Primacy of experiencing (as the frame through which to understand this ongoing...) implies a presentism, as of momentary atoms of experience succeeding each other 'according to co-dependent co-arisal' or whatever the jargon. These are self-contained or monadic enough as to be outside of time - there is no 'you' serially inhabiting these shells, but the shells are the complete thing, with a virtual 'you' inside or not as the case may be (depending on the type of shell or monad) complete with temporality. Therefore on this notion the kind of being that belongs to the monads is timeless. This is the basis for a kind of utilitarian ethics, since every unit of experience has an equal ontological basis, and inheres with more or less suffering etc. A block-universe of qualia, in which such ethics as can be derived (given its equivocal relation to time and free-will) depends on the directly experienced imperative within each monad to minimise the suffering in its direct dependencies. All of this again dependent on accepting the primacy of experiencing as a frame, a sort of qualified idealism. As against this consider the 'soul'.

A generative theory of consciousness which was able to derive all of its modes of temporalisation as well as demonstrating the entire field of possibility for qualitative phenomenal experiences, of which our own sensory modalities are special cases etc., all this on the basis of something, fields, energies, general relations, for example, that is not conscious but precedes it would go a long way towards refuting idealism. If such a theory were found however it would only serve to launch a new idealism being itself the portal through which the limits imposed on consciousness could be overcome. Of course this is just to say that any future theory of consciousness worthy of the name would be an updated Kantianism which would immediately lead to an explosion of updated versions of German Idealism - just as gimcrack as their originals. No, it is better to start from Idealism, warts and all.

What is past is non existent, like death as an abrupt end or even as what you were experiencing yesterday or five minutes ago has disappeared. It is irrevocable and unrecoverable, but gone completely and quite unreal. The moment you take experiencing as the fundamental reality this stares you in the face. Insofar as past occurrences have consequences affecting present and future these belong entirely to present and future, to their peculiarly constrained structure, the past does not inhere in them. Unlike the past they are not fixed, and much of future oriented intentionality is directed towards evading or confirming these constraints. This being-in-time is so fixed in experience as to be itself not subject to time. The complete and utter falling into non-existence of the past is the ever-present death which 'powers' experience. Any way out which is not a way out of time is no way out.

You can only know consciousness or experiencing if you what is is different to, out of what background it has come to be. What is the not or absence of experiencing? If you think of death as you imagine it to be the absolute nothing, absence of all experiencing as, say, under a general anaesthetic - although that is only an idea arising in consciousness. This is so overdetermined by conscious constructs as to be entirely misleading. Whatever it is that is the not of consciousness is as present an all-pervading as consciousness, and is precisely not the background in any sense, because it is not prefigured in any way. Consciousness is the making-unsurprising of not-consciousness, and so not-consciousness is the utter surprising of consciousness!

Consciousness as an immediate awareness of what is happening, so that it can happen. For example, if self is intention, there is the immediate knowledge of that which is not itself intention without which there could be no such happening as an intention. When this is called witnessing, a distance is implied, as in the phrase, 'innocent witness', but there can be no such distance and hence no witnessing - and yet there is an awareness independent of whatever it is aware of. The distance, the innocence is a kind of deniability, a space for judgment or for uncertainty, for alternate worlds. Consciousness is awareness with out alternate worlds, without judgment and without innocence.

A self is an integral of intentions, that is what gives it voice and salience, and intentions are a claim on the future born out of motives which are necessarily only partly revealed within the complex or conclave of intentions - which may be large or small, broad or narrow, fleeting or stable - it makes little difference. This is to view embodied experiencing on a political model, and what better model can there be since they arise together. But who are these intentions for? Or better, who does this voice speak to or for? What is the people in this analogy? What is the state? An intention is instrumental, it is not persuaded or impressed by another intention. Actually, it is, that's all it does, but not in the way you mean. Again, if politics is theatre, who is the audience?

You lose yourself so as to find yourself again. But first you must be thoroughly lost without a clue. Only phosphorescent traces of desire like fireflies in the cave.