Living Without My Self

I don’t feel like I have a self. Most people I encounter speak about their experience as if they have an internal centre of awareness – something inside doing the perceiving and feeling, a centre to their subjective experience. And most people seem to connect this intuitive sense of a singular self to who they were yesterday, last month, last year – to a continuously unfolding life-story stretching back to their earliest childhood memories. I’ve always struggled to relate to people with such seemingly full and wholesome selves and coherent life narratives. When I look inward, I find no locus of awareness. There doesn’t seem to be anyone or anything at the centre in me, nothing identifiable that is generating or receiving experience; only thoughts and feelings that don’t seem anchored to anything, changing patterns of energy that are simply happening. I don’t remember much from my past either. When I recall it, it comes to my mind mostly as facts – CV-like points that are useful for functioning socially and professionally but with which I feel little emotional connection.