Consciousness is not the ineluctable starting point for self-understanding because there is a difference between being conscious and understanding oneself as a conscious being. The difference is between being in a certain state and knowing oneself to be in a certain state.
The greatest wisdom is to get to know oneself.
Not to be alone. To be spared the possibility of knowing oneself, in aloneness.
I always thought I was Jeanne d'Arc and Bonaparte. How little one knows oneself.
How can one learn to know oneself? Never by introspection, rather by action.
To know oneself is not necessarily to improve oneself
To know oneself is to disbelieve utopia.
To be enlightened is to know oneself and not run away.