What is Ego Death?

so I want to talk about a very controversial subject today the subject of ego death and we chose the title ego death not because I really understand what it is because I don't think very many people do but because it was very provocative so this is a very controversial question about Enlightenment what happens to the ego and does the ego die or not and if it does what is what does it really mean this is something I've been thinking about for a good 35 years so I know a little bit about it and I have a lot of experience in this area but uh it's very confusing it remains to be a confusing question because so many so-called experts including me seem to disagree with each other about fundamentals so this is a very confusing area it's a very confusing topic it's a theoretically a lot of people seem to have it figured out but I I really question whether anybody has it figured I have a lot of different ideas about it I have a lot of different thoughts which I think are important significant relevant and helpful and I work with them myself to try to make sense out of my own experiences with Enlightenment how confusing it is sometimes and I think if you're willing to just consider some of the things I'm saying some of the paradoxes that I will present to you I think it'll help you to come to terms with the question that was ultimately very mysterious because the question of what does it mean to be what what is Enlightenment number one and what does it mean for a human being which is who and what we all are to actually manifest enlightened awareness what what if Enlightenment exists if it's real if what people like the Buddha and Raman maharshi what they were speaking about is true what does that miraculous and mysterious state of consciousness walk like a talk like an act like and what does it have to do with the very real day-to-day experience of you of each and every one of us especially for those of us who are doing our best to take Enlightenment seriously and are taking our own potential for enlightenment seriously but those of us are serious about it which not very many people are but but for those of us who are serious about it or at least believe we're serious about it we might be deluded of course also but for those of us who believe we're serious about what does it mean to be enlightened what does it look like what does it walk like what does it talk like what does it feel like and that's always the question I've been interested in because I was always aware that of the theory I would read about the theory of what enlightenment looks like acts like Walks Like and talks like and I would want to know what does this really mean about Humanity how do we express this miraculous State of Consciousness in and through the complexity of our human consciousness and so especially when I was a younger man and I was still a Seeker I went to see as many supposedly enlightened teachers Masters and gurus as I could because I wanted to know what enlightenment looked like not just what it was like what it was supposed to be like from a theoretical or abstract intellectual perspective philosophical perspective but I wanted to know what enlightened human beings actually look like and it's very confusing because the whole notion of enlightenment emerged in you know two and a half thousand years ago three thousand years ago during the Mythic era and so Enlightenment for many people means a state of that which is perfect for the state of perfection state of human perfection and human Perfection and the enlightenment context usually means that the separate self sense the unique separate self sense has been utterly obliterated and I'm just speaking of metaphor metaphorically I'm not speaking literally it's what we imagine in the mythics in the Mythic context that the separate ego that the separate self-sense has been utterly and radically obliterated and what's left is a human being whose Consciousness is more or less fundamentally only aware of the consciousness of cosmic Unity of what some people call God consciousness in their separate eye sense a unique separate eye sense of being unique ego has been utterly destroyed once and for all and forever and so to be in the process of such a beings is to be in the process of one of God really God appearing through the Body Mind personality of a unique human being man or woman but it's the god Consciousness which is fundamental that's being expressed in a separate eye sense the separate ego sense the personal and unique identity is gone forever at least this is the Mythic idea and as all of us are aware of the story that in the late 60s and 1970s when many hippies who discovered glimpses of enlightened awareness through the taking of ingesting psychedelic substances travel to India or seeking to seeking the company of true enlightened Masters and they met many and many enlightened Masters were brought back to America and to Europe this is when these mythic beliefs these mythic ideas of the perfect state of enlightenment crashed into crashed into Western psychology and the postmodern scrutiny in deep deep understanding of human nature and then everybody started to see that these enlightened Masters were also shockingly human not always in the best ways there's so many examples of these kinds of stories and then many people said well if enlight if enlightened beings are especially expressing human imperfection and issues around ego and power and narcissism and the usual kind of weaknesses maybe Enlightenment doesn't mean anything and maybe after all it doesn't really exist