I found myself doing this exercise in ‘mental’ space. For instance, if an image comes to mind, and I let that image be the subject, what becomes of the self? The self is not present in the ‘same’ space as the image; it is present only as the one who sees the image, or owns it. So if the image is the subject, the self seems reduced to a point of view. I could maintain this experience, even while at the same time holding on to the self as owner in the usual ways.
Similarly, I have a idea that I use that I call the Thought of the Whole (TOW), by which I mean the totality of the way things are (for me) in any particular moment. If I make the TOW the object, then ‘I’ am inherently part of it, with no separation, because I am part of the way things are. But this ‘no separation’ is also a reversal from my usual ownership claims.
Jack