The Importance of Taking Refuge

The concept of taking refuge, when for me, and I actually wrote these down in my journal a year or two years ago. To me, this is the essence of what it means to take refuge in the Buddha. That's essentially what the Buddha did, right? We talk about this in terms of enlightenment, what does enlightenment mean? And I've done podcast episodes about this topic where to me, the core understanding of the Buddha's awakening or enlightenment was his realization that he was it.