• ego as illusion
• not I, but we? (relate to concept of environments/ extending mind/extending self)
• awareness to what is (all of our experience, surroundings, organisms)
• body "I?" as part of a greater nature, Allah, and everything else (part of oneness we participate in)
• ego as construct (things we tell ourselves, beliefs)
• ego as illusion (are we a center of consciousness/energy? it causes opposition)
• we are the body, as part of the natural environment
• no self, as system (organs)
• self as organism that goes together with other organisms/see extended mind as extended self, maybe different phrasing)
• I as organism/environment, but ego as opposing it
• confusing symbols with reality of the world itself (see Tolle on interpretation as removing from present)
• caused by stories to ourselves, by others, looking at mirror/listening etc. "creating of image of self/mask" (persona), as a social institution (construct of self/ego), it is useful (helpful for navigation, but it is abstract)
• hides of ourselves, entirely unconscious, to external world etc. (things that are essential to us, we don't perceive, bec of the ego)
• sensations of "I" is false (cutting off your complete experience, all organisms, everything in ones awareness, not closed off)
• forcing the mind/concentrate is thinking to ourselves (for example, how we ought to read thst difficult book)
• distracting ourselves from reality
• destroying environment as destroying the body
• "you can't rid of it" (that is the ego, trying to get rid of the ego, a circle) answer: do nothing (ego asking the question)
• you can't control anything, like thoughts, feelings, other organisms, they are as they are, so you don't do anything, you see, you feel, observe, you are not "you" , you as the whole world (and creator), as experience

• misunderstanding nafs as misunderstanding quran
• doctor doesn't use ego, but self
• ego as ana? (not same?), ego as term by freud
• how science and religion can be compatible (removing materialism)
• key to world as in hands of man (self), thirtieth word
• Nursi as using quranic definition of self and philosophical
• Nursi studied himself, not attending medrese (at early life)
• Nursi memorised 90 collections of books, reciting those books every 3 months, read quran in his early 40s
• self/nafs 300 times in quran (& different meanings of self)
• other component than self, directing you?

Good explanation of what self-consciousness attempts to do:

Self-consciousness is not something obviously "self-existing" it is a fiction, - it is ungrounded because it is - a mental construct.

Rather than being selfsufficient, - consciousness is like the surface of the sea: dependent on unknown depths ("conditions," as the Buddha called them) that it cannot grasp - because it is a manifestation of them.

The problem arises because this conditioned, and therefore unstable, consciousness wants to - ground itself, to make itself real.

But to real-ize itself is to objectify itself - meaning to grasp itself, since an object is that-which-is-grasped.

The ego-self is this continuing attempt to objectify oneself by grasping oneself, something we can no more do than a hand can grasp itself.

//* Loy is stating... - Those engaging compulsively in money, fame, power, materialism - are actually deeply repressing - the fact that the ego-self, and therefore self-consciousness is a construction - To continually reify the ego-self, we engage in these activities - and of course, this is fueling the polycrisis we now find ourselves in

Raj shares what is meant by Graduation.... it is to abandon the ego sense of all the interesting dynamics of becoming educated and "it is truly a moving back into the elemental and fundamental natural perfection of one’s Being, which I will say constitutes a complete invalidation of everything which was ever learned in the educational process."**

The ego in 3d can be confused, the True Self in 4d cannot be.