What is Ego-death ???

[st.bot.32]

Yes, fear is kind of essential. It keeps you inside the comfortable walls of your own ego. Getting over fears (=seeing them as your guardians instead of as your limitation) is a beautiful experience.

It's true, any sort of intense experience that challenges your fears, even the experience of meditation and trance can give you a radically different perspective of your ego.

Being aware of yourself, in touch with yourself is a pivot allowing for change and growth.

 

[Brugmansia]

Transformative in that I had some fear within determining a lot of my actions and now I know that fear is just fear and that you don't need to hold back if you trust what you do is okay. The fear is not such an issue anymore.

OK. I wanted to undergo a similar experience actually but with a different motive. Rather than overpowering the fear I want to work on a natural mechanism with the ability to suppress pain. To block the responses between nerves and the center that let's me feel the pain.

I find the news which I posted a while ago about the 61 year old man who went through sugery with his own anaesthetic system very fascinating.

 

[Forkbender]

I can see your point. To me that part of it would be less important right now, because this fear was more important to me. But I am interested in these things (mastering the body to a certain extent), and I was fascinated by the article as well. I've downloaded some videos about hypnosis recently and watched a couple. Interesting stuff.

The pain was somewhat suppressed during the ceremony by focused attention, a meditative state and loud drumming music. I did not really feel it, I remember feeling a few hot spots, but they were not sharp and fast, more diffuse heating of the skin to a high temperature. I felt it, but also noticed a short tingling of fear. Fear and pain went together. My last and third go over the coals I could pretty much feel the pain without being jumpy or fearful. So I guess our motives are very complimentary and share a basic similarity.

 

[druglessdouglas]

OK. I wanted to undergo a similar experience actually but with a different motive. Rather than overpowering the fear I want to work on a natural mechanism with the ability to suppress pain. To block the responses between nerves and the center that let's me feel the pain.

I find the news which I posted a while ago about the 61 year old man who went through sugery with his own anaesthetic system very fascinating.

this is an interest we both share. ive been working on this one for years. ive a long term back problem where ive permanently damaged a disc in my lower back and ive spent 6 months at a time on opiate pain killers- big doses, anti spasmodics like valium and baclofen, all of which you develope a tollerance to far too quickly.

there is a strong element of feedback with pain. you feel some pain and your mind fixes on it the pain intensifies. ive found IF you can shift your mind away from the pain and at the same time convince yourself "its only pain" the intensity diminishes. i think hypnosis keeps your focus away from it so it never develops.
recently ive made some progress with this. through standing zen ive learned to shift the focus. if you dont the standing zen practice itself hurts. standing zen frees the mind. or as my Sifu puts it "monkey mind, monkey mind", from the organic reflex reactions to stimuli.
it works for me. ive dealt with a broken jaw, cheek bone and ribs without being bothered too much by pain. and the feedback pain with my back problem no longer lasts longer than a second. try standing zen. it also makes you chi aware as in you become consious of your whole nervous system in a way that has to be experienced to be understood

 

[Forkbender]

there is a strong element of feedback with pain. you feel some pain and your mind fixes on it the pain intensifies. ive found IF you can shift your mind away from the pain and at the same time convince yourself "its only pain" the intensity diminishes.

Although I do agree with the other things you say, I find this statement intuitively wrong. Maybe it's just the wording and we both mean the same thing, but to me shifting your mind away from pain doesn't really work, it just "locks up" the pain somewhere in the body. What I have learned during qi gong exercises, is rather the opposite: put your attention right into the pain (with loving awareness, so to speak) and the pain will dissolve, thus freeing the energypaths within the body. This can take a long time, because a lot of pain has some mental habits attached to it and these need to be recognized, so that you can put the right intention towards it. The way you put it sounded like escapism to me. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

"monkey mind, monkey mind"

Classic.

 

[druglessdouglas]

unless someone is doing qigung they will have little knowlege of energy paths and gates. i think for most people alowing their mind to focus on the pain will only feed it as the relaxing element is no longer natural to us. what you say is true, but it takes a good bit of learning. my statement should have started " unless you know advanced yogic technique, or qigung etc. ...."

 

[Nomada]

I often hear and read about people talking about ego death . Please give your definition of ego death . What is it ? What do you experience ? What do the words ego death mean to you ?

...MU

:shock:

 

[druglessdouglas]

Nomada- good answer. and lol too

 

[st.bot.32]

right now i'm thinking about ego, and how on especially my first psychedelic journeys the ego was made manifest, not killed. if anything, the ego became the universe, projected onto everything around me. this process made psychedelics a very useful tool, by seeing the ego distorted and warped, after the experience I could examine the nature of my ego and get insights into how it functioned and from whence it came.

since my "ego death" experience (dare i call it that) psychedelics in general have been far easier to deal with, in fact generally blissful.. my last acid trip was the heaviest dose i had ever taken and was a night and morning of relaxed bliss listening to raindrops and watching the sunrise. i felt moments of profundity but I forgot them the moment after. what i got out the experience was less from my own journey but more from watching how other people faced their respective journeys that day.

i guess for me to experience "ego death" again my ego would have to be subconsciously fighting with the trip, and at some point be overwhelmed by the sheer force of the experience? perhaps i need to try a higher dose of mushrooms at some point..

