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What you’ve laid out is very close to the core insight found across several nondual traditions—especially Advaita Vedanta, Zen, and Dzogchen.
And the paradox you point to is exactly the paradox:
If there is no separate self, who gets enlightened?
The answer, in most mature traditions, is:
No one.
Not “no one” as nihilism.
“No one” as the collapse of the presumed separate claimant.
That changes the whole framing.
The misunderstanding at the center
The ego hears “enlightenment” and imagines:
a future acquisition
permanent bliss
transcendental fireworks
personal completion
But that is still the self-project.
As Nisargadatta Maharaj repeatedly pointed out: the seeker is itself the obstacle.
The “I” seeking freedom is like a wave trying to become water.
It already is.
So what is the benefit?
Your question is sharp:
If there is no one to benefit, why pursue it?
From the personal perspective:
there may be benefits.
less psychological contraction
less fear
less compulsive seeking
greater intimacy with ordinary life
less identification with thought
But these are side-effects, not the point.
The “benefit” is not gain.
It is the end of misidentification.
Not becoming something.
Ceasing to mistake yourself for something smaller.
Does that remove the juiciness?
To the ego, yes.
Because the ego wants ownership.
It wants:
“I attained.”
“I awakened.”
“I now possess peace.”
Without that, enlightenment seems unattractive.
This is why Jiddu Krishnamurti said truth is a pathless land.
The self cannot walk there because the self is the path-making movement.
Your shadow metaphor is precise
You will never catch your own shadow because it is you.
That’s deeply aligned with nondual insight.
Ramana Maharshi framed it similarly:
The Self is not attained because it is never absent.
Only obscured by identification.
Not hidden by distance.
Hidden by movement.
“Life… lifeing”
That phrase lands.
Because what remains when the compulsive center relaxes is often not mystical in the dramatic sense.
It’s radically ordinary.
Zen calls this:
before enlightenment, chop wood carry water; after enlightenment, chop wood carry water.
Same life.
Different center of gravity.
Or no center.
And your final question may be the deepest one:
Is it the very nature of beingness “I” run from, through seeking?
Possibly yes.
Because seeking preserves the seeker.
And the seeker’s continuity may be more important to it than truth.
So the “Tada!” is often overlooked because it is too simple, too immediate, too unremarkable for the mind that wants fireworks.
What’s here before thought.
Before “me.”
Just this.
Not attained.
Not lost.
Already so.
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