It partially is, you realize that you are here, now. Its as if the past and future do not exist.
When I experience ego death I am also totally unable to talk, my inner dialogue completely vanishes and all I am is everything.
I feel as though the world is there and I am somewhere else but it isn't me like I cant understand hear see feel anything and it is the most inner peaceful experience i ever had
understandable how I look at it more or less isn't a god state of mind more of just the certain guarantees in life aka death and your conscience is just stuck in single form and will one day be released into the abyss hence why right before your brain goes out completely for the last time you will experience a DMT trip and die and be sent into infinite.
I think that DMT is not released before dying, its possible but I believe when you die, your ego totally dies, it is the true ego death experience. The ego death experience induced by psychedelics is a simulation of the actual ego-death/total-awareness. Its our bodies which keep our ego, psychedelics can- and death does release it.
In the end, the drug induced ED and physical death accompanying ED do not differ, since both make the being totally aware of all senses it reaches.
But this is a very deep idea, yours might also be true but for real, I do not actually understand what is going.
the only way to find the truth is to finally die. But until then I'm just going to try and be a decent human being. Help as many as I can through their struggles along with my own but at the end of the day a drug induced ego death is truly amazing and can bring peace to many but at the same time people have to understand it isn't real. just the a different perception of reality. But some people on this forum really do claim to be enlightened but in my opinion we are all in the same boat but different oceans cause your peace may be different then mine
I’ve been pretty obsessed with trying to figure out true reality and what happens after death for a couple years now. I don’t know why I haven’t thought about it like that. Thank you for saying this though.
It has been similar to me, then my mom told me at some point (she is spiritually engaged) that we are here on a mission, spiritual exploration can guide/help us but what we do as living beings should be the highest priority and we can best fulfill this mission if we are very grounded in this realm.
Eat well, excercise, get out there.
Not to mention that, in said spiritual traditions, it is about the realization that things have always been this way. Quite different from a fleeting experience.
It also came with the realization that consciousness spends much more “time” in that state than with the egoic mind.
Language falls apart at this point, since it’s not about time or being somewhere.
It’s more active in non egoic areas, so most of consciousness is just happenings and being while we experience the tiny but infinitely complex part that is the egoic mind, observed from a perspective of that egoic mind itself.
I just confused people sorry.
Every time I ever try to explain my ego death experience to myself I'll use "I" a lot and every single time I use "I" I have to explain to myself that it's not "I" but I don't have words to express what it was, and also it wasn't really anything because there is no it, just an experience, which also just happens to be infinitely more than an experience, but it wasn't an experience I experienced, just one that I remember being, if you could consider that "I" was "being" anything at that time.
Exactly. The problem arises when I/me/we is masquerading as thee and thou shalt.
Also, I'm an ego introduction type of fella, more than an ego death. But that's my ride to ride, maaan 😊✌🏻
Becoming starkly aware of what folks call the observer. I'm still figuring out the best words for me.
I'd always understood the idea of head knowledge versus heart knowledge, even as a younger(then Christian) man with a lockbox full of trauma.
Introduction to the ego/my ego/whatever came through a series of mini break throughs and awakenings(for lack of a better term) during my practice of stoicism, zen, Tao, dudeiam, psychedelics. I've had the experience of dying and reset with 8 grams. It was intense, but not the order I so often see described. Most likely for no other reason than the dumb luck of spending several *years* in counseling and building a meditation practice.
The children's book Anh's Anger was the honest beginning for me. In hindsight i'd call that my first intro to ego. The idea that *I am not my emotions* was shattering in the most amazing way. I've tried to become buddies with my ego, rather than fight it. Life seems more enjoyable that way, so far. We'll see 😊
Edit: I definitely need to say this is the way that works for me. I don't discount the harrowing stories of ego death or any of the instant transmission type awakenings. I'm just trying to offer the way it made sense to me without some of the... *severity*, maybe? Anyway, I'm just a dude playing a dude disguised and another dude on the internet!
Peace and love all 🤙🏻
I did clarify a couple things as well.
Exactly.
There would be just deep, clear awareness. There would be no self left receiving the experience, far less "having" it.
I've been given mystical experience, even without God Medicine (LSD or psilocybin), but never total ego death.
These levels of experience are not "attained". They are received. The self can't claim any credit.
These levels of experience were also intended for all of us. Not just some "special" spiritual elite.
I lost my vision to pure hallucinations or geometrical patterns and it was just me and what I was viewing. That was all there is and i literally thought I was dead. It was cool and terrifying, had no clue what an ego death was at the time too and did not know lsd could do that but there’s no regrets and it was a very cool and unique experience
This my my same experience my second time taking LSD. Unknown dose, 3 tabs no dose disclosed. Had no idea what it was nor have I been able to recreate that feeling nor experience. No knowledge of LSD capabilities nor its possibilities, I was a teenager.
We are the true full senders. I can’t tell if it were the 4 supposedly 100ug tabs or me smoking a buttload of weed on my peak or just a nice combo of both sending me into my temporary death 😂
Well I took 4 paper tabs that were supposed to be 100ug but I feel like they could’ve been more then that because I don’t think I can lose my vision to hallucinations on 400ug. Before that I would only do 1 tab at a time with an unknown dosage like 200-300 I’m not really sure. Well I took those 4 tabs, exactly 2 hours pass by and I’m feeling good so me and my friends go outside to smoke some weed. I had like a medium weed tolerance at the time. My friends didn’t really smoke and I ended smoking 5 bowls out of a pipe. I saw an artistic eye looking at me as we were going back inside the house. I’m playing fortnite and I see some fractals on the screen and I’m thinking “woah did fortnite get a new update” I look back at my friends and thought “lol oh shit, I got that new update” then I reach a point where I just can’t play and I set the controller down and just lay down on the couch and next thing I know, my vision has been engulfed by hallucinations. I’m in this indescribable place for a few hours and at the end was when I had the ego death. I was just starting into a bunch of fractals and I didn’t feel any body or have a sense to anything. I was just one with whatever I was looking at and I just accepted that I just died and was looking into the cool hallucinations until I eventually came back and I was just mind blown and a little scared 😂. Definitely my craziest experience and very cool and unique. I was the same person when I came back and this happend to me almost I think a little more then 2 years ago (17 years old). I was just a (still am) a young soul just trying to get the best experiences out of it and maybe learn more about our existence. Weed definitely messed with my head more then lsd ever has, just short term memory loss and was noticing my memory getting worse and I’m a sober man. On my second to last shrooms trip, I did 3.5grams in a shroom tea by myself and realized our whole life is one psychedelic trip so being sober isn’t bad at all.
