It is relatively easy to have an opening experience – an awakening into Big Mind – even if it is only a glimpse, or a shadow of the full blown experience.
It can come spontaneously, as it did for me after a long period of illness and despair – I broke open instead of breaking down. It can come through nature, lovemaking, drugs, athletics, meditation. Any strong experience that for a moment allows the exclusive identification with small self to fall away and awareness to drop into Big Mind. It can also come, in a faint way, through techniques such as the Big Mind process.
The real work comes afterwards – in terms of deepening and clarifying the transpersonal and how to live it in everyday life. How do we embody it? This process also involves a lot of work on the personal level, in terms of healing wounds, developing skills, etc.
Awakening is not a free ticket to anything when it comes to living our lives. There may be less suffering and a stream of bliss even in the midst of everything else, but bringing it into life continues until the day this body and personality dies.