maybe it's all been a myth that's the short story what happened and in spite of that many of us kept calling he didn't give up so so that's the that's the overarching context of the story so I think most people because most people are interested in this topic but grudgingly will admit that Enlightenment does exist but most people don't really know what it means and these days a lot of people are very cynical become very cynical about whether Enlightenment is real or whether it's even attainable so we live in a context right now in a in a cultural concept context where I'm I'm see I'm speaking broad Strokes I'm making big big General statements you don't apply to everybody by any stretch of the imagination and more people now tend to be interested in psychological healing rather than Enlightenment and not the same thing and I really wanted to emphasize at the beginning of this talk it's psychological healing is not enlightenment in The Awakening to enlightened awareness which is what a Enlightenment is all about it's not about psychological healing psychological healing is about is about the attempt to heal our childhood wounds unresolved traumas and things like that which is what everybody seems to be talking about these days but the Quest for enlightenment is to search for the direct experience the liberating experience the liberating experience the liberating experience of the Awakening to enlightened awareness which is a thing that exists Enlightenment is the awaken enlightened awareness is this higher state of consciousness it's what the Buddha was pointing to it's what he was calling Oliver stewardship was speaking about what he called spoke about Awakening to the self that's what my own Guru the great hwl punji was speaking about when you talk about Awakening to the self of the capital s so just to make a simple distinction that everybody's already aware of clear Enlightenment is about transcending the egon's mall South and psychological work is about healing the ego in the small self if I want to make clear that Enlightenment is about Transcendence not that's not a new idea it's about transcending the small cell completely totally radically and absolutely at least for some a period of time and about experiencing a state of consciousness that is utterly unaffected and Untouched by anything that the egos ever experienced that's why it's so liberating because it's different territory this terrorist territory where there's innocence and purity and the presence of Eternity and Unthinkable and unimaginable positivity the experience in which the knowledge of which is utterly transformational it doesn't necessarily heal the ego but it transcends it the ego temporarily disappears doesn't die forever but in the state of transcendence the ego is nowhere to be found and psychological healing is is about psychological healing and it needs to be done we all need to be doing it if you want to be happy but I sometimes think that too many people these days are confusing psychological work with the work of transcendence and they're they're not the same thing they're both necessary and important but they're not identical they're not the same thing they're very very different and some people are just more are just more interested in psychological healing the more interested in coming to terms with their woundedness and their unresolved drama drama dramas that are still bothering them and that's absolutely reasonable and totally fine and some other other people myself included are more I've always been more interested in Transcendence than in healing and I know I'm not supposed to say that in a polite company but it's just true and it's just they're not the same thing and be be wary or be careful when psychological healing and Enlightenment it's broken about in the same breath or when it's when when it's like Wednesday the spiritual Guru says it says it the same thing they're not or if psychotherapists say the same thing they're not I once asked my Guru about a very big ego get an enormous ego unbelievable and he also had a very big Enlightenment whose Enlightenment was unimaginably huge enormous vast incomprehensible mysterious overwhelming ecstasy producing his Enlightenment so big that in his presence the whole world would disappear one felt the one felt that one was suddenly sitting and at the heart of the cosmos the spiritual energy that was vibrating in and around his physical form into his Persona was absolutely overwhelming I never I haven't before and since I never met such a being it was so powerfully the way it could transmit this state to other people so effortlessly in such a way that a lot of people never recovered from meeting but that didn't mean he was eagleless he seemed to be eagerness when he was in these dramatic higher States but the rest of the time his ego was in good shape very present and active and um sometimes not so pretty did that mean he wasn't enlightened absolutely not it did not mean he wasn't in line this this is the whole Paradox I'm trying to bring to all of you it didn't mean he wasn't enlightened he meant he had issues like so many of us do some big issues he was a very powerful man for better and For Worse but his Awakening to enlightened awareness was undoubted it was impossible to doubt an impossible to question because because when he was vibrating it was like sitting in front of God time is facing to warp around him maybe they did and the day I met him which is March 25th 1986 Is The Day My Life changed forever simply because I met him and said experienced his grace sat in front of