If the parameters of consciousness were slightly different then some final metaphysical truths would be discoverable. Isn't there, in other words, a sort of analogy of the so-called anthropic principle that applies to consciousness, a sort of ontological principle? If the purpose of consciousness is for being to awaken to itself wouldn't it be fine-tuned in such a way as allow this possibility in terms of the possibility of unlimited clarity and penetration and the impossibility of stopping short, of ever coming to the final end and truth of anything finite?

Existing timelessly in the now is synonymous with consciousness and is not a fact about its metaphysical being. In so far as the world is in strict correspondence with e knowing of the world the same is true of it, but again this just means that all temporal and physical relations exists timelessly in the now. It is not a truth at every level but only as seen from the seeing.

You cannot witness the persistence of the 'I'-self in time since it is only located in the 'now' and there cannot be two different 'now's at once. You can witness all kinds of feelings and thoughts, but only in the 'now' - everything else is a thought. That you persisting in time, that the same self recurs and in that recursion makes meaning is a large part of thought. It's not really essential to anything but that is where it starts and ends - it acts like a filter that smooths the course of experience by blurring it, more or less.

You have a consistent self for others and for yourself via others, but purely for yourself there is only a succession of unpredictable momentary states, each one complete in itself but with no relations between them. You can create an autobiography only by getting outside yourself, consulting memory as if it were a book, but it can be wiped away in the next moment. Fully entering into time would leave no trace behind.

A good part of the culture is about finding your authentic self, discovering and being true to your authentic desires etc. Authentic being a catchall term for a certain kind of focus and release of energy. It doesn't end there. Another, smaller part of the culture is realising that the authentic self is no self at all, that every desire is founded on the fundamental misrecognition that you are the one that has it, that it expresses, that it is real.

Consciousness as it is to you, the sensory, individuated self-reflexive, knowing inside of life can only be as the restriction or limitation of a universal potentiality, the inside of everything and the outside of everything, and so the being everything all at once.

Do you have life or does life have you? Life's way of having you is for you to have life. Only you could call it life. This why the troubling question is never answered, always escapes, you could never contain what contains but rages endlessly, unnamed and new, without purpose or repetition.