Until the idea of "our" and "my" and "we" become truly understood then you go around in circles with these sorts of discussions. There is no "my consciousness," or "my self." There is only consciousness. When you state that your sense of self is driving you crazy you have separated created the duality that you write about. This cannot be an intellectual understanding or you just won't get it. Something must crack open and make a permanent change to break down the wall between the observer and the observed.

The brain is a physical instrument and has nothing to do with consciousness except that it is an artifact of consciousness — an energy, if you will, that contains all that exists.

There are so many ideas in your article worthy of discussion, but there is one more that stood out to me... You mentioned the out of body experience. I have had more than a thousand of such experiences in the past 60-plus years. There is no disappearance of the self during this experience. The self remains intact; and the self is the result of psychological conditioning. When out of your body you still now who you are, what your relationships are, where you live, and so on. These are all artifacts of the self and the totality of consciousness.

When I read articles trying to intellectualize what the self is I recall my own struggles with such concepts. Most people try to figure this out with the same conditioned mind that creates and perpetuates the self. It will never happen this way. The self does not dissolve or merge; it becomes understood or realized.

You wrote: 'Next time you feel anxious, worried or embarrassed, try to pause and ask yourself, “Is what I am thinking about a real threat to my well-being, or does it only threaten my mental model of my self?”'

But who exactly is asking itself what it is thinking? It is the self, so you see that the whole thing just goes in circles, with the self chasing the self. When you use these pronouns such as "my well being," etc., you are not only perpetuating the idea of a self, you are also perpetuating a connection to the body, which is why the self exists in the first place.