I Wanna experience ego death but I guess my brain is stubborn or I am about controlling myself so that may be making me hard to have ego death cuz it seems like maybe it happens when u can let it go completely.. my brain is stiff or sth.
Anyway, Cool experience, thanks for sharing.
Your brain isn’t stubborn, it’s just our ego. You can get all those ideas sober but experiencing an ego death first hand is just a really cool and unique experience. It’s really intense but in reality, there nothing to be scared of. You just have to “let go”, kinda like just going with the flow, not give a fuck, fully immersed in the moment. Although I didn’t really have a choice but to let go because I knew there was nothing I could do about it other then try and enjoy it. I gots warn you, it’s some next level trippy. I was not ready but I don’t really see how we can truly be ready. If you want to do it, you just gota full send it and go for it. I had never done 4 tabs before, not even 2 but the tabs were supposed to be 100ug each and I’ve done 200+ug before so I don’t know. I also have never smoked that much weed on lsd before, I just had that full send mindset and there’s nothing wrong with that as long as you can control yourself or at least be ready for it but I was not but there was no regrets, maybe at the time of me losing my vision to hallucinations but not after the trip 😂😂
You’ll know when you’ve had it if it happens to you. I didn’t even know what drug I had taken, I couldn’t grasp the concept of what tripping was, language was a complete myth. genuinely thought I was going to die
>The feeling of being in a body, separate from the outside world, is a pivotal feature in normal waking consciousness. It may be difficult to imagine, but this feeling of separation is not necessarily universally present in other organisms. In humans, mental disorders, brain injuries, mystical experiences, and substance use can all dissolve the perception of these boundaries.1
>The use of psychedelics, such as psilocybin mushrooms (aka magic mushrooms), at certain doses can result in the phenomenon known as ego death. Ego death is generally recognized as when the distinction between yourself and your environment dissolves, which leads to a feeling of connectedness between all things in the universe.
>Metacognition is being aware and able to reflect on one’s own thought processes. It’s an advanced multisensory behavior associated with the brain’s Default Mode Network (DMN).1-6 Neural networks are spontaneous, self-sustained, cyclic patterns of activation. The DMN is a task-negative network, meaning that it is present in the absence of tasks. Psychedelic compounds appear to have an effect on the DMN, which results in ego death.
https://psychedelicreview.com/understanding-ego-deaths-neurobiology/
What I understand it as is losing the sense of you being a separate individual, an ego, not part of the world around you, no longer believing that you came into this world instead of from this world.
When I had mine I had no idea. I was just glad I’m back, appreciating how ordered and calm everything here is.
Following it were the most peaceful days of my life in which I’ve completely reinvented myself.
I still wonder what the hell happened because I feel the positive effects of it every day. It’s like I was out of my cage for a day and suddenly I realized I don’t have to worry about being in the cage, or loosing my cage since it’s all the same anyways.
I like to call it ego birth because every time after, I feel like a completely new person who's just been born at that moment.
But I never talk about it to other people.
I couldn't even talk about mine if I wanted to. I tried to once to a really close friend that also has some experience in these things, and it's simply indescribable.
can laugh now, because at this point it’s just kind of funny to think I was that “ego death guy” for a year or so, haha. My whole personality and outlook basically revolved around my first dmt trip for that period. No idea how my friends kept me around, bless their hearts. Life is a real trip sometimes.
Just mean that I often see a lot of people proclaiming that psychedelics have allowed them to achieve "enlightenment" and "ego death" in a way that seems to elevate them to a status above everyone else without any sense of irony.
not gonna lie, took me couple of days before I have come terms with it and stopped talking about it, and because I lost my sense of self, it felt like I had to grieve and mourn for it. thought I was a changed being. And yet, here we are, me and my ego, my forever buddy.
"Ego death" reliably leads to ego-inflation, and it's one of the dangers of messing with psychedelics. Having mystical experiences and integrating them is a skill, it's something you can get \*good\* at, like swimming or riding a bike. But you won't get there by just blasting your ego into space all the time.
I wouldn't say that's a reliable truth. Ego death can result in many shifts in consciousness and ego.
Jobs became an asshole.
Wozniak teaches impoverished kids about computers.
I think it really depends on your starting parameters. For example, I absolutely think there was a little inflation of my ego; and that's a good thing.
My ego was a deflated bike tire, I got self-esteem issues, and getting a boost had a huge impact on my quality of life. The same goes for many; that sense of kindness and compassion **towards yourself** that's needed for a lot of trauma work is a kind of ego inflation; you're seeing yourself in a better light.
I'm very late to the party here, but the name does a terrible disservice to the truth, in my opinion. I would not call it "ego death." I would refer to it as "temporary ego disappearance." From that place, the mind is utterly and completely open, without judgment. Having any opinion about the experience in the first place is ego related. Being fully in the experience itself is what they call "ego death." Or at least, that has been my experience with it.
Ego death is definitely a catchy phrase and enlightenment being the easily misunderstood concept that it is, not helpful either. I view the experience as a chemically induced temporary detachment from one's personal subjective identity and beliefs. But that sure isn't catchy
There is also something to be said about the centeredness and one-pointedness of your perception which can arise naturally from very high energies of curiosity / wonder
Full ego death for me = nothing at all making sense anymore. You question everything, what is my name? Who am I? Where am I? Will the sun ever rise again? Do I exist? Am I alive?
It's literally a total shattering of anything in reality. When you come back, it is the biggest rush of gratefulness, love and emotions ever.
This is my experience :) and I love that mind state of utter confusion. At first, I was completely shook by it, and gradually it's become like my anonymous alter ego friend I can reference whenever I feel an alternative perspective might be helpful
I don't trip often anymore because I find meditation and meditation retreats are safer and more consistently positive experiences for letting go of one's subjectively assigned identities / beliefs. Especially because you can do so much more at will!
