What is now, or in the interval of time just elapsed, without self-consciousness, seems to be just simple finite being, bounded snugly by its own experience, and to have been the perfect expression of the subject, exactly because of the absence of any thought of there being a subject or of its needing expression, the very absence of any demand for something more.  This adequation of life, which makes spiritual inquiry seem to be a slightly disreputable activity, something not in good faith when all is said and done, is the natural attitude of life in the world, and is what might later be rediscovered as suffering, a suffering so continuous as to have altogether dropped below awareness. This confidence in itself on behalf of life, the mind's habitual overwriting of insecurity, is active no matter what the experience through which it is expressed happens to be, however much this experience might itself enact a striving to reach beyond its limits, driven by pain and discontent, etc., etc., by crazy ideas of what needs to be different, or conversely by satisfaction, by sovereign approval of some peak mood. Being a self, however, is the capacity to apply the acquired skill to read and interpret other minds to one's own case. Do you look at yourself as if you were looking at another mind, or do you consider what an other mind would find on looking at you? It's unlikely that these opposing tendencies can be distinguished o prevented, but either way another perspective has always already shattered the pretence of simplicity. This is why there can be no such thing as unit of life, or an atom of satisfaction to be placed permanently on our account.