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Ego Death: Can You Be Who You Want To Be?

Killbook

Bluelighter
Joined
Oct 17, 2017
Messages
32
Hey guys,

So I have recently been wanting to have an ego death while tripping. I am not satisfied with who I am, and I want to be someone else. From what I understand about ego deaths is that they strip you of who you are and you become a new person afterward. Now, I believe that who you become afterward is who you are supposed to be in that current time in life. I've always been a believer that you can be who you want to be when you want to be. So, before you guys say anything, I understand that what I want to be done I can just do on my own sober. However, the problem I have with that is that it would take too long. If what I want to do works, then it can happen instantaneously. So, I want to induce an acid-ego death.
The reason I'm doing this is also tied to my last trip where I came close to having an ego death. Literally, I was having such a bad trip that I passed out for no more than 2 seconds. Instead of just laying there, accepting I was 'dead', I thought to myself I could still live. I don't have to accept death just because I 'jumped off a building'. (I was convinced what I was seeing was an illusion and that I was really on top of a building, tripping, about to fall off if I crossed a certain line on the ground. Needless to say, I convinced myself I did fall off that building and die.) So, I held on and kept telling myself to not give in or I would die and I had to stick it out for the rest of the trip in the hell I was in (I was at a party in the middle of nowhere and I had nowhere to go or I would get lost). So, I basically prevented my own ego-death but I still got close because I literally felt what it was like to die.
Anyways, now, for personal reasons, I want to become this whole new person. So, I came up with this plan. What I have been doing is I have been doing a lot of self-reflection. I have, in my mind, an image of who I want to be. The qualities I wish to have, the person I want to look like, and the values I wish to possess. I have it all in my mind. So, I have been creating a word document of who I want to be, going through all the fine little things and covering it in extensive detail.

Now, in order to do that, I have to know who I am. So, I have also been creating a document of who I am. I cover every small thing about myself. I have been doing an extreme amount of self-reflection. I have been doing a lot of self-reflection for most of my life so it's not hard but I took it up a notch. I'm thinking about making a document of who I don't want to be.

What I want to do with all of this information is put it all in my trip. I am going to record myself reading every word from these documents and I am going to sit in a dark room and just listen to my own words. To start, I am going to listen to the 'Who am I' document which will force me to think about myself to such a degree that I may have an ego-death. I say may but I have a backup plan. If all else fails, I'll take more acid or smoke a lot of weed since that makes me paranoid as hell. I already plan on dropping 3 tabs for this trip which is the most I've done since I've only been dropping a tab per trip until now.

Then, when I experience my ego-death, I am going to have my trip sitter play the audio of me reading who I want to be on the come up from my ego-death. This will be during the stage where everything is nothing to me. I may also have him play who I don't want to be when I am done with that.

Then, I'll have the rest of the trip to construct my own personality, new thoughts, and etc. What I want to do is basically forget who I am now to the point where I won't become this person again but not to the point where I forget my life in my new one. I think this is possible but it does not seem like anyone has used psychedelics in this way to this extent. I've looked all around and found nothing. I've done a lot of research on this.
That's my plan for this next trip. I am doing the self-reflection while I am waiting to get my hands on some. Anyways, tell me what you guys think. Do you think it will work. I will provide a trip report after (if the new person I am even remembers to). Do you guys have any tips for forcing an ego-death on an acid trip though? Like, forreal, drop as many ideas as you can. I understand that by wanting an ego death, I am defending myself from an ego death but I have various parts of my mind blocked out from myself for that very reason. So, if you guys could drop some ideas on how to do this, let me know! Also, tell me what you think about this. I want to know what you guys think since most of you are more experienced or at least knowledgeable than me.

Here are the screenshots of what I'm talking about.
The 'Who I Want To Be' Document https://imgur.com/AaXSM6f
The 'Who Am I' Document: https://imgur.com/IjhxSNj
 
hey, I don't want to burst your bubble - but in my experience on the subject, the only instantaneous lasting changes induced by psychedelics are typically negative and result from trauma in the psychedelic state. I think you are confusing a lapse of conscious ego control with the erasure of the current ego vehicle. That is not the case - go ahead and blast yourself with 1000ug/200mg ketamine/50dxm - you will certainly experience a protracted "ego death" but as soon as it wears off, you are back where you were, as yourself.
Even after an intense experience, (during which, I might add, the drug effects are so overbearing and intense you will be EXTREMELY hard pressed to create a 'programmed' experience. See Leary et al. and their book of the dead experiments) you will be very hard pressed to keep around any mental changes longer than a week, week and half. IME of almost a decade of such experiments, truly the way to self improvement is incremental. Props for the bold steps, however.
 
as indicated by cdin
I think you are confusing a lapse of conscious ego control with the erasure of the current ego vehicle
Instead of psychedelics you probably want a genie; or maybe the wizard of oz.
 
