The structure of the self.

The most prevalent aspect of the self is the ego.

The ego is everything you call you. It is no more than an idea. It is self proclaimed and it is what you define yourself by. The ego is not your true self. The ego that you can lead yourself to believe is who and what you are is not the same person that anyone else may know. The ego is a thought made up in your mind about yourself. it is a fabrication.

Not only does the ego shape your perception of yourself, but also of others. The ego is really every object of perception. Every object of perception is subject to your interpretation and once perceived, it has already been filtered through the veils of your ego, preconceptions, and anatomical determinations. What you wind up experiencing is never what actually exists. All you see is all your ego can see, and so when you try to find your true self,and see that, you're still only going to experience your ego.

The true self is your objective self. It is the actual self.

You will never experience your true self. As was explained earlier,you only ever experience your ego. All experiences are subjective and subject to the ego. The true self can be known though. Knowledge is objective. The true self is the experiencer of all that you see. It doesnt have an opinion about anything it sees, that is the ego's job. It just sees. You are not what or who you think you are.

It is important to know the difference between your ego and your true self. Mainly because you are all you are and you have to be you for the rest of your life. For a lot of people, the truth is something that they value above a lot of things. The truth, as it pertains to you, needs to be understood to not be that which you experience. However,were it not for the truth, the experience would not be possible.

Knowledge is that one part of your perception that may be factual, but beliefs can be mistaken for knowledge and be false. Knowledge is the link between your true self and your ego. Where the more you know, equals the more you know your self. Knowledge reduces the amount of your ego's involvement with perception. It separates truth from fiction even if the truth means realizing that everything you see is not what really is there.

Put down the bong, man.

Just kidding - awareness of the ego seems to freak people out. I remember reading Tim Leary's, 'The Politics of Ecstasy,' when I was about 15 or 16 years old, and that's when my little, imagined world came crashing down before me - I did all I could to reject the ego and be faithful to whatever I thought my 'true' self was ("Stick out yr tongue!"). I wouldn't go back and change things, but this made me a very reluctant and self-conscious individual for a period of time. On the flip side, I think that I understand the function of the ego in human evolution - namely, its purpose as an extremely valuable survival mechanism. I think, ideally, one would be aware of the ego and seek to root out its manifestations that only pander to our hang-ups and get rid of them, while nonetheless continuing to develop a strong self-identity that stems from real experience and reasoning. I think that the ego is really inescapable, but it should always be kept under conscious surveillance, dig? Humans are unique in that we can think and reason and have emotions and all that, yet posses this strange faculty of mind that can simply observe what processes are taking place in our mind (e.g., we can think, and simultaneously think about how we're thinking about things). anyhow, I'm drunk and that's my two cents. star & xox