IMHO, if we can accept that these aren't contradictions, I think we can move forward. It's not that I don't think a self doesn't exist, but I do think that it has no seat. The more ways we can describe it, the better we can characterize it. We know what is necessary for the self, but it doesn't reside within those necessary components. It's like wheels are necessary for a car, and to make it drive, but if we remove the wheels, it's still a car.
Certainly our brain has immutable functions, without which we would not be conscious. It does not, however think, trick us, make decisions, or any of the other myriad activities or properties that are ascribed to it in both scientific and popular literature. That's my issue with using language like "our brains deceive us"; whether consciously (pun intended) or not, when this language is used, consciousness is being ascribed to the brain, which inevitably leads to the supernatural because it creates and infinitely long chain of who is thinking for whom.