Personally, I prefer spiritually awakened to the terms enlightned or nirvana, which for me, based on my post-awakening, channeled conversations with my spirit guides, have a very limited and specific meaning that almost no one achieves and if a soul does, that only happens after a vast amount of life cycles, and I cannot even conceive of how many life cycles that would take as I know that at 17,043 I have not lived remotely close to a vast number of human lives. That nitpicking by me being said, I love the substance of your essay and am glad you had a painless awakening. Mine happened very painfully and instantaneously upon my discovery of my young lover's death 2 years ago. I write about all of this. I often drop links but I will not to you. Thanks for sharing your experience and thoughts.