Ram ana Maharshi, a great 20th century yogi, once said that a day will dawn when you will laugh at all of your past efforts at attaining enlightenment or freedom or liberation in this life. But that which will be on the day you laugh is also here and now. What he meant was that we spend so much time and effort trying to figure out what is holding us back or keeping us from the good we seek that we miss what is already right here before our very eyes. We can't attain the real because we already are the real.