"To realize that I am nothing (or, better, no-thing) is to become free, because there is no longer an insecure self inside that can never feel secure enough. Realizing that I am everything gives rise to compassion for others who are not really separate from me." 

A new buddhist path - p. 53

"We come to meditation with the usual assumption that the thoughts and images and feelings that arise are something that I am doing, only to realize that the thoughts, etc. have a life of their own. It's more correct to say that the thoughts are "doing" me: that my sense of self is composed of mostly habitual ways of thinking, feeling, acting, reacting, remembering, planning, intending and so forth.

One's thinking, feeling, intending, etc. constantly relate back to the self-image of a "me", yet that image too is a conditioned construct.
Conditioned by what? By earlier experiences, both passive (what happened to me) and active (what I did in response).

According to Buddhism, the problem isn't that we have a self; on contrary, there's never been a real self, so there's nothing to discard. Nor do we need to get rid of the sense of self; that's necessary to function in daily life. The problem is a sense of self that feels and believes itself to be separate from the rest of the world.

Realizing that the sense of self is a construct gives us insight into why it is the source of our most problematic dukkha. A constructed self is not something that has any discrete reality of its own. It's a cluster of impermanent and interacting psycho-physical processes that are not grounded in anything more substantial.

The solution to our festering sense of lack is deconstructing and reconstructing the sense of self, so that it doesn't feel so separate." 

A new buddhist path - p. 43-47

"Sankhara, one's habitual tendencies, are what survive death and lead to the conception and development of a new psychophysical being, which is necessary for those tendencies to continue actualizing. The sense of self as we know it does not survive, which is why we don't remember our past lifetimes, yet mental tendencies continue to exist, and cause the formation of a new one." 

A new buddhist path - p. 138

Dependent origination and the five aggregates

Early Buddhist maps of the mind - Andrew Olendski

Early Buddhist maps of the mind - Andrew Olendski

The five aggregates

Early Buddhist maps of the mind - Andrew Olendski

"When desire is replaced by equanimity, and awareness of all phenomena thus unfolds without reference to self, we gain the freedom to move along with change rather than setting ourselves against it."

Self as a verb - Tricycle: The Buddhist Review - Summer 2005

"[...] grasping is not something done by the self, but rather self is something done by grasping. The self is constructed each moment for the simple purpose of providing the one who likes or doesn’t like, holds on to or pushes away, what is unfolding in experience. Just as there is a fundamental interdependence between consciousness and its object, so also is there an interdependence between desire and its subject. But there is no inherent bond between subject and object or between consciousness and desire."

Self as a verb - Tricycle: The Buddhist Review - Summer 2005

"Desire is a state of disequilibrium between what is arising and what one wants to be arising."

Self as a verb - Tricycle: The Buddhist Review - Summer 2005

"We do face the more challenging problem of how first to uncover the socially constructed prejudices we all harbor and then to transform them, not at this level of intellectual argument but at the deeper level of changing emotional and behavioral responses. It is not about changing views (the aggregate of perception), but of reconstructing patterns of habitual reaction (the aggregate of formations). Fortunately, the Buddha bequeathed to us a powerful tool for doing this: mindfulness.

Psychology has demonstrated clearly that some of what we do is conscious and some is unconscious. That is to say, we are consciously aware of a narrow band of our experience as it unfolds, but most of what happens is formulated out of view and emerges apparently on its own from the mysterious depths of the psyche to surge into behavior unhindered by awareness. Our views and reactions are formed as they appear, based on patterns laid down in the past, and consciousness is more a matter of observing what is already unfolding than of deciding what will take place.

Mindfulness practice involves training the ability to observe what is happening within us in the present moment with an attitude of patience, kindness, and equanimity. As different bodily sensations or feeling tones or thoughts arise into conscious awareness, we “watch along with” (anupassati) them, or “gaze evenly upon” (upekkhati) them, or are simply “aware of” (pajanati) and “fully experience” (patisamvedati) them. If we get angry at what we see, or if any sort of response rooted in attraction or aversion occurs, then we are thrust out of mindful awareness and get carried away ..."

Shining a light - Tricycle: The Buddhist Review - Fall 2015