him and as a result of that meeting an experience of Awakening after about 10 minutes so I asked them during my my early weeks with him I said does the Enlightenment with Enlightenment I said does the ego die and he said no the ego doesn't die but it becomes satric means peaceful he said so the effect of enlightened awareness is that the ego becomes pacified so it doesn't die but it becomes pacified so one of the points I wanted to make in this talk was that in in the therapeutic context we want to understand why we're going to come to an understanding why we're suffering what are the issues or the events that happened in our past it created very negative impressions in our nervous systems and in our souls as long as they remain unresolved they're going to continue to cause us trouble and cause us to suffer in the present moment with the Awakening to enlightened awareness what happens is that the Awakening to higher consciousness reveals where it's instantly recognized to be a much deeper dimension of reality what experiences it seems like a deeper truth not only about oneself in one's history but about life itself about existence and this the discovery of this deeper truth about the reality about life and existence is so unthinkably positive so I'm thinkingly positive that at least better than at least temporarily displaces our obsession with our own suffering and our obsession with their own misery in our obsession with Iran pain and so and so once this happens we want to see well what can I do to what do I need to do to remain conscious of this deeper truth that becomes what spiritual practice is all about what is it what is it that we need to do what is it that I need to do in order to remain conscious of this deeper truth because if I'm conscious of this deeper truth my obsession with my own he goes pain and suffering and misery and grief will be displaced and usually the intensity of that state of consciousness will continue to displace our experience of pain and suffering and misery and grief now of course some people say a lot of people say special psychotherapists say that the those individuals who are obsessed with higher states of consciousness are using their experiences of these higher states to spiritually Bypass or to avoid their own Shadows their own unresolved issues and if that's true if that's true and often it is true and that would mean that our spiritual part of a fundamental part of our spiritual practice would have to be facing the difficult the difficult truths about ourselves that we would tend to like to avoid and just in case anybody's wondering about my approach to all this and my own teaching work of evolutionary enlightenment I have five fundamental principles that I work with and the first is the first is cultivating the unconditional desire for Liberation first and foremost as a first principle one's relationship to existence into life itself I Want to Be Free more than anything else first and foremost whether I want to be rich whether I want to be famous more than I want to be anything you want to be free I want to know what to put into but the second says if you want to be free if you truly want to be free you have to take responsibility from all of your karma all of your karma past present and even future because if you're anybody who's aspiring to become a bodhisattva outside who has to take responsibility for what has yet to happen for the future so the second principle of the teacher tells us if we want to be free we have to be willing to take unconditional absolute and radical responsibility for our Karma coming from our past present and also the future and the third principle that I teach says if we want to take responsibility for a Karma past present and future how are we going to do it the only way to do it's going to be by facing everything and avoiding nothing and that is not an easy form of spiritual practice to do who says if you want to be free more than anything else you have to face everything and avoid nothing we have to learn how to face everything and avoid nothing and speaking about it is one thing doing it is another it's very difficult because the ego your ego my ego the ego tends to have a great resistance and reluctance to face everything and avoid nothing especially issues about ourselves that make us feel uncomfortable our LEDs who don't make us feel so good about ourselves so facing everything and avoiding nothing requires a lot of humility and a depth of resolve for purification this level of the song it's it's not for the faint of heart so one thing to understand that the in terms of the the terms of this distinction I'm making in this talk between the enlightenment perspective and the therapeutic perspective is that um when we're trying to heal the ego we're trying to heal it in psychological context if you work with a good therapist you won't demonize it you don't demonize the ego that'll just make the division or the split in the South even deeper because of course the goal in the therapeutic context is for the wounded self that's become divided against itself to become healed and become whole to reunify with itself resolved it and didn't attempt to resolve the trauma without this Blood but um losing track on mine Direction just give me a second yes but but what happens what I wanted to say is that the is it something that not a lot of people know about is that from the perspective of enlightened awareness when you awaken to enlightened awareness within yourself when you awaken to enlightened awareness within yourself and you start seeing perceiving