Why does SWIY want ego death/reduction/etc?

[Venusia]

When one is looking for ego death, are they looking to completely obliterate their sense of themself (as it has been cultivated and reenforced throughout one's life by one's experiences, interactions and relationships) in order to start fresh with new psychic imprints all together, with the goal of becoming more in touch long-term with some spiritual/divine/etc energy that our usual feelings of duality keep us from doing; or is one merely looking to kill the ego for a finite amount of time so that one may experience the humility of oneness, as opposed to the constant duality we are used to at baseline. I think of it like a psychic vacation vs. moving into a state of oneness for as long as possible and maintaining that head space.

If it is neither, tell SWIV about your spiritual/mystical/emotional reasons for losing one's self in the "moment" (which can take 6-18 hrs! ) regardless of what substance is used, just ID it for clarity please.

ETA:
Some extremely cool anonymous person gave Swivy this rep comment:

"Very interesting question. Thank you for this contribution, perhaps you might give a good example by describing the motivation which compels SWIY to seek ego death/reduction."

Well, it all really started with this thread.
To answer the question, Swivy has to set her background up for ya. Firstly, as of the last year, Swivy can't trip anymore. She's on citalopram, an SSRI that renders LSD and MDMA useless. Sad, I know. She even got two hits of liquid from her best friend for X-mas to trip and bond with her little sis. Little sis was trippin balls off of one hit, and Swivy was at baseline all night from two. *sigh* (and that was a time when she really could have used it to shake off some shit that had collected over time. Boo.)
Nor can Swivy even smoke the ever-so psychedelic sativas because she's subject to random urine and blood tests for pain managment and her opioid contract. ("Damned chronic pain...I shake my fist at you!" Swivy says. )

Now, that all being said, Swivy started trippin' in high school. It was done for silly reasons,like just to get messed up, and basically it was used as nothing but a novelty until Swivy turned 19. Swivy had no idea the power LSD had to help people molt of all the crap they've collected, stored and processed, molding themselves into something that was ugly and unhappy with no lust for life and no love or knowledge of the things that go on beyond what we can see .She had no idea that LSD was like glasses for the soul. (I know, that was a totally cheesy line. But it's from the heart.)

That is when she met Loki, Swivy's best friend, lover and lifetime companion (and now her husband). Loki had followed the Dead in the 90s and had megadosed many, many times. He'd immersed himself in the works of Robert Anton Wilson, Aldous Huxley and the like, and he tore through books on zen and eastern philosophy. He'd sat for hours, staring at one spot on the wall, trying to acheive the kinds of highs that only long bouts of intense meditiation or LSD could give. Early on in their relationship, Swivy and Loki started trippin together, and Loki taught Swivy about some of the spiritual/metaphysical aspects of LSD. That is when Swivy started using LSD regularly in order to re-imprint a lot of the things that had been harming her psychically--a mother who was overly Baptist and slightly negligent, a step-father who was emotionally abusive to everyone in his life, hang ups she had about herself and life, preconcieved notions about the way things "should" be, etc. Swivy used to call herself stupid and dumb. She let herself believe the things people said to and about her. She was a mess and hadn't really been able to tell.

LSD and Loki blew Swivy's mind. Together, they taught her all about the importance of set and setting, grey areas vs. absolute black and whites, false dualities, and the patterns and order that make up the chaos of life. Swivy sort of stumbled into learning about ego death, and she fell in love with life and the world again when she got that first taste of being stripped down, layer by layer, hour after hour. Life made more sense when Swivy realized that the world really DIDN'T revolve around her, and that life (as George Harrison put it) really does go on within you and without you.

So, if she were to answer my question, she'd say she wanted it for the more permenant changes it can bring if used in that manner. She wishes that she could go there again, but life and certain pharmecuitcals have made it an unrealistic thing for her for now. She may have lost the LSD for a bit, but she'll always have the Aum if she really wants back in/out.

It's 2:32 am. This little psychonaut needs to get ta' bed.

Reputation Comments on this post:

Very interesting question. Thank you for this contribution, perhaps you might give a good example by describing the moti...