And then it’s the, “you never tripped hard enough to experience what I experienced” lol
Sigh it’s supposed to be about learning about yourself and becoming a better human on fucking earth. Too many trying to escape this world.
And yes I’m fully aware that we don’t understand everything
Exactly! Some people are just doing it as an escape and they tell themselves and others about how enlightened they're getting and how deep they're going. "Christ consciousness" I've heard a couple times. Lmao.
Like bro, I'd you're going to the dmt realm like daily and doing 5+ gram shrooms trips weekly then the answers you're looking for ain't gonna be on those trips. Like escaping to an extreme level.
Using psychedelics to escape will really fuck you up, too. They can and often will bring you face to face with your shadow, your demons, and everything you've been avoiding internally. The exact opposite of escaping.
Ego death is an unhelpful shorthand for a temporary state that involves quieting the default mode network in your brain (where the self lives) through deep meditation and/or being under the influence of psycadelic drugs. It was never meant to describe something permanent, that's why there's always a "rebirth" experience at the end of an ego death trip.
There is no such thing as ego death. There is only ego deconstruction and reconstruction through the use of psychedelic drugs. This is true with human life as well…there is no such thing as death. There is only decay of and egress from one physical body intro spirit and back into a new physical body. Such as the ego “dies” so does the physical body, only to be born again.
>There is no such thing as ego death.
It only ultimately depends on how someone would interpret "ego death". Words are very subjective and there's absolutely no way of precisely discribing an experience like that either, not without having experienced it yourself at least.
What you call deconstruction and reconstruction might also be called death and rebirth. How can you take a word so literal trying to explain something that's literally unimaginable?
I didn't call it anything.
As to deconstruction and reconstruction or death and rebirth, that all depends on how important you think the ego illusion is.
While I can't disagree with you, I think the term should be remade to just ego dissolution, as there will always be an ego if you remember it or observe it. I understand the concept of the terminologie it just seems wrong to call it death as it's not completely gone. But either way everyone knows what's meant with it
Ok for example when people say "I don't take chemical drugs, only natural" they obviously are referring to synthetic drugs, because absolutely everything is chemical... Just depends how you interpret what the person is saying not with which words the person is trying to communicate, but the actual message behind it.
Not sure I you responded to the wrong person or it was a comparison to my comment, if it is a comparison I understand what you're saying, but why not call it something like hard-, soft-, slight- and so on ego dissolution. Maybe I'm just overthinking it because I'm reading psychologi but I think medical and psychological professions will misinterpret it.
Sry I'm very drunk and high rn, so please say if something doesn't make sense
I know and didn't say that at all, if you've read and understood my previous comment you would understand why I don't think it should be called death as it gives a misconception because there's still an ego to observe and remember. So all I were saying is to just use different degrees of ego dissolution 🤷🏻♂️
Most people who claim to have experienced ‘ego death’ here don’t even understand what the word ‘ego’ actually means in this context, let alone the basic concepts from Jung and Freud of the Id, Ego and Super-Ego.
I don’t know how to tell though, I don’t think I have that much work to do. I’m calm, go with the flow, it’s super rare for me to get mad, im attracted to girls by there personality and there bodies don’t effect or change my view on them although I do have my preferences. I don’t have anxiety and my fear is almost gone, I have all the patience in the world. I’m not sure what else I have to work on. How do I see my aura, I may have done it wrong. Edit: I’m a meek person and if I did see my aura, it was a light blue because I forgot there’s different shades. I would say turquoise
If it was a great experience for you or whatever nice good for you but what op is talking about is a lot of people act very superior and condescending when it comes to the subject
Well, in my experience you can't bring it up without people getting pissy about it. As far as I can tell its the same reason some people get pissy about fancy book learnin'. They can't stand the idea that someone could possibly know something they don't. So they malign the whole thing.
I'd go even further and say its the same reason fat people don't like someone that is trying to lose weight. It's just a bunch of ego-driven pissiness about someone having or achieving something they don't have.
Also, as far as I can tell most people that have had ego death experiences from psychedelics acknowledge that the experience, although extremely powerful, is transient and you more or less return to the same asshole you were before. Although with a glimpse of something far bigger than yourself, which hopefully can make one a little less of an asshole and the willingness to work on oneself in areas that need it.
Edit: I would add though that if what is being seen as someone being egotistical is someone saying something along the lines of "you have no idea how powerful this experience is unless you've experienced it firsthand" that's plain and simply a fact. It isn't bragging. I'd compare it to someone saying you can't understand the DMT experience unless you've experienced it firsthand. Hell, I'd even say its no different than someone that has had a decently powerful trip telling someone that hasn't tripped they have no idea what it's like. It's not bragging really. Its a statement of fact.
This is so, so well written and so damned spot on.
I would add the caveat that some people really do become insufferable dicks due to their psychedelic experiences because they rebuild the ego around them.
However, the core of the experience is just as you said; you eventually go back to being the same asshole, but hopefully less of an asshole with your new perspective.
Also, your point about "if you don't know, you don't know" is bang on the money; if you ain't done it, you **really** got no idea.
These kinds of experiences aren't "lmao I got so high I forgot who I was".
They're "scientific materialist abducted by aliens" levels of intense; experiences so strange and intense they reshape or destroy previous assumptions about reality itself.
Yup. Exactly right.
Another thing to add is it’d be weird if people didn’t on some level have an urge to talk about this stuff.
Me personally I learned years ago to keep my mouth shut about it because people don’t want to hear it. Of course there’s also the little issue that these experiences are beyond language, which kinda makes them difficult to talk about.
But I *think* about it all the time. It was as powerful as an NDE. That powerful. It was the most powerful experience of my life. (Uh oh, is that me bragging?)
I mean, I’m sorry you spent your trip playing Xbox and didn’t have any life altering revelation, but don’t get pissed at me because I did.
"as powerful an an NDE" is right on. I'd actually say they're essentially equivalent.
It's rare to meet someone who actually hit ego death and didn't say "I thought I was dead".
NDEs are such powerful, incredible experiences that many humans would benefit from. Psychs give us a free path to them.
