The “schoolhouse” of self-manufacture works through an equative habit: I = X—the assertion of a stable locus (“I”) identical with a changing state. It shows up as:

• I am my thought about me.

• I am my feeling about me.

• I am sad / happy / angry (and the intensified versions: I am so…).

• I am my memory / my history.

• I am what I like and don’t like: I like this / I don’t like that.

• I agree / I disagree.

• I am the kind of person who…

• I am my role / image / personality.

• I am what I believe about me—the concept I have of myself.

All of these are modes of self-fashioning: manufacturing a seeming self-continuum out of impermanent content. The remedy is not more refined identification, but the cessation of fashioning through meditation and mindful stillness. When something appears, the move is to drop the equation I = X and return to a process-language: X is arising (and passing).

Replace identity claims with process descriptions:

• Instead of “I am angry” → “Anger is arising.”

• Instead of “I am sad” → “Sadness is present.”

• Instead of “I am this kind of person” → “This pattern is occurring now.”

Shift: from identity (“I = X”) to event/process (“X arises and passes”).