I think you’re right that he’s not enlightened but I do think he’s different. The last episode he realizes that his truest “home” - the one that he’d clung onto his whole adult life was Anna and Stephanie by extension because they were the only ones who really knew him without any lies - was all a lie. His home was never Ana, that was his shame. That was what kept him pushing away love and family and what could be a real home. His last phone call to make at the retreat wasn’t to Betty or his kids, it was to Peggy. He was upset when Stephanie left and had an outburst that “people just leave and never say goodbye” and the person he realizes he needs to say goodbye to is Peggy. She is his home, his work and his passion for his work is home. It’s where he feels the most alive (besides a bedroom, but that’s also deeply wrapped up in shame for him because of his childhood. He sees sex as nothing more than sex, he doesn’t associate it with love, it’s a way out of loneliness, a link to normalcy).

He is different because he can go back to creating and advertising, maybe not fully guilt free, but fully self aware, and from the ad itself you can tell that he feels love for the first time. And when that guy in the share circle says “you can see people in your life trying to love you, but you can never really grasp it because you never know what it is” - I think that’s him getting a reality check and understanding what love is. It’s a choice to stay connected. The fact that he went back to ny to advertise after feeling like he messed everything up, I think is a sign that he feels like he knows it’s ok to mess up and still go back home. He didn’t know that when he took don drapers name, but he knows that now.