Even after an intense experience, (during which, I might add, the drug effects are so overbearing and intense you will be EXTREMELY hard pressed to create a 'programmed' experience. See Leary et al. and their book of the dead experiments) you will be very hard pressed to keep around any mental changes longer than a week, week and half. IME of almost a decade of such experiments, truly the way to self improvement is incremental. Props for the bold steps, however.

I agree with this. People do use psychedelics as tools of personal growth, but it's not a magic bullet. You have to work on it, it's like you can catch glimpses of how things could be, or maybe the sheer experience of melting into oneness causes you to view things differently and you have an insight about yourself. For a few days it feels easy to stick to this insight. But in order to make those changes permanent, you have to integrate the experience, think about it, make sense of it, and actively put into practice the things you want to change. My first trip was an ego death and it changed my life , but I have never felt like a different person than I was before, I emerged from it feeling humbled and overwhelmed with awe, but a week later I felt more or less the same as I did before. I had to slowly incorporate actual changes into my life. I had some periods of time where I wished I could forget because it made life seem more overwhelming. And it did feel that way, for a time, after the initial excitement was over. That was 16 years ago, and these days I feel the best about myself that I ever have, I feel much more aware and emotionally mature, and I realize what it is to be a good person all the time instead of just when it's convenient. I do credit psychedelics for putting me on this path. But I've worked for those lessons and every day I have to keep myself on the path.

Making the most of your life isn't easy but you can do it, you just have to step out of your comfort zone and have the drive to work on changing your thoughts.

All that said, psychedelics can be a wonderful tool. But you're going into it with the wrong mindset. Psychedelics strip you down and show you the truth of things, including yourself. If you can't handle that, it's probably going to be a traumatic experience for you.
 
I understand that by wanting an ego death, I am defending myself from an ego death but I have various parts of my mind blocked out from myself for that very reason.

You sound like a very perceptive individual. It seems like you've already made your plan and decided on what you're going to do, so I can't add anything in that regard. I'm impressed by your efforts and commitment to making a change but your post is a bit sad, too. What I get is that you want to commit psychic suicide because you have a deep hatred for what you believe you are, and you believe it's possible to somehow erase what you believe you are but then still exist in a 'better' form.

Maybe it's possible and I'd be curious to know how you get on with your experiment. I personally think it's a very risky thing to do, but I don't know you or your circumstances so maybe it's the right thing for you now.

On a more general note: What do people on BL think ego death is? I know the concept but I think it's kind of tenuous, to be honest. I see the term get used quite a bit and seems to have become another way to say heavy, deep, or difficult trip.
 
1. The most popular hippie description of ego death involves suddenly appreciating a blissful integration with the universe along with the loss of myriad minor personal preoccupations (ego). More facets or lotus petals can be added to this 'godhead' state.

The mental pedal to the metal engages when some minor personal preoccupation arises and the bliss begins to dissipate but the tripper can release the personal preoccupation (effortlessly) and then the bliss re-engages miraculously. Often hippies return from this claiming to have learned so much, but usually the learning only applies to when really stoned, and personal preoccupations take over in daily life.

This experience is relatively common but it is not really dose related (even though Shulgin would get it repeatedly at measured doses) - and some people get this kind of 'spiritual' experience without drugs as well.

2. Many people never get this effect, but they do get a kind of 'ego loss' when extremely stoned and that usually equates to amnesia, whiteout or blackout. Prior to amnesia and immediately following amnesia intense sense of loss of body integrity or merge-ing with objects or loss of boundary between self and other will occur. This is relatively dose related, and there is a correlation here with the more exalted classic hippie ego-loss state (1.) above.
 
On a more general note: What do people on BL think ego death is? I know the concept but I think it's kind of tenuous, to be honest. I see the term get used quite a bit and seems to have become another way to say heavy, deep, or difficult trip.

