The brilliant Point is the quintessential exemplar and understanding of what realization is in the Diamond Approach. Seeing ourselves for what we truly are and having the felt-known recognition is self-realization. The Point of Light specifically and precisely differentiates experiences of True Nature—for example, of presence, essence, space, emptiness—from being True Nature. Some paths make no distinction between awakening and realization, but we find the term “awakening” too broad as a category. It does not clearly differentiate between waking up to what True Nature is on one hand, and, on the other, recognizing this nature as being what we are. The meaning of being realized is that we awaken in Being as Being and recognize that there is no distance between self and Being. I am not merely present or experiencing presence—I am presence. – Karen Johnson, The Jeweled Path: The Biography of the Diamond Approach to Inner Realization, Ch. 22