reality through a different lens lens of enlightened awareness itself you start to find the presence of the ego or a separate self sense especially in individuals that are particularly and uniquely identified with the separate self sense and individuals that would have a particularly narcissistic tendencies from the perspective of the Awakening of the Awakening to enlightened awareness scene through the lens of enlightened awareness the ego is seen as in obstruction I remember the first I remember when I was I'm 67 now so I started experimenting with psychedelic drugs and I was far too young when I was about 16. I took a very powerful dose of LSD and I remember a friend of mine had a had a very big ego he was quite a narcissistic character and uh me and a bunch of my friends were in the country and we took a particularly large dose of this powerful psychedelic drug I remember when my friend walked in I'm sure many of you have had this kind of experience his ego was it was so uh ugly and I suddenly saw I saw it I saw it through the lens of this kind of psychedelic state I saw his ego as his monstrosity as this ugly creature or appendage it was particularly shocking and particularly painful of course this was the the effect of the Psychedelic substance of course animated this particular reactivity in the but when we wake into enlightened awareness the ego is felt to be an obstacle it's it's suddenly seen as not our friend since that isn't because the because the enlightened awareness has its own self sense when you when you awaken to enlightened awareness you awaken to a different part of your own self in a different part of your own self has particular sensibilities preferences likes and dislikes and so when you awake until enlightened awareness in similar ways as to how reality can seem from the perspective of being in the trans staying activated by psychedelic substances you can become more sensitive to particular issues that ordinarily would not be bothersome so I just wanted to make this point that while in a therapeutic context we want to befriend the ego and don't want to alienate it so we can help to serve its reunification with itself feel the wounds when we see the ego from from a deeply awakened state of enlightened awareness we see that we see the problem that it is because it wants to remain separate it stands against Cosmic Unity unknowingly it doesn't can't help it it's not it's not as deliberate or uh it's not deliberate or intentional it's just that it's entire position and relationship to existence into life itself is to stand apart and to be separate it doesn't want to die to drown in love he does not want to disappear into our absolute Cosmic Unity so when we awake into a line awareness we discover that the ego can be very problematic for us especially if we also are very interested in enlightenment ironically the more interested and Enlightenment you are the more serious you are about it the more problematic the ego can become because even though the ego doesn't die at least in my experience and most of the others have observed the ego has to has to somehow and some mysterious way has to be experientially convinced for you whoever you are have to be experientially convinced about that Which is higher more real in such a way that your ego will ingly step aside and become second fiddle the ego always wants to be the star of its own movie and like I've been saying for many years our narcissism which is arrogant self-importance undeserved and unearned arrogance of importance but foreign [Music] conditioned narcissism which is the unearned unearned superiority it means I want I want to be able to stand out and be seen as being separate from the other the others the world and the whole universe it's a desire to stand out and away from the hall or the others or the world I want you to see me I don't want to disappear I don't want to die into an infinite without which is eternal I want you to see me and the ego doesn't want to let go of its own uniqueness its own specialness its own separateness and it's a it's a it's a contrary position to be very inner momentum of enlightened awareness itself because enlightened awareness is the is the is this is the feeling of the sense the momentum of unity which is the ultimate nature of reality the ultimate nature of the cosmos the ultimate truth about the cosmos is the principal truth about the the Don to speak so loudly about the nanta tells us that the ultimate truth about the nature of reality is if there's only one and not two and I am and I am and you all are that one without a second I am that in the the ego says no I'm not no I'm not a no I won't so then of course if if this is the situation then of course you need a spiritual teacher or a spiritual Master someone who's actually crossed this rebook on who can help you to deal with these conflicting motives in your own self the part of you that wants to be unconditionally free and liberated wants to die in love and cosmic energy once it's wrong forever eternally for eternity never to return again and your Egos and the ego's refusal to let go to relinquish its own power so for the enlightenment of the Awakening to enlightened awareness to become stable in other words a lot of people find it easy given the right circumstances to awaken briefly temporarily but usually they wake into a mind awareness is a brief flight from the torment and the tyranny of the ego story unless people fall back again very quickly into the ego's world wondering where did it all go so for the for the enlightenment to be able to