A core concept is Already Awake.
There is no individual self that is "already awake", but it may help to understand the concept by beginning with assuming the individual self is "already awake". After all, there is no real true separation between the individual self and Totality.
You may think of yourself as "already awake", but in truth there is really no separate being there to be "already awake". That is all part of the grand illusion from which we can not escape.
But then again, there really isn't anyone there to escape anyway!
First, there was the scientific path where I new that existence was so huge, been here for such a long time before I came along, would be here for such a long time after I was gone, that there was no question for me that existence wasn't about me. I always saw that I was just a random outcome of a probabilistic outcome of eons of mixing and evolution of chemical combinations.
Second, there was the illusion that I was the center of existence. After all, what did anything that came before me, that will come after me, of that is physically beyond anyting that I will ever contact with, matter. But that was just an illusion, though a very compelling one.
Coming across the concepts of non-duality really helped me understand and intergrate these two perceptions. It did seem as though the individual self was all that mattered, but that is total illusion. It makes total sense to me that there really isn't any individual self, that it is all illusion. I am totally comfortable with the concept of non-duality and that existence is one undivided Totality. That is what I have always felt from my intellectual and scientific view of existence. It is what has given me great releif in what is really going on.