[humdroid]

SWIM, or Y as he likes to be called sees ego death as a goal.
Y would like to achieve the work along the path of ego death.
Conversely Y's ego is quite weak, so he would probably need to do some inner work to strengthen it, and give him more confidence, so he can feel free to let his ego fly off, safe in the knowledge that it will come back to him.

[TheGreatHabiblious]

SWIM has never read any thread about 'ego death' because to be frank, it seems like some cliche emo bullshit. Sorry, but those are SWIMS thoughts. Reading this thread, SWIM realized what an ego death is and realized thats exactly what he is trying to do. Only physically. Not suicide, but there is a link between the physical and the spiritual. Everything has a balance, it only needs to be found. SWIM feels like its on the tip of his tongue, yet unspeakable. Still he can do it. SWIM is very envious of SWIV's external insight but still happy for SWIV that you have someone to patternize thoughts. Things that are literal speak infinite truths, run with that.

[Venusia]

Originally Posted by TheGreatHabiblious

SWIM has never read any thread about 'ego death' because to be frank, it seems like some cliche emo bullshit. Sorry, but those are SWIMS thoughts. Reading this thread, SWIM realized what an ego death is and realized thats exactly what he is trying to do. Only physically. Not suicide, but there is a link between the physical and the spiritual. Everything has a balance, it only needs to be found. SWIM feels like its on the tip of his tongue, yet unspeakable. Still he can do it. SWIM is very envious of SWIV's external insight but still happy for SWIV that you have someone to patternize thoughts. Things that are literal speak infinite truths, run with that.

I laughed at the Emo comment. It was funny.
Swivy is glad Swim came to understand a little of what this meant. I am certain that there are much better accountsand examples SWIMmers have here that have not been shared here (yet...?) and they'll no doubt blow Swivy's little personal epiphanies away.

Glad this post has been bumped now too, so maybe more SWIMmers will share their wonderful (and/or frightening) experiences. Swivy is eager to read more in-depth about these experiences, especially ones from the psychonauts here at D-F! Thanks!

[VClacker]

Originally Posted by venusia

Glad this post has been bumped now too, so maybe more SWIMmers will share their wonderful (and/or frightening) experiences. Swivy is eager to read more in-depth about these experiences, especially ones from the psychonauts here at D-F! Thanks!

Kitty is trippin face on DXM right now, please excuse any strangeness/errors.

This may sound weird and you may not believe it, but my Kitty believes she experienced ego death after smoking a looott of weed. Kitty is not a daily smoker and therefore has no tolerance for cannabis, and she always found, when compared to others, that she was particularly sensitive to it. Perhaps it is because she is so introverted. With nearly every drug she takes, Kitty always looks to the inside first, and sometimes she wishes this were not true.

Kitty had read a little about "ego death" and somehow came to the conclusion that the only way that would ever happen to her is with some strong hallucinogen. But Kitty knows that anything and everything is possible, and one night after smoking a bowl she had this incredible and frightening experience.

She saw herself, and everyone in the world. We are only humans, just creatures, and we try the best we can to rationalize the world around us. We rationalize and we survive and we wonder about the world, and in the end I can't help but feel that nobody will ever understand it all. Because there are infinite possibilities.

Kitty used to take drugs to see a god or a being or anything to give her some kind of reassurance of a higher power. On this particular high there was no god, she went beyond that concept, and into the abyss. Alien contact, gods, higher powers, Kitty used to wonder. But she believes that mostly these things are the human mind, trying to rationalize yet again.

As a "psychonaut" Kitty used to believe she had some portion of the world figured out, or at least the idea of it. But all Kitty really knows is what she can learn with her own body and brain. As humans we do not share a collective brain, we are in fact individuals. Rationalizing, we try to give meaning to everything. An intense psychedelic trip becomes contact with god or alien beings. Well, why? Is it scary to accept that we are alone in the world? Hmm.. I'm talking about Kitty's ego death right? I hope this is making sense. All these ideas... they mishmash together do you know what I mean. After Kitty's ego death she realized that the only thing that matters in this world is eachother. We would die without eachother. Don't get caught up in the "spirit realms" or things like that, the "spirit realm" is intangible and such things are individualistic thoughts.

I feel best when I make people happy.