stick and for one spiritual self-confidence to be able to stick with a spiritual self-confidence Bill to become strong the ego has to be it's very simple really but it's very difficult the ego has to be willing to become second fiddle not first fiddle not star the movie anymore you can be here if you want but you've got to become number two second best of second important that you're no longer your importance is no longer primary it needs to become secondary and the ego most people most people at the level of ego would rather die and give up being the most special one in the whole universe because the ego thrives on being special can you see how special I am either special because I'm more talented more intelligent more beautiful because I'm more traumatized more screwed up and I suffer more than you the ego doesn't really care how how it can be seen as special it'll do anything to hold on to the position of being seen especially even if it means it's a result of pain and suffering it's kind of it's ironic attraction so the big so the big challenge is is is you whoever you are and so this is true for all of us if we want to be able to awaken to enlightened awareness in such a way that will become relatively stable is that we have we have to be willing to die or you has to do and to relinquish its it's irrational need to be number one within this the story of your own life so if there's anything if there's anything if ego death is real but then I can see this in people when they you can tell if you meet a true Seeker or someone who's a true finder in most true finders there's a softness in their Persona and their personality the way their personality expresses itself is the softness and they kindness that reflects that that they've let go significantly at the deepest level of their being a big Letting Go has happened it doesn't mean it's an unconditional absolute letting go of the ego doesn't mean they're fully enlightened for eternity whatever that means but it means it means it means they're their their soul it means they've allowed their soul to become wounded by the love of God so to speak the love of the infinite the love of the absolute they've allowed them they're allowed balances primary and absolute to pursuit to to take the first place and and that they have humbled themselves before God you know in an essential or fundamental irreducible way and this doesn't mean that the ego's Gone Forever doesn't mean it's left but it means that you can feel and you can feel the humility the true Seeker this is a certain kind of arrogance if they have seen to have transcended in these significantly in a more significant way and that's because there's been a deep measure of surrender to this higher principle and of course once that surrender has happened once it's taken place once a decision has been made once that letting Gods happen doesn't mean one has reached the Yonder Shore never to return again or anything like that but it means now I want spiritual practice is working on letting go more and more and more and more and more but at least one one at least one now is living in the momentum of transcendence and it means that once pride and arrogance has been punctured not ultimately defeated but puncture the means it's been wounded in a good way spiritually wounded in a very positive way and to do the kind of work that I'm doing that that wounding of that function of the small self it's and it's willing to and the willingness in that context to take second to the ego to take second place willingly happily joyously is essential for Spiritual work even to be able to begin to spiritual work to be able to begin and earnest because until that's happened all the spiritual work is just happening on the level of the intellect or the level of kind of performance you know spiritual practice only happens once the ego has been punctured in a serious way I want to stop resisting the love of God often I think we're gonna think about this question about ego death and what does it mean what does it look like I often think about my own Guru who was as I described him very powerfully awake powerfully enlightened and you also had a very strong sense of an ego a very strong self sense he's a powerful man and the only way I can metaphorically describe to you what that looks like is that if you imagine imagine the ego as this big Shield a lack of a better word or this frontal Shield and imagine if imagine if as a result of a powerful Awakening a huge Hall had been made in the shield and through this Hull the light of the local love of God and love is the absolute the immensity and the inconceivable glory and goodness of higher Consciousness the transcendental radiance to be shining through that that huge Hall The Shield is still there just a metaphor for the frontal self with the Hugo legal personality but does it but it's been punctured it's been wounded and in people who have a very whose Awakening is is profound an enormous and Powerful and transformative means that there's a huge hole in their psyche and through that Hall the light of God the light of the absolute light of enlightened awareness shines through so the the light and the radiance of God consciousness shines through their egos there's a couple of other things I wanted to say I wanted to add to this picture is that um there's many different ways to describe the ego in many different spiritual teachers and spiritual gurus and psychotherapists and innovators of all kinds had their own theories by what these cell structures look like and how they work so I have a very simple