Well to be honest I don't really like the term "ego death", because if you can remember it, there was ego left to remember. I prefer the term "ego dissolution", which can occur in varying degrees. Most trips have some amount of it, even as little as just no longer feeling bothered by something and seeing it from an objective viewpoint. But when people say ego death, they usually mean that they went into such a deep place that they retained little grasp on their personal identity, and instead experience a sense of unity with everything. Sometimes this involves a great deal of terror and a belief that you're actually dying, but not always. That's why they say you have to learn to let go... if you're having the "death spiral" (a thought loop that leads to the conclusion that you're dying, overdosing, etc, which can lead to ego death), if you can't let go, you're going to be terrified and possibly try to abort the trip, or perhaps the strain becomes too much and you snap and start behaving very intensely in your panic. Sometimes people will lose all memory at this point and find out they kept doing stuff later. Or, they are able to let go and have the experience of being one with the universe or something similar, having moved beyond the self.

I definitely don't think of "ego death" as another way to indicate a heavy or difficult trip, however. Ego death/dissolution trips can be difficult or blissful. My first trip was an ego dissolution trip where I was still aware I had a body but my life was reduced to the tiniest speck of insignificance and I basically woke up from it and remembered that I am everything, we are all the same force of consciousness. The experience was entirely blissful, and I only ate 1.75 grams of mushrooms. If I desired, I could get up and walk to the bathroom or something, but I was too busy experiencing... everything. I have tripped MUCH harder since then, but that trip changed my life, it opened up an entire universe outside of myself and showed me what I am/we are. It didn't really have anything to do with the strength of the trip, it was about the specific thing I experienced, which was ego dissolution for the first time when I hadn't even imagined such a thing was possible before.

I also had a much more intense ego death on 2C-E where I hit this thought loop of logic that was shattering all of my certainties that I existed, one by one. I was terrified, I briefly considered killing myself to end the trip because I believed at the time that if the spiral got to its conclusion, the universe would be unmade and everything would cease to exist forever. Obviously I did not kill myself, and it because a part of my mind realized that there was a good chance I was just tripping. As I reached the center of the thought spiral, everything froze and I was looking into this infinite yawning void of absolute isolation and nothingness... the single point of consciousness that is at the core of each of us and the universe existing without the physical realm of infinite subjective experiences to keep it (us) company. This felt so bleak and horrible. At that point I entered the void and quick as a blink it was 30 minutes later and I was sitting at my desk, back to myself. I consider that an ego death because I did lose memory entirely at the crux of the experience.

Despite the extreme terror I felt, I consider it one of my most important and memorable trips, totally glad it happened but man was it scary.

I've also had difficult trips that did not approach ego death at all, for example when I tripped on mushrooms when I was 18, when my parents were home. I got so anxious and my mom got mad at me for walking the dog and smoking cigarettes with her blanket on my shoulders and leaving the front door open, and I spent the next 4 hours in a chair just absolutely beating myself up, I felt like a horrible, degenerate person. I thought about everything I ever did wrong. At the end of the trip I was so happy to have come down that I felt amazing. But that wasn't anything like ego death, just a difficult trip.

I've also had really intense trips that were fun and awe-inspiring that weren't anything like an ego death. For example, taking solid doses of 2C-B and 4-HO-MET together and listening to some great albums with my eyes closed. I was seeing the most majestic closed-eye visions that were telling the music's story, and when my eyes were open I could barely see through the visuals, and I couldn't have done much of anything besides what I was doing. But I always retained full grasp on myself, so it was just a powerful trip, not even close to an ego death.

Hope that clarifies things. :)
 
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/hey, I don't want to burst your bubble - but in my experience on the subject, the only instantaneous lasting changes induced by psychedelics are typically negative and result from trauma in the psychedelic state.
/You will certainly experience a protracted "ego death" but as soon as it wears off, you are back where you were, as yourself.
/you will be very hard pressed to keep around any mental changes longer than a week, week and half. IME of almost a decade of such experiments, truly the way to self improvement is incremental. Props for the bold steps, however.

Yeah, that's what's been bothering me the most about this. If I trip, it will be for some time. If I did have an ego death, it won't have the effect I won't because the trip won't wear off after the ego death. I will still be tripping. Which means I will still be thinking. Which means there is a possibility I can achieve what I want and think myself back to who I was. Or come to some consensus that I should be myself and be happy with myself. I'll explain that part later in this threaded reply. But anyways, this has been on my mind and I'm not really sure what to do in this regard. As I said, I refuse to think about certain things so that way I don't defend myself against this ego-death like the last time. However, at the same time, I should probably plan such a big thing or something could go wrong.

