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Synchronicities happen no matter if you believe in them or not. In which case what you think about them plays no role whatsoever.

Or they happen as a function of the belief in synchronicities. Meaning the subject is the one who interprets an event as a synchronicity.

The third option may be that synchronicities occur no matter what you think of them but their occurrences respond directly to intent. In this scenario, the observer has agency in their occurrence.

In any case, writing about them is what interests me.

The main factor separating a synchronicity from a chance meeting seems to be intent or desire.

For something to be recognized as a meaningful coincidence, the desire of the observer has to present itself in the form of an answer to that desire.

In other words, if you happen to meet Sally and you were not thinking about Sally, a mind may interpret meeting Sally as a chance meeting.

However, should you have been thinking about Sally who lives in another country, and while going for a walk you meet Sally who happens to be in your area just for the day, then you might interpret that as a meaningful coincidence, a synchronicity.
A chance meeting connected by meaning.
You may further feel strange when she sees you and says something like: "Oh! I've been thinking about you!"

In this, subjectivity and intent inject meaning to random chance.

Described as an acausal connecting principle - when two things are connected by meaning rather than a specific cause - synchronicity is a merging of intent through will and agency, not because of a specific cause.

In simpler terms: You don't meet Sally because you both happen to be in the same place at the same time, but because you both want ideas the other one has. Or even stranger, you might need something from Sally on the level of personal development which you are perhaps not aware of, a flaw of character that her experience can perhaps help you overcome or become aware of. In this scenario especially, meaning seems to play the main role in making sure which personalities will be connected through synchronicity. But is meaning truly an acausal event?

You might view this scenario as Sally and yourself being connected through meaning, and not through the cause and effect of going to the same place.

However, I question the axiom of this statement in two crucial aspects. And that is the aspect of connectivity and acausality and the role they play in the occurrence and mechanisms of synchronicities.

Both connectivity and acausality are dualistic principles.

Connectivity suggests there exists a fundamental disconnect between things which can be connected through action and thus share connectivity.

And acausality implies that anything at all can be acausal and that meaning (thought) is not cause.

Both view the subject as separate from the outside world.

An acausal event suggests that meaning is not causality. In other words, it disconnects thought and/or wish (desire) as being a causal event (even wishes the subject is not aware of consciously) and perceives it as an isolated system happening separately from everything else. In this view, meaning is implied as a connecting principle, and only further perpetuates the idea of there being a fundamental disconnect which can be subject to connection.

In contrast, any action by a human where he has to move anything or change anything or act with force upon anything other than himself is perceived as a could-be cause for something else to happen. And so anything which happens will be a causal event. However, in the Jungian frame of thinking of synchronicity, thought (meaning) may not be considered a casual event. This separates mind from meaning and necessitates a viewing of synchronicity as being acausal - an acausality.

In this way of looking at mind and its events, it views it as separate from outside the skull, or separate from the space/time it occupies aside from its immediate position in it. This thinking necessitates a further separation and suggests there is a connection which occurs only at the point where a synchronicity happens: when two subjects meet to form a meaningful coincidence.

However, there is no meaning inherent in a chance meeting other than what the subject has been thinking or feeling. So while there is no meaning in any connection outside of the observer's mind, there is an inherent connection there that requires no meaning for the connection to happen.

The two intents (individuals) until the point of synchronicity or "chance merging" are only subjectively unconnected, perceived by the observer as two separate events, precisely because the observer himself views himself as a separate event from everything around himself.

When two minds or more have a conscious intent this intent will pulse through the psychosphere as a ripple of frequency. On the level of consciousness, each object in space is space and occupies the same field, so any spatial separation is seen as a division only by the observer. Meaning that it may seem that two frequencies could naturally seek coalescence because they are the same frequency. And yet having arisen out of the same space and moving in the same field, the two frequencies are always connected non-locally, even when their distance is great.

In this, it seems synchronicity is an emphatic system that responds to individual states (emotion and sense-response) and works through the psychosphere, connects according to the needs of the individual, and not because of his or her will.

Because of this aspect, it is exceptionally hard to speculate on the role of intent in the manifestation of synchronous activity. Especially because intent itself is always accompanied by counter-intent. Meaning, if a mind holds the intent towards something it will also hold a subconscious possibility of the intent not coming to fruition or form the desired goal.

