i tend to go on about not really existing. peguy said some accurate enough words about "my self" or the "authentic self (term by ken wilber)" in general, but i feel i can't be this self, because all of this self grew, evolved or was conditioned by the world without me even understanding what was going on. now how could i be something, that really only presents itself to me piece by piece?
i can be the ego, if i define the ego as a glimpse in time, this observer of the experiences, noticing this and that, in somewhat linear fashion, like a reflection, a bright spot, capturing, absorbing focus, consciousness. a reflection that is created by elements (metaphorically: mountain, snow, sunlight, perspective/direction of observer) none of which "are" substancially this reflection.
so i can be the ego, but this ego is virtually nothing, it's none of the objects of my worldview, in particular. it seems easy enough to be virtually nothing, because there is nothing to know about nothing, so not knowing myself (as ego) doesn't imply that i am not it.
all of this reasoning depends of course on the assumption that being is knowing. but this assumption is just horribly deep ingrained into my ... what? my ego? thought-system? what if "being" can be/occur without knowing? but then i could be everything, without knowing. i might as well be nothing.
intellectually i get nonduality, i guess, insofar that is possible, intellectually, but there is no point in giving a bookish answer.
saying "i am nothing", while it's not proper nondual understanding, is the answer that honestly reflects my regular mode of comprehension.
some would not agree, but the witness of the deepest self (of the soul/causal) is in my understanding just the most bare-bone version/mode of function of the same ego, which witnesses the thinking or the feeling mind, or the body in regular waking stage consciousness.
and i have seen the deepest self, afaik, not all of it, i should say, i have seen the deepest "depth", as a sample, but always just seen it as this witness. and this witness is nothing, which was too obvious to it/me.
because all the substance in the deepest self is different stuff from all the substance in the waking self. so the witness isn't any of it. it's just a reflection, a spot without substance, somehow magically created by this self, by all known sides or corners of this self, created whenever i am there, not while i am dropped out. created by a self which happens to be one with the whole rest of everything, as far as i can see anything of that everything. so i am nothing, alone with, confronted with, and created by everything.