[Arthur Dent]

I just posted a couple of trip reports, on behalf of my towel, in the LSD forum. During both of the trips described, my towel experienced what he believes would be called ego death - though he is not sure because 'ego death' seems to be largely referred to as a philosophical, transcendental, spiritual or religious experience, and it was not really any of these things in his experience.

What he experienced was the loss of any concept of what 'he' was. Not in a sense that made him feel "at one with the universe", which seems to imply some sort of spirituality, but rather the simple fact of not knowing what he consisted of.

Throughout those experiences, he was aware that he existed. "I think therefore I am," he might have thought (though he's not sure if he ever actually thought those words during the trip.) He knew that he did exist. But the question was, where was he? What was he? What part of what he could see was him?

The key point is that during these stages of the trip, my towel lost the ability to understand anything that was not in front of him, seen by his eyes. Everything became like a two dimensional painting. He understood that everything in the painting existed. He understood that he existed. Therefore, some part of the painting must be him. But which part? In one such occasion, he went through a cycle of describing "that's the TV, that's the desk, and that is me" pointing, for the third item, to his leg, because he understood that the leg represented him, and it was the only part of him that was in the 2D picture he could see.

On another occasion, he was lying down, or lying on his side or similar, and couldn't actually see any part of his body. He therefore tried to understand what part of the picture - which consisted of other people, the walls, floors etc - was himself. It was like he was trying to break the image up into squares or segments, and label one of those segments 'myself'.

He's pretty sure that must be similar to what people describe as ego death, but for him it did not then extend into philosophical thought. It didn't lead him to believe "that we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively" (to quote Bill Hicks - here's Tom with the weather!). It was really just a practical attempt to understand what he was in a world that seemed to consist of a very limited set of things, that which was defined by the two dimensional image in front of him.

He wonders if that is because he is not a religious or spiritual person, and is one who deals with the universe, and himself, in terms of pure science - atoms, molecules, string theory (if he understood it!), etc. When, during a trip, he loses the concept of himself, he deals with that in a scientific way - trying to find himself out of all the available information he has.

He does sometimes feel a bit disappointed that he can't have one of those great revelations that will impact his life. But what he did experience was still awesome, though

[lostmente]

swim believes ego death is associated with shame, and maybe a sense of wanting more...boredom swim guesses

[Venusia]

Wow, Kitty and Towel really had some great reports. Thanks for sharing them. Kitty, MJ is a mild hallucinogen, so it can happen that one may trip off weed to some degree for sure, esp if one hardly ever smokes. Thanks for contributing all to this thread. SWIYou guys are what make these types of threads great!

Keep 'em coming, SWIMmers!

[lostmente]

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/j...f_insight.html

A great example of ego death without drugs, and it goes into excellent details of the left/right brain.


From swims readings, one side of the brain examines things as a whole, the other as parts.

The (left?) side that examines parts is where identity is, it shows where you end and other things begin. Without it we cannot tell the difference between us and that...infact since we do not perceive any component of us (emotions, taste, past, present, shape etc) then we cannot really experience them

Swim once achieved something like this on a really good hit of salvia while quite stoned and in a dark room with 2 relatively close friends.

Swims reality went fractal, he lost the details that made up objects and things, including emotions and perceptions spiraled out of control to the point where they became an indistinguishable force of momentum....swims perception was flowing through so much that nothing was recognisable.

In retrospect there seemed to be levels of ego death, ideals/realities/beliefs had to be let go because they were uncomfortably innacurate and didn't represent the bredth of reality observed. Eventually a stillness came about...darkness consumed everything. This progressed into something, texture formed and in that texture identities were seen...beings in a way but more basic than that. Swim looked back and saw a reality that he came from in a new light, one that very interchangeable in itself elements...the thought crossed swims mind of all the possible combinations that could create new realities were right there, merely a perception away from the average man...and this is when swim lost his insight

[terrapinzflyer]

Swims turtle would like to recommend learys version of the Tibetan book of the dead" as well as the original.
While the original has to do with preparing a person for death, Learys take centers more on ego loss and shutting off the mynd in a bad trip. Both are incredible reads for a psychonaut with a penchant for learning.
Turtle believes Learys version is called "the pysychedelic experience" and is dedicated to Aldous Huxley.
Swims turtle may have a more personal answer soon, provided he remembers