That voice in your head when you’re reading this sentence is you. Or is it? What are you? Are you your thoughts, your “spirit,” your memories all tied into a physical body on some physical plane? What if you are only your thoughts and the physical body you inhabit is merely a tool for your brain?
I believe we are neither our thoughts nor our bodies. I have learned not to trust thoughts. They were meant to solve problems and keep us alive, giving them a tendency to be “fear-mongering,” and unstable.
So if we are not our thoughts and we are not our bodies, who are we?
The person you think of as "yourself" exists only for you, and even you don't really know who that is. Every person you meet, have a relationship with or make eye contact on the street with, creates a version of "you" in their heads. You're not the same person to your mom, your dad, your siblings, than you are to your coworkers, your neighbors or your friends. There are a thousand different versions of yourself out there, in people's minds. A "you" exists in each version, and yet your "you", "yourself", isn't really a "someone" at all.
"As I ran on like this, a fresh anxiety laid hold of me: the realization that I should not be able, while living, to depict myself to myself in the actions of my life, to see myself as others saw me, to set my body off in front of me and see it living like the body of another. When I took up my position in front of a mirror, something like a lull occurred inside me; all spontaneity vanished; every gesture impressed me as being fictitious or a repetition. I could not see myself live."
One, None and a Hundred-thousand
Author: Luigi Pirandello
http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks16/1600681h.html