The process

For some, an awakening experience is easy and liberating. For others, it may not be liberating at all and stir up a whole lot of programming still to be cleared in order for ultimate freedom to eventually be lived in daily life as an wanted experience. Then, there are some for whom the awakening experience can be so disruptive and impossible to assimilate that they may become physically, emotionally or mentally non-functional. Some may actually die in the process or end up in a mental institution. Others may become so incapacitated to operate in the world that they may need to depend on others to care for them. They might possibly need to relearn how to do regular life again since the how to got obliterated in the enlightenment experience. Still others may not notice at all that something unusual happened until days or weeks later when it dawns on them that something has changed in their perception of the world. There are many more such variations I could list from ultimately great to ultimately not so great. As many people as there are on earth, that's how many possibilities exist as far as what enlightenment may or may not do for someone. To get hung up on one particular possibility creates a very one-sided view of the whole thing that does not serve anyone in the least. 

Months into my breaking-down, clearing-out, scrubbing-away process I was shown that what I had taken me to be was actually a mere compilation of concepts, beliefs, ideas, thoughts tangled up with feelings, piled up on top of one another, making up something like a scaffold... and nothing else.