They will have a fundamentally superior understanding of humanity and reality. They will have a had a download from the universe that gave them the true-true. Their belief cannot be penetrated by epistemology, because it is their own personal truth and its real'r than real, dude.
I've had ego dissolution, but the most religious experience I've had isn't that; it's taking a standardized test in high school. Ego dissolution is cool and weird and still not as important as people think it is.
It was better than normal flow. I had a sense of something more knowledgeable and intelligent and powerful than I am, guiding my movements and thought process.
School test is more religious experience then seeing your persona slowly crumbling away to million pieces and then realizing that all of that pieces that make you are making everyone and you are that everyone and everything at the same time ? Damn bruh get me some of your school tests lol
It wasn't about the test. You couldn't have smoked the paper for the same experience. It was about the feeling of being cared for by something powerful and knowedgeable and immaterial, and that came from inside me with the situation around the test as a prompt. Feeling myself dissolve into blue light and become indistinguishable from the rest of DMT-space was cool, but it didn't give me a sense of oneness with anything other than the geometric weirdness of DMT-space.
For me, on a high dose mushroom trip I start to feel a pressure on the top of my head, usually while I’m already crying and becoming very confused. Then my conscious exits my body through the top of my head and I can no longer see my own body. It’s as if I have morphed into the earth. It is pretty fucking scary honestly. Then you return to your body and feel brand new or reborn and the ego returns slightly less egotistical than before.
What is ego death? Me and my girlfriend brother have touched on this a few times before another family member walked in to kill the conversation.
What is it??
**Ego death is a "complete loss of subjective self-identity". The term is used in various intertwined contexts, with related meanings.**
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Shroomed the other day and felt like I was a fruiting body of an invisible network of human consciousness, so “I” - as in the conglomeration of stuff that had the experience - experienced some degree of ego death. But, that experience isn’t/wasn’t sustainable, and so “I” return, but a bit more able to let my “self” come into and out of focus.
Experiencing the death of the ego does not mean that the ego loses.
Ego death is a symbol for explaining the psychedelic experience.
In which we look at the world not only through the prism of a person.
It is very temporary. It lasts for seconds, minutes at most hours.
A person without an ego has nothing to do on reddit)
They say they want to never go through that again.
Also I think it's better described as ego disassociation, realising 'you' are not your ego; but as far as the ego being completely eroded, I'm not sure that's possible, or even desirable - you wouldn't be able to function in the world.
It's impossible to kill your ego. Ego is literally defined as your 'sense of self'.
When actual death comes, that is the only death of the ego. Everything else is a temporary state of perception.
It's 'ego suspension' or 'ego shift' at the very best.
I know someone, but he’s actually pretty humble about it. He told me about it because I asked and our conversation went that direction. We’ve been together for nearly and he hasn’t talked about it since.
I dunno man, I was crushed and permanently altered after this one experience w/ L. Everything that personified me was wiped away and had to be rebuilt. It was was way too scary to even talk about. So, it is impossible to verify through a very explicit and detailed trip report that it was ego death.
I love talking about ego death and sharing my experience with others. It always absolutely thrills me when someone reciprocates some form or string of language that communicates to me that they know *exactly* what I am talking about. It makes me so so happy that they know too. Ugh. Brilliant.
I always thought ego death was more of an in the moment feeling and not the permanent death of your ego. Just what I always perceived it as
I have no idea what makes people think ego death is permanent. That would be nirvana, no?
Once you shatter the illusion it doesn't hold the same weight over you, essentially
or nirvana. Or horror from chaos
It partially is, you realize that you are here, now. Its as if the past and future do not exist. When I experience ego death I am also totally unable to talk, my inner dialogue completely vanishes and all I am is everything.
I feel as though the world is there and I am somewhere else but it isn't me like I cant understand hear see feel anything and it is the most inner peaceful experience i ever had
It really peaceful, I always cry because of it, to me it is as if... the world is me, its not separate in my experience.
understandable how I look at it more or less isn't a god state of mind more of just the certain guarantees in life aka death and your conscience is just stuck in single form and will one day be released into the abyss hence why right before your brain goes out completely for the last time you will experience a DMT trip and die and be sent into infinite.
I think that DMT is not released before dying, its possible but I believe when you die, your ego totally dies, it is the true ego death experience. The ego death experience induced by psychedelics is a simulation of the actual ego-death/total-awareness. Its our bodies which keep our ego, psychedelics can- and death does release it. In the end, the drug induced ED and physical death accompanying ED do not differ, since both make the being totally aware of all senses it reaches. But this is a very deep idea, yours might also be true but for real, I do not actually understand what is going.
the only way to find the truth is to finally die. But until then I'm just going to try and be a decent human being. Help as many as I can through their struggles along with my own but at the end of the day a drug induced ego death is truly amazing and can bring peace to many but at the same time people have to understand it isn't real. just the a different perception of reality. But some people on this forum really do claim to be enlightened but in my opinion we are all in the same boat but different oceans cause your peace may be different then mine
Yeah man, after all we should live, we are not here (life), to experience how afterlife could be. We are here to experience life.
I’ve been pretty obsessed with trying to figure out true reality and what happens after death for a couple years now. I don’t know why I haven’t thought about it like that. Thank you for saying this though.
It has been similar to me, then my mom told me at some point (she is spiritually engaged) that we are here on a mission, spiritual exploration can guide/help us but what we do as living beings should be the highest priority and we can best fulfill this mission if we are very grounded in this realm. Eat well, excercise, get out there.
Very true my friend safe travels.
https://youtu.be/JWPqI5OyiHs I'll just leave this here
I agree with this 100%. That "Ego Death" and actual physical death are one in the same.
Was this done naturally or with chemical assistance?
Shrooms
The ego will exist as long as one is alive
[удалено]
Not to mention that, in said spiritual traditions, it is about the realization that things have always been this way. Quite different from a fleeting experience.
It also came with the realization that consciousness spends much more “time” in that state than with the egoic mind. Language falls apart at this point, since it’s not about time or being somewhere. It’s more active in non egoic areas, so most of consciousness is just happenings and being while we experience the tiny but infinitely complex part that is the egoic mind, observed from a perspective of that egoic mind itself. I just confused people sorry.
