Speaking from a buddhist perspective, there are means by which you can develope the mind, your understanding of reality, and your understanding of "self" quite significantly, depending how far you're willing to go and if you know how to go about it.

in buddhist meditation, the goal is to lose sense of the "self", and the ego. Buddha taught that our minds and perspective on reality is clouded by delusion and to some degree, hallucination. this is because rather than being aware of your own consciousness and awareness, people live under the delusion that their "self" is the chemical drives within us, the instinctive reactions that push us, the mental conditioning we are put through from birth, and the primite egotystical concept we are all ingrained with that what we can immediately percieve (that being your own body and mind), is all that makes up reality.

the sense of "self" is derived from immediate sensory perception. what is outside us, and what is our physical form, are perceived quite differently. Because the world outside our physical selves is not as intimately percievable as the physical body and thoughts within, our minds make sense of this indiscrepency in understanding by separating the world from our physical selves with "Me" and "not me". This eventually leads to concepts such as "pride", sometimes very strongly within some people. pride in itself is the delusion that the worth and importance of ones own actions and abilities are of more importance than anything else, because the actions and abilities contrived from within our physical being are the most intimately percievable, and therfor the only true reality and importance, or so the undeveloped mind would believe. Scientists in the field of neurological study's have actaully found that people who are not selfish and are very generous have a more developed part of the brain that can grasp concepts outside their own views, and see other peoples point of view.

Then there are the drives within us all. in order for the species to innitially survive, we developed instincts. instincts to belong to a societal group, to gain wealth, power, dominance, security, all necessary prerequisites to survival. This is why we have craving, craving brings about attainment, attainment ensures survival. This is what buddhism speaks of when they talk about "the extinction of self". it doesn't mean you blink out of existence, it means the extinction of conditioning, whether it be instinctive or societal. Enlightenment is attained when chemical drives no longer control us, when instinct does not determine our actions, when cravings do not push our response. Enlightenment is the realization of pure conscious awareness, complete liberation from the illusion that our cravings and drives-that-push make up who we really are.