@Raphael Speak from your own conscious presence. Become in touch with the present, and act spontaneously from this conscious presence. 
I don't know if you can guarantee it will be the right decision. But you will be acting with integrity because you are speaking the truth, as the truth. It's also consistent and reliable, because there is only ever this moment. So when you make decisions while in touch with the moment, you always know where to go if you want to speak the truth, and with integrity.

Oh brother, you are nothing but your thoughts
The rest of you is merely skin and bones
If your thought is a rose, you are a rose garden
If your thought is a thorn, you are fuel for the fire
- Rumi

@sara373 Meditation has helped me develop the vigilance to remain present. Still, my greatest teacher has been suffering. You can meditate for decades and remain asleep. Suffering is the solvent of the ego. It is actually a gift in disguise, since it builds the courage necessary to let go of the conditioned mind.
Human life is miraculous. When I say that it isn't ultimately real, it is not to diminish its beauty. The realization of our true nature actually makes life all the more precious. We are the same Self, appearing as separate beings, but no less holy for appearing as such.

Yes. It is disconcerting to dissolve the illusion that we are our thoughts, when we have identified with them all of our lives. The ego thrives on thoughts, and the drama they create. It doesn't go down without a fight. Sometimes I feel like my brain is rewiring itself. It can be dizzying, and you have to pace your progress.
When you discover the serenity of awareness, which is who you actually are, thoughts begin to lose their gravitational pull. Suffering prepares you for this serenity, and when you have suffered enough, you will finally be willing to surrender to the Self.
It's more of an upward spiraling roller coaster than an effortless ascent. Your sincerity will be tested. It's all about the adventure of the ride. ?

In my view thoughts are just a smokescreen screen that distract from the subtle feelings and sensations of the body. Learning to sink into these sensations by sinking into our own aware presence is always the answer. 
If you're ever distracted by thoughts, take a moment to notice if there are any underlying feelings you are resisting. Sometimes it can be quite subtle the feelings and sensations we avoid

The way I see it, there is no "end state of enlightenment" bam and you are done.
Its a gradual and Infinite process of self-realization, and everytime you awaken to some
aspect of yourself. One part of you will try to fall asleep, and the other part will try to stay awake.
Its your experience and duty to yourself to integrate every stage and become comfortable with it.

If anything, I would say that "your" life will become more meaningful, the higher/deeper/further you go.
The more conscious you become, the more meaningful things will be.

At the end of the day, its your expereince, if you feel scared, then be with yourself in that state, until you taken
your time to accept, integrate and embrace it.
Time is dualistic, but its as they say: "Time is the healer", maybe in this case, further unfoldment is the healer.

@Michiryoku Are you more likely to discover meaning by hiding from yourself, or by realizing your true identity?
As I see it, the meaning of life is love, and love is who you ultimately are. It is already here, within you, waiting to be realized. There is nothing to fear about love.

@Thought Art  Your thoughtful response is appreciated. Please know that the responses from my end may seem lacking...it's become difficult lately to navigate written conversation. Honestly still not sure why I'm here, haha!
The main point I'm trying to get across is:
Something happens in our past > we feel the emotion but don't navigate it because a safe container did not feel provided > we label it as bad and write it into a memory > this memory stays dormant until a similar thing happens in the future...
Now there's two ways we could go here. If one is not maintaining right view, then > belief system triggers memory and emotion at the same time, yet it stays subconscious and we go with the conditioned response, which is to be averted to the feeling and thusly > suffering.

The other option, if right view is maintained > belief system triggers memory and emotion at the same time, one is conscious of it, we recognize the perfection of the experience rather than being averted to it > the emotion is felt without being something bad > we have successfully dropped the aversion. Now the next time it occurs, there is no aversion and peace is maintained. 
Life is giving you these opportunities ALL THE TIME. The whole path is contained within and as itself through what appears. If one does this mindful work at all times, the karmic windings of aversions fall away with zero effort as the path walks itself.

The transcendence of the emotional system simply means accepting all of them as one complete set, not being averted OR  attracted to any of them individually, as they are not individual and should not be treated as such. It does not mean that what was previously experienced as sadness is not experienced anymore, just that it's seen as just another sensation, no better or worse than joy. In this, we can release all emotionality to the plane of existence without identifying with them, leaving us in a place where bliss can flower even within "sadness".

@Gianna You seem to have a great understanding of this already. Mindfulness in those moments is so deeply important. While it's important to some extent to understand the original beliefs and recognize the unreality of them, the real work comes with the present insight into the truth of the moment, as seeing the perfection and recognizing Divinity automatically rewrites the old beliefs.