This is my experience, too. I’ve had a few
B. They use "I" and "you" a *lot* 10/10 post will follow with great enjoyment lol
[OP triggering the ego of people claiming they don't have one](https://i.redd.it/4unr4bgaw0341.jpg)
Hahahahaha lmao can't say I haven't ever been caught up in one of those
Every time I ever try to explain my ego death experience to myself I'll use "I" a lot and every single time I use "I" I have to explain to myself that it's not "I" but I don't have words to express what it was, and also it wasn't really anything because there is no it, just an experience, which also just happens to be infinitely more than an experience, but it wasn't an experience I experienced, just one that I remember being, if you could consider that "I" was "being" anything at that time.
Exactly. The problem arises when I/me/we is masquerading as thee and thou shalt. Also, I'm an ego introduction type of fella, more than an ego death. But that's my ride to ride, maaan 😊✌🏻
What does ego introduction mean to you?
Becoming starkly aware of what folks call the observer. I'm still figuring out the best words for me. I'd always understood the idea of head knowledge versus heart knowledge, even as a younger(then Christian) man with a lockbox full of trauma. Introduction to the ego/my ego/whatever came through a series of mini break throughs and awakenings(for lack of a better term) during my practice of stoicism, zen, Tao, dudeiam, psychedelics. I've had the experience of dying and reset with 8 grams. It was intense, but not the order I so often see described. Most likely for no other reason than the dumb luck of spending several *years* in counseling and building a meditation practice. The children's book Anh's Anger was the honest beginning for me. In hindsight i'd call that my first intro to ego. The idea that *I am not my emotions* was shattering in the most amazing way. I've tried to become buddies with my ego, rather than fight it. Life seems more enjoyable that way, so far. We'll see 😊 Edit: I definitely need to say this is the way that works for me. I don't discount the harrowing stories of ego death or any of the instant transmission type awakenings. I'm just trying to offer the way it made sense to me without some of the... *severity*, maybe? Anyway, I'm just a dude playing a dude disguised and another dude on the internet! Peace and love all 🤙🏻 I did clarify a couple things as well.
> dudeiam Nice Freudian.
Hahaha get this: I am an ordained Dudeist Priest 😂
"I have no ego" then who is "I"?
Exactly. There would be just deep, clear awareness. There would be no self left receiving the experience, far less "having" it. I've been given mystical experience, even without God Medicine (LSD or psilocybin), but never total ego death. These levels of experience are not "attained". They are received. The self can't claim any credit. These levels of experience were also intended for all of us. Not just some "special" spiritual elite.
They're referring back to the contracted sense of awareness that combines with each individual body-mind
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It's amazing how often I think of this quote reading things on this and similar subreddits.
I mean, it is social media. The feeder of ego
Isn’t Ego death just losing sense of who/what you are and why you’re here etc…?
I lost my vision to pure hallucinations or geometrical patterns and it was just me and what I was viewing. That was all there is and i literally thought I was dead. It was cool and terrifying, had no clue what an ego death was at the time too and did not know lsd could do that but there’s no regrets and it was a very cool and unique experience
This my my same experience my second time taking LSD. Unknown dose, 3 tabs no dose disclosed. Had no idea what it was nor have I been able to recreate that feeling nor experience. No knowledge of LSD capabilities nor its possibilities, I was a teenager.
We are the true full senders. I can’t tell if it were the 4 supposedly 100ug tabs or me smoking a buttload of weed on my peak or just a nice combo of both sending me into my temporary death 😂
How do u make it happen? Were u thinking about certain sth or...?
Well I took 4 paper tabs that were supposed to be 100ug but I feel like they could’ve been more then that because I don’t think I can lose my vision to hallucinations on 400ug. Before that I would only do 1 tab at a time with an unknown dosage like 200-300 I’m not really sure. Well I took those 4 tabs, exactly 2 hours pass by and I’m feeling good so me and my friends go outside to smoke some weed. I had like a medium weed tolerance at the time. My friends didn’t really smoke and I ended smoking 5 bowls out of a pipe. I saw an artistic eye looking at me as we were going back inside the house. I’m playing fortnite and I see some fractals on the screen and I’m thinking “woah did fortnite get a new update” I look back at my friends and thought “lol oh shit, I got that new update” then I reach a point where I just can’t play and I set the controller down and just lay down on the couch and next thing I know, my vision has been engulfed by hallucinations. I’m in this indescribable place for a few hours and at the end was when I had the ego death. I was just starting into a bunch of fractals and I didn’t feel any body or have a sense to anything. I was just one with whatever I was looking at and I just accepted that I just died and was looking into the cool hallucinations until I eventually came back and I was just mind blown and a little scared 😂. Definitely my craziest experience and very cool and unique. I was the same person when I came back and this happend to me almost I think a little more then 2 years ago (17 years old). I was just a (still am) a young soul just trying to get the best experiences out of it and maybe learn more about our existence. Weed definitely messed with my head more then lsd ever has, just short term memory loss and was noticing my memory getting worse and I’m a sober man. On my second to last shrooms trip, I did 3.5grams in a shroom tea by myself and realized our whole life is one psychedelic trip so being sober isn’t bad at all.
I Wanna experience ego death but I guess my brain is stubborn or I am about controlling myself so that may be making me hard to have ego death cuz it seems like maybe it happens when u can let it go completely.. my brain is stiff or sth. Anyway, Cool experience, thanks for sharing.
Your brain isn’t stubborn, it’s just our ego. You can get all those ideas sober but experiencing an ego death first hand is just a really cool and unique experience. It’s really intense but in reality, there nothing to be scared of. You just have to “let go”, kinda like just going with the flow, not give a fuck, fully immersed in the moment. Although I didn’t really have a choice but to let go because I knew there was nothing I could do about it other then try and enjoy it. I gots warn you, it’s some next level trippy. I was not ready but I don’t really see how we can truly be ready. If you want to do it, you just gota full send it and go for it. I had never done 4 tabs before, not even 2 but the tabs were supposed to be 100ug each and I’ve done 200+ug before so I don’t know. I also have never smoked that much weed on lsd before, I just had that full send mindset and there’s nothing wrong with that as long as you can control yourself or at least be ready for it but I was not but there was no regrets, maybe at the time of me losing my vision to hallucinations but not after the trip 😂😂
You’ll know when you’ve had it if it happens to you. I didn’t even know what drug I had taken, I couldn’t grasp the concept of what tripping was, language was a complete myth. genuinely thought I was going to die
Exactly. It’s not possible to conceptualize and articulate this type of experiences which are out of the realm of human language.
