No need to figure out the concept of "Self"
Watch out for the mental "dog chasing its own tail" in your head. The futile self-referential nature of trying to find your "true-self".
Everyday mental health issues can stem from excess conceptual rumination, and a habitual drive to straighten out every concept in the mind to achieve some kind of logical consistency or conceptual ultimate-truth. Training the mind out of this habit through meditative practice, can bring immense lasting relief. 🧘
Firstly, be convinced that it's actually impossible to straighten it all out logically because the whole subject-object oriented nature of thoughts, is itself stemming from another self-referential thought which calls itself "I", hence a "dog chasing its own tail". That is, both the "I" and the "one calling itself I" are imagined thoughts. So is the "one doing the imagining". Try to search for the "one doing the imagining" and notice that even "the one who is searching" is yet another imagination. It doesn't make sense and never will. It's not supposed to. Conceptual information is just a tool, not your God. It might be one of many tools to help bring you to an "ultimate-truth" (which is again just a concept I am using for the sake of explanation), but it will never itself be the ultimate-truth.
Thinking is a useful tool but just don't become the tool of thinking. That should have been the first thing they teach us in school, before they dish out the conceptual knowledge.
What about "free will"? 🤔
While we are here, I might as well dispel the myth of free will. Obviously if there is no "I" then there is no-one to have any free will. Asking about free will is like asking "how far do I have to go to sail off the edge of the world?" - a question based on a false assumption about the nature of the world. The concept of free will is moot once you take away the false assumption of there being a concrete "self" to have any free will in the first place. That doesn't mean its "wrong" to talk about free will, or even the "self", you can still use these as a tools just like every other concept or thought which are equally imaginary.
It's not important to hold on to what I said here as any kind of truth, thinking "ah ha! thanks to this wise blog post I have figured it out now! I don't exist and thoughts are just tools. I cant wait to tell my friend and sound really wise". Then a moment later you think "wait... if I don't exist, then who is the 'I' that cant wait to tell my friend?" 🌀
That's just yet another thought, just more chasing the tail. I intend these words to be a tool to bring us to mind-silence, not more noise... but you are free to use them as you wish. The chasing will eventually tire you out completely anyway, which will ultimately be very good for you.
I hope you are either mentally tired now or thoughts are settling. You don't need any of these bloated ideas, they have done their work. Put down all the tools and relax. Notice your immediate experience directly and deeply, without habitual labeling. See clearly.
Increasingly I find when I simply become silent and feel everything directly rather than mediated through labels/concepts, suddenly everything is "clear".
When in a state of mind-silence, it is directly clear that problems have been imagined, simply the result of a fixed perspective of "someone" who was himself just imagined too. The "someone" and the problems simultaneously vanish like phantoms. The chase ends.
All that remains is natural, clear, direct... silence. 😌