In the whole universe and beyond there is either subject or object.... We know what an object is, and of course you are subject, and subject is a no-thing.
If 'subject' were a thing, it would be an object, and therefore not subject.
As the book Shantaram says "if you want to know the truth, close your eyes", meaning notice that you are the silence/awareness before thought arises - recognize your true nature as that - that silent awareness. You are already that, and only that. There is nothing to become or to attain.
When you close your eyes, you know that you are; you can't deny that you are. Your very being is presence/awareness. Everything else is illusion - EVERYTHING.
All has disappeared.
As Ramana says "all there is, is consciousness".
The belief in a 'me' is formed from an early age and gradually identified with. Once the belief is formed, it becomes encapsulated and self sustaining. The mind feeds on the belief. Life is then viewed from or referred to this imaginary 'me', hence the term 'man and his environment' or man and his consciousness. The concept of separation causes us to see ourselves as a third party - separate from the environment and acting in the environment. The search for truth is distorted by viewing through a false belief, an imaginary separate self - the 'me'. Seemingly there is a me searching, asking questions... Answers are found, but that only brings up more questions; and no peace!

The seeker has already gone too far. It's too much to say stop seeking because then it's two steps too far - first seeking and then to stop seeking. Instead, when we identify ourselves as a seeker, stop! Simply be the I AM, not I am a seeker, or I am a person seeking but the I AM. Dwell in that, dwell as that I AM, as that I am'ness - that is who you are. The 'me' is a conditioned belief, that takes many years to develop but its assumed power ends in a single moment of seeing. In fact it has no power, it only claims to have.
What you are, right now, and always have been, is presence/awareness. Without awareness nothing could be known. You don't have to wait a moment longer to know this. Waiting for some mystical event in the future only delays the seeing. You know that you are. It is one thing you can't deny. You already know it - it's obvious.
All language is inadequate in describing your true nature. Language is dualistic and part of the content of awareness. Being part of the mind it therefore cannot describe that which it appears in, like characters in a movie cannot relate to the screen. Language is conceptual & dualistic and can't describe the non-dual, non-conceptual self - it is useful in daily life but when it comes to the search for the self has to be used merely as a pointer - toward the truth. It is not the truth. Nothing spoken is the truth. No-one has ever spoken the truth.
From a 'me' perspective there appears to be a problem, something needs to be fixed - seeking ensues and the mind tells us that enlightenment will be the solution - one day.
At the point of self realization it is seen that there is no 'me'. The 'me' is an illusion, a belief and doesn't exist in reality. The 'me' is a conditioned belief that takes many years to develop. When it is eventually seen that the 'me' is non-existent, it is clearly seen that I am the 'I AM'. We've been conditioned to see the content of awareness and to ignore the fact that I am the awareness that it appears in. Content is very entertaining. You cannot deny that you are. A difficulty with the search for the self is that it is no-thing and so can't be found - there is nothing to find simply because it's a "no-thing", and who would find it anyway? An imagined 'one' looking would be a third party and that would need the concept of separation to create it. The I AM is pure subjective awareness; in that awareness, objects such as thoughts, feelings and the world appear & disappear.
From a 'me' perspective a solution will never be found, for several reasons. Firstly, the 'me' doesn't actually exist so how can it even look for something? Secondly, an imagined me actually has no power of it's own. Thirdly, there isn't actually a problem in the first place - it only appears that way from a limited 'me' point of view. The 'problem' only exists after the concept of separation has allowed the formation of the idea of a me. Fourthly, seeking implies the future and time, and anything that appears & disappears is impermanent. Fifthly, it's the omnipresent awareness that is witnessing all, so how can it witness itself when all is one? No. The only problem is that awareness (context) has become identified with the content, instead of remaining as it truly is. The Hindu religion has an analogy that describes the world as lila - the play of God, or the play of consciousness. All that needs to happen is for awareness to once more understand what it is and end the false identification. And this will happen when it is time for it to happen. Problem solved.

