Free Will, Decision making and religion

[Thumpalumpacus]

Is the self necessarily unchanging? The Buddhists make a lot of arguments that there is no unchanging thing in consciousness which would serve as the self. But I wonder why the self has to be considered unchanging; why can't it change along with everything else about us?

I analogize the conscious self to a river, in that both change, and yet remain selfsame.

I find the idea of an unchanging self to be frighteningly static, myself.