Here is a close to 2 hour info.. tainment thing on losing the ego. Please watch it if you have the time.
Linkie, streaming video (Video linkers do not work in all countries, for me, the second link from sharesix worked well. You can find the video elsewhere)
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The Pandora Project Are You Ready to Awaken: The Pandora Project - A film about breaking free from the ego and awaken to your Self In the captivating film 'The Pandora Project' we journey deep into our minds to search for the part of the mind that is responsible for all the pain, misery and suffering in our lives and in the world - the ego. We get close and personal with dedicated seekers, we investigate how we become the persons that we are, and we receive words of wisdom from Eckhart Tolle, Jiddu Krishnamurti, Adyashanti, Dr Kenneth Wapnick and the Dalai Lama. Join us on the greatest journey you will ever take - from a painful life with the ego to the glorious life of your true Self. Are you ready to awaken?The German/ Canadian spiritual teacher, motivational speaker, and writer Eckhart Tolle writes about the ego in his book A New Earth.
"The extent of the ego's inability to recognize itself and see what it is doing is staggering and unbelievable. To become free of the ego is not really a big job but a very small one. All you need to do is be aware of your thoughts and emotions – as they happen. This is not really a 'doing' but an alert 'seeing'. In that sense, it is true that there is nothing you can do to become free of the ego. When that shift happens, which is the shift from thinking to awareness, an intelligence far greater than the ego's cleverness begins to operate in your life. Emotions and even thoughts become depersonalized through awareness. Their impersonal nature is recognized. There is no longer a self in them. They are just human emotions, human thoughts. Your entire personal history, which is ultimately no more than a story, a bundle of thoughts and emotions, becomes of secondary importance and no longer occupies the forefront of your consciousness. It no longer forms the basis for your sense of identity. You are the light of Presence, the awareness that is prior to and deeper than any thoughts and emotions."
Eckhart Tolle:
I couldn’t live with myself any longer. And in this a question arose without an answer: who is the ‘I’ that cannot live with the self? What is the self? I felt drawn into a void. I didn’t know at the time that what really happened was the mind-made self, with its heaviness, its problems, that lives between the unsatisfying past and the fearful future, collapsed. It dissolved.
Death of the Self-identity
It is clear here that the ego or self which is annihilated in ego death is not the ego of depth psychology and it is not the actual self. It is specifically the self-identity. The death of this identity merely means that there is no barrier or resistance to the Presence of Essence.
The Point of Existence, p. 524
The Perspective of Unity Does Not Recognize Ego Death
Experiencing this unity reveals to us that life is beautiful. Prior to this, when you experience yourself moving from the state of the physical or of the personality to the state of the essential or of the boundless dimensions, there is the feeling that life is a problem. The best option seems to be to get away from life, and one may long to disappear or die. From the perspective of unity, there is no such thing as dying, nor of being reborn. There is no such thing as ego death, and no such thing as enlightenment either, since you are already the unity. This is the state of affairs all the time and always -- before you develop an ego, when it is dissolving, and after you are dissolved. All those parts are the unity itself, and so you are not going anywhere.
Facets of Unity, p. 88
Experience of Complete Ego Death
Beyond this experience, all light disappears, all awareness ceases. There is no perception of anything; there is simply no experience. When the soul is completely concentrated on the absolute there is nothing to perceive, for to perceive total darkness is not to perceive. Light is the awareness that arises out of this total darkness, revealing that the absolute is prior to light, awareness, and consciousness. This experience of cessation is the experience of complete ego death, for it is going beyond the world of manifestation, beyond even awareness of the world of manifestation. There is no awareness of self or soul, for there is no awareness at all, without this being unconsciousness or sleep. When awareness looks out again, which we experience as the return of awareness, the manifest universe reappears. With the return of awareness the logos appears as the displaying of time and space, and all the phenomena of the universe. We are here the absolute, the luminous night, witnessing appearance arising within it, out of it, but we still experience ourselves as the immense stillness and stupendous silence underlying all existence and all appearance. We feel fresh and clear, as if our consciousness has dipped into the cleansing energies of the source, and returned renewed and rejuvenated. This is similar to the rejuvenation we experience after deep sleep, except we are here clear and awake, bright and lucid.
Inner Journey Home, p. 382
I could easily go on, the experience is.. inexplicable. I feel at peace, I see everything, I am at one with everything. My life will never be the same, I am happy in a way I never knew existed.Soul's Experience of Disintegration and Dissolution
To follow our example, when the soul begins to see the limitation of structure and experiences herself as presence, the structure begins to reveal its nature as a mental construct characterized by past conditioning, ideas, memories, etc. The soul begins to experience an inner emptiness, a meaninglessness, a dread of falling apart, and terror of death and annihilation. These experiences of falling apart or being annihilated actually come to pass as the structures dissolve. The soul experiences disintegration and dissolution, disorientation, and a loss of identity; she feels lost and despondent. These existential crises are actually elements of some stages of working through ego structures that then lead to deeper realizations of true nature, moving to timelessness and formlessness.
Inner Journey Home, p. 231
