Ego

Ego dissolution happens when the brain looses the ability to differentiate between outside and inside stimulus. Studies theorize that this is due to an increase of entropic (disordered/random) activity in the DMN, and generally across the entire brain. Picture the brain just firing randomly and making connections across the brain in places it’s not suppose to and would never under normal circumstances. As a consciousness you become a passenger to your brains inner mechanisms.

PsychonautWiki describes ego death as memory suppression. Without your memory, there is no 'you'. Ego is an identity. Any identity. It's the ongoing, unconscious process of grouping certain memories, experiences, moments of feedback, etc., into a seemingly coherent narrative that creates a certain self perception.

There is no ego to kill. There are thoughts, emotions, sensory perceptions, intentions, memories, etc. Their changing kaleidoscopic interplay creates the illusion of a separate, permanent self. The point is to see through it, that the illusion is in fact an illusion. “Kill” is not a metaphor I would want to use when exploring the mind. This isn't just semantics. The mindset we use when exploring affects the experiences we create.

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.

Notes

• 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.
• The Phrase Ego Death is, in 99% of cases, referring to the complete suppression of the Ego system of the mind - the little voice in your head, the bundle of memories and biases that are you - it all disappears, and what you left with is a blank human, simply experiencing a moment with no contextual clues coming from memory about HOW to experience the moment. As a label, ego death is pretty extreme, but it's also valid. The ego isn't killed entirely because it always comes back, but the process of ego suppression is a very close approximation of death according to your mind - as systems of memory and control start to 'shut down' this can be interpreted and can indeed feel like you are dying.
• Almost half of all people have a vicious inner critic, an internal monologue that ruthlessly judges and shames them, everyday. These people should disregard any spiritual advice about losing their ego. They need to be BUILDING ego, strengthening it, so it can stand up for itself.
• Its the “oneness” people describe. It’s when everything you feel both inside and outside goes unfiltered and you become a blob of stimulus, a thing that is just feeling,existing somewhere in space time. You feel inevitable both in life and in death, in the sense you feel you cant avoid any fundamental aspect of your own existence. Immortality is not that you will live forever, it’s the understanding that you are the laws of physics happening. You been put in motion because of them, you continue to move because of them, and you will stop because of them. You realize the entire time it’s always been you, the universe happening, you’re just aware of it now for an instant. This is true immortality.

Links

• 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
• How "I am god" experience influenced you?
• How To Surrender Your Ego To A Psychedelic (2022)