> "Awareness is an illusion", as proposed by some thinkers, certainly doesn't do it for me, because there's still something that has to perceive that illusion.

Maybe the illusion is just perceiving a past/previous instance of itself -- which further sustains the illusion? The recursion obviously bottoms out at the point of emergence, if we assume that consciousness is an emergent phenomenon.

(Don't take this too seriously -- I just think it's fun to think about these things.)