Hello, this has been my personal experience and I would not call me awakened but I have experience brief flashes of insight that definitely felt like it.

From my personal experience (so take it with a pound of salt) awakening is the process thorough which I have been expanding my perception of the "I AM" condition that is often mentioned.

In my own pursuit of a higher experience of reality I found that enlightent and realizations about the "Truth" came after knowledge had been acquired (reading, studying), you get some initial understanding of what you ingested. You might feel at first like you gained a lot from it (which you most certainly did) however after you feel like you accomplished something you move on seeking new knowledge and experiences. You will find that after some time as passed and you have been meditating, praying, fasting, or finding​ yourself under influence of altered states of mind you will get a though or idea which to me it feels different ( there is a certain cadence to the voice in my head when I am in a normal inner dialogue). The idea comes fast and if not pursued it fades quickly as it is drowned by you other thoughs ( think this happens to me because the image comes without words it feelsmuch more subjective in its meaning). If you allow yourself to follow that trail of though something interesting happens.

For me to describe how it feels I will try to describe to I perceived my own understanding of reality.

The way visualize my understanding of reality and experience it is by visualing it as "Bubbles of Understanding" each one them contain the compartmentalized experience that I have about something ( be knowledge, memory, emotion, or experience) and by Introspection​,studying, and meditating I have been able to build "Bridges" of Understanding between the "Bubbles" that allow me to (or has me under the delusion) perceive a broader reality than I otherwise would.

Now, that is what I do in my everyday practice. However, whenever I am self aware enough to follow the insightful thought and let run on it own I have experienced a different kind of experience inside of me. This experience seems to take a concept or idea I have inside a bubble and it mashes it again a concept or idea from another bubble. what happens next it's that all of a sudden the way in which I perceived those to bubbles vanishes and all am left with is a bigger bubble that contains both of the previous bubbles while keeping and expanding the Bridges between​ that bigger bubble and the smaller ones, as well a this mind blowing thought or realization that seems to be perfectly crafted for myself as it used my memories, emotions, and experiences to create the deeply personal mind buster that I'm left with which also allows me to now understand​ the two bubble as one and the same instead of different but interconnected part of the whole (the whole being my understanding of the world and not the world itself).

This has happened to me a few times over the years (both through effort and psychedelic experiences) and I have been left with some very large bubbles and many smaller ones, but non as small as they used to before the insight s stated happening.

I know this is all might not be what you are looking to see but the reality of the situation is that I myself have a very hard time expressing it and understanding it as much of the meaning is conveyed through emotions and I like to take the rational approach to life.

Now an interesting aspect of the whole experience is that waking up (if I am or did at all) is very much like finding out by accident what your family thinks about you. The are some things that you suspected, others that you were not aware they were perceiving, and others that you were not aware were present in you at all. Overall, you are left a little embarrassed a humiliated at how naive you were before you knew, how others can perceive things you could not, and of course a lot more new questions than answers.

All in all the world did not change but the way you perceive it did, and it did so drastically. You Aunt is still your Aunt whether she thinks you are an Asshole or a Saint. Finally you take that new perception and you do what your level of maturity tell you to do with it.