When people say “self” they mean the ego: a more healed one, a more authentic one, a brand. Capitalize it and they still mean a person, only glowing.
That is not what is meant here.
The Self — Jung’s word, used until a better one arrives — is not a bigger I. It is the whole in which I and not-I already are. Ego and collective unconscious are not two floors of a building the Self owns. They are the two fishes of the yin-yang: opposed, interlocking, each carrying a dot of the other, and meaningless without the circle.
The circle is emptiness. Not a blank, not a nihil. The nondual field that can appear as a someone and as the depths that someone hides, without being either.
This is why psychology maps onto metaphysics at the root. The psyche’s map (ego / unconscious / Self) is the same map as appearance / hidden / ground, or form / void / the not-two. You can enter by a dream. You can enter by a particle. You can enter by a silence. The topology does not change.
The ego wants the Self as a prize: integration, wholeness, the complete personality. That is the white fish trying to eat the circle. Integration as a project is still egoic. The Self is not produced by the ego making friends with its shadow. The Self is what was the case while the making-friends was happening.
The collective unconscious wants the Self as absorption: dissolve the I, drown in the chorus, become myth. That is the black fish trying to eat the circle. There is no one left to live. Telos dies. A life toward the good requires a someone — even if the someone is a surface.
The yin-yang is the entire figure. Not balance as a lifestyle. The fact that the cut and the uncut are one display.
So: do not improve the ego into the Self. Do not smash the ego to reach the Self. See the figure. The seeing is already the circle. The someone who sees is already the white fish. The depths that flood the seeing are already the black fish. Nothing extra is required, which is why it is so hard.
This is psychological. You can watch it in a mood, a projection, a dream.
This is metaphysical. You can watch it as the structure of mind itself.
If all is mind, there is no gap between those sentences.