identification

The return to the true self involves psychologically moving everything which was previously identified with outside of the self, yet (somewhat paradoxically) contained within it. The beliefs, desires, emotions, thoughts, sensations, actions, experiences, body - everything that was formerly identified with must be seen as occuring within range of the self without containing it.

The true self is beyond all this. It bears witness to these aspects but is not confined to any of it. It would be more true to say that the self is simultaneously all that is than to say that it's confined to the activities of an individual body/mind. These qualities are more like movements occuring within a localization of awareness.

This awareness is, in a sense, separate from what it observes, though not essentially so. It isn't any of the beliefs, desires, emotions, thoughts, sensations, actions, experiences, body, etc which are seen and felt and so on. It produces and holds space for all of these transient phenomena without being altered by them. It's timeless, formless, boundless aliveness. It's serene, unmoving and unchanging. It's the essential nature underlying all creation and all life. It's where the true self emerges into the world in all of its myriad expressions, to be witnessed by itself within itself.