There is no such thing as an ego-death

[r0ckyreed]

When you “awaken,” your ego never dies. Awakening isn’t the killing or dissolving of the ego but the integration of it with the rest of the universe. The desire to kill your ego or have an ego death is just more ego. Ego is all about acquiring (an enlightened state) and killing whatever obstacle is in its path (itself). But the act of trying to kill your self is an act of ego and will only breed more ego, more suffering, and more illusion.

When you awaken, your ego goes to sleep temporarily. When your ego wakes up (as it naturally will), your awakening will go back to sleep. Notice how you can have a deep profound awakening and then lose all of that in an instance with ego and self-deception.

There is really nothing we can do about ego but to integrate it and become aware of it and love it. You cannot live without an ego because your human character is the ego. If you no longer desire to breathe, have sex, and make money, you will die. Ego is important. There is no God-Realization without ego; otherwise, you would just be God without the realization. 

The game of life is so beautiful that we start will an illusory character to play the game to realize that it is all a hallucination. The issue is that the hallucination never goes away because that is what life is. 

That is why I say Absolute/Complete Awakening is impossible unless you do a mahasamadhi. But there is no point in doing that either. There is nothing to understand or realize when you are dead. That is why I say that understanding is relative. You first have to exist as a finite, ego in order to have the ability to understand.

The key is figuring out the best ways that you can develop your ego rather than ways to kill it. The former is higher consciousness and the latter is more ego.

Just writing out my daily insight for the day. The main insight that I had today is that ego death is an illusion. Maybe someday I will realize what physical death is.

Edited October 6, 2023 by r0ckyreed

[Yimpa]

25 minutes ago, r0ckyreed said:

The issue is that the hallucination never goes away because that is what life is. 

It goes away in the sense that at a higher order hallucination takes its place.

[Vincent S]

2 hours ago, r0ckyreed said:

When you awaken, your ego goes to sleep temporarily. When your ego wakes up (as it naturally will), your awakening will go back to sleep. Notice how you can have a deep profound awakening and then lose all of that in an instance with ego and self-deception.

Each time the jump is made, each time reality expands and contracts, a deeper Awareness is realized. Each time the crossover is made, the nature of the “in between” is expanded and colored with the connection.

All I can call it is Absolute Awareness. That’s the seed you go back to and water each time you crossover. The middle way. That’s death, when you have a full grown “tree”, you reside there Forever. That’s peace. A peace that is Aware of “itself”, a Love that is Aware of itself. An Awareness that is Aware of itself.

Nice post btw, loved reading it ??

Edited October 6, 2023 by Vincent S

[vibv]

Thank you. Finally something that makes sense here.

48 minutes ago, r0ckyreed said:

There is really nothing we can do about ego but to integrate it and become aware of it and love it.

Exactly. You can transcend something only by loving it to death so to speak. Condemning it and trying to destroy it.. we know how that works out throughout history.

Loving it to death means actually integrating it. It will not disappear, but it will stop showing its toxic traits. You could say our shadow is created by condemning something and therefore trying to change reality, thinking it would be better without it. But reality is way more intelligent than you are.

By loving it it will in fact start to show you that it's an irreplaceable part of perfection.

Edited October 6, 2023 by vibv

[Breakingthewall]

the ego can become lighter and lighter. up to what point? I don't know, but pretty transparent. the ego moves away and in its place remains a window to infinity. As the op has said, the dissolution of the ego is not total, since it exists and you are still a human, but it can be dissolved by, say, 95%, to say a cypher. The work is to identify what prevents this transparency and address the obstacle, how to understand it, face it. Honesty and be insightful is needed, I'd say that @r0ckyreed has both conditions

Edited October 6, 2023 by Breakingthewall

[vibv]

@Breakingthewall The ego needs to be consciously developed and strengthened, not weakened. While at the same time practicing unidentification with it. Both counterintuitively go hand in hand.

In my understanding that's what @r0ckyreed was hinting at, too.

[Breakingthewall]

4 minutes ago, vibv said:

@Breakingthewall The ego needs to be consciously developed and strengthened, not weakened. While at the same time practicing unidentification with it. Both counterintuitively go hand in hand.

In my understanding that's what @r0ckyreed was hinting at, too.

