Death of the Ego
Death of the Ego
Ego is a good servant, never a real master. A lot it is said about the need of one to control the demands and caprices of the Ego. Many schools of wisdom and spiritual practices strongly recommend the taming the scope of our wants and needs to break free from the world of Illusion. Some traditions indicate that the only way to reach a point or level of enlightenment is to neutralize the Ego even to the point of extermination.
Ego is the immediate dictate of human consciousness.
~Max Planck
No doubt that the Ego can inconveniently stand in the way of major moments and transformations sponsored by our soul; but does it needs to be annihilated? Not necessarily. The death of the Ego is an experience that supposedly reveals its illusory state. This can be an experience emulated by shamans, monks, psychologists and other seekers, individuals mainly interested in exploring the deepest points of their minds. The Human Ego is organized by such a dualistic way of thinking; it means that an Ego can die without corporeal death and without consciousness coming to an end.
“What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly.”
~ Richard Bach
Every soul extension which agreed upon that the lessons of incarnation in the kingdoms of the material world, patiently builds through lifetimes the personality, the body of emotions, the lower mental; all our "spiritual quintessence,” to be wrapped in a substance of the matter. In other words, to take an individual material life experience, a soul will need a physical body, an Ego, and a Light body. These are built-in devices that are inevitably part of the system of any and every human being alive on Earth. We need all three of these actually to exist and experience individuality. There is no way around it.
You may develop your Ego to make it more soul infused, work with your physical body to be able to receive more efficiently the directives of the soul. You may even furnish your Light body with extra channels and connections with the Light, but we cannot ignore their importance nor resent their trickery functions and malfunctions.
One may understand the cosmos, but never the ego; the self is more distant than any star.
~Gilbert K. Chesterton
The fact that the Ego needs training is most sure, but not its annihilation because through the taming of it, many luminous characteristics came come to life and enrich the learning of the different nuances of human experiences.
When one reaches a steady stage on the path of self-realization and non-attachment, it is common to reach a plateau where one will literately get the impression of being in an eye of a storm and where no further progress can be seen or felt. It is not unusual for an individual to think that there is something wrong and feel that their continuous spiritual work is no longer rendering any progress. This is one of the most telling signs that you are reaching the place in your inner world where you are approaching the death of the Ego. Most of the time, when such circumstance occurs, you have to keep in mind that any progress towards the path of non-attachment will incite a reaction from the Ego. And Ego always will put up a fight, even if it is silent, to undermine your efforts and make you think that to continue step-by-step will not lead you anywhere.
