I'm not sure there is anything I really want to preserve by means of personal immortality.

But assuming that there is, it's a specific dynamic pattern of relationships among representations of hypothetical attributes of my environment (including me). Which includes a number of words that I haven't defined here, admittedly.

It could be instantiated physically in any number of ways. It's (probably) currently instantiated in a network of protoplasmic cells, but I don't particularly want to preserve any part of that network.

Edit: Responding to the edited question... the direction is a more precise and detailed understanding of how cognitive structures relate to one another, and relate to events in the world.