The biggest obstacle on the path to Self is over-reliance on the mind's ability to analyse, understand and process.
The path to Self is nothing if it fails to evolve into a heartfelt relationship, an ever-deepening love, that ultimately ends up as devotion to guru/God.
Most are doing the seeking circus with their minds. Hearts dry as hay, minds crammed full of separation, hearts devoid of love. Regurgitating borrowed words and getting stuck deeper into separation from the whole.
Looking for peace, God would never be reduced to an intellectual pursuit. Most are lost in the realms of 'seeing what has to be seen', 'clearing old energies', changing perceptions etc. Buddhism and Jainism are the only two atheist religions in the world. Even those two have heavy reliance not on intellect but on heart-connection that enables a transference of pure essence. These two religions are God-less, but not guru-less. That is hard to see unless one can really see.
Looking for God is to draw closer to guru, so close that it feels imminently dangerous to your false centre. That closeness awakens all kinds of fears, resistance, anger, hatred, fights, tantrums...Keep going, until the heart remembers the long-forgotten pangs of love. In this crucible, all impurities of the conditioned mind, all sanskaras (patterns of mind-body), all karma (energetic imprints of thoughts and actions), and all mental projections of past and future burn off to reveal pure gold. Stay in there. Don't keep succumbing to the impulses of the unsettled mind. Be cooked! The whole idea of the presence of a guru is to burn off all that clings to you that is foreign to you.
It sounds hard from the perspective of the mind that wallows in dire suffering and yet trusts itself and over-thinks.
but in reality, heart-connection to a guru is not only the only way out of this suffering, it is the easiest and the most fun path to God.
When you get established in the no-mind, you come to know that you were not committed, devoted to the guru, but only to yourSelf. Then you will always be devoted the the guru- principle. The only challenging phase is the endless tantrums of the conditioned mind, while you are trying to deconstruct the prison of perceptions
I sincerely pray that your mind matures enough to become receptive.
All happens with grace, never without grace
Om tat sat