The Ultimate Realization

We suffer because the ego rises as "I" and adds this or that to the pure awareness, which we truly are. This identification with the "I" leads us to believe ourselves to be this limited and separated body-mind that needs external objects to fulfill us and give happiness. Yet, the happiness derived from these objects always fades and is temporary, just like how the circumstances, people, and states that give such happiness constantly change.

What is real happiness? We associate happiness with temporary highs, pleasure, and excitement, and thus, crave these activities. However, happiness is our state of being; it's our real nature. 

By putting suffering all over the place, Life takes you on a journey to seek this real peace, happiness, and bliss. For countless times, one comes to hear the Truth that All is One and that s/he is That. Conceptual understanding isn't enough, of course, so one practices various practices and seeks various pointers pointing to the non-dual Truth. Bhagavan Ramana named it Self-investigation (ātma-vichāra), and Nisargadatta Maharaj named it "staying with I Am." There are countless other pointers, pointing to the Truth. However, none of these methods themselves is the Truth. They are a way of pointing to the Truth.

S/he takes time and effort in taking up the practice and does them diligently. Millions of doubts arise, and depending on his/her maturity, it either tangles them or they transcend them. The individual began this path of seeking the Truth to be free of suffering by dissolving the ego-self "I." However, the more one practices, the more they feed their ego, robed in spiritual clothes because of the belief, "I need to practice self-enquiry/being still/self-abidance in order to dissolve the ego." S/he is pretending to be the ego, practicing in order to get rid of the ego. Bhagavan Ramana summed it up well when he said, "To ask the mind [ego] to kill the mind [ego] is like making the thief the policeman."

The following is a great example of this from Living by the Words of Bhagavan by Sri Annamalai Swami:

Bhagavan once told a story about a man who wanted to bury his own shadow in a deep pit. He dug the pit and stood in such a position that his shadow was on the bottom of it. The man then tried to bury it by covering it with earth. Each time he threw some soil in the hole the shadow appeared on top of it. Of course, he never succeeded in burying the shadow.

Many people behave like this when they meditate. They take the mind to be real, try to fight it and kill it, and always fail. These fights against the mind are all mental activities which strengthen the mind instead of weakening it.

If you want to get rid of the mind, all you have to do is understand that it is 'not me’. Cultivate the awareness 'I am the immanent consciousness’.

After endless effort and strain, causing them to ripen, one comes to the ultimate realization. Although the essence remains the same in all of the Upaniṣads, the sentence "Tat Tvam Asi," translating to "Thou Art That," from Chāndogya Upaniṣad, is quite popular. If you are That, the Absolute, the Brahman, which all of these texts refer to and so do all the sages, then why are you pretending to be the ego "I" and doing practices to get rid of the ego "I." That makes no sense. The mind is so attached to seeking, learning, and making sense of reality that the essence of it all is missed. If you already are That, then why not live, think, and be like That? Why pretend that you are the made-up ego self and do practices, look up practices, instructions, and read countless number of books, if you are already That? 

If one hasn't reached this stage yet, s/he will be pulled from inwards to do more practice, which is completely fine. Maybe they are not fully ripe yet. At one point, though, one will realize this at an instant and will laugh at themselves for putting in all the effort to be who s/he already is and always have been. The Supreme Bliss that one achieves at all times is beautifully captured when they say sat-chit-ānanda. This Supreme Bliss is what Taittirīya Upaniṣad talks about, what Bhagavan Ramana talked about, and what enlightened sages talk about. 

Enlightenment isn't gaining something, because whatever is gained will be lost. Enlightenment is when the false "I" falls off, and you are left with what you always were—That.