Not weakened in the sense of a vulnerable ego, but lightened in the sense of an ego without fear, that understands itself thoroughly, and that understands its place and can depart at will. An ego that does not understand what it is will never be able to let go of the mental grips, it has a horror of emptiness, it needs content, constant mental flow or it panics.

[r0ckyreed]

It’s a paradox I call the ego paradox. The more you develop your ego, the less ego you will have. 

By that, I don’t mean to develop your identities/attachments. I mean to be able to sit and face a wall and effortlessly contemplate for 1 hour straight. I have done it, but am not developed enough to do that consistently.

Edited October 6, 2023 by r0ckyreed

[AerisVahnEphelia]

ego & awakening are pure fantasy of the mind.

the idea of an ego being selfish or not is the selfish fantasy of something that isn't awakened.

 

[Bazooka Jesus]

True, the ego is not some autonomous entity that can somehow 'die' (or be dropped). The ego is simply a sort of tunnel vision of contracted/focused awareness -- nothing more, nothing less. And since reality is infinite, there will always be a certain degree of tunnel vision present within consciousness... but you can become directly aware of the substrate within which the tunnel exists, so to speak.

Which shouldn't stop you from expanding the tunnel, of course.

 

Edited October 7, 2023 by Bazooka Jesus

[Hojo]

it is just an algorithm from akashic record. its not even alive to die. you can just turn it off. if you dont know how to turn it off just treat it like the radio ignore it and treat as if it has no meaning. if it is negative just listen to this while you sleep. if you listen every night for a week you will see radical change in thought process. ego is just a program

 

Edited October 7, 2023 by Hojo

[An young being]

11 hours ago, r0ckyreed said:

When you “awaken,” your ego never dies. Awakening isn’t the killing or dissolving of the ego but the integration of it with the rest of the universe. The desire to kill your ego or have an ego death is just more ego. Ego is all about acquiring (an enlightened state) and killing whatever obstacle is in its path (itself). But the act of trying to kill your self is an act of ego and will only breed more ego, more suffering, and more illusion.

When you awaken, your ego goes to sleep temporarily. When your ego wakes up (as it naturally will), your awakening will go back to sleep. Notice how you can have a deep profound awakening and then lose all of that in an instance with ego and self-deception.

There is really nothing we can do about ego but to integrate it and become aware of it and love it. You cannot live without an ego because your human character is the ego. If you no longer desire to breathe, have sex, and make money, you will die. Ego is important. There is no God-Realization without ego; otherwise, you would just be God without the realization. 

The game of life is so beautiful that we start will an illusory character to play the game to realize that it is all a hallucination. The issue is that the hallucination never goes away because that is what life is. 

That is why I say Absolute/Complete Awakening is impossible unless you do a mahasamadhi. But there is no point in doing that either. There is nothing to understand or realize when you are dead. That is why I say that understanding is relative. You first have to exist as a finite, ego in order to have the ability to understand.

The key is figuring out the best ways that you can develop your ego rather than ways to kill it. The former is higher consciousness and the latter is more ego.

Just writing out my daily insight for the day. The main insight that I had today is that ego death is an illusion. Maybe someday I will realize what physical death is.

Here's what I think as a better way  to understand ego:

Imagine your ego is a highly concentrated juice syrup in a bowl full of water. If you don't dissolve in the water, you think you are the sweetest and the most important thing in the whole world. You can remain as such, but if you experience its taste, it tastes so so sweet, that you can't consume it all. So, you dissolve a bit in the water. The more you dissolve, the less sweet it becomes, but the concentration becomes a juice and more drinkable and tastier as well with the correct sugar levels. One time, you decide I am going to dissolve completely in the water and see what happens. That time, you lose the taste, but become a part everything, that is the water. You realise your true nature, which is water, and it feels awesome because you have become a part of something so large. But, still you have lost your sweetness, and decide that you wish to come back to being sweet again. Whether you return to become a juice of whatever concentration you wish or become more concentrated than you already were,  is upto your actions.

[Leo Gura]

Yeah, ego-death is not a good phrasing.

Universal Self is much better.

Edited October 7, 2023 by Leo Gura

[OldManCorcoran]

It is real, it is what happens when the seeming external objects like shapes and color, remain when the idea of a seeming internal ("observer") self, which is made of many perceptions like the perception of distance (me here, that there) and various thoughts, stops appearing.