Think of it this way...the beliefs never represent the absolute truth of the moment. If you are feeling something that you want to run away from, it's an opportunity to release the conditioned responses into the perfection of the moment and form brand new understandings to unwrite these old ones. These brand new understandings are then recognized as being completely tailored to the exact experience we had, so we can't carry them away with us. Eventually, we show up every moment fully present, which means we have enough trust in our own ability to gather insight IN THE MOMENT. All of the information we need to navigate the moment is available in the moment, and we have no need to carry anything in or out (no past or future influence). This is the culmination of the path, the unbinding of karmic windings. Attractions and aversions can all be released...if you think a certain way about something, that thought is never equal to that thing - that thing can never be that thought. With this insight, we can allow ourselves to actually BE the sensations, treating them all as our equal, naturally being compassionate towards them all because they are we. If we carry nothing into the moment, the moment is always an opportunity to sink deeper into Divine Love, that which we always have been, that which is the connective emptiness between all apparent form.

@Raptorsin7 Mmm yes, there is a huge shift physiologically in transcendence...
Notice that all of sensation occurs where emptiness meets form, not in the form itself. The whole body is seen as solid before awakening, as the ideas of "self" have manifested as solidity in the experience. Once the form is recognized as just a bunch of elemental light building on each other and the true ground of being is recognized and abided in, one becomes more attuned to emptiness. As such, the space is being recognized more thoroughly. This is especially true in the head, where most of us have been residing in the sense of self. It's possible at deep levels of surrender that the head vanishes from experience completely...you can literally feel like you're a dot floating in empty space. Yoga is incredibly important to reconnect to this feeling of spaciousness. Kundalini is the same thing, it's spaciousness clearing out solidity (a belief in something unchanging). Every belief we have is stored somewhere in the body as energy charged towards or against a certain type of sensation. We are just flowers that decided to move towards a specific type of light because we thought the sun wasn't exactly "it". The more we can deepen into the feeling rather than the conceptualizing/thinking, the more solidity falls away. Eventually the container for awareness falls away and the awareness fills in the space...like you "leaked out" or "flipped inside out" and now the sense of self resides everywhere, which in turn means it's nowhere.

@Ascent X  There definitely seems to be a split in the intellectual understanding of transcendence in the community. If something is within the whole, it can not be removed, only accepted to the point of complete embodiment. Once something is fully embodied, the "thing" is no longer separate, so there's nothing separating "you" from "it" and the need to intellectually understand becomes irrelevant because you ARE it.

I agree with your concept of transcendence there
What Im talking about are the many people in the “enlightenment community”, who want to “transcend”, and do Away with emotions all together. The talking points and language can conflate 
You are also just as much a human as everything else, we are here to live not to transcend life.
Theres a reason source broke out of formless nothingness to experience.

This was to be a reply on another topic but seems suited for an individual discussion topic.
This is simply a translation of the direct experience of reality from the viewpoint of this form, and in no way does it contain spiritual truths. If you can use it as a guide to understand yourself, lovely.
Imagine the emotional system as a sort of AI machine that primes the body with hormones that correspond to whatever one believes the emotion means. The core of anger is being unable to escape from something which has been labeled as unsafe for survival. It is deeply rooted in fear and operates energetically in the lower chakras. The central chakra system is quite simple to understand in terms of lower (form), higher (formless) and the heart being the perfect centerpoint for unity. It can be true that after awakening and recognizing the deathless directly, the emotional response to a stimulus related to fear can be recognized and eventually dropped away completely.
The emotion is like solidity in the body...it’s connected to a dualistic mindset about the emotion which is in the form of a belief system in the mind. We identify the feeling as anger and that traps it in the corresponding chakra because of the belief, which is a very gross sensation and thusly it seems easy to hold onto.
The way out is to recognize the emotions are a complete non-duality, that they are simply energy moving in its various flavors, and maintain mindfulness during the experience so that the original mindset can be overwritten.
Anger is not bad, anger is not even anger. Anger is a term we use to describe a type of energy which the egoic self has labeled as bad because it fears the death of the form (the death of self). In this it creates resistance and solidity in the body. It is just a sensation.
With the self transcended, there’s no longer someone labeling things as good or bad, happy or sad. In this way, yes, the emotions will drop away, and a constant level of peace can be maintained.
This requires a deep understanding of the human experience and an unshakable understanding of Truth. If you maintain mindful presence at all times and are okay with every core belief you have being wrong, all your core beliefs will fall away and you’ll be left with peace.

