Should all Christians experience being “born again”?

There’s a date and time that I experienced being born again in my room a full year ago. It was extremely profound and spiritual and I could honestly divulge it for hours. But basically I knew without a shadow of a doubt that I had been made a new creation and entered into a new life in Christ, that the “old me” had died (crucified with Christ), and that I had passed from death to life because the blood Jesus shed had cleansed me and brought me near to God. My world turned upside down. My perspective is forever changed. I saw my sin and how sinful the world is and how much we desperately need a Savior. But I inexplicably had a sensitivity to sin because I knew I sinned against God alone and it displeased Him, and I was given a desire for holiness and righteousness that I didn’t have before - I knew I had been given a new heart, and that it was only God’s doing within me and not myself. That night that I was born again, I was also delivered from so much spiritual oppression and I was in my right mind. After that I went around talking to pastors and Christian friends about God, began listening to testimonies on the internet, and started listening to Bible reading and commentary to learn what on earth that experience was. And one day it became so real, it clicked and made complete sense - repenting and receiving Jesus’s blood sacrifice allows us to enter directly into God’s presence and cleanses us such that the Holy Spirit dwells within our bodies, the temple of the HS, and that is what I experienced when I was born again. It was all the Holy Spirit convicting me of sin, righteousness, and judgment.

The majority of Christians I’ve talked to irl say that there wasn’t a precise date that they knew they had been born of the Spirit/born again/regenerated, but that they had a gradual process of getting revelation of God and getting to know Jesus. After I was born again, I started listening to probably hundreds of testimonies on YouTube. There are a lot of people who have a “moment” and they are radically transformed. But there are also a lot of people who have some kind of a progression of a relationship with God and the practice of faith who can’t say there was a moment they knew they were “saved,” but they were definitely showing the fruits of saving faith and empowered by the Holy Spirit to live a transformed life, conform to the image of Jesus, etc. What’s going on here?

John 3:3 says unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God. Verse 5 goes on to say that you must be born of water and of the Spirit to enter the kingdom of heaven. 1 Peter 1:3 in the ESV and NLT use the phrase “born again” as well and the NIV mentions a “new birth.” In the NKJV, which I mainly use, it says God “has begotten us again to a living hope” through Jesus, with a cross-reference on that phrase to John 3:3 and 3:5. Not sure how that’s related to the passage in John 3 with that phrasing. But anyway, there’s plenty of other scriptures related to spiritual regeneration or whatever you want to call it - 2 Corinthians 5:17, Ezekiel 36:26, Titus 3:5, Psalms 51:10…

Recently I had an interesting exchange with a guy livestreaming a Bible study on YouTube. In the chat I asked, “when did you get saved,” and I don’t really remember all of what he said, but he said it wasn’t the single radical experience that I and others testify having where the initial indwelling of the Holy Spirit was evident (although he did talk about one intense encounter with God when he was receiving a baptism of the Holy Spirit) but a gradual transformation and growing in knowledge and intimacy of God through prayer and Bible study. Then he brought up something interesting about how there’s phrases in the Bible like “be saved” and “being saved” and that there might not necessarily be a singular event where one comes into right standing with God, and he said that being “born again” might look like a gradual renewal process for some.

Largely because of my personal experience and how much of it has been consistent with the Bible, I believe mostly in Pentecostal salvation doctrine, where being born again isn’t a guarantee of inheritance of eternal life (I don’t believe OSAS) but is a “symptom” of initial saving faith that marks the beginning of a lifelong process of sanctification empowered by the Holy Spirit to conquer sin and be conformed to the image of Christ.

Just curious about what everyone else has to say. Christians who did not have a singular “born-again” experience, are you able to say that you know that at some point you knew that God had forgiven you of your past sins? Those who did experience being born again, what was that like and what was the first sign you knew of the occurrence?