[gettoefl]

13 hours ago, r0ckyreed said:

 

 

If you no longer desire to breathe, have sex, and make money, you will die.

did you try?

ego for me is the pretence that others are here for me and the desire they affirm me by stroking me in sexual but also non-sexual ways

every meditation moment culls ego towards that zero level

if you dont want to meditate your way to ego death taking a vow of silence is just as good, online as well as offline

Edited October 7, 2023 by gettoefl

[gettoefl]

10 hours ago, vibv said:

@Breakingthewall The ego needs to be consciously developed and strengthened, not weakened. While at the same time practicing unidentification with it. Both counterintuitively go hand in hand.

In my understanding that's what @r0ckyreed was hinting at, too.

ego is my greed to be someone

[Razard86]

13 hours ago, r0ckyreed said:

When you “awaken,” your ego never dies. Awakening isn’t the killing or dissolving of the ego but the integration of it with the rest of the universe. The desire to kill your ego or have an ego death is just more ego. Ego is all about acquiring (an enlightened state) and killing whatever obstacle is in its path (itself). But the act of trying to kill your self is an act of ego and will only breed more ego, more suffering, and more illusion.

When you awaken, your ego goes to sleep temporarily. When your ego wakes up (as it naturally will), your awakening will go back to sleep. Notice how you can have a deep profound awakening and then lose all of that in an instance with ego and self-deception.

There is really nothing we can do about ego but to integrate it and become aware of it and love it. You cannot live without an ego because your human character is the ego. If you no longer desire to breathe, have sex, and make money, you will die. Ego is important. There is no God-Realization without ego; otherwise, you would just be God without the realization. 

The game of life is so beautiful that we start will an illusory character to play the game to realize that it is all a hallucination. The issue is that the hallucination never goes away because that is what life is. 

That is why I say Absolute/Complete Awakening is impossible unless you do a mahasamadhi. But there is no point in doing that either. There is nothing to understand or realize when you are dead. That is why I say that understanding is relative. You first have to exist as a finite, ego in order to have the ability to understand.

The key is figuring out the best ways that you can develop your ego rather than ways to kill it. The former is higher consciousness and the latter is more ego.

Just writing out my daily insight for the day. The main insight that I had today is that ego death is an illusion. Maybe someday I will realize what physical death is.

Your on the right track. When they call it death what they mean is it goes offline for a while so the true self emerges, or you can call it the true ego emerges if you want. Then the illusory ego returns of course because you can't live your life without it, but here is the kicker.....what you call ego is just your perspective, your identity. When we talk about being disconnected from truth we are referring to judgment. The Spiritual Path is not about killing your ego, it's about killing it's self-hatred. 

The more you "die" the more you have the opportunity to reconstruct your ego. Your ego is a CONSTRUCTION. Now this construction was done on autopilot without much of your control because you were a kid and on average it's foundation is put in place by age 7. What you are doing is deconstructing it so you can re-construct it in a way that serves you better in life. Spirituality is basically therapy. 

[ItsNick]

Is even awakening an illusion then?

Is it not just a different state or dream of consciousness? Albeit one where there is greater understanding and awareness.

[Breakingthewall]

The ego is the feeling that there is a center and that you are that center. In infinity there is no center, it is impossible. That is why it is impersonal, and the ego is personal. the ego death is the rupture of the center, and the expansion of the being without limit. It is a change in frequency, which requires identifying what creates the appearance of a center and releasing it. It is very counterintuitive because you, from the center, are trying to break the center. It is an act of generosity, of giving of yourself

[Breakingthewall]

26 minutes ago, ItsNick said:

Is even awakening an illusion then?

Is it not just a different state or dream of consciousness? Albeit one where there is greater understanding and awareness.

awakening is realizing that reality, that is, you, is infinite. not realize it through logic, but here and now see that infinity is. For that you must break the finite appearance, and the finite appearance is the self. Within the infinite you can be aware of many things or few, it is indifferent since it is infinite. the crucial thing is to realize one: infinity. Not you realizing that the reality is infinite, it's the first step. The real awakening is to become infinite, without limits. It's a total change of frequency.