In the confusion of reflexive terms, self, mind, I, me, consciousness, thought, subject, subjectivity, spirit, soul etc., some distinctions can be introduced based on the answers to such questions as, does it have attributes?, does it have a history?, is it extended in time or does it exist only in the now? These distinctions are purely hypothetical, or groundless in this context; they are speculative, mobilising an opposition of ideas in order to see if some small illumination results. Generally when 'I' is said or included as part of another intended meaning it points to a something with a history, something about which it makes sense to say that there is a puzzle about the persistence of personal identity. It is linked to a name, a marker for a formal identity and for a body as object in an acknowledged common world. But it is precisely this historical 'I' that seems to culminate in the present moment, in the little bubble of presence lasting a fraction of a second or a few seconds or even minutes that we call 'now', not an absolute illumination or clearing but one that dominates all past time and inherits all meanings, appropriates all mattering and is the pivot on which a vague and as yet unreal future rests. Looked at more closely this implied structure seems only a prejudice or meta-belief with obvious shortcomings. There have been an endless number of such momentary 'I's, each with the same belief in its definitive calendar moment, and there will be future ones which will erase any claim to reality of this one. As the actor and audience of experience all its reality is concentrated in one distinguished point, but reality to it must be precisely not the point but its rootedness in the all. The vivid spark of awakening to oneself in the moment must therefore be merely a reflection or declension of the necessarily unmanifest self.