The illusion of a separate self I think for me, the knowledge that identifying as a separate self is an illusion is liberating. We create a concept of 'self' to help us survive and navigate the world on a day to day basis. This idea of 'self' is generated by our thoughts ..... but this is just a useful and essential illusion. If we look deeper, this 'self' is 100% dependent on everything that has ever happened and everything in the world at this precise moment. I think our lives today seem to be all about nurturing the 'self' rather than understanding that we are all connected and interdependent. This obsession or identification with our thoughts (the self) distracts us from what is and constantly makes us want more and more. Eckhart Tolle puts it perfectly.... “Identification with your mind creates an opaque screen of concepts, labels, images, words, judgments, and definitions that blocks all true relationship. It comes between you and yourself, between you and your fellow man and woman, between you and nature, between you and God. It is this screen of thought that creates the illusion of separateness, the illusion that there is you and a totally separate ‘other.’ You then forget the essential fact that, underneath the level of physical appearances and separate forms, you are one with all that is. By ‘forget,’ I mean that you can no longer feel this oneness as self-evident reality.”