As consciousness awakens, awakening to itself, it grows closer to falling into an infinite regress: aware of being aware of being... This would unfold backwards or upstream. What prevents this from happening is the sense of self, a sort of formal structure that 'corks' the upstream of consciousness so that it seems to belong to something or someone. Becoming more conscious is dissolving this stopper and opening to the regress, like a powerful feedback loop that overwhelms all forward content But there is no infinite regression, what stops it is not a self but grounding of being. This unthinkable (and therefore not 'impersonal') and yet unrelated in any way to a self or an 'I'.