Yes - this seems like the movement of self is being taken very seriously. Do we know why this is the case? Is it due to some recognition of trauma?
I’m with Dan, its a dog chasing its tail kinda situation - which can even be enjoyable in a melodramatic kinda way
If I had to pick a second reason why : lack of sensitivity, as in I don’t really feel that I am really a major cause of suffering in the world, and if I was (theoretically) what do you want me to do about it?
Honestly? I think these probably are the root-level causes. The deeper things are just more of the same.
Well there is an obvious root, the go-to root for many of these investigations: the self. If there is no self, there is no psyche, no psychological habits, inertia, insensitivity, darkness.
But even then I gotta ask: What, if anything, lies ‘beneath’ the self that might be fundamental to preventing humans from being free? For example, and I’m thinking out loud here: Could it be that there is something in existence and/or life itself that resists freedom?
What if a function of conditioning is to protect the “me” from being disclosed completely?
I think you are right Manuel! The brain is conditioned to never even suspect that ‘me’ doesn’t exist. If there is even a suspicion, the whole ‘trick’ of thought starts to fall apart.
To show fear when threatened is ordinarily taken as a sign of weakness, and to hide this weakness, that is, to keep “my” fear from showing, “my” reaction is to show anger instead. Therefore, “my” conditioning is to hide “my” weaknesses.
Yes - the self is one’s (psychological) conditioning. I feel it is only
that block us from having a perception of it as a whole. These blocks are all aspects of the same (psychological) conditioning.
Yes - the self. Probably the brain itself dimly or unconsciously realises that the self-complex, the psyche, is not secure, is not permanent, and so it resists acknowledging it fully. To acknowledge the unreality and impermanence of the self is projected by thought as something terrible, as death, as annihilation. - This is part of the “dark side” of our psychology that we “resist/avoid looking at”.
The brain protects itself against such a threat by avoiding it, rationalising it, ignoring it, remaining occupied with thought, with activity, etc.
So perhaps it is by inquiring objectively into what death means that the brain can begin to let go of its defensiveness, its resistance to psychological freedom?
You could say that our image of death is our conditioning. We see it as an ‘ending’ to be feared, to be pushed into the future so we can live a full long life…Is there ‘ending’ at all except in the superficial coming and going of forms? Could it be that in the same way that there is no division, there is no ending?
Why are we wondering about this? ie. about whether the seemingly impossible might actually be even more impossible than it seems.
Is hope involved? Hope that my fear (or pleasure as I prefer to call it) may never die?
PS. I see that I am not the only one who thought of death upon reading your inquiry
I’m still working to get down to the root of our resistance to freedom. Rephrased for clarity:
Is there something in the nature of reality that causes us to resist being free?
Note that I’m using ‘free’ in the Krishnamurtian sense: Freedom is seeing things as they are.
Let us look at three core attributes of reality: impermanence, connection, and causality.
Is there something in the nature of impermanence, connection, or causality that causes us to resist seeing things as they are?
Should yous guys find the question too tangential, just ignore it, and I’ll get the hint. 
I think this is very tangential Rick? The original question was: what is stopping us from directly seeing our psychological conditioning - aka the self - as a whole, with one glance, and so finishing with it.
We have not been inquiring into or speculating about the nature of causality, impermanence, or how things are interconnected. I don’t feel that causality in nature, or how things are interconnected, or the impermanent flux of things, are directly relevant here - this may just be another intellectual movement of the mind away from direct inquiry.
I think the factor of death is relevant. All human beings fear death. And the brain knows at some level that the psyche, the ‘me’, will come to an end. Being afraid of this it resists direct awareness of the fact, and moves away in every direction. The self does not want to end. I think this is the crux of the matter.
Is it possible to ‘enter the house of death while living’?
Or, put slightly differently, we are attached to what we know, to our conditioning, we have found security in that, and we do not want to let go of that known security for an uncertain freedom. We are unwilling to be insecure (i.e. face the actual insecurity of what we call secure).
Roger that. It’s your thread, makes sense for you to preside over its direction. But it’s really quite interesting for me, I’ll probably pursue it elsewhere, got the bug!
I think that hits it pretty good. BOOM! Perhaps one of the reasons the self dreads its ending is that, seen through a certain lens of understanding, if it ends it means it was never really real?
But why does it dread it if it is inevitable? (I am asking myself out loud). How can something not truly real be upset about being found out for not being real?
Does it have to do with the brain investing security in the self? - and by security I mean chemicals, dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, etc? It has invested in this thing, it has found temporary security in this thing, and it does not want to let that go?
The self survives brain death if the brain doesn’t transform, and the tradition of self is carried on by the next generation.
I’m afraid you’ve lost me here Douglas.
I think it’s safe to say: It can’t. Unreal things (illusions, hallucinations, mirages) don’t have agency. That is what rational thought tells us, in any case. That raises the question: If the self doesn’t dread its ending, what does? Is there a dreader? Or just dreading?
I can’t help but feel that the brain has been suckered into an identification with what we call the self, the ego - has invested tremendous chemistry in it, and now can’t get out of it.
It’s like someone who has fallen in love with (the image of) another person, and who is now stuck with it - because the brain has invested all its serotonin, dopamine and oxytocin in (the image of) this person.
Even if the brain understands intellectually that the self is really no more than a series of thoughts and memories - to which the brain has given outsized importance - it cannot let the identification go because all its eggs are in that basket (by eggs I mean the chemistry that makes these memories feel familiar and secure).
This is what I am saying: it is the brain’s 
own internal chemistry - what it has invested in the illusion of the ‘me’ - that it cannot relinquish. It’s like a drug addict trying to withdraw from the drug.
And that may be one of the reasons why psychedelics work well for some people. They can demonstrate that all those yummy feelings can exist when the self is absent. Knowing that their goodies will remain available may give users of psychedelics encouragement to dump self.
Pleasure junkies may be less afraid to unravel the self if they have experienced viscerally that pleasure (positive feelings) are present during periods of self-lessness.