This is Buddhist hypernerd shit, be warned:
I've been using "pratekyabuddha" to describe my contemplative provenance, but it isn't right. A better term is tirthika, or someone fording the river of samsara at a different place than where the Buddha did. It's usually negative when Buddhist scholars use it and it isn't a perfect descriptor, as I don't really fit into any of the historical categories (who does?) but it's true that my path has been Buddhism-adjacent, mostly done alone and in the wilderness. The reason pratekyabuddha isn't a good name for me is that I did have a teacher who helped me forge my own technique and helped me navigate my exploration of my own experience, keeping me away from the worst pitfalls. He taught a kind of Buddhadharma, or something that overlapped a lot with it, by negation more than anything.
Given that I am not convinced at all that Buddhadharma is the one and only truth, which is a precondition for Buddhist enlightenment, and that I came away from my longest and most affecting meditative experiences with an inexplicable suspicion that there might in fact be a God, I think I shouldn't use the pratekyabuddha term at all, and should maybe entirely rethink whether to identify as a Buddhist at all.