What Does It Mean To "Realize Self"?

So then, not 'actually' SR, just 'thinking' you are...?

Sounds right, though I'm not sure what you mean by 'existential status/misconception'.

I mean "existential status" as a shorthand for describing the appearance of the individual relative to realization. As far as the misconception goes, it's any sense of conceptualized self.

A common idea is: "I am Being/Source/Isness/Existence/God/The Universe/Awareness/Spirit/Consciousness/Nothingness/Infinity/Emptiness temporarily manifesting in human form". Now, some peeps who say this are "Jed-done", but to my eye, for most it's instead, sort of an aspirational statement. In either case, it's clear to me why they're saying that.

And I suspect that the period of informing mind after realization is as potentially varied as the human experience in general. Also, the significant milestones of re-conditioning that appear to the individual to have led up to the moment of realization tend to group into classifications of common objectively describable events and experiences. Some of these will seem contradictory, so I've come to actually expect the possibility of impassioned disagreement between peeps who are even genuinely SR. In the main, it's actually quite remarkable that there are pointings -- some of them hundreds if not thousands of years old -- that can lead to agreement on the commonality of what's realized between these different groups.

Sure. That can't hurt.

But there's also got to be an interest in the topic of spirituality and how the individual relates to various appearances for it to happen, and I intuit and am willing to consider other factors as to the impetus for the informing to happen. Seems to me that most of the big pieces are gonna' fall into place naturally just as life and mind moves afterward. But understanding and relating to other peeps can sometimes bear aspects of what they call the "coastline problem".