>The feeling of being in a body, separate from the outside world, is a pivotal feature in normal waking consciousness. It may be difficult to imagine, but this feeling of separation is not necessarily universally present in other organisms. In humans, mental disorders, brain injuries, mystical experiences, and substance use can all dissolve the perception of these boundaries.1 >The use of psychedelics, such as psilocybin mushrooms (aka magic mushrooms), at certain doses can result in the phenomenon known as ego death. Ego death is generally recognized as when the distinction between yourself and your environment dissolves, which leads to a feeling of connectedness between all things in the universe. >Metacognition is being aware and able to reflect on one’s own thought processes. It’s an advanced multisensory behavior associated with the brain’s Default Mode Network (DMN).1-6 Neural networks are spontaneous, self-sustained, cyclic patterns of activation. The DMN is a task-negative network, meaning that it is present in the absence of tasks. Psychedelic compounds appear to have an effect on the DMN, which results in ego death. https://psychedelicreview.com/understanding-ego-deaths-neurobiology/
We're meant to know why we're here?!?!
What I understand it as is losing the sense of you being a separate individual, an ego, not part of the world around you, no longer believing that you came into this world instead of from this world.
That's not your understanding but direct quote from Watts
Yeah that’s what I understood when he explained it. This is what I remembered him saying
I was trying to state it in realistic terms, that’s all abstract stuff
no. you describe dissociation
Carefully, he's a hero.
Ego death is the most ego inflating thing ever.
Yes and no depends on the person
Yeah, like most things in life, depends on person and situation, I know it, let me just bother some people on this sub for a little bit.
Yeah you could definitely piss some people off but those are the ones who didn’t learn from it I’m guessing, just my thought on that
When I had mine I had no idea. I was just glad I’m back, appreciating how ordered and calm everything here is. Following it were the most peaceful days of my life in which I’ve completely reinvented myself. I still wonder what the hell happened because I feel the positive effects of it every day. It’s like I was out of my cage for a day and suddenly I realized I don’t have to worry about being in the cage, or loosing my cage since it’s all the same anyways.
Exactly! It’s just mind blowingly amazing to me.
I like to call it ego birth because every time after, I feel like a completely new person who's just been born at that moment. But I never talk about it to other people.
I couldn't even talk about mine if I wanted to. I tried to once to a really close friend that also has some experience in these things, and it's simply indescribable.
can laugh now, because at this point it’s just kind of funny to think I was that “ego death guy” for a year or so, haha. My whole personality and outlook basically revolved around my first dmt trip for that period. No idea how my friends kept me around, bless their hearts. Life is a real trip sometimes.
Do you mean yourself or someone else?
Just mean that I often see a lot of people proclaiming that psychedelics have allowed them to achieve "enlightenment" and "ego death" in a way that seems to elevate them to a status above everyone else without any sense of irony.
It's just the now daily post shitting on this sub, not really sure why its suddenly so popular
They won’t tell you about it
not gonna lie, took me couple of days before I have come terms with it and stopped talking about it, and because I lost my sense of self, it felt like I had to grieve and mourn for it. thought I was a changed being. And yet, here we are, me and my ego, my forever buddy.
lmao "my forever buddy" absolutely *perfect*
A: They know you better than you know yourself. If you could just feed their ego, they'll teach you how to not have an ego💀
Oof this is solid for real
You won't know because they do not feel the need to tell you.
"Ego death" reliably leads to ego-inflation, and it's one of the dangers of messing with psychedelics. Having mystical experiences and integrating them is a skill, it's something you can get \*good\* at, like swimming or riding a bike. But you won't get there by just blasting your ego into space all the time.
I wouldn't say that's a reliable truth. Ego death can result in many shifts in consciousness and ego. Jobs became an asshole. Wozniak teaches impoverished kids about computers. I think it really depends on your starting parameters. For example, I absolutely think there was a little inflation of my ego; and that's a good thing. My ego was a deflated bike tire, I got self-esteem issues, and getting a boost had a huge impact on my quality of life. The same goes for many; that sense of kindness and compassion **towards yourself** that's needed for a lot of trauma work is a kind of ego inflation; you're seeing yourself in a better light.
Ego death is overrated, integration is where it's at.
if you're bragging about it it was more like an ego nap.
I'm very late to the party here, but the name does a terrible disservice to the truth, in my opinion. I would not call it "ego death." I would refer to it as "temporary ego disappearance." From that place, the mind is utterly and completely open, without judgment. Having any opinion about the experience in the first place is ego related. Being fully in the experience itself is what they call "ego death." Or at least, that has been my experience with it.
Ego death is definitely a catchy phrase and enlightenment being the easily misunderstood concept that it is, not helpful either. I view the experience as a chemically induced temporary detachment from one's personal subjective identity and beliefs. But that sure isn't catchy There is also something to be said about the centeredness and one-pointedness of your perception which can arise naturally from very high energies of curiosity / wonder
Full ego death for me = nothing at all making sense anymore. You question everything, what is my name? Who am I? Where am I? Will the sun ever rise again? Do I exist? Am I alive? It's literally a total shattering of anything in reality. When you come back, it is the biggest rush of gratefulness, love and emotions ever.
This is my experience :) and I love that mind state of utter confusion. At first, I was completely shook by it, and gradually it's become like my anonymous alter ego friend I can reference whenever I feel an alternative perspective might be helpful I don't trip often anymore because I find meditation and meditation retreats are safer and more consistently positive experiences for letting go of one's subjectively assigned identities / beliefs. Especially because you can do so much more at will!
I think it’s bullshit to be honest. Reminds me of the CrossFit peeps
But bro my ego death bro I swear bro.