In common objects this non-local connection is hard to demonstrate outside the scope of elementary particles, however, the mind seems to display curious properties of non-separateness in the way it communicates with other minds.

The above can be explained differently by using, for example, the principle of sympathetic resonance. Where one object's frequency will resonate when another object near it is struck. Meaning that the second object which has not been struck will pick up on this pulse as they are both not in the same field, but are the same field. Again, these two objects may, through resonance, appear to coalesce into the same resonance.

In the case of mind, the consciousness it has access to (and in fact is it*) may appear to respond to these frequencies non-locally, meaning the mind, while being consciousness itself, is also a conduit through which consciousness can flow. And so through the observer's point of view, a synchronicity brings together two states of consciousness where they can coalesce.
(*, in this case, the mind is seen as being consciousness itself and not a lump of matter that has consciousness.)

However, they only seemingly coalesce.

Why seemingly?

As two similar frequencies "meet" they are perceived by the observer to merge into synchronous movement, observed as a merging of two minds to then follow the same pattern of action.
A chance meeting of two people with the same intent as observed by the subject/observer.

However, the two intents are the same intent.

Any meaning which the subject gives this chance meeting is because he had intent. Not the intent to meet Sally, but the intent to learn something which Sally can teach, without necessarily thinking Sally is the one he has to meet. But perhaps a specific intent is not even required, perhaps the mere intent to continue to exist is enough, as our nature seems to be a mirror of the field (space/time) which we ourselves are, meaning the nature of our consciousness might be to naturally expand.

The two intents are apparently separate points and thus perceived by the observer as merged when these two intents become synchronous, while in reality, the two intents are already one intent, fully merged and realized. It is only in the observer's dualistic framework of viewing where it seems the two intents are not already fully merged.

In other words, the observer projects a disconnect because he is disconnected from others, not because there is a disconnect there.

The observer will view the thought of another as a separate thought, even when the two thoughts are identical and convey the same meaning and arise in the same space/time field.

When the individual's intent is viewed from an observer's standpoint through the lens of an active observer (self), he views these intents as separate from one another.
That the intents arise within two individuals who feel themselves separate does not make them separate events, but only seemingly separate through subjectivity.

That these intents are not separate is further practically displayed when two individuals come into immediate space of each other, where again the two intents seem, from the point of the observer, a single event actualized by two intents, while in reality, the two intents have always been one and the same thought occupying the same field of space/time, separated only by the perception of self.

At this point, it is perhaps important to note that what we call our senses is in fact only one sense. The sense of touch.

What we call our senses are refined ways of touching the same field. Refined ways of touching this field or space/time that we are not moving inside of, but are ourselves. Whether we touch it through the vibration of air, vibration of the spectrum of light, or in presenting of our own vibration against something (touch), etc.

In the view of the mind as not an isolated system, it not only functions within space/time, but is it, and so constantly touches reality.

What does this mean about the functions of synchronicity?

When a mind learns about an experience, it will attempt to replicate it, or at the very least emulate it.

To a degree, the willingness of a mind to copy the experience depends on the mind’s level of interest in the experience that it has learned about.

It can only ever experience anything if it has the knowledge of that experience.

Without this knowledge, it cannot experience anything.

The knowledge can be learned by being read about, seen, heard, or imprinted in the genetic code, so in a very real sense, the subject must first touch this knowledge, which then expresses itself through the individual.

Every step since infancy is a way of learning about a certain experience and how to act and feel so the infant can at last experience it for himself.
He must learn to touch light with his eyes, learn to touch sound with his ears, learn to feel other objects and learn how they touch him, learn how he feels about certain things, then project this knowledge into three-dimensional space. Meanwhile, he learns to experience the time dimension by having touched the now in which the experiences occurred, then imagines them as the past and contrasts them with the now to draw a sense of time.

In a very real sense, he must learn how to touch reality.

If the knowledge of how a being should act is not learned from other minds, the mind will attempt to draw the knowledge it thinks it needs from its genetic code and then act according to its recorded impulses. In this, he merely directs the sense of touch inward.