@Ry4n Well said. Consciousness creates the dream, and each form within the dream, for a reason. While human life isn't ultimately real, it is still Consciousness expressing itself, and as such is worthy of joy.

Emptiness is not a "thing," but rather a quality inherent in all phenomena. Emptiness means empty of self (Svabhava), or self-defining qualities. Nothingness is closer to what it sounds like—an absolute lack of sensory data. The 7th Jhana isn't full-on cessation, but it definitely is characterized by the exclusion of sensory objects in comparison to the lower states. So, in that sense, "emptiness" is really another way of expressing the nature of reality, while nothingness is an immediate description of perception. 

@opeli good! Let the mind go crazy, like sit down and melt into the chaos.
Let thought be free, trust it to work without You needing to do something about it. Eventually in its freedom, thought remembers its own innocence and rests as itself in itself (sounds confusing I know). 
The BIGGEST mistake people make is thinking that meditation is about forcing yourself into some state of sharp focus and calm. 

Imagine 2 people exchanging an object. One person gives a cookie (or whatever) to a second person who receives it. Imagine this happening in slow motion, in reverse, etc... Do this while imagining what both of their experiences simultaneously are at each moment. Notice how the 2 appearances "fit together?" Unify them. Notice how "each" is already a manifestation of completeness, and not separate. They are, in a sense, merely different perspectives of everything. There is only one appearance, but capacity for an infinitude of stories.

If reality is infinite, why is it so important to see the bigger picture? Wouldn't there always be a bigger picture? Couldn't the bigger picture always become recontextualised?
I am writing an article on 'big picture' thinking for my university project and I have hit a brick wall on why big picture thinking is so important.

“If we become conscious” = the delusion. There is already more passion & creativity within you to have, do, be & experience, more than is possible in a hundred lifetimes. 
“Becoming” = delusion in that sense. You already have a Great Dream within you. You’re already feeling the resistance to allowing it. Everything you want manifests in perfect conjunction with the changing of outlook & attitude - which is not something you need to get or do - it’s the letting go of the discordant narratives. The story about yourself & your world which feels lousy. The opinions & perspectives that you yourself don’t even like.  At one point, it was all everyone else’s & the world’s fault. That’s was legit, was valid. It’s not anymore, and it’s not valid right now & going forward. It is like you once burned your hand on a stove, legit. Then you retell the story over and over, that is suffering, dwelling, complaining and it equates to boredom. 
This is the ‘inner kriya’, The Choice. When you genuinely choose to cut the shit, to allow all which doesn’t resonate within you to be the flotsam & jetsam of living, let the past be passed and start living & allowing, momentum builds and consciousness roars within you like a great lion. Pure mother fucking fearlessness. Love. Previously unimaginable.  It is so good it can not be thought, believed or actually described in anyway. These words are just pointing symbols. It is not something or somewhere, it is now. Thus, the practice. The cessation of the ruminating mind, the ‘seeking’. Expression. Healing. Consciously Creating. 
Analogously - imagine you go to Disneyland, and then sit around ruminating on ‘your purpose’ and the ‘the meaning of’ Disneyland, at Disneyland. Just get on the fucking rides. Disneyland is the point, the purpose, the meaning, the reason. 
Aw hell No. Boredom is the projection of ideas of consciousness onto consciousness. It is arrogance, and yet it is absolutely innocent too. You think & believe you know stuff that you do not know as a defensive mechanism so you don’t get hurt again. On behalf of consciousness my man, I am sorry for that. It will make great sense, but you have to learn to let discord go to be able to see it.  It is like a two hundred pound armor you got used to carrying, and are now looking to let go of. Continuing to investigate & ask questions is expression (what you’re already doing) which leads to adopting the practice. It’s like you’re asking ‘is it safe’, and being told hells yes it is get in here my brother it is Good - but you are, or will soon be realizing you can’t take anyone’s word for it, you have to actually embrace the practice and truly let All your bullshit go & find out. “Bullshit” ain’t you. It’s false ideas, assumptions, beliefs, projections. That leads to calming the activity of the mind, (beliefs & projections), and with a calm meditative mind all good things arise.  
In the path sense, you are thinking about ‘where’ you have not been, believing your own idea about it, & projecting it upon what you have not experienced. Actuality is humbling like the grand canon is a hole. Nothingness is not your idea of it anymore than your idea of Paris is the same as actually experiencing Paris. You can not drink your idea of water. That is aversion & suppression of feeling, and avoidance of the practice and expression. Don’t use what’s said here to ‘beat up on yourself’. That’s be more of the same unconscious creating of suffering. (Bullshitery) There is everything to experience and everyone to share it with. Open your eye. You are not within Disneyland, it is within you, you are being it, for the ride. 
Yes - it’s not a higher lower situation, it’s a ‘infinite can not know finite’ situation. You forgot what you are, by being this experience. The greatest Joy is remembering, which means letting go of all your bullshit. It is not a ‘getting somewhere’, it is going back to the start, the real, true Home within. Meditation, yoga, breath work, therapy, psychotherapy, trips, retreats, self inspection, self expression, introspection, reflection, contemplation, the practice, expression, etc (any or all of the above) = transmutation. All things are possible in consciousness, it is infallible. You give it a dollar of your time and attention, it gives you a hundred back, analogously. It is sofa king good it’s indescribable. It is the caterpillar that is already the butterfly. It is shit which becomes gold; the snake is a rope. Meditation is the cocoon. 
Good. Be aware of that. Feel it. Consciously change that in accordance with feeling. It is the only guidance around. 

