As stated before in this thread, there are a whole lot of misconceptios about awakening. The way it's often presented, many people feel it's something way beyond their reach. In fact it's not THAT incommon or even special. For an individual though, it's a life-changing experience. A modern awakened guru came up this year with a technique for awakening / stream-entry, when he felt after his own awakening that there could be a much easier way for this experience of no-self than countless years of meditation and contemplating information which is often unspecific or misleading.
This method, instead of meditating for hours, is more of a scientific, analytic, approach to the nature of "I".
1. Pay attention to any object, watch it intensively. Don't think anything, just watch. What is the nature of this direct cognition? When the eyes see, seeing happens. No effort is needed. No separate seer is needed. Is this so, or is it not? Examine.
2. Say to yourself: "I, I, I" or "my, my, my"). How does this feel? Do you feel a sense of freedom or a lack of freedom when you reinforce your feeling of I? Examine in what situations you have reinforced / continue to reinforce this feeling of I. When you search for this I, can you find it? Does it exist? Examine.
Examine according to phase 1 in all sorts of different situations, don't add any philosophy / spiritual teachings to this. Examine for yourself as if you've never heard anything about spirituality. Take a scientific approach to this. Is it so, or is it not?
Phase 2, this reinforcing the sense of "I", haven't you done it throughout your life? Whether it's in an earthly way or in a spiritual way, still it has been reinforced or it hasn't been examined yet. Is this sense of "I" a solid, unchanging fact that is always independent and separate? Is "I" something that is always a concrete base in your experience? Or is it just something in which you've always believed and taken as granted? Examine!
Put the work in! Who/what is this "I"? Is it?
Take this seriously, as if you're working on a master's thesis (I do recommend using writing/paper in this process). Many people have written down different situations where their "I" gets reinforced, then systematically examined WHAT this "I" is - is not. This will take many, many hours and days to come to a realization (but significantly less time than with other means one does by oneself, like awareness meditation). And obviously will be significantly more rewarding than getting any degree.
So put in the work!