Ultimately, the infant has to learn to do what humanity considers a vital experience. Which is learning how to touch the perceived self.

This is quite a feat, actually, as for the experience of there being a self to arise one has to actively split himself from the experience and view it as a perceived observer.

As far as we know, nothing else can quite manage it the way we can.

This split, while perhaps necessary for survival, is to a large extent later responsible for feeling separate from the world, not being the world, and thinking of ourselves as a part of nature and being in nature, as opposed to being its expression in human form – in exactly the same way as a tree is nature in the form of a tree.

Synchronicity then too is mistakenly viewed in this way, as a coming together, instead of an expression of a connection that is already there, has always been there and remains the very expression of humanity.

A person will almost never be consciously aware that the processes of mind are trying to replicate a learned experience. That is to say awareness will not be aware of itself naturally expressing this connection until it enters into immediate awareness.

The process itself will not become clear until the process interrupts the everyday experience.

When it becomes obvious -- then it becomes obvious. Or in our case, when Sally adds, "Oh! I've been thinking about you!" Then the whole coincidence seems to be a bit too coincidental to be just a coincidence.

It is always the natural tendency of the mind to emulate that in which it is interested in experiencing or even that which it imagines it does not wish to experience. As on the level of space/time field, what we wish to experience and what we wish not to experience carries the same potential and energetic pulse.

Because the observer is the observed, and the observer is split from the observed only so the act of observing can occur (which we had to learn how to do), the subject may be led to believe that the process of preparing for the experience is happening independently of himself. In other words, when a synchronicity occurs the process may seem as if it happened all by itself. While in fact, the observer is always an active participant in the process of actualizing any experience. It is only his level of conscious awareness about his actions and lack thereof which convinces him he directed no action towards the realization of any experience.

"It must have been fate," he might say. And in saying this, the one who says it forgets himself as being necessary for fate to happen. A stage remains empty without an actor to fill its space with meaning.

The observer is always an active participant in the realization of any experience, because the split of there being a participant and a thing to be participated in is imaginary, although again, perhaps necessary.

In this way, that which causes a synchronicity to arise is the observer himself.

However, in this too, you could make the mistake of viewing the observer only in the local sense of personal self, while it is the whole movement of reality responding to intent.
While the observer is touching light with his eyes, he is also touching reality with his mind, affecting its frequencies and sending his own through the psychosphere. (This is not necessarily something as transmundane as sending thoughts out into space, but merely reacting to situations and interacting with the world.)

Just as the observer never concerns himself with trying to beat his heart, but lets it happen, so he does not concern himself with causing an experience to rise from his knowledge of the experience. Because just like breathing, it arises naturally through intent.

And yet intent always arises as a response to something else. From a desire to attain.

Once the mind has attained the knowledge, it can replicate the experience, and so conscious intention is no longer necessary.

We are not aware of the mind setting the stage for an experience because we operate in the conscious field of mind. The conscious field is influenced and one with the subconscious at all times, however, the focus of the everyday mind is on the conscious part only.

To set the stage is not the role of the conscious mind, only to perceive and touch, and in this create the unconscious where more of the stage is set so the conscious can then further interact, and so on.

In other words, the role of conscious intention (as opposed to subconscious), is to continue to touch reality and itself simultaneously so it can give meaning and shape to reality.

So the observer’s main purpose remains shifted outwards and inwards to attain and absorb sensation and information and reference it.

A curious thing occurs, however, when the mind chooses to look directly at mind.

In this case, conscious attention has shifted from observing what is perceived as being outside, to observing that which is the observer.

And yet the split remains.

The mind is so convinced of itself as split from all that is sees, even its own processes of growing hair, beating a heart, breathing, thinking and even pain, that it will stay in this state of there being one who is observing and that which is being observed even when mind looks at itself.

When we consider it, it seems very natural for us to think what we are observing is our own thoughts.

But this is never the case.

There are no thoughts which are our own.
What I mean by this is there are no thoughts which rise independently from your immersion in the events around you and the environment, so all thinking is the direct result of the flow of these events. This is the very crux of why an acausal event is being questioned, as there seems to be no such thing and a human never seems to act, but always seems to react.

The same split operates even when you look at self. It is still the same split of the observer and the observed which remains active and continues the same energy of thought of a split from the world around us, and so we inevitably think our thoughts exist independently of others.

