Meditations on Paṭiccasamuppāda

While meditating on Dependent Origination, I have come to understand certain things that I hesitatingly put forth here: 1. Though the links in the chain of Dependent Origination are cyclical in nature, Avijjā is the one that can be said to be the root of deception and the primal cause of the infinite repetitions of the cycle. Also, it is present in each and every link all the time. So, as an example, though Avijjā gives rise to Saṅkhāras, it is Saṅkhāras (plus Avijjā), that gives rise to Viññāna and, in turn, it is Viññāna (plus Avijjā) that leads us to the next Nidāna, i.e., NāmaRūpa, and, so on and so forth. 2. The ‘self’, the deceptive ‘individual’, is present only in an incipient form till, I feel, up to the Nidāna of Phassa and starts getting organized, as it were, from the link of Vedanā, getting totally entrenched and almost ‘irreversibly solidified’ by the time the level of Upādāna is reached. 3. The weakest links are those of Vedanā, Taṇhā and Upādāna, and that is why it is possible to break the chain at these three places, the relatively easiest being the passage from Phassa to Vedanā and the most difficult that from Taṇhā to Upādāna. 4. Before Phassa, the ‘self’ is too vague and incipient and, therefore, quite weak to attempt its own break-up. 5. After the Nidāna of Upādāna, the ‘self’ is too deeply entrenched and solidified and, therefore, its break-up again becomes almost impossible. Is this right? Am I only partly right? Or, is it that I have got it all wrong? And yes, is it possible to have a profound insight directly into the primal link of Avijjā, so that the later interventions are not required at all?