Why isn't it natural and easy to become liberated?

Isn't it strange how, as humans, we have this gift of consciousness but squander it by allowing our minds to run wild and not using it to perceive the true nature of reality thereby releasing us from suffering? Why isn't it self-evident what we are here to do? Or at least why isn't it common knowledge, widely taught and shared? I suppose Truth has to have a cultural context and so we find it expressed in many different ways, each expression becoming progressively more narrow in its interpretation of Truth and therefore more inaccessible, or unpalatable, to all except those steeped in that culture or subculture, as time goes on. Perhaps even if the mind does get a glimpse of Truth and the path to end suffering, it resists. Why? Because the path to fully awakening is arduous? Why would this be so? Why does the mind create obstacles? Is it simply that the ego, the limited self, fears the annihilation that would come with awakening? I don't understand the purpose of this. Is our culturization somehow responsible - instilling in us the notion that we have to fend for ourselves? If we grew up in a society where everyone cared for each other, where no one had to worry about defending what was theirs, would a less dominant ego make it easier to live in an awakened state and be more fully human?

But this is not how most people grew up, and so the world is full of people who are suffering, and more often than not blaming their suffering on other people, institutions or fate, but still, on some level of consciousness, knowing that there is a greater Truth that can free them of their suffering. So this brings me back to the question of why, if we have the capacity to grasp the Truth and there is a longing in everyone to awaken, is it not a natural, spontaneous process? Or at least a process that can be simply and universally explained and understood?