Ego is who I am. Without ego, there is no I.
PsychonautWiki describes ego death as memory suppression. Without your memory, there is no you.
I had an experience of true ego death only once on Salvia. In those brief moments, I did not know that I was a human person who just smoked some drug. My experience was completely foreign to me (like an observer that has no control of what I get to experience or feel). There is a brief moment where I thought, wow I just died. Only to have a wild experience that is hard/impossible to put into words for some unknown time. Eventually you do come back as 'you'. With all the memories you had before you smoked and a quickly diminishing recollection of the wild experience you just had. DMT is supposedly like that too but I never had a breakthrough experience on it yet.
One thing I always keep at top of my mind as far as ego goes is that I am not a 'main character' in this story of life. Everyone else around me lives a life as complicated or more complicated as me. Everyone has the capacity to get hurt and feel pain. And everyone can be happy. I should never be better of at the cost of someone else. I should strive to lift everyone around me up.
I like to believe in the idea of Pantheism. I and every other conscious human/animal in this universe is part of one conscious being that is the universe itself. Hurting another conscious being, you are hurting yourself.
- According to Buddhism, birth and death are both illusions of the self or the ego
- The value of ego loss is primarily in self analysis. The social constructs that normally limit your thinking, and beliefs, are lifted. It allows for a free flow of thought that can only be attributed to your being. At least that's my thought behind it. I primarily use psychedelics as a learning tool, not expecting to learn anything larger about the world or universe, just hoping to learn more about myself.
- Ego death is a sudden realization of your eternal nature.
- One way to compare them would be that nn dmt is an immersive visual experience but there is still a perceiver of events as there is a duality between subject and object, eg seeing entities that are perceived to be separate from the self, 5 meo dmt induces complete ego death where there is no longer even a perciever of events, all boundaries disappear and your awareness becomes infinite. This is why people believe that you become God on a 5 meo breakthrough
- Focus on the past, that’s ego. Focus on the future, that’s pride. Focus on the present, that’s humility.
- The real ego death is in seeing your humanity, seeing how flawed you are, taking accountability, and working to be a light, not to guide others to the light.
- Who experiences ego death if not your ego?
- What REALLY is ego death? (2019)
- Martin Ball - 5 MEO-DMT, Energy, The Ego and Non-Duality (2019)
- Loupe 2019: Ash Adamson on a Practice Through Change
- What is an ego death to you? (2020)
- Why is everyone so obsessed with the destruction of "ego"? (2020)
- Why is Ego Death Therapeutic? (2021) (Reddit)
- Why “You are the universe” actually scares me (2021)
- The self is not singular but a fluid network of identities (2021)
- Alan Watts - Get Rid Of Your Ego
- Alan Watts ~ The Purpose Of The Ego