While in actuality, no thoughts arise without the knowledge you have gained about the way to think.

Without learning how to think a certain way, the experience of thinking a certain way can never arise.

This learning is always dependent upon other minds, from which our own mind is constantly absorbing information and fitting it into its ideals and perceptions to fill out the whole picture of what it wishes to attain.

No thought of ours is independent. No thought or expression is unique. The only factor which determines how unique our expression may seem to other minds is the obscurity of our sources of knowledge.

And so while synchonocity appears to connect through meaning, that meaning is always superimposed by the observer upon a connection that is always there, arrives from the same form and field which we are, and naturally seeks to form denser and denser clusters of itself to play with and expand itself, forever.

This is an answer to a question asked Here.

To quickly answer before I elaborate a bit:
I don't think there is no such thing as spirituality. What I think is: there is no spirituality separate from materiality.

When you talk about spiritual goals they are really material goals, and when you talk about material goals they are really spiritual goals.

Both are words for the same thing.

To achieve either you are using the same instrument.

And there is no other instrument.

Without Mind there would be no means for you to be spiritual. Without Mind there would be no means for you to be psychical. (I capitalize Mind because in this case I don't mean mind as a personal mind, but Mind as the collective flow of Nature.)

If you are thinking everything is a test of how spiritual you can be, how present you can be and concentrated you can be. If you are thinking how every opportunity in life is a test of how to be your best self in any given situation, you may deny the full spectrum of self, which includes your worst self just as much as your best self. Your nature includes and is both you when you are not aware of your actions and you when fully aware. Both equally encapsulate nature.

You are nature - anything that you do will be an expression of its boundless potential. Even things you might consider wrong or things which you might view as wrongdoing.

This, however, does not excuse wrongdoing and man should strive to hold ideals that include, not exclude. It does not excuse wrongdoing because nature is as much Other as it is You.

One does not have to brand themselves spiritual to be compassionate. One can be materialistic and be just as emphatic.

What we call spiritual is a term to describe a way of seeing and touching reality.

To feel compassion and show compassion is to be compassionate, but does not require spirituality.

For instance, instead of being calm about not being compassionate in any given moment, you may instead think about how uncompassionate you are, and that too is your nature just as much as being compassionate.

We may end up feeling unrest because we think we shouldn't feel unrest.

You may even think the solution is to think of how you can solve this problem.

There is no problem to begin with. The perceived solution is what creates the problem and remains responsible for creating the problem time and again.

I talked about this in my previous post called Pursuit of Happiness.

However, having said all that, I think there are aspects of our existence that can be called spiritual.
These are aspects of ourselves which go deeper than what we normally perceive or see in our typical ways of perception. And in meditation or instances of presence where we are not thinking of the past or the future, but immerse ourselves in the flow of now and feel ourselves to embody that flow, in these instances, when conceptualization is cut and we gain direct access, I believe we become and see the very essence of what we named spirituality. An experience that needs to be embodied in action and loses it's isness as soon as a word is uttered about it. A thing that can be pointed at but never truly explained. This, however, does not mean that our everyday thinking, our stress and our worries are not spiritual processes as well.

It just means that in moments of frivolous mental activity we don't feel this connection to what we call spirit, to the essential flow of existence, as deeply or as directly, as we are distracted and hypnotized by Mind.

Man proposes, God disposes.

Every action of man, even his life, is disposed and bares little meaning outside man.

Man is the beauty of this world. He holds in his hand the will to behold but mostly chooses to ignore.

There is no soul.
Nothing the self fear more than it too being disposed. Of there being a time in which nothing of it will remain. In this it has made itself eternal in the need for continuity. It has made the soul.

Man projects what is already there, in himself as nature. The soul is a projection of man who desires to be eternal. Like him, the soul exist as an expression of thought.

For man, there is no world outside thought and mind. Only more delusion of mind.

You are not a man having the experience of a soul.

You are not a soul having the experience of man.

You are existence having an experience of itself.

Existence experiencing Self.