model which is just a simple model because the map is not the territory so I want to make clear the map is not the territory so what I'm saying what I'm about to describe to you about the ego is just one helpful way to think about it but it's not absolutely real it's just a you can use it as a tool to help you understand something that's very difficult to understand but the ego is uh the organizing principle on the psyche so we want the organizing principal and psyche to be in good shape because if the organizing principle on the psyche is in bad shape you are going to be a mess yourself will be broken in many different pieces and this is not a the state of position or a state of consciousness or relation to reality that anybody any of us want to be subject to that's a state of Madness so the egos are self-organizing principle on the psyche we want that you get to be in good shape I think you've got to be healthy and strong so when I call it positive ego is when we have uh a positive relationship to our unique self-identity when we believe that we are a good a good person the love of the Soul we believe that we are inherently good which means we were we are lovable we're worth loving we are worthy of love we're worthy of respect worthy of the kindness and generosity of others who believe in that and we believe in our own inherent decency and goodness and we also believe in our unworthiness very important we believe in our unworthiness which means we have a measure of self-confidence because we believe in ourselves at the level of self that's a positive ego and a lot of psychological work and also a lot of spiritual work to be honest is really about cultivating a positive ego sometimes we have to do a lot of psychological work and also a lot of spiritual work you get to the point where we can honestly say we respect ourselves the way we love ourselves small self love ourselves respect ourselves and believe in our unworthiness so the negative ego is is is is is the place is the place of our woundedness the place of unresolved trauma of fear and anger resentment rage in so much pain now if we create Bad Karma and everybody does to some degree rather it's usually because of because of the ways that you have been wounded and traumatized and suffered at the hands of others so the negative ego which was the result of our woundedness is usually the cause of all of our self-destructive Behavior and as I was just saying a lot of spiritual a lot of psychological work and a lot of spiritual work in the end is about healing this these wounds so that we can become selfish self-respecting powerfully kind spiritually inspired trustworthy it's important and trustworthy trustworthy deeply transformed very deeply trustworthy Brands to ourselves and to other people too many of us aren't really trustworthy in the end people who aren't trustworthy will always end up betraying themselves and betraying you as a result and they do that because they can't they can't seem to help themselves not do it but that's the negative ego the negative ego needs work and all of us it needs work the needs it needs whatever work it needs to heal now as I said earlier in the call in the psychological context and healing usually comes as a result of under coming to an understanding an experiential and emotional experiential and also intellectual understanding of of what happened with what the causes were to the problem but the spiritual healing as far as I understand it and I experience it is very different as I already explained is because we've discovered something that is higher and deeper and more real more substantial than any psychological experience positive and then negative could ever be and it I mean and and in that context it is our direct cognizance of that that Which is higher and more deeply real the priest is more and more from the from the negative Tendencies and negative conditioning to come from the negative ego and the way I approach this it's my belief it's my convictions part of my philosophy my teacher's philosophy is that I believe that the more we wake up the more sincerely we wake up the more you have the courage to be authentic and transparent and you know the more we have the courage to be authentic and transparent and the more inspired by the by higher States Of Consciousness by the god consciousness to keep our dignity because God Consciousness or higher Consciousness or transcendental awareness and Awakening to non-duality if it's the real thing well compel us to be dignified to do the right thing because inherent in the spiritual awakening is the discovery of in the presence of a moral imperative which would compel us hard to hear it to do a little better to make a little bit more effort to care a little bit more not to fall apart but to be a little bit more anti-fragile a little bit more strong so he can fight the good fight and so I believe I believe that's what we're all here for after all we've got to be here for a reason I don't think life is a random accident and I don't think I'm a random accident I don't think you're a random accent I think we're out here for a very good reason but if we're here for a good reason and that and from the perspective of God Consciousness that that reason seems to be to be a reflection of the energy and intelligence the greater the universe in and through the body mind personality that God gave you gave all of us so I think we all when we awaken deeply enough we'll feel an obligation to become a reflection of our own Highest Potential not just for our own sake but for everyone else to say