The Self as the Tendency to Contract

 Perhaps what we experience as a "self" is our tendency to contract in the face of the overwhelming experience of reality.  

We are social creatures, we want to connect with everything, to find safety in connection.  To find a home.  We personify everything.  We see gods everywhere that are like humans, only more powerful.  Or we see one God who looks out for us and protects us like an omnipotent father or mother or both.  Nature or reality becomes just another community that is like us and acts like us.  Plays by our rules.

Unfortunately, nature or reality doesn't always cooperate.  And its difficult to face the sheer immensity and overwhelming lack of coherence of reality.  We can't handle the truth.  And when God shows Job the Leviathan, Job contracts.  His sense of self curls into a little ball of self protection.  He circles the wagons so to speak.  And we do this always and everywhere.  This tendency toward circling the wagons is the sense of self.  In some people it is strong and rigid.  In others, it is more loosey goosey and "non-dual" and the boundaries between the self and the other dissolve.  The tendency toward enlightenment then becomes the opposite motion of circling the wagons.