For the purpose of this let me explain what I mean by Ego as to avoid any confusion. We as bodies are space, its tangible aspect. While what we label as Ego is more akin to time, a unit of measurement that cannot exist without space, but unlike space, is used to measure that in which it exists. An idea about a thing which reflects the thing in an attempt to portray it. An agreement of there being a way of measuring a person's personality and traits, whereas the end result is a set of guidelines and shouldn't be confused with all of what a person is. The term Ego exists as a way of measuring the psyche.

What we call an ego collapse or loss is the exact point where this psyche, the individual's inner workings and perceptional responses, no longer know how to deal with the situation at hand.
The subsequent reaction produced is a temporary but often complete loss of self-identity.
It is something that happens daily, although the older and individual gets, the more he or she tends to notice only collapses which are extremely prominent in the psyche. For the most extreme ego deaths, a more readily used terminology exists in clinical psychology: mental breakdown.

Due to the term mental breakdown and the associated stigma, an ego collapse is taboo in most western social circles. You're not going to bring it up as an ice-breaker.
For most it remains a thing to be avoided at all costs, as it suggest a delirious self, an unstable mind, emotional fragility and mental instability, and in the event of an actual occurrence of a breakdown, the person in question is often considered, for a time, to be devoid of that which makes a mind able to exist in any intractable sense. However, a collapse can potentially underline something else.

In the instance of a collapse or loss, the part of mind which forms responses to stimuli based on previous experiences and ideas about experiences, usually does one of two things: it produces an attack which we often call an overreaction, or withdraws and produces a non-reaction. It may produce reactions that follow on any point of the spectrum between these extremes.

In both cases it adjusts and adapts. It does this by skewing what is and adjusts itself not to what is going on, but in most cases molds a situation to fit its own preconceptions and beliefs. In other words, in most cases it does not accept what is, but looks for ways to justify its own existent point of view and further deny what is in any way it knows how.

Let’s first examine why such a thing might occur.

The initial breakdown or collapse occurs due to the inability of the mind to accept what is. That which is becomes too out of bounds of the every-day perception upon which the ego has so far functioned. The conditioning patterns upon which the ego operates cannot produce a reaction. Non-acceptance of what is, in other words, not accepting things as they are, triggers a dissonance between the idea of self and the happening perceived to be outside of the self, where the ego needs to effectively shrink into a more basic self, and reset in order to adapt. It will attempt to attack, defend, hide, or a combo of any of these reactions (and more) in a very short span of time.

For a person to realize what is happening and what the event underlines, a collapse needs to happen again, and preferably again under proper guidence. However many times it takes.

At some point a subtle feeling can arise in anyone who has undergone a series of collapses.

It can portray the nature of the ego.

Or more precisely, it brings the awareness of the Self identifying wholly and completely with it.

The Ego is and will remain a telescope with a narrow view of assessment that feeds the rest of the organism whatever it needs to survive in any given situation.

When trying to go beyond the ego as a way to test yourself by doing something opposite of what you thought the ego might do, you may find yourself wondering if the reaction produced was in fact ego-driven in some subconscious way. This portrays the strength of the deception; but also presents a stronger problem which the ego will resolve in a very cunning way.

The Ego will, instead of recognizing itself and exposing itself to the scrutiny of perception, create what most call a Higher Self. The ego will develop the Higher Self through subtle means of self-deception and self-confirmation. It will actively seek out minds with the same attitudes and knowledge of the Higher Self to confirm itself in the individual psyche. The Ego will seek minds to shape itself and lean itself upon in order to give the concept of the Higher Self validity through acknowledgement. It will guide a person through levels of confirmation to make him or her believe in the Higher Self, while still being the ego in disguise.

Questions may be asked of others who have “realized the Higher Self”. The most readily asked being: “How can I differentiate between what is my Ego reaction, and what is the reaction of the Higher Self?”

The answer usually goes something like this: The Ego reaction comes after the initial gut reaction. The initial reaction of the Higher Self is the right and immediate reaction.

In this scenario, an ego reaction is the reaction which is not immediate - a response which goes through a filter in the mind for a particular social condition. However, even the most basic gut reaction will always arise from the mind, and so always be conditioned. (If you think when you are by yourself your reactions are not socially driven it will be a mistake.*) (*A human being is never separate from his social environment, no matter the level of isolation. If the Self perceives that the Self intends to isolate itself from its environment it can do something the mind does on a regular basis. It will project itself as far into the future as it must to justify what it is doing now. In other words, it will do things now for future acknowledgement and confirmation.)

