What awakening is
Imagine, for a moment, you live and always have lived in a world without any reflective surface: no mirror, no glass, not even the reflection of water. It's simply impossible to see what you look like.
So, everything you know about yourself comes from other people: to your mother, you are a baby, to a tall person, you are short, to a skinny person, you are large, and so on. You see some of your traits, of course, but you can never get the whole picture.
One day, through no matter what mean, you get a full-size mirror and you see yourself, the whole of yourself, top to bottom. Once you see it, you cannot unsee it anymore.
Now, you understand what you are. Some of what the others told you might be true and other things are their own views, but wether true or false, coherent or not with what you feel to be yourself, until you'we seen it for yourself, there's no way to be sure.
Onve you see yourself, you can't unsee it anymore. That's what awakening is.
That doesn't mean you are better than, or more than anyone else. As a matter of fact, once you see who and what you are, you understand that all people are the exact same thing as you, they just don't see it. And as much as you want to share that with them, you know there is no substitute for direct experience. Every human has to see for themselves, when the moment is right.
Life doesn't end after awakening. You simply have a different perspective and all experiences have a different value than before.
You still learn, evolve, stumble, fall, get up again, raise kids, work, go to the dentist.
But now, you know. And you see that what you are, everything is. What everything is, you are. You are a human living in a body just as much as you are the totality of existence exploring itself in a miriad of ways.
Awakening is not the end, only the beginning to something that never ends.
And it all starts with you.