An avatar rating of 0 is... almost typical for sleepers, but those also have Arete 0. They have no nudge, no intuition that pushes them to magic - and with Avatar 0 you are not much further. There isThey have no driving force to ascension from your Avatar. There's only the Mage trying to push themselves. An avatar so weak that you are basicallyalmost indistinguishable from a sleeper means that you technically shouldn'tmight not even qualify for a mage on some masters' tests! Someone with an avatar this weak is most likely an Orphan that just... figured out how to get something to work, they never communed with their avatar, it might not even have a shape you really noticed.
In essence, such a Mage isn'tis barely enlighted, but he isn't entirely a sleeper. The Avatar is what makes a mage a mage, and the Avatar 0 one is so faint, that it barely registers at all. He's... just barely awake to the magical, but if he doesn't nurture the Avatar in Seekings, he'll always be slow and weak even compared to someone that has a single dot.
Sure, you have a tiny speck more than a sleeper, but whatever induction you took to light your fire of enlightenment... it did leave you with but a spark, the potential of a flame but not more. A single dot would compare to that as candlelight, shedding some aura into the dark, answering to your breath. To stay with the comparison: Two dots are a torch, three a bonfire, four a pyre, and five a house ablaze.
On the other hand, it's also the ability of your Avatar to answer to you... or how loud it haunts you to become a better you. With the speck of Avatar X, you feel alone in the darkness, the voice of it unhearable. You have no guidance but what you find yourself. With Avatar 1 it is faint, barely audible. At 2 it's about as audible as you and me, standing in front of one another while an Avatar 4 or 5 is so loud and powerful that you just can't not hear it, you can't drown it out or close yourself off from its desire to guide you.