What is self-awareness, anyhow?

Yeah, navel-gazing. I’m reading more from Covey’s Seven Habits and he describes this wonderful thing we have that animals presumably don’t, called self-awareness. He says that we are superior and have dominion over the earth because of this ability to observe our thoughts and feelings and understand ourselves as being separate from these thoughts and feelings.

I think that’s important–believing myself to be my thoughts is a trap I used to fall into. I like the way my priest described it: in meditation, all our organs continue to function: our stomachs digest food, our hearts pump blood, and our brains produce thoughts. My thoughts are vital to me, but they are not me, any more than my blood, food, or air are me.

So the question is: what is this self of which I’m supposed to be aware? I am aware of these aspects of me, my heartbeat, my thoughts, and so on, but I’m not really sure what else there is other than the assembled parts. We can’t really be aware of ourselves any more than we can see our own eyeball. If an animal has sophisticated cogitative facilities, I assume that it would be aware of its thoughts. So I’m not sure that it’s self-awareness that distinguishes us.

I dunno. On the other hand, I am aware of my experience as I act and cogitate. Maybe that’s all it means. Still, why assume that an animal with less sophisticated thinking ability would be any less aware of their own actions and experiences?