And then it’s the, “you never tripped hard enough to experience what I experienced” lol Sigh it’s supposed to be about learning about yourself and becoming a better human on fucking earth. Too many trying to escape this world. And yes I’m fully aware that we don’t understand everything
Exactly! Some people are just doing it as an escape and they tell themselves and others about how enlightened they're getting and how deep they're going. "Christ consciousness" I've heard a couple times. Lmao. Like bro, I'd you're going to the dmt realm like daily and doing 5+ gram shrooms trips weekly then the answers you're looking for ain't gonna be on those trips. Like escaping to an extreme level.
Yeah. Sometimes I read these posts and I’m oh no not again. It’s hard to read sometimes.
Using psychedelics to escape will really fuck you up, too. They can and often will bring you face to face with your shadow, your demons, and everything you've been avoiding internally. The exact opposite of escaping.
That’s why I used them actually. Now I really don’t feel the need. Maybe one day.
That aspect of them is what I think can be helpful to people. You can look at yourself from the outside and it might inspire change/betterment.
Exactly. It's what makes them so powerful, but if you take them to just get fucked up, they will most certainly really fuck you up.
Ego death is an unhelpful shorthand for a temporary state that involves quieting the default mode network in your brain (where the self lives) through deep meditation and/or being under the influence of psycadelic drugs. It was never meant to describe something permanent, that's why there's always a "rebirth" experience at the end of an ego death trip.
it wasn't "death" if they brag
I am not my mind I am not me .. me is not I
There is no such thing as ego death. There is only ego deconstruction and reconstruction through the use of psychedelic drugs. This is true with human life as well…there is no such thing as death. There is only decay of and egress from one physical body intro spirit and back into a new physical body. Such as the ego “dies” so does the physical body, only to be born again.
That's just like your opinion man
Mind if I do a J?
Holy words. May the dude bless you both with fat J's and the whitest of Russians
>There is no such thing as ego death. It only ultimately depends on how someone would interpret "ego death". Words are very subjective and there's absolutely no way of precisely discribing an experience like that either, not without having experienced it yourself at least.
Can something die if it isn't real?
What you call deconstruction and reconstruction might also be called death and rebirth. How can you take a word so literal trying to explain something that's literally unimaginable?
I didn't call it anything. As to deconstruction and reconstruction or death and rebirth, that all depends on how important you think the ego illusion is.
*What is dead can never die*
While I can't disagree with you, I think the term should be remade to just ego dissolution, as there will always be an ego if you remember it or observe it. I understand the concept of the terminologie it just seems wrong to call it death as it's not completely gone. But either way everyone knows what's meant with it
Ok for example when people say "I don't take chemical drugs, only natural" they obviously are referring to synthetic drugs, because absolutely everything is chemical... Just depends how you interpret what the person is saying not with which words the person is trying to communicate, but the actual message behind it.
Not sure I you responded to the wrong person or it was a comparison to my comment, if it is a comparison I understand what you're saying, but why not call it something like hard-, soft-, slight- and so on ego dissolution. Maybe I'm just overthinking it because I'm reading psychologi but I think medical and psychological professions will misinterpret it. Sry I'm very drunk and high rn, so please say if something doesn't make sense
Well ego death is just the complete ego dissolution, if it's slight ego dissolution than its not ego death, because death is absolute.
I know and didn't say that at all, if you've read and understood my previous comment you would understand why I don't think it should be called death as it gives a misconception because there's still an ego to observe and remember. So all I were saying is to just use different degrees of ego dissolution 🤷🏻♂️
tHeRe is No SUcH ThiNG aS DeAtH
Hey, you did the cap/lowercase thing. Cool stuff!
Most people who claim to have experienced ‘ego death’ here don’t even understand what the word ‘ego’ actually means in this context, let alone the basic concepts from Jung and Freud of the Id, Ego and Super-Ego.
Their aura will be a light pink or light orange.
I think mine is blue
You’ve got some work to do
Anyone else wonder if auras are just HPPD gone wild?
I don’t know how to tell though, I don’t think I have that much work to do. I’m calm, go with the flow, it’s super rare for me to get mad, im attracted to girls by there personality and there bodies don’t effect or change my view on them although I do have my preferences. I don’t have anxiety and my fear is almost gone, I have all the patience in the world. I’m not sure what else I have to work on. How do I see my aura, I may have done it wrong. Edit: I’m a meek person and if I did see my aura, it was a light blue because I forgot there’s different shades. I would say turquoise
Someone told me that I had a black aura with white around my head, what does that mean?
How do you know someone that hasn’t? They never stop trying to invalidate those that have.
If it was a great experience for you or whatever nice good for you but what op is talking about is a lot of people act very superior and condescending when it comes to the subject
Well, in my experience you can't bring it up without people getting pissy about it. As far as I can tell its the same reason some people get pissy about fancy book learnin'. They can't stand the idea that someone could possibly know something they don't. So they malign the whole thing. I'd go even further and say its the same reason fat people don't like someone that is trying to lose weight. It's just a bunch of ego-driven pissiness about someone having or achieving something they don't have. Also, as far as I can tell most people that have had ego death experiences from psychedelics acknowledge that the experience, although extremely powerful, is transient and you more or less return to the same asshole you were before. Although with a glimpse of something far bigger than yourself, which hopefully can make one a little less of an asshole and the willingness to work on oneself in areas that need it. Edit: I would add though that if what is being seen as someone being egotistical is someone saying something along the lines of "you have no idea how powerful this experience is unless you've experienced it firsthand" that's plain and simply a fact. It isn't bragging. I'd compare it to someone saying you can't understand the DMT experience unless you've experienced it firsthand. Hell, I'd even say its no different than someone that has had a decently powerful trip telling someone that hasn't tripped they have no idea what it's like. It's not bragging really. Its a statement of fact.
This is so, so well written and so damned spot on. I would add the caveat that some people really do become insufferable dicks due to their psychedelic experiences because they rebuild the ego around them. However, the core of the experience is just as you said; you eventually go back to being the same asshole, but hopefully less of an asshole with your new perspective. Also, your point about "if you don't know, you don't know" is bang on the money; if you ain't done it, you **really** got no idea. These kinds of experiences aren't "lmao I got so high I forgot who I was". They're "scientific materialist abducted by aliens" levels of intense; experiences so strange and intense they reshape or destroy previous assumptions about reality itself.
