There definitely can be some problems with dualism of mind/soul and body. For one, we must affirm that we are our bodies. We are not a ghost trapped in and operating a body. Nay, we are in fact a body. But I would argue that our experience also indicates that we are not a physical body alone. Our experience of the world includes and incorporal element, for example, your experience of seeing this screen right now. The material light waves bounce off your retina, which send signals to your brain, which produces this experience of sight. The experience itself is not material, however. Also, when it comes to our being in control of our thoughts, and our not being our thoughts but us merely being aware of them, well I think you've basically contradicted yourself. If you are aware of your thoughts, then what are you? Where are you? This reflexive self-awareness, as you put it, indicates a transcendent incorporal element separate from the brain and body. But I don't think that is the case! Rather, we are very much in control of our thoughts (even though we are not absolutely in control of them). And there are many evidences which point towards this being the case. Our being able to intentionally change our thoughts and moods is probably the best proof (as is the common experience of all humans). Remember William James. "My first act of free will was deciding to believe in it."
You were close to the answer but you went back off into dualism Taylor. The eternal tao that can be spoken is not the eternal tao. There is no self, the self is a conception, one that changes from moment to moment. you are separating up experience into incorporeal and material, they go together, they are not separate in the first place. I would tend to agree with you in terms of incorporeal, in a stoic sense, lekta and the like but I don't think you are going far enough, spinoza would be my suggestion for you with regards to this discussion, maybe ruyer, his sense of the incorporeal was the modes of the two attributes, extension and thought,neither independently existing but just two of the infinite number of attributes possible of the one substance. You see it's paraconsistent logic a dialetheism! the logical posivitists were wrong, Godel showed this much.
Your sense of self is an illusion, an illusion run by the default mode network or the task negative network. Split brain patients show this much, there are two selves in these people. Shut down the DMN and you will experience pure undifferentiated consciousness. You are stuck in your ego mind my friend, there is a pre-linguistic real a invariant pre-representational that needs no thought, there is something prior to thought, my speaking about he moon is not the moon itself, the thoughts, words etc are not the thing-in-itself (Ding an sich). You think you are the body, thats just a thought, the observer is in fact the observed, you cannot have an observer without something to observe, they go together, thats why its called non-duality, its not two! you are simultaneously the body the mind, the explicate but also the implicate awareness which is the absolute truth. Nagarjuna would also be a good person to read up on, his two truths are very much paraconsistent, an absolute (very much spinozin) and a relative, non-duality contains duality but cannot be conceived, its beyond thought which is inherently dualistic.
To the question of what are you if you aren't your thoughts? Nothing!! there is no self! its pure subject ie not a thing, thoughts are objects unless you think everything is objective? you will discover the subjective, the realize that the subject and object are not in fact separate, they are two sides of the same coin which no reductionism can reach. You are denying consciousness apart from thought. I promise you that you in fact have no control over your thoughts, you have no idea what thought is coming next and the thoughts you believe are yours are pure conditioning. Same with your body, you aren't in control of that either, it ages, changes without your will the vast majority of things going on it it, heart beating, thyroid working, digesting are going on without you! you know why? there is no you, that's just a fucking thought, a helpful one. If you want to get to the truth you simply drop all beliefs, the truth is self-evident and requires no belief, its nothing and everything all at once.