Is enlightenment an event or not? Some say yes and some say no. For me there was a time, and for many years I might add, when I suffered as a seeker and although later on I could see that I am awareness and generally understood much of what Advaita said I also knew the point of no return had not occurred. Then the day came when it intuitively hit me, and was most obvious that I AM, I AM is awareness, I am awareness. From there on the whole paradigm had shifted, and for me that was the moment of self-realization. In this description I would call that moment an event. Before then I thought of myself, as most people do, as a person who was aware. After then, and now, I know myself as pure subjective awareness in which everything - thought's, memories, feelings, this body and the world appears. The 'me' doesn't dominate the scene any more, although I still refer to myself as me - it's a linguistic convention. There is no 'me' in charge, and never was. Therefore there is no me to become enlightened. That was the fiction - the ghost in the machine. The whole landscape changes even though the appearances are the same.

At an early age (of the human) awareness becomes fascinated by the content of awareness - the world. Increasingly, involvement with contents takes place, and later identification occurs and strengthens. For many people there is an intuitive knowing that things are not quite right; a few go on to become seekers. For most seekers there is a long period of seeking where the seeker goes looking for his/her true nature. But looking for your true nature implies two, one looking for the other, a subject looking for their subjectivity. As awareness is non-dual there is a difficulty in that awareness is trying to identify with something other than itself and everything other than itself is an object. This is never satisfying because it won't find its true self as something other than itself. There comes a point where the seeking stops with a simple acknowledgement that I AM the witness of everything seen.
And then what was never lost is found.

Who am I? Not who I take myself to be, or who I believe, or assume myself to be, but who am I - really? Am I this body? If so then how much of me would be deleted if a leg was surgically removed? That would be about one fifth of my body mass. Does that mean that I would only be four fifths of a person, or that every fifth word I spoke would be missing or I would have only four fifths of my original memory or earn eighty percent of my wages? And what happens when I vote?
Am I my name? Then who would I be if I changed my name? Would I be a different person - with different memories, different life experiences?
Am I my profession? Then I change my job. Who would I be then, another person?
Am I my memories? Then who is it that's remembering them and am I a different person as my memories change over the years?

Who, or what is at my centre and where is that centre? Obviously changing any of the above wouldn't change my being, who I feel I am. So what is the self? The mind will find many answers, objects of identification to that question but none will finally satisfy. Actually the mind will never find the true self because it's completely out of it's terms of reference, it's abilities. It needs a complete paradigm shift to understand it. The mind will never find the answer simply because the mind is just another appearance in awareness - another object and not the subject. It's like expecting my Toyota car to understand the factory and staff that built it.
The created is not capable of knowing the creator. The mind is not capable of knowing the awareness it appears in. Awareness is always behind everything known. The mind is the wrong tool for the job.
So, for a moment, stop the mind and just be. And then notice that you are still in existence - you still are, even without the thinking going on, with no thoughts. Then it's seen that the true you is not at all defined by the mind, but exists prior to the mind, simply as I AM.
Imagine you & I sitting opposite each other. Is there any separation between the awareness that I am and the awareness that you are. Where does one stop and the other begin?
'BE STILL and know that I AM'.
It's an interesting fact that seekers seek.
It's also interesting that we believe we will recognize what we are seeking when we find it.
This is the case, but for us to recognize what we find means we must already 'cognize' it - (know what it is), before we can 're'-cognize it. You can't 're'cognize something you've never known before. So, you see, we do know what it is we were looking for, but have forgotten.
Advaita says 'that which appears & disappears is not real'. Conversely what is real is that which never appears or disappears. We, the seeker, are looking for what is real, so we can't be looking for anything new because if it is not the case now then we're dealing with the unreal. This again shows that what we are looking for is already and always the case, and indeed it is.
The problem is that the mind always thinks in terms of objects, however insubstantial they are. The mind itself is an object appearing in awareness, now. Nothing is known without awareness and awareness is a no-thing. The mind can't get a handle on a no-thing and so it continues to search for 'things'. In this way the mind will never find awareness - it's the wrong tool for the job.
Awareness is, and you are that.

The whole spiritual trip is not about becoming happy.

The trip is about coming to see that we are the awareness that happiness, sadness and all emotions appear in. Then its not important to feel happy, since happiness is just another passing phase. And in the end all emotions are just appearances - they come and they go. The less we are attached to them the more freely they pass through and the less suffering there is. With this new, relaxed approach to life everything is peaceful.