Personally, I think "destruction" is a rather violent term for what happens to the ego during an intense psychedelic experience. It seems to me more like a simple separation of the consciousness from the ego; during especially intense experiences, actual dialogue can occur between the two halves of cognition. They are independent (and still very active), rather than synergizing as in everyday life.
Take your pick, destruction or separation, but consciousness is definitely freed of much influence from the ego during the trip.
-------------------- Enlil said: You really are the worst kind of person.
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reptie7 said: What if someone can feel like that when they want?What are the cons?
I cant feel complete ego loss at will, but one con is that once you have felt it to some extent your ego can feel almost like a foreign element, an almost schitzophrenic state of being, because i feel the "personality" to be a defined set of rules, where as my awarness has no real limits, almost feels like two seperate parts of myself. So it can be hard to intergrate. Its not a completely negative thing, but it can be confusing.
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It really depends on what your idea of the ego is. People toss the term "ego loss" around as if it's a very clear cut, set-in-stone experience. This just isn't the case.
Some people consider tripping to such an intensity that they don't know their own name to constitute ego loss. Others see it as an experience that is very painful, resembling a real and physical death. Then there's the idea that ego loss can be a very liberating and enlightening experience. None of these ideas is right or wrong- people simply have different experiences and interpret them in different ways.
I consider the ego to be the socially constructed part of you that is constantly concerned with seeking the approval of others and trying to convince itself that it is useful and worthwhile. In contrast, I believe people also possess a clearer, true self- that part of you that realises you are nothing more than a single part of the all.
Ego loss can be either positive or negative. The most fantastic experience of my life involved what I would consider a pleasant ego loss. When I first took LSD, it was as if all the negativity and socially conditioned aspects of my self were gone, and all that was left was this point of awareness- like a single flower in the midst of a pool of infinite light.
Generally, ego loss involves a period of rather intense fear as the ego totally melts away, and once the ego is gone, you enter a state of temporary enlightenment. However, as I previously said, the term is used as a label for a wide variety of experiences which, as always, are highly dependent on the experiencer.
Ego loss, for me, is the moment wherein you exist only as the sum of your perceptions and experiences. If consciousness is defined as "awareness of awareness", ego loss is the time in which the only existence is awareness itself- the person having these experiences is no longer there as only perception is real.
Ego loss means different things for different people, and it's not something you necessarily need to chase after. In very basic terms, what ego loss means for me is the moment in which you realise that the self is not an isolated, solitary thing, but simply one part of the eternal infinite that is reality. You exist as a single thread in the pattern of life, so to speak.
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