because when you awaken deeply enough you keep on realizing that there's a larger purpose to this all process that we're in the midst of The Human Experience is not just the need that's true as many people seem to think seem from their behavior who seem to think that it is The Human Experience is not ladies and gentlemen just to leave that trip it's a cosmic event that's unfolding throughout through us it's full of challenges well the Paradox is in difficult paradoxes and difficult contradictions and full of pain and suffering but if you awake it deeply enough to see there's a higher principle at work it makes it all worth it no matter how tough it is no matter how tough it seems to be so how I one of the ways that I think about ego death is that the is that so we become so moved by these transcendental truths as a result of being a deep experience with the personal world of the separate self sense including all the ways it's been culturally conditioned by unenlightened parents and teachers has been fundamentally dislodged from this from the from the source of ourselves since in other words there is this now close to the source of ourselves since there is a vast open space of infinite freedom and unimaginable potential that's always available and assuming what God actually is not what I'm ego tells us not what other people's have told us and that all not all the terrible things that happen to be true about human life we discovered that there's a deeper truth that transcends anything that happens in time and space and the more we have surrendered to this deeper dimension of reality the more that the more that mysterious space will be present within us there will always ensure our freedom our liberation in spite of maybe been given a very difficult deck of cards in spite of the enormous challenges we're all going to face on a human level there's something else that's become first and foremost you know attention in our awareness and our experience so we want to see death of the eagle more as when you get to when you meet people and you get to know them especially if you get to know them all you say well are they living for use Mythic language for some reason falling into that habit like that I'm not sure why I'm doing it but anyway but the thing is when you get to know people well you say well is this person living living first and foremost for God or the absolute all right the ultimate mystery that lies my own life and death is that what they're living for and is that what they're living from where they trapped in the story of the small cell trapped in our Collective story or some part of their personal Persona and heart fundamentally liberated and vibrating with deeper conviction about what's true so the death of the ego or the reduction of its influence on our being can be seen if you if it depends on you you know you can only you can only see and understand as much as much as you can have experienced yourself but if your soul has been put if there's a facade so if a hole has been punctured New Soul and then and that hole is to God of the absolute you're going to know and it's all everyone else doesn't mean your ego's gone doesn't mean it's not going to continue to make great problems for you either and other people also you go doesn't let go very easily as we all know I used to call the ego the irrational refusal the irrational refuse Nick it's the part of us that says no I won't even though we know we should we know we should but we say I won't say well what's the matter why not she because I don't want to why because I don't see the ego from the perspective of uh enlightened awareness can be seen as the irrational refuse Nick or the irrational no and so it's getting you getting me or you whoever you are whoever I am say yes in spite of that and that's a very difficult thing to do in spite of the know of the ego remaining in the unconditional yes and that's what I call ego death and everything that I'm describing to you can be done it's not um it's not out of it's not out of most people's reach even though most people don't do it because it's just more than most people want most people don't want to go that deep but I just want to end saying that Enlightenment is real that it exists that it's attainable please don't doubt it and also that the the most important thing if you're sincere and serious about this is that not that the egos eradicate eradicated completely totally and unconditioned because that's probably not going to happen and the most important doesn't need to happen but the ego has to Bow Down and ask to be willing to become the second fiddle in the story of your life not my life your life yeah there was one more thing I wanted to mention which I will which is for for for our pride this is just positive pride and negative Pride positive pride is self-respect is all good but the negative pride is the part of your ego the ego our ego that would rather die than bowed down that's the biggest obstacle too The Awakening to enlightened awareness is the vicious Pride and we feel is this ferocious reluctance to bow down to give in the same not my will but thy will be done so it's the irrational refusal to bow down become second fiddle it's the most difficult expression of the ego for those who are most serious about this Supply so be aware of pride be very aware of your pride positive pride is good and self-respect the pride of the ego The Arrogant Pride is very dangerous it can be a big problem but nothing that I have spoken about so far is unattainable it's all within your grasp if you want it badly enough