Self-conception is your assumption through prefix ‘I am” which you apply after some self-delineating noun or adjective and believing “I am this” or “I am like that”. Due to self-conception articulated through beliefs “I am this” or “I am like that”, you live self-ignorantly, rigidly and conflictingly with yourself and your ecosystem.

Your existence is dependent on your constituent cause and conditions. Self or the sense of “I am this” or ” I am like that” arises due to your association and identification with the known and unknown cause and conditions.

The sense of self arise due to self-conception or self-ideation through your identification or association with self-delineating labels based on artificial ideas like name, age, gender, class, caste, nationality, religion, beliefs, eternal self, good, bad etc., thus affecting your natural processes of life, making you rigid, insecure and conflicting with your ecosystem. Self is neither eternal or immortal nor independent of its constituent cause and conditions in any way.

Due to self-conception, the quality of your life experience diminishes, and you are not able to explore your full potential to live life. Just like painful knee or upset stomach makes you conscious of it, so also, self-consciousness is symptom of some disorder in your constitution. Self is like a psychological tumor in mind.

Self-delineation and self-conception due to your association or identification with known and unknown is self-ignorance. Without self-conception or self-delineation, you are a natural phenomenon of knowing or awareness which can be known through reflection but cannot be labeled. Without self, you are like formless water, flexible, resourceful, adapting, nurturing, yielding and yet menacing in the given conditions.

Inner-Self Is Subliminal Stress

Sense of self or self-consciousness is subliminal stress. An infant just born has no sense of self or self-conception until a certain age. Infant is natural and nature is original. Sense of self is developed later in life during growth in order to interact with the environment and adapt with the society. Adults become self-conscious due to conjured self-image. Infants has no self, no self-image, no self-conception and are not self-conscious. Infants are stress free and happy the way they are.

Self is acutely conjured for meeting the demands of environment in order to survive and flourish but self should not arise when not necessary. However, due to wrong upbringing and unhealthy conditions, the sense of self or self-conception can become chronic and severe. Infants get hypnotized by self-delineating labels given to them by society and grow up to live self-consciously through the rigidity and burden of self-images. Self is rigidity and stress due which you get divided, lose your wholeness, feel incomplete and conflict with your ecosystem.

During the right practice of meditation, you are fully aware, knowing no-mind without self-conception.

You Are Ephemeral Phenomenon of Awareness.

Naturally you are the result of dynamic interaction of your indispensable constituent cause and conditions, including but not limited to your ancestors, your body, your processes of life, actions and effects of those actions, without which you cannot continue to exist in any way. As awareness, you are an ephemeral phenomenon, just like brightness is an ephemeral phenomenon arising due to dispersion of light.

You are awareness, phenomenon of knowing arising due to your constituent cause and conditions. You become your actions and you continue in the effect of your actions. This is commonsense and as obvious as truth of earth, nature, pain, disease, old age and death. There is nothing eternal or immortal about you or any life form that can continue intact independent of it’s constituent cause and conditions including but not limited to processes of life, body, mind etc.

Society Enforces Ideas of Eternal Inner Self

You are prematurely or chronically hypnotized due to association with artificial ideas and beliefs about who you are. The idea of being eternal immortal self or spirit of some kind is one of such self-delineating belief due to which you believe that “I am eternal” or “I am eternal spirit or soul” and solidify your self-conception to lose your fluidity.

You get prematurely and chronically hypnotized by this idea of being independent eternal immortal inner self with afterlife or next birth. Some cultures may ridiculously believe that self or soul or consciousness enters the female womb during pregnancy.

Eternal reality of inner self” or inner being” or “Ego” or inner soul or inner spirit” etc.., independent of the process of life and actions, is a naive primitive idea sustained artificially by institutions of society and passed down from one generation to the next through institutionalized cultural and customary beliefs out of fear of death and desire for immortality.

At an early age, society overwhelms you with artificial ideas like class, caste, religion, race, nationality and unproven ideas like past birth, next birth, soul, ghosts, afterlife, rebirth, reincarnation, supreme Creator and controller etc.

If you are brought up in such society, the idea of distinct inner self or being may seem real, and you may live and act through self-ignorance according to your self-delineating labels.

You tend to accept the idea of reality of distinct inner self or inner being independent of conditions of life, if it is given to you by someone whom you trust, like or depend on, for example, parents.

You tend to believe just because everyone believes and not because you know. If you know that self is eternal or immortal, you may not fear death or keep suffering by holding on to life under some pretext or the other.

You Are Impermanent

You do not exist independent of your constituent cause and conditions, neither as awareness nor as the Self based on self-delineating labels. You cease to exist with the death, decay, disintegration, dispersion and recycling of your constituent cause and conditions. This is practically known in all forms of life. There is no rebirth or afterlife. Just like your body, your memories and mind also disintegrate, disperse and get recycled. If you live without leaving any trace, you will not continue in any way.

Though becoming self-aware without self-conception during meditation may feel like deathlessness, neither awareness nor the Self can continue after life or beyond death.

Knowing the impermanence of life, you value it and live life authentically without getting attached.