To realize implies something that exists being discovered. The Self or pure consciousness is. We may not have heard of enlightenment, the Self, or pure consciousness, but this does not negate the fact of its existence.
The discoveries of Einstein and other great minds were not created by those minds, they were just the first to uncover them. They already existed.
It is the same with enlightenment. The Self exists. Some discover it. Many do not. We don't need to do anything to bring the Self into existence. It is. It is existence itself. It is the awareness, the space in which all experience occurs. The space in which all objects, thoughts and feelings appear.
We spend most of our life caught in the web of experience, thinking and feeling. But there is the possibility of discovering that we are beyond all that we experience. We may discover that we are beyond and prior to any experience, or any object. We may discover the awareness in which all we know appears.
We may discover the space, the awareness, in which all things appear. This discovery is enlightenment. It is the noticing that one cannot be other than the space in which all experiences obtain.
Like the discovery of gravity, or the speed of light, enlightenment is the discovery that we are the container of experience, and not the experience. We are the awareness that allows the appearance of a person and all it may experience.
There is nothing we can do to become that. We can only realize that. With that realization we discover our true identify. What could be more grand than to realize we are that Self which contains the whole universe. Outside of time, outside of limitation. Eternal existence, consciousness, peace.