In still other words, the Self has the potential to access the meta-mind and react instantly. These instant reactions are not based on emotional responses that have not yet formed into complex thoughts about a situation, while the ego processes emotional responses and runs it through the meta-mind's thinking patterns overlaying the emotional patterns, and so is influenced by the created patterns of thinking, as well as what the meta-mind is trying to achieve.

This perceived layer or conscious decision may trick anyone that in fact these two responses are separate, or even performed by two separate entities, one more true to the idea of self than the other.

However, this distinction between ego and self is again a product of pattern, as the meta-mind or what we call self cannot experience anything without knowledge. Be it genetic knowledge or learned knowledge. Without this knowledge, no experience arises, as every and all experience can arise from mind and its ideas.
Even the meta-mind operates according to pattern and cannot produce a reaction without a mental pattern according to which it can produce it.
A trans-personal experience is not a trans-personal experience if you never heard of a trans-personal experience and what it might be. At the point of not-knowing about this experience, the happening is that of a living organism and perception.
Without knowledge you cannot experience anything, and once experienced, that experience fortifies the knowledge, this them becomes a circle wherein you are unable to see the circle as happening and so instead you produce more versions of the self, claiming each to be more self-aware than the last in order to create new experience of self-awareness, while still being in the same circle.

We may end up thinking the initial gut reaction is more valuable than the second, Ego reaction, as our skewed belief and propensity to repeat the same patterns and think through the same system of knowledge. It may even happen that we devalue the response produced by thinking and value that produced by feeling as we operate on the basis that the self is real, as much as we believe the ego is real and not a set of ideas about itself.

In this sense, the higher self in maintained, thinking and believing it exists in much the same way we believe the ego does: as an entity with its own will and drive separate from the perceived meta-self.

To give two basic examples why the Higher Self and the Ego are the same thing, we can use two examples. (Here the word illusion is meant as a division created by mind where there is none or a fantasy to explain reality)

the clouds and their separation from the sky is illusory. The clouds are an aspect of the sky and not a thing in the sky. They draw a pattern of the sky, not a pattern in the sky.

You can argue the distinction is semantic, and that indeed the clouds are a measurable phenomena happening in what we call sky. But this uses the same modes of thinking as any separation between any object and subject. For instance, we shift in different social environments depending on what group we find ourselves in and separate the perceived subject and the perceived object. We sense that we become a pattern in a social process and re-imagine the self in most social situations. As the separating mechanism fades from immediate perception, we fail to be aware of being the social situation itself but view the self as being an event inside the situation.

In all social situations, the only separating mechanism which informs the self that it is separate from the situation and not the situation itself, remains our self-awareness.
We started doing this when we were kids.
We had a Self for our family, for our friends, our pet, our other group of friends, etc. In school we were placed into a program and expected to create a Self that will be able to function out there. A failure to be that program brought with it a perceivable threat of being able to fit into a system that requires the inception of specific programs to work.

Can therefore any benefit be found in watching your own thinking and doing? Or should a person always react in a knee-jerk motion?

At first you may notice that when the mind is on stage, it will not produce a thought-reaction as long as you can maintain focus and intensely watch. If you attempted it you may notice how difficult this is to maintain for any impressive length of time. Meaning that, as long as you watch the next thought that will come, it will not.

When thoughts come and you remain focused and watch, you will find that in these situations, your reactions to your own thinking and responses to this thinking tend to shift to a different spectrum.

There comes an acceptance of things as they are and as they come and go, while keeping nothing. The life of such an individual can be more akin to playing. Almost in the same manner as playing any instrument. The Self is that which strums the strings or hits the drum, but the strumming is not the guitar, only an expression of it. The guitar itself keeps no notes, they come, then they go.

That is the function of the Self, to look at itself, while the Ego’s function might seem to be to sense things outside and produce instant reactions. It can do this the most efficiently by making you think the world inside you is separate from outside. But also to have you believe that even your inner world is seperate into a watcher and that which is being watched. A doer and a thinker. A reactionist and a being who can perceive the reactions as happening. And yet the Ego cannot exist without the Self and Other just as a cloud cannot exist without the environment we perceive it to be inside of. Just as the Self cannot exist without Other and Other cannot be without Self.

