Sorry. But ‘What Is’ happening never stops for a ‘self’ to be made. ‘The happening’ does not limit It’s  ‘no thing-ness’ to a stable permanent thing. Ergo, It cannot stop the Beingness of ‘What Is’ happening,  for a trip in some entity that limits It’s eternal-ness. The eternal-ness, the ‘happening’, is never limited,  otherwise finiteness would prevail.
 
The appearance of an illusory self is a created ‘thingness’ that is purely illusory. This ‘thingness’ has no real reality. It borrows Reality from “What Is”. Belief in ‘this’ manufactured thing devolves into an identity, being beefed through iteration of thought and conditioning.
 
A thought arises, as any other thought. The thought, that I am the ‘thinker’ arrives. With repetition, the thought of the ‘thinker’ gains permanence and identity. A virtual Frankenstein is created with all of it’s quirks and limitations. We call it ‘me’.
 
The transfer to ‘thingness’ of identity occurs with the Knowledge of Self. Permanent Self, through collective thought, forgets Itself in the illusion of this creation. Permanent Self keeps on happening despite a plethora of illusion and seeming inconsistency of ‘things’. The ‘Permanence’ remains undiminished, as It Is the Permanence.
 
All along, Our true identity is this Ephemeral Self that has no ‘thing’ to It. Phenomenally, nothing happened. And nothing happened to Us even when believing we are/were the illusory self. Our true nature could never let Us be a ‘thing’ illusory or otherwise. Nothing happened because nothing ever happens (permanently). Illusion is the best that little self can accomplish. And illusion essentially means nothing. Nothing does nothing to change any part of eternity.
 
There Is just ‘happening’ without anything real being created. The illusory self was always illusory and never permanent or real. Thoughts, like identity, are things that happen after the ‘priorness’ of Being. The thought of the ‘thinker’ appears to happen before Beingness, but this is only with the distortion of time. The Now reveals the permanence and ‘priorness’ of Being, being first and always. The temporary-ness of identity is exemplified by the transitory-ness of thought itself. Thought-based existence is hollow and can never really be fulfilled by thought/concept alone.
 
Time is a creation to plumb the creation of things/matter. Time is used by self to remember self (memories) in the past and the future (imagination). The little self’s importance is only important to the little self. Illusion respecting illusion. Again, nothing there.
 
‘What Is’ happening is the constancy of life moving through Itself, commonly called the Now. There is no settling into ‘things, as ‘things’ are empty phenomena, or in other words, a dead end.
 
One can never be a ‘thing’, so nothing happened (here). There is only the verb called ‘happening’ that never stops verbing. The illusion we sell ourselves is that the idea of a ‘thing’ is created. No ‘thing’ ever got created with a false identity because ‘nothing happened’. Nothing happened because ‘What Is happening’ never paused to be the past tense of a ‘thing’. Timeless Eternity just happens Now. There are no objective qualities to timeless Eternity, so there can be nothing to think about, Now.
 
The dream, illusion, or movie may carry on as if it is real but it is only a projection, with Reality never being tainted by the temporal unreality.
 
There is no after, there is no before. To imply either is to engage in the construct of time. Timelessness is not in time. Time is in Timelessness.
 
The conclusion that we are the thinker, is the mind imprisoning ‘Us’ in limitation. Seeing the activity of the self of thought, we see that this self creates itself by claiming to be this thought.
Seeing the activity before any conclusive claiming occurs, stops the Frankenstein-ish-ness from appearing as Us in disguise. ‘See’ the process.
 
This Iz Daddy’O (Happy Thanksgiving!)