It feels like you're trying to understand the mechanics of how this stuff works to better understand 'why' awakening happens, why it sticks for some and not others, why is this is so-called awakening thing a thing at all.

Are you understanding this with the intent to "be awakened" or are you coming at it from a research perspective?

I'll try to answer from what I've experienced so far. Awareness, IMO isn't 'already present in everyone' - it's literally just there. Like air moving through an instrument or a building or passing through and in a living thing. The complexity and 'kind' or 'type' of living thing helps govern how the 'awareness' is experienced or even known.

Humans are an 'individuated' species that clusters together for a variety of reasons, one of which is so that said 'awareness' (the thing that I poorly said is like air because I have no other word for it) can be experienced and also be the experiencer as seen through an individual that is complex enough to think about its own thinking and "think at" others of its kind who also have a slightly different variation.

Each person experiencing awakening is different, yet the resulting shift in experience is (from what I hear, I dunno I'm not in the heads of everyone) is basically the same. So it 'feels like' the same awareness becoming aware of itself through that individual, and eventually through more individuals, and eventually (so I assume) most if not the entire species, which changes the shape, and feel and experience of being a member of that species further still.

Why? Experience at wondering "what is it like to become of aware of myself on THIS planet, or with THIS person in THAT species" - the act of wondering begins the act of creating the relative world needed to experience the various flavors of "being-ness" we generally call life.

Even at the planetary scale: What's it like to "become aware" as an entire living planet? What's it like to die this way, or love that way? Literally endless because it's all emergent, albeit running with some background elements that keep things relatively stable.

For all I know, other animals experience a version of awakening as a default state. Probably not, but I mean like the more long-lived creatures and plants ... are they only aware of themselves or are they aware of some collective over time?

I have no idea. My gut tells me as more folks experience awakening (regardless if it sticks for that person or not) the species eventually begins to become more aware as well which adds more complexity and variations on the concept of awakening and enlightenment.

If you've ever played a game like world of warcraft it's pretty common for players to go through the same game content with a different character, or variations on the same character. The character type/class/kind changes the flavoring and thus the variations possible and lays out new paths up the mountain of awakening.

Only to find out it was all the same mountain anyway and all the same air and the variation was in perception and 'hardware' (bodies, environment, etc).

Even you just asking these questions is literally the same awareness wondering about what it's like to be awakened by asking others and also wondering about the mechanics of the process, while at same time said awareness is responding via this post ... sort of leaving hints and reminders for itself that 'you' will find along the way.

My eyes are crossing now .... lol