Somewhere in our evolutionary path we became self-aware.

Which immediately served to conceptually separate us from our environment. Without self-awareness an awareness of there being an Other as well as a Self cannot exist. Without this self-awareness you would be hard pressed to ever feel separate from anything. As we perceive animals as not being self-aware conceptually, we never say an animal has en Ego, only a Self that is that animal right down to the marrow.

The next of the two ways of seeing why the initial separation into a Higher Self is illusory, and why this creates only further separation from the meta-self and creates another identity based on ideas about what the self is, is this:

You could do it ad infinitum and never reach “The Real You” or “Highest Self”, because you will always be under the illusion that you have reached it. As the Self, you can watch the Ego, then as the Higher Self you can watch the Self watching the Ego, then watch the Higher Self watching the Self who watches the Ego, then watch the watcher who watches the Higher Self who watches the Self who watches the Ego and so on... You can do this until however long you like and only create more illusion and separateness. Or you can recognize that the basic problem was illusory.

The Self needs no further label of Higher or Lower, and the Self has a social structure, which we call the Ego – but which is not separate from the Self, but remains that which reflects whatever it receives. You can express a certain nature, but it is an expression of the same Self as the Self that is the Ego.

The only way to break this cycle is to realize that the I and the Ego are the same thing. You may watch what you are doing and not like it, then say, “Aha! That is the Ego, not the real me,” but instead of seeing the Ego as a thing to be fought and defeated, see it as a tool. By watching the Ego, what you are doing is watching the construct in your mind made by the imprints of your existence in the physical dimension. It is not a presence, but a concept, an abstract, a possibility. You may not like this construct, and that is fine, but that does not mean the one watching is different than the thing being watched.

So by looking at the Ego in this sense, by creating the illusion of duality, you can see the ego as a creation of the basic functioning of the Self, a program you can understand by observing it. The main purpose of the Ego will remain survival. To separate You from Environment and to help You be safe from Environment. And for that it is perfect, as it creates the perfectly crafted illusion of there being a separate existence between Self and Other. It is best at activating patterns to fit a role, but the role is not the nature of that which plays the role. The nature of that which plays the role is empty. Not empty in any real sense of the word, but empty of separate existence.
Knowing this, you can start producing reactions that take into account this inseparability from anything else.

You can watch the ego and have feelings produced by what you call the ego which may lead you to believe the ego is real, and that would be a completely fair assumption. However, thinking that the emotions were produced by the ego is the same as thinking what you thought of right now is something Mary has thought of across the street and that it didn't come from you. Do not think of it as watching the Ego, but of “stepping back and allowing the I to look at Itself.”

There is a Zen Koan that asks: “When many are reduced to one, what is one reduced to?”

Just like this problem of the Ego, your immediate reaction will be to examine the Koan as a problem to be solved. You may think, "If Many can be reduced, then One must also be reduced – because the question implies it."

Or if you think in a manner of “all is one”, you might say, "If Many is reduced to One, then one cannot be further reduced, as all is one."

And yet the problem is illusory. As one is reduced from many, so can one be reduced to many. One and Many are both man-made measurement and have no meaning besides in the mind. Many already contains one and in fact implies it, so one is always many as the concept of one cannot be perceived without the concept of many. In this manner the question is a trick, much like the idea of separation from your ego is a trick.

No matter the effort, you will never become separate from the ego. Instead you can see it as a play that you can either go along with, or do differently. In trying to separate from it, you are attempting to do the same thing as if a finger were trying to touch its own tip.

The attempt can only create more illusion.

Recognize that touching the tip itself with the tip is impossible, not because of some mechanical problem of the human body, but because it is already done, as the very separateness of the tip from the finger is not there. The mind created a tip where there is just a finger, pointing at itself.

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(response to a comment here)

You can never separate yourself from the totality of existence. The undivided mind knows and lives this. Whatever you do, whatever you think, it will be in relation to this complete immersion in the totality. I am not referring to the totality of human existence, but the whole of Nature, the totality of its energetic flow.

