Why does realization or awakening seem to be so elusive? What's obstructing this potential of realization? Here's a pointer from J.Krishnamurti, from the book Exploration Into Insight:
"Any movement of the known, any movement, potential or non-potential, is within the field of the
known. I want to be quite clear that you and I are understanding the same thing. That is: when the content of consciousness with its experiences, demands, its craving for something new, including its craving for freedom from the known, has completely come to an end, then only does the other quality come into being. The former has a motive; the latter has no motive. The mind cannot come to that through motive. Motive is the known. So, can the mind come to an end which says: ‘It is no good investigating into it, I know how to make it come to an end, ignorance is part of the content, ignorance is part of this demand to experience more’? When that mind comes to an end—an end not brought about by conscious effort in which there is motive, will, direction—then the other thing is there. "
So what is this quote pointing to?
Most 'seeking' tends to start from a false assumption in thought that some separate "I" or "me" is "looking." So the mind is actually 'occupied' with a conceptual belief or thought-story. An 'occupied mind' is not an open mind, and an open or unoccupied mind is essential for insight to occur.
The common conundrum that occurs with seeking is that any "trying" to reach enlightenment is a conceptual movement of the ego-thought-structure, which is the movement of an occupied mind. A mind which is occupied with "the known" beliefs and opinions it has accumulated.
Looking from not knowing occurs effortlessly in the "clear seeing that nothing I currently know can tell me about something I don't yet understand." This is a seeing which makes it absolutely clear that everything we currently think we "know about it," is totally useless or irrelevant, to a potential discovery of that which is currently unknown. With this seeing, the mind stops giving attention to the collection of known beliefs, opinions, concepts, etc., and is now in a state of 'not knowing' or silence, and open to insight.