Awakening is a permanent state of witnessing the self, not a temporary experience or an ego-driven sense of superior spiritual status.

“When the ego awakens when the ego or that small self or the shadow within us has this high and feels okay I wouldn't quickly label it as awakening because awakening doesn't come and go.”

Loch Kelly argues that awakening is a development of a subtler dimension of consciousness that exists alongside the ego, rather than a total replacement or elimination of it.

“the ego can take over and use the spiritual knowledge as a commodity. Um, so they don't see their own, you know, humanity and humility. However, this is the history of many of the spiritual teachers who have acted out.”