same thing. Your perspective is attached to a body, but this body is not you; in the same way as your body is attached to a chair but the chair is not you.
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draconica