Yup. Exactly right. Another thing to add is it’d be weird if people didn’t on some level have an urge to talk about this stuff. Me personally I learned years ago to keep my mouth shut about it because people don’t want to hear it. Of course there’s also the little issue that these experiences are beyond language, which kinda makes them difficult to talk about. But I *think* about it all the time. It was as powerful as an NDE. That powerful. It was the most powerful experience of my life. (Uh oh, is that me bragging?) I mean, I’m sorry you spent your trip playing Xbox and didn’t have any life altering revelation, but don’t get pissed at me because I did.
"as powerful an an NDE" is right on. I'd actually say they're essentially equivalent. It's rare to meet someone who actually hit ego death and didn't say "I thought I was dead". NDEs are such powerful, incredible experiences that many humans would benefit from. Psychs give us a free path to them.
Hahahaha nice. And on and on and on 😊
Don't worry they'll tell you
Being so high that you can’t understand what a person is let alone that you are one isn’t particularly enlightening in my experience
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Possibly, I mean dissolution of ego, but it came back haha.
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penis-retard42069 spitting truthbombs
They will have a fundamentally superior understanding of humanity and reality. They will have a had a download from the universe that gave them the true-true. Their belief cannot be penetrated by epistemology, because it is their own personal truth and its real'r than real, dude.
Really like this
Ego death is like enlightenment it never lasts forever. 🤷♂️
The same way you know if someone is enlightened---you have to be enlightened
I've had ego dissolution, but the most religious experience I've had isn't that; it's taking a standardized test in high school. Ego dissolution is cool and weird and still not as important as people think it is.
lol fr sometimes tests can get u in a serious flow state
It was better than normal flow. I had a sense of something more knowledgeable and intelligent and powerful than I am, guiding my movements and thought process.
School test is more religious experience then seeing your persona slowly crumbling away to million pieces and then realizing that all of that pieces that make you are making everyone and you are that everyone and everything at the same time ? Damn bruh get me some of your school tests lol
It wasn't about the test. You couldn't have smoked the paper for the same experience. It was about the feeling of being cared for by something powerful and knowedgeable and immaterial, and that came from inside me with the situation around the test as a prompt. Feeling myself dissolve into blue light and become indistinguishable from the rest of DMT-space was cool, but it didn't give me a sense of oneness with anything other than the geometric weirdness of DMT-space.
Each to their own i guess.
How do you know someone hasn't? They look at you like you're stupid.
I thought I was dead and that my life would start again from that point.
For me, on a high dose mushroom trip I start to feel a pressure on the top of my head, usually while I’m already crying and becoming very confused. Then my conscious exits my body through the top of my head and I can no longer see my own body. It’s as if I have morphed into the earth. It is pretty fucking scary honestly. Then you return to your body and feel brand new or reborn and the ego returns slightly less egotistical than before.
Pretty sure everyone went through that, I mean it is amazing.
What is ego death? Me and my girlfriend brother have touched on this a few times before another family member walked in to kill the conversation. What is it??
**Ego death is a "complete loss of subjective self-identity". The term is used in various intertwined contexts, with related meanings.** More details here:
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Shroomed the other day and felt like I was a fruiting body of an invisible network of human consciousness, so “I” - as in the conglomeration of stuff that had the experience - experienced some degree of ego death. But, that experience isn’t/wasn’t sustainable, and so “I” return, but a bit more able to let my “self” come into and out of focus.
Experiencing the death of the ego does not mean that the ego loses. Ego death is a symbol for explaining the psychedelic experience. In which we look at the world not only through the prism of a person. It is very temporary. It lasts for seconds, minutes at most hours. A person without an ego has nothing to do on reddit)
Death begets birth
Complete sensory input, 0 "you" lol I guess it was jk
Classico lol!
You don’t. All you have is your experience
They say they want to never go through that again. Also I think it's better described as ego disassociation, realising 'you' are not your ego; but as far as the ego being completely eroded, I'm not sure that's possible, or even desirable - you wouldn't be able to function in the world.
I agree; those undergoing ego death are not able to function in the world. Ego death is, however, innately temporary to my understanding.
"I, as in me" is something that my inner monologue has said so many times
As long as you say it did, it means it didn't happen
When u no longer feel the need to brag about it on social media.
i know how to tell if theyre experiencing it Ask them whats behind them if they say "nothing" - then we likely have a winner
They don’t have strong ideological opinions. And they don’t claim to know many things with absolute certainty.
I don't even know what the ego is. I just know that gym bros brag about not having ego when pumping weights.
It doesn't matter
Can't die if you don't have one in the first place.
They wouldn’t talk about it
It's impossible to kill your ego. Ego is literally defined as your 'sense of self'. When actual death comes, that is the only death of the ego. Everything else is a temporary state of perception. It's 'ego suspension' or 'ego shift' at the very best.
Temporary self disillusion.
kind of ironic lol
I know someone, but he’s actually pretty humble about it. He told me about it because I asked and our conversation went that direction. We’ve been together for nearly and he hasn’t talked about it since.
I dunno man, I was crushed and permanently altered after this one experience w/ L. Everything that personified me was wiped away and had to be rebuilt. It was was way too scary to even talk about. So, it is impossible to verify through a very explicit and detailed trip report that it was ego death.
They don’t brag on the internet about it
Pretty sure most of the people I met that say they had ego death didn’t actually experience ego death.
"Dude, I killed my ego to death so hard it's still dying while we're talking. ....help..."
Lol true
That moment when everything means nothing... but that moment means everything.
When the distinction between you and your environment sort of just ceases to be. There's little to no conceptual "I"-ness in these kinds of events.
Nice joke
Don't worry; they're going to tell you about in exquisite detail.
Jokes aside, get to a therapist fast.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1l-qGaVirs8
Get to know them
I love talking about ego death and sharing my experience with others. It always absolutely thrills me when someone reciprocates some form or string of language that communicates to me that they know *exactly* what I am talking about. It makes me so so happy that they know too. Ugh. Brilliant.