A reader recently asked me, “What I really want to know is what lead to your awakening? What life were you leading that contributed to this event?” He wondered if there was a certain way to cultivate a fertile ground for enlightenment, a kind of prerequisite plan.

Well, for one, by the time I awoke from the dream that I was a separate self, the enchantment of being Lori-Ann had all but worn off. Like wall paper which had begun to fade and peel, the near fifty years of living under the spell of selfhood was lifting. As this trance loosened its grip there glimmered underneath the façade of “me”, something brilliant by comparison.  Then one day the wallpaper-thin self just fell away entirely, revealling a spacious vast nothingness full of life.

Even so, a spontaneous awakening is probably not really instantaneous, even if it looks to be sudden. In…