I think the main confusion people have with understanding the self is in the understanding of consciousness and its contents, which is where you would look for such a thing. The confusion comes from attributing independent control to awareness. Consciousness (all subjective experience) simply is made up of stimuli arising into awareness then disappearing, there is no choice/selection by a self, there is only mindfulness, or knowledge of awareness of the present moment, available to us. If you pay attention to your experience, this is available to be seen now. Even thoughts of the past/future are simply arising into the moment. The feeling of control/choice/ being something permanent is an illusion, also arisen into conscious awareness.

There is no subject/object, experience/experiencer duality in relation to subjective experience. There is only the awareness of the present, of consciousness, there is only experience itself, there is no separation between a someone and something done to him, all there is is something happening, this happening is experience, and that is all. This is the non-dual nature of reality, there is no self, just change, just experience, just consciousness and its contents. This is Advaita Vedanta. To practice Advaita Vedanta, you are focusing on the awareness itself which is the backdrop in which contents of consciousness are appearing. Rather than recognizing the contents as they arise and fade away, as in Vipassana, and rather than focusing on a single content of consciousness and bringing the awareness constantly back to it, as in Samatha, in Advaita Vedanta you are focusing upon the field of pure consciousness within which these contents are appearing. It is the reflexive meditative act of focusing awareness upon the field of awareness itself. The best metaphor I have for it is that of a stage play, where actors and sets are constantly changing on the stage, but the whole act is occurring on the stage. The contents on the stage change, but the stage remains the same. Here the stage is consciousness, and the actors are the contents of consciousness. In Advaita Vedanta we are watching the stage, and realizing its “permanence” in a Hindu sense, as it is the backdrop and consistent aspect which lies behind all conscious content. Through this identification with awareness itself, we remove the distinction between there being a watched and a content watched, we lose the subject object distinguishing and identifying, entering into a non-dual state, which has with it the realization of the non-dual nature of consciousness itself. This insight, and this state, is the primary objective of Advaita Vedanta.