(and yeah, i love nomada's answer too. what is the ego death? three grains of rice.)

 

[Nomada]

does ego have any function that would concern a psychonaut?

an then, just maybe, this funny ego-death might just shed some lit on the possibility of a relative existence for it and not this dominatrix existence á la conditioned ape.

 

[Enivid]

I don't believe in ego-death, that is what connects you to other things. The EGO is your connection to the "real-world". But to see that you must kill your ego, but I guess its more complicated then that, but that's what I believe anyways

 

[Nomada]

yes, exactly

 

[Dervish]

Ego is the self that drives your animal life. Our anger, our like, hunger, sexual desire, our motive to earn money to reach ultimate comfort, our need to be admired etc is all related to it.

Soul is the divine thing inside us. It comes from God itself. Through soul, we love, we feel the need of beleiving in God.

Ego has always needs, it orders us to get what it needs, without considering moral values. It covers soul so firmly that, we can not communicate with the ultimate love of God. Love of God is not the simple feeling, in encompasses all the knowledge, science and art that created us and the universe.

?n order to reach ultimate love of God, Ego should be weakened or killed at all. It's what sufism does for centuries. Sufis refrain from all the things that their ego wants, while repeating the holy names of God and praising it day and night. After a while, they reach the love of God. Sufis call it "dying before death", "penetrating mountains of 'being'", "drunken by the love of God", "burning in fire of love of God". After then, their souls enjoy the love of God, God becomes their eyes seeing, their ears hearing, their hands doing. But it's a very hard journey that very few could walk.

So, What these DMT and other entheogens are actually do in that picture? God created human beings in the most exculisive way. The key to the other worlds are hidden in our brains that can be brought about by only pure devotion of our soul. I think sufis train their brain to secreate excessive DMT so that they can reach the love of God. They possibly have some degree of mastery in other world, so they don't just trip back and forth as the one who takes exogenous DMT.

So to reach love of God ego should be killed hence let the soul free.

 

[tryptonaut]

I don't believe in ego-death, that is what connects you to other things. The EGO is your connection to the "real-world". But to see that you must kill your ego

?????

How can you kill your ego if you don't believe in ego death?

 

[BrainEater]

does the ego have to believe in ego-death in order to achieve ego death???

 

[buffachino]

Ego is belief, so the ego would just have to believe in itself for it to die.

 

[BrainEater]

Ego is belief, so the ego would just have to believe in itself for it to die.

Great! Then it's easier than i thought.... :mrgreen:

 

[Dervish]

Ego is belief, so the ego would just have to believe in itself for it to die.

Indeed, what everbody call "death" is the death of ego, not our soul. Please differentiate between ego and soul. Our souls never die. Ego, on the other hand, is bound to die. If someone could kill it before death, he can reach the love of God.

Ego dies no matter what it believes.

 

[zezt]

Ego is belief, so the ego would just have to believe in itself for it to die.

Indeed, what everbody call "death" is the death of ego, not our soul. Please differentiate between ego and soul. Our souls never die. Ego, on the other hand, is bound to die. If someone could kill it before death, he can reach the love of God.

Ego dies no matter what it believes.

But death is part of life. to say 'no death' is really just denying death.

Say I said 'no life'. It wouldn't make sense right?

Now a question: how can you HAVE life without death? and vice versa?

Think about it!

 

[BrainEater]

Ego is belief, so the ego would just have to believe in itself for it to die.

Indeed, what everbody call "death" is the death of ego, not our soul. Please differentiate between ego and soul. Our souls never die. Ego, on the other hand, is bound to die. If someone could kill it before death, he can reach the love of God.

Ego dies no matter what it believes.

But death is part of life. to say 'no death' is really just denying death.

Say I said 'no life'. It wouldn't make sense right?

Now a question: how can you HAVE life without death? and vice versa?

Think about it!

I guess Dervish spoke about the relation between "ego" and "death".

Apparently he doesn't speak of "death" in it's traditional meaning, which would be: the end of (a) life.

NOW another question: If you could HAVE life, what would you have then??
Think about it....

Probably there needs to be a differentiation between higher and lower levels of death/life.

If it really needs to be differentiated, then denying the reality of spirits or other invisible entities would be the same like denying "death".

So please respect spiritual people and for the same reasons try to respect religious people.