Thought remains the only separating mechanism, creating an imaginary divide between the thinker and the thought. Between that which is being experienced and the experiencer.

To whatever degree, humans like the idea of themselves as creators of experience. We like the idea of others thinking of us as creative individuals and of ourselves as individuals who create. Either by creating thought or by creating the physical expression of thought. And yet all of our creative capabilities are constructed from past events, from other minds and training in expression of thought and doing.

There is no such thing as new thought. There are no thoughts which are your own.

In this sense we are often fooled by ourselves, believing we are creating something new or something not made of something imagined or seen or explained, before. We think we create new things and new thoughts constantly. But this is not our nature. Nature is not creative. Nature is emergent. It emerges out of itself. From the possibility of itself and nothing emerges out if nature which is not it; any event is by its nature an expression of its boundless potential.

Our direct experience revolves around the idea of consciousness and of being immersed in sensory inputs, and we neglect that what we call unconsciousness is just as much part of nature. And that every emergent sentient thing jumps between what we call consciousness and unconsciousness. And sentience, being conscious and experiencing consciousness, appears to be interested only in unconsciousness. This is to say, that all desire of every organism seems bent towards a primitive or an increasingly complex desire not to desire. The deepest expression of this desire is unconsciousness.

For animals this is simple, as it mostly centers around food. Meaning an animal will bend all of its will towards gaining enough food so all desire for food may cease for a time and it can slip into unconsciousness.

But then there is the human animal.
Our desires seem complex, all of them driven by the desire not to desire and seeking pleasure in desire. In this we are fully immersed in the expression of the totality. The only separating factor from the totality of existence being the projected thought. Thought that we project upon the totality. Thought that tries to define, measure, explain. Our ability to realize that there is a self watching itself when looking into a mirror is the very source of division in the divided mind.

What emerges is the ability to project any idea into a constructed framework of logical thinking and drive that idea to what we think is the logical conclusion. A conclusion based on the premise projected by the human and its perceived division from all other things. Resulting in an imagined divide between all further projections stemming from the first.

This allows us to think thought itself can be observed by imagining an observer. And yet what is observing thought is just more thought.

We are not creators. We are imitators.

Somewhere in our path of becoming what we are right now, we became self-aware. A thing in our minds was born which allowed us to imagine ourselves as separated from the things around us and made it possible for us to imagine that our thoughts can be directly observed by an imagined observer. So our immersion in this totality was separated by thought from that which is being immersed. We cease to realize our complete immersion and inseparability through the very thing which makes us believe we are separate.

A human being never acts, he reacts.

Every society in which a human lives is dependent on things around that human. He cannot exist alone or inside a vacuum.

And yet we constantly think that we do. That all our thoughts are our own. That all our emotions are our own.

The only separation which mind experiences is the experience of thought. Then projects its own imagined separation outwards to all things.

People think it is possible for them to observe thought. That it's an empty mind which looks upon its own thinking. There is not such thing as empty mind. You can call it presence, you can call it concentration, you can call it whatever you wish. It will still be thought.

The undivided mind knows this and ceases to try and define its own state outside of its own Isness. Ceases to label it.

What is observing thought is still thought.

What is experiencing bliss is still thought.

What is experiencing emptiness of thought is still thought.

What is being present is still thought.

You believe you are experiencing your life, and yet you don't really know if you are alive or dead.

If I were to ask you if you are alive, then ask you why you think you are alive, you will recite to me what you were told what life is. What they said to you are the properties of life, the processes of life, ideas of what must happen for something to be considered alive.

The undivided mind knows these are concepts about life, and not its Nature. The undivided mind knows it has no ideas of its own and everything is recycled. The undivided mind knows no thoughts are its own or belong to it, but belong to us all. There is nothing which can be said - just as everything I have said now - which will not be trying to convey a concept, and in conveying manages to point away from the Isness of the thing, and instead attempts to convey a thought about a thing.

The undivided mind knows there is nothing there which can be enlightened and nothing there to free itself from. When all concepts are stripped away, when all ideas are put aside, when all concepts about what the Self is are brushed away, nothing is left. And so the undivided mind knows there is nothing there to find, and in this sees itself as full of all things all at once.

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