Hi David - very nicely stated.

There's a phase of Maharshi's self inquiry where you don't use words any more.

As I learn to quietly, without using labels or words of any kind, learn to "sense" that sights, sounds, emotions, thoughts, images, etc are all arising and passing in a vast, open space of awareness, at some point my sense of "I" spontaneously shifts from being aware OF that spacious awareness to being - as Loch Kelly puts it - aware FROM that spacious awareness.

I then find my "self" to BE an undefinable, open, spacious timeless awareness, encompassing, embracing all experience

Then self inquiry is merely a means of reminding ourselves - over and over and over and over again - to "shift" away from our habitual absorption in the play of mind and body to our true I of spacious, open hearted awareness.