Self-Realization and Other Awakenings

I wondered if those primal beliefs of, 'I am the
body, I was born, I will die' could be dropped in the
same way as any other belief, by constantly
questioning, investigating, contemplating. I pondered
how I came to have these beliefs, who told me these
things? Are they true? Can I know for myself?
I wondered if these things are squeezed out of us,
gently, mostly without detection and we find we feel
more natural, more whole. I am finding that patience
is a must in spirituality.
Another one of the reasons I got into spirituality is
because when I began to question and see through my
religious beliefs I became terrified. I couldn't imagine
life without God and since I only knew God within the
context of Christianity, I was convinced that to drop
that religion as the blueprint for my life meant that I
would be without anything. The fear and the terror
were too great at the time; so unconsciously, I turned
to spirituality in order to feel 'safe and secure' and
became deeply conditioned with the learned
conceptual idea of what awakening was.
The more spiritual books I read the more I was
convinced that I would experience something like the
'big bang'; a huge, one time, cataclysmic event that
would relieve me of 'my life.' I notice from time to
time that the residue of this idea still lingers in the
back of my mind. I find myself sometimes, 'waiting' for