
For most people it is not an event but a process they undergo. Even those rare beings who experience a sudden, dramatic, and seemingly irreversible awakening will still go through a process in which the new state of consciousness gradually flows into and transforms everything they do and so becomes integrated into their lives.
Instead of being lost in your thinking, when you are awake you recognize yourself as the awareness behind it.
Thinking then ceases to be a self-serving autonomous activity that takes possession of you and runs your life. Awareness takes over from thinking.
Instead of being in charge of your life, thinking becomes the servant of awareness. Awareness is conscious connection with universal intelligence.
Another word for it is Presence: consciousness without thought.
The New Earth - Eckhard Tolle