Let's do the second question first.
What are the key elements in the Steps?
1. Responsibility: recognising that I am 100% responsible for my beliefs, thinking, and behaviour, and that these are 100% responsible for my feelings and experience. This means no one else is responsible at all for these.
2. Forgiveness: no judgement un-withdrawn. Dropping of all attack thoughts.
3. Confession: no dark secrets.
4. Amends: no relationship with unfinished business, however small. No theft unamended. No debt unsettled (or un-payment-planned). No apology unmade. No borrowed object unreturned. No thanks unexpressed. No obligation undischarged. No tension unresolved. Going all the way back.
5. Transcendence of the material: this is partly a result of the other Steps but is also an activity on its own account. Taking a lead from the Big Book (look at page 25), viewing the world as the (unreal) venue for our activity but not our home. For most, diligently pursuing a spiritual path is vital for this. Stay stuck mentally in the world, and the wages of this are death.
6. Service: being only a servant of God, in disguise in all other roles.
What does the spiritual awakening look like?
The description under 5. covers this to a great extent, but also:
1. Understanding at a deep level that nothing external, really nothing, can harm me.
2. Understanding at a deep level that nothing external, really nothing, can fix me.
3. Loss of personal ambition.
4. Generalised insouciance and lightness ...
5. ... combined with resolute action in the world to help others ...
6. ... wake up.
7. ... or, failing that, find relief.
If this is not achieved, something has been missed. What to do then? The Steps.