Adya said somewhere (in part one or two of The Ground of Infinity?) that if an opening or awakening happens relatively early in life, it tends to happen at age sixteen. And that’s how it was for me.
In my fifteenth year, there was an absorption into witness. The world seemed very distant, and “I” was only awareness. I went to many doctors that year, and nobody found any answers.
Then, in my sixteenth year, Spirit revealed itself to itself as all there is. All is God, all is consciousness, all is infinite love and wisdom. Without any exception.
I assume it tends to happen around age sixteen because our identity tends to be quite fragile at that age. We are no longer children, and not yet quite adult. We are faced with living an adult life we don’t quite know how to live. (A thought says I still don’t!) And with this fragile and shifting identity, identification has less of a solid anchor to attach to, and it can more easily release. Revealing God to itself, and all as God.
For me, this was followed by a quite intense reorganization of my human self, including at a physical level, thoughts trying to make sense of it (I had been an atheist before this happened), and figuring out how to live from this. This lasted for about ten years. I now see that the year preceding the initial opening was, in a way, a dark night of the senses. The world withdrew from me, along with it’s pull and promises. And following the initial ten years or so, there was a gradual onset of a dark night of the soul, inviting the belly center to be included along with the head and heart.