Help me figure this out? (self/nonself/englightenment/etc.)

Something keeps bugging me, pulling at me, but I'm not sure I really understand it yet. I don't even know if I can explain it, but I'll try:

Suppose that Mike Monson and all that Mike Monson thinks is Mike Monson is a temporary construction of his brain; an ever changing creation based upon sensations, thoughts, memories, patterns, instincts.

Okay?

Now suppose that that thing in the mirror, the flesh and bone Mike Monson object, is real; and that that Mike Monson thing, in reality, is very very different from the Mike Monson creation in that brain. That there is so much fiction in Mike Monson that the awareness of who he really is blocked and filtered out of sight, out of awareness.
And, what this Mike Monson is is an empty entity that actually lives in complete harmonious connection to all things.
Two things at once: ignorant, living in darkness, suffering, full of conflict, full of need -- AND ... vast and empty and full of light. At the same time. Limited/unlimited.

Okay?

So there he is (and there YOU are). Now, when there is awakening, when there is intimacy, when there is insight into one's true nature, who does this happen to? Who is awake? Who has the insight?
Right now I think it is the small, limited Mike Monson. who is awakened, but that seems wrong.
Who seeks insight?
Who becomes awakened?
Is Mike Monson always ignorant? Does he ever see anthing true? Or, does he have unitive experiences or bursts of insight only while totally empty and then remembers the experiences later and give them the usual fictional meaning based upon pre-established mental patterns and concepts?

Or, is enlightenment, practice, only for the limited Mike Monsons (and Tomos, and Chrises and Jacksons and Kate's and Jakes, etc.) and is something, in a way, that is made up by all us limited entities to name what might happen when we really get who we are?

Anyone see what I'm getting at? I know I don't.

(this all goes with my hunch lately that there is no change in one's body and/or mind that correspondes to "enlightenment" or "awakening." that if anything, it is just a lack of ignorance that lasts an instant or longer depending on practice activity. Our true nature doesn't see,know, or care about any thing called "awakening" or the "progress of insight" because it would be like seeing one's own eyeball or biting ones own teeth)

@ Mike Monson: '...my hunch lately that there is no change in
one's body and/or mind that correspondes to "enlightenment" or
"awakening." that if anything, it is just a lack of ignorance that lasts
an instant or longer depending on practice activity. Our true nature
doesn't see,know, or care about any thing called "awakening" or the
"progress of insight" because it would be like seeing one's own eyeball
or biting ones own teeth'

My suspicion is that 'it is just a lack of ignorance', as you put it. And peace is just the lack of conflict; health is just the lack of subtle or gross illness or malfunction of mind or body; virtue is just the lack of vicious motive or acts...

Seems like we have some really odd 'default' / unexamined beliefs and expectations about ourselves and one another and our life in this place, that the absence of confusion, bad behavior, and malfunction seems somehow 'mere.' Is it some lurking heaven/hell, good/evil dichotomy that wants the good side to be amplified more, into transcendence?

Yeah guys I think there's something to this. This is what always struck me as discordant in practice cultures that frame "the process" in terms of attainments, stages of awakening, and "ranks" of practitioners.

On the other hand there's the strange fact that something does seem to happen, over time.

Maybe this is why it's so helpful to frame practice more in terms of dropping our agenda (even of having no agenda), of relaxing our resistance (even if it's resistance to the fact that we're resisting) and so on. Practice as a paradox. And the Process, Path, may be best measured in terms, not just of dropping that ignorance in this moment, which is the practice, but of reducing the general tendency of our brain/mind to give rise to that momentary ignorance.

So there's still practice-- anything on a spectrum from mustering the courage, patience, openness to face our ignorance, pain and suffering, fragmentation and dis-ease in this moment, to relaxing completely in the natural wakefulness and wholeness of Universe that has absolutely nothing to seek because it's already the Great Perfection of unbroken reality.

And there's still a Path--- measured in terms of what the ignorant illusory separate self loses, how much naive traction it loses, how much compulsive hold it loses over our natural mind/body/world wholeness.

And that Path is for the illusory Jake, yes, for sure; for the illusory Jake to learn to face his own imaginary nature, and to let go into the wholeness that he belongs to, like a cloud belongs to the sky. But-- and maybe this is some perverse illusory pride of the fictional "Jake"-- but just maybe, this Path is for the natural mind/body/world itself as well. Maybe this body and mind have been twisted, compressed, torn, shoved, contorted, ignored, disrespected, exploited,. stressed, and disordered under the claustrophobic regime of the totalitarian Ego, however illusory it's been all along. And maybe this body has said and done things which harmed the natural bodies and minds of others, and reinforced the illusory totalitarian ego in others, and maybe they will be relieved as well, in some small degree, by my own progressive freedom.

So in summery, to borrow a phrase from you Mike: "Anyone see what I'm getting at? I know I don't."

I'm glad I asked those questions just for Kate and Jake and Chris' responses alone.

Mmmm-- I forgot the most important 'little' thing: relaxation, or resting is just the absence of tension, the abandonment of efforts to control. This is what I have learned through the practice of getting sufficient sleep-- my focus for the last 7 months.