“How long did it take for you to achieve spiritual awakening?” … always asks, the un-awakened mind.

But, you see, the awakening does not involve the mind at all. Therefore it’s not stuck into time.

So the answer can’t be. Awakening is not a moment, when you awaken you just realize what always was, since the beginning. So a proper answer would be: 0, it was like that at your birth, awakened is your true nature.

And the difference between an “awaken” and a “not awaken” being, is just that the first dude will act based on false assumptions about reality, whereas the “awaken one” won’t do that mistake.

He will just “be”. And the not awaken will just “try to be”, or “pretend to be”, which will just “fail”.