Ego Death

Ego Death

The concept ego death always seemed incorrect to me. I don't believe an ego can nor should die.

First, let’s bring ourselves to a definition of what the ego is. The ego began developing as an evolutionary tool of self protection and self preservation as we slowly began understanding our self-awareness. This self-awareness is simply noticing oneself as an individual. This awareness made us feel vulnerable and the ego keeps us in a state of fight, flight, anxiety, or alertness. These are all the basic tools non-self-aware creatures use to simply survive in their instinctual mind. We as humans have moved beyond the instinctual mind and needed a program in which to make our choices of survival. The blending of the instincts, our memories, our imagination, the perceived flow of time, and all of our interactions with other individual egos have caused some of the most atrocious behaviors of any living creature on the planet. We simply lacked understanding of the program in which we operate.

Over time, the ego began to be associated as one's identity. If you think about your identity or are asked to describe yourself, you likely are reminded of decisions you've made and things that have happened to you in your life. "I'm this because of that." Your ego keeps you in your story thus removing you from the present moment. Because you are always living from the place of your story, then that is the filter in which you will always see your present rather than each present moment as a realm of new possibilities. Think of the guy who always tells stories of the high school football team, and that one play that won the game. This story makes him feel proud of who he is, so it is often something he will try to relive and retell to continue experiencing the sensation of pride. To the man, that feeling made him feel valid and worthy, and most likely he does not feel the same pride and worth in his present moment. This is ego trying to preserve his worth, and uses his memories to pull the emotion forward and perpetuating that past equals better.

Have you ever found yourself longing for "the better days," yet when you think about actively being in "the better days," you know never once thought "this is the highlight of my life." Maybe you did, but those highlight moments are typically much more impactful and can indicate the presence of an energetic check point or leveling up of the soul. Mostly, they were simply passing moments with the same opportunities you have right now just presented in the old packages and situations. Most likely you saw even earlier times in your life as, "the better days." This goes back to the self preservation mechanism that the ego engages. The ego keeps you from looking toward your future because it hasn’t happened yet, and it is the anxiety of the unknown that often keeps us from moving out of our safe places.

Have you ever held a grudge against someone? "Oh, but Evie, you really don't understand what they did to me. I can NEVER forgive them because it not only affected me, but my entire family too. It changed my entire life for the worst- it was THAT bad." As someone who physically lost her mother by way of public murder - yeah, I'd say I have a pretty good idea of how bad it can feel to have been deeply wronged.

This doesn't mean I'm incapable of hurting someone else for having experienced this pain. This is also one way the ego will work against you because harboring pain is the reason why we hurt others. The pain will always find a way out and sometimes the ego has to blind you in order to preserve you. You have to let your pains out willingly, or in your blind state of ego, things that seem perfectly clear on the outside are severely distorted from within. This is why you will perceive your life as worse because of their actions because you haven’t done any work on understanding your own feelings or actions. This goes back to the ego wanting to keep an individual in their story. We want to compensate our hardship by living in the illusion that we are better than the person who wronged us because, “how could they not see what this would do to me? I would never be in that situation myself. That person was only being selfish and not thinking of anyone but themselves,” when reality is we can’t know that. If you never heal your own wounds, who’s to say you won’t accumulate enough pain that you eventually erupt like an emotional volcano - much like the individual who wronged you, and in turn, you hurt people you would have never imagined you would.

If whatever the thing the individual did to you only makes you feel the exact same way you felt in the moment the thing was actually occurring, then you've given that individual all of your power. You’ve let that individual choose your emotions for you. You're sacrificing your peace and presence in favor of preserving past moments that can never change. It doesn’t matter if you only cried that day and haven’t spoken on it again, or if you’re currently still crying about it, the past cannot be undone. Your ego is in the driver's seat and it isn't actually protecting you from anything but keeping you inside of your own pain. Initial reactions are always valid, and you are absolutely justified in your feelings and expressions of anger and sadness. It is the extraction of the lesson within the action that allows you to heal and forgive. What will protect you is what you've learned. Even further, what will help you grow is attempting to understand where the individual’s own ego may have led them to making the conscious and subconscious decisions to do the thing that hurt you.

This is not an attempt to excuse the behavior or invalidate the impact it had on your life. To forgive the person, not the action, is ultimately to free yourself of the responsibility of feeling like you should or could have changed the situation somehow. This self imposed responsibility contributes to the feelings of anger and guilt within the grudge. As we all know, hindsight is always 20/20. If it's really bad, you don't have to invite that person back into your life by any means. You simply release the situation to be what it was, take the lessons, and you purge the negative feelings that take up space within you in favor of better feelings. This will place you back into the present moment and you will feel a sense of clarity.

We are all here to learn and grow, including the individual who wronged you. If we're lucky both parties learned deep lessons from the situation and sometimes a relationship can actually grow stronger for it if the right actions have been made, and circumstances/spirit guides your paths back together. Perhaps it is not reconciliation but reintroduction.

So, why wouldn't I want ego to die if I know all of this and am to achieve spiritual presence and awakening?

It's about learning how to use the tools you've been given. Your ego is your contrast to your soul. You can see what you are by learning to observe what you are not. Over time you will begin to notice the thoughts you have as the noise of the brain and you can now sit at the water's edge watching the white capped waves you were once drowning in. It gives you insight to your shadow areas that need to be forgiven and healed. You cannot see yourself without the reflection and your ego is your reflective surface. To remove your ego entirely is to remove your mirror, and when that happens, your soul will have reached a place where physical third dimension incarnation is no longer necessary. You will have a perfect understanding of presence and your soul’s journey will move on to deeper cosmic lessons.

I believe when people speak of experiencing ego death, all they simply observed was reality for what it is with a quiet ego. Once one experiences a true moment of silence from the fear, anxiety, fight, or flight that the ego wants to keep us trapped in, that is when they will say they’ve experienced ego death. You can understand yourself as the energy of Love and Light or as some say divine masculine and divine feminine. Union of Love and Light is the balance of the two master energies in our creation. You can see from a place of truth, but this moment will most likely not be permanent without understanding how to maintain that presence.

However the ego does not die because it will always come back as soon as enough time has passed and the proper work has not been done to maintain living in the present. You cannot kill the evolutionary program of survival. It is constant maintenance and effort to remain aware of the egoic thoughts we will undoubtedly experience every day. We must use it to our advantage to heal and retain the understanding that are all truly united energetically, and our ultimate purpose is to Love, understand, and work together for each other because you and I are one.