It is a principle, not lazy. After the principle is digested and understood as nourishing all concepts that follow, all concepts DO follow. And the fun in that may be why people don't accept the principle of self before or preceding world. They 1) can't ("world" is too big) and 2) somehow actually know the order is self then world, but just ignore it so they can play around and have fun.

You are the gap you seek. None other. To deny this is to deny your reality as the player you are in all of this.

But, to construct this post, you assumed an ontology and its epistemology. So, you are more primary and before those concepts. And, because death, to verify this fact, you must be. You are. QED.

And then Kant came along an moved it along again. Then the phenomenologists took it up a notch. See Continental Philosophy for one.

Here's a good article: https://risingentropy.com/kants-attempt-to-save-metaphysics-and-causality-from-hume/

Agreed.

One's metaphysics = one's ontology + one's epistemology.

Does that register? Profoundly. Practice seeing your nature as God's. Identical with the limit that is your self. See nature, God and you as ontologically related, relatable and the only thing you are all at once. Don't use this as an excuse, ever. But, as a reminder of who and what you truly are. Forever and ever. Amen.

Yes, it is. It subsumes all others, really. This is the standard I use to measure my internal ethical rules and external judgments. Actual reality, once something, anything, happens, does not matter anymore. It can't be judged for it happened (your friend was murdered, you were cheated on a deal, the police arrested the wrong man).

What we often want is that reality didn't happen and we want it changed, when what can be changed is our response. Always respond with love and compassion, even if externally, you have to discipline, arrest or no longer join up with said reality later.

I judge all my internal and external ethical rules and/or behaviors on whether I am able to love and support myself and others in the doing.

I will test the waters of this on purpose and on accident for small periods of time; and, as you allude to, I will use my standards and reactions to me by others to deny and/or reinforce my ethical norms; or changing them somewhat (if at all) to quite a bit, but generally retaining a spiritual sense of mine and other's evolution, one based in loving and supportive responses, in process of coming to be and become, guides my every moment.

Good advice.

As to feeling alone in a very large universe, I felt completely alone. It nagged at me. I think it stemmed from perception and projection as well as feeling misunderstood, an outlier in a bell curve world. I also didn't feel whole and complete. I also had so much faith in my own subjectivity, but it turned out to be philosophically unlearned, untested.