This is an important and nuanced question. In my view, it really depends on the natural capacity of each individual person. Some people seem to have a configuration – whether due to genetics, life experiences, or some other factors – that gives them access to multiple threads or facets of awakening. They may have profound openings into emptiness, oneness, energy and the psychodynamics of the self. Other people seem to be naturally attuned to going extremely deep into one particular thread.

If someone fully awakens to the depth of all the threads that are available to them based on their particular make-up and baseline, I would be inclined to call that a full awakening for them, even if it looks quite different from my own experience or from someone else’s realization. A Christian mystic who has a complete and total realization of the sacredness of existence, who knows to their core that everything is an expression of divine love, may have fully actualized the potential of the threads that were native to them. Similarly, a Buddhist practitioner who penetrates to the utter depth of emptiness, who sees with pristine clarity the lack of inherent existence and the contingent, interdependent origination of all phenomena, also may have fully awakened to their own potential, even if their path didn’t emphasize devotional love and surrender, or an exploration of psychological shadow material and trauma. Again, they have fully realized the liberating potential of the threads that were available and resonant for their unique being.

I don’t think either of these paths is better or more complete than the other. They each represent the fulfillment of a certain trajectory, the complete realization of a particular set of threads or dimensions of reality. My model aims to describe the most common threads as I’ve observed them – and the ones that were most salient to my own process – but it doesn’t assert that every single person needs to experience all of them in order to be fully awakened. The model is descriptive more than prescriptive.

That said, when we shift into the perspective of what I call “releasing the threads”, the question of whose path or awakening was more complete or well-rounded becomes irrelevant. From that vantage point, all the spiritual threads or dimensions are seen as conceptual frameworks that reality can be viewed through, but not as fundamentally true or required. The very notion of “awakening” is seen as just another conceptual overlay that can be useful at certain stages of the path, but is ultimately transcended.

So whether a practitioner thoroughly explored one thread, three threads, or ten threads, that entire way of parsing reality comes to be seen as provisional, not as the bedrock truth. A oneness with life is discovered that doesn’t depend on viewing it through the lens of any particular thread or set of realizations.

There is a freedom and an open-endedness to reality that is not constrained by any model or formula of awakening, even as different models and formulas can serve as helpful and perhaps even necessary tools at certain stages of the journey.