Mind over easy:
I figured I'd post this in direct pointing since looking directly at the sense of self is doing this for me at the moment-
When I look into the sense of self and try to look at awareness separated from thoughts, this immense feeling of suffering grows.
Kellen
There is a flaw in the premise that is probably important.
"Awareness separated from thoughts": sounds like you are attempting to create a duality between something that doesn't exist (awareness) and thoughts, which are intrinsically aware or you could just more simply and clearly say manifest where they are.
Why try to create that illusion?
There is no separation, nor anything to be separate from anything.
No-self: no subject, no observer, no doer, no controller, no this-and-that, no split, no gap, no this-side-and-that-side, no duality.
Reality is a natural, causal, integrated, transient, ephemeral, empty process. You are trying to be someone who is trying to create a split between something that is mythological and something to ephemeral that it must be held in some illusorily fixed way to create a split.
Let the thing show itself. Let what arises just be, just arise and vanish, aware of itself where it is, no doer, no controller, no meditator, just things arising and vanishing all the way through, easily, simply, straightforwardly. Why make something so simple and easy so complicated and artificially held in some contrived sense of a divide?
Relax and allow the qualities of space to synchronize with themselves.
Daniel