I want nothing more than to experience inner peace and universal love! I have a few motivations for why I'm pursuing Enlightenment, one of them being a deep desire to transcend fear. After reading countless trip reports from all sorts of places online, I think it's safe to say that the Ego comes back in some form or another, after having a transpersonal experience through drugs or any spiritual practice. I want to be able to love unconditionally without being loved in return, which is another primary motivator of mine for getting involved in Consciousness Work. The point of Life is to exist! It's The ALL (GOD) experiencing itself in every form, imagined. So, getting to my question(s), is it possible to completely transcend the Ego without ever returning to what we call ordinary reality? Is that what happens at the point of death? Or do we reincarnate into another form? 

Don't beat yourself up for that. Try this, it works. Imagine having had a childhood where you did stand up for yourself. See how that feels in your body. And play with this as often as possible. In other words give the past versions of you what they wanted, and notice how your identity in the present begins to shift. It's kind of like overwhelming your past with infinite love. Works like a charm, because you are the creator of your life after all. And if infinite love is the case anyway, why not make use of that fact to speed up the healing process.  

Suffering is the (seeming) absence of (that is: unrecognized) Love. Suffering is resistance and exclusion, Love is acceptance and inclusion. 
Love is not suffering, but suffering is Love. 
Unconditional Love goes full circle into forgetting that it is Love - it is so utterly selfless (loving), that it even abandons its selflessness and "pretends" to be a self which results in suffering, because "self" and "resistance" are identical. That is why suffering is Love. 

I have been really interested in trying to uncover the unconscious aspect of myself that have been repressed possibly due to due childhood neglect, being the “odd” kid. 
On the surface I appear to be a really put together, mature person. But on the inside I struggle with low self-esteem and fear of my shadow (counterintuitive I know).
I would like some clarification on how to help heal this process. For eg I have many dreams in where I’m selfish, or my partner has treated me badly ect. By integrating this, does that mean I should feel okay acting selfish & if others do or just notice that feeling and don’t become it. Also by acknowledging the feeling, does it eventually go away and heal? 
 
plus any methods for dealing with the shadow or healing I would love to learn about. 

“Egoic mind” is one thought. There is no such thing as an egoic mind. That is the sneakiness at play. There is no time, that is also conceptual, so not only is there no egoic mind, there is no possibility of it ‘catching up’. This is all self-trickery. Scrutinize a bit more… is ‘we practice oneness’ an actual possibility? “At this” dontes an experience and someone separate of it - can experience be permanent, or is permanent a thought?  
Affirmations can be great for sure. Also, ultimately this is dualistic. Like a light socket can be used to illuminate, or electrify. It’s in how one implements. Affirmations can uplift and inspire, and can also subversively unknowingly suppress. It seems as if there is, or could be, a correct consensus of such ‘things’, but yet more akin of direct experience, in your life so to speak, there is a season for everything. There is a day for a band aid, and there is a day for shadow work, and there is a day of realization there are no band aids, and there is no shadow. There is a realization of finite mind projection, there is a realization of infinite mind projection, there is a realization of finite mind hijacking infinite mind projection with finite mind projection lol, and there is a realization there isn’t projection. 

I want to beat this horse to death.
There are various definitions for the ego but very little agreement between people, including spiritual. Maybe it's because of how vague and general the term is being used and how layman it's now become. Or maybe it's just because the ego is actually a tricky beast, as they say.
From the biggest picture possible, how do you define the ego?
Creativity is encouraged, Mr. @Nahm