Yes, awakening happens.
Yes, awakening includes not identifying with thought, emotion, sensation.
Yes, awakening can involve subtle to powerful shifts in perceptions about the nature of reality and separation.
Yes, awakening is about seeing no self.
No, there is not one static event or state called awakening that everyone arrives at in some magical moment, never suffers again, and then holds hands in bliss, light and love eternally singing Cumbaya. Life is way too fluid to neatly fit into those kinds of static myths. That’s the stuff of spiritual poems that are written during spiritual highs. Notice that you often don’t see spiritual poems about the lows of spiritual awakening. It just doesn’t sell.
– Scott Kiloby in Premature Claims to Awakening
Another excellent article from Scott Kiloby.
In my case, the head awakening happened first (all as Spirit, Spirit waking up to itself as all there is). This was followed by heart awakening (all as love, love for all). Then, a “dark night of the soul” with a gradual belly awakening, and clearing out/opening of remaining chakras – perhaps first the two belly ones, and then the throat. I am still very much in that phase. I guess I was “lucky” in that I knew more needed to be seen, felt and loved, so I didn’t want to set myself up as a teacher. (Although I could have, from the head/heart awakening, and the insights that came with it.) I still don’t feel at all ready, and perhaps I am just not drawn to it – or cut out for it – in this life, or this life phase.