The mindset I have right now is because this is unknown, I should ponder the meaning on the trip. Not while sober because it takes away from the impact. What happens on this trip has to effect me strongly enough to make the lasting effect when I return to soberness. And that's not going to come from me knowing certain things already. I did my research on this topic and I saw that everyone has the same experience--you return to normal after the ego-death but you take certain things with you that make you better. I sum it up to my own quote in regards to this, "In order to find yourself, you have to lose yourself." I have figured out that the reason ego-deaths have such a big effect is because they have such an impact on your mental and emotional state equally which I have read reoccuring patterns associated with negativity. However, negativity is a very strong driver. The 'funk' people get stuck in is just prolonged reflection and sometimes that is needed. I hope I'm making sense because I don't really want to proof-read this lol what with the whole being defensive against being too defensive ordeal. But yeah, I understand I will grow in increments. However, I want to see if I can trick myself into growing faster.

It's hard to explain but I will try. If I lose my 'self', I want to see if I can convince myself I am someone else. Kind of like disocciating my personlity--or having multipule personality disorder but instead of multipule, I am just another person. This new person is who I want to be and who I feel I am at the core of my being. However, things prevent me from being this person and maybe this trip will help me. But only maybe because this trip is just a big experiment and I don't know what the outcomes will be. But yeah, ego-death is a meditative practice that monks have indulgued in and achieved but that takes years of practice and a lot of concentration I am not prepared for and I don't want to wait that long to achieve. I hope that I can achieve this within a small time frame. If I can achieve this instaneously, even better. But I know what you mean.
 
/I agree with this. People do use psychedelics as tools of personal growth, but it's not a magic bullet. You have to work on it, it's like you can catch glimpses of how things could be, or maybe the sheer experience of melting into oneness causes you to view things differently and you have an insight about yourself. For a few days it feels easy to stick to this insight. But in order to make those changes permanent, you have to integrate the experience, think about it, make sense of it, and actively put into practice the things you want to change. My first trip was an ego death and it changed my life, but I have never felt like a different person than I was before, I emerged from it feeling humbled and overwhelmed with awe, but a week later I felt more or less the same as I did before. I had to slowly incorporate actual changes into my life. I had some periods of time where I wished I could forget because it made life seem more overwhelming. And it did feel that way, for a time, after the initial excitement was over. That was 16 years ago, and these days I feel the best about myself that I ever have, I feel much more aware and emotionally mature, and I realize what it is to be a good person all the time instead of just when it's convenient. I do credit psychedelics for putting me on this path. But I've worked for those lessons and every day I have to keep myself on the path.
/Making the most of your life isn't easy but you can do it, you just have to step out of your comfort zone and have the drive to work on changing your thoughts.
/All that said, psychedelics can be a wonderful tool. But you're going into it with the wrong mindset. Psychedelics strip you down and show you the truth of things, including yourself. If you can't handle that, it's probably going to be a traumatic experience for you.

Your story is how I imagine the aftermath of an ego-death to be. But that is what I want to avoid--for when I return, I don't want to be myself again and take the trip into ponderment in order for change, I want to have convinced myself that I need to have the charachteristics I have come up with for myself. Honestly, I hope that on this trip, something is going to convince me of that. I'm kind of relying on the completley irrational to change me. I don't think I'm going in to it with the wrong mindset if they are intended to strip me down and show me the truth. I want the truth, which is why I don't want to control any of this. I will try but the outcome is what was meant to be for me. And if it's not what I want, it's what I needed. But I'm lost right now. And you're right, life is what you make of it. But I'm lost. And I need answers. And I need some truth. And the reason I'm even doing it is because despite my efforts, I can't seem to find it. No matter what would happen on this trip, I will have my answers. Am I meant to be who I think I am meant to be? Is what is meant to be what I think is meant to be? Am I wrong or right in my thought? Are my actions needed for my fate, or is fate set and no matter my actions, it will not change? Will I 'miss' my 'fate' if I don't do certain actions. Is my fate what I think it is, or is it not? These type of questions are what I'm hoping to have answered. And if the way I am going about this works on fails, it will answer them. Psychadelics aren't some magic bullet, but I mean can they be? Or can they be only to me? Or can they be but not to me? But all that said, it still doesn't help because I still don't know what an ego-death is like. I can't possibly be prepared for this trip. But most importantly, I don't know what it's like to live life after an ego-death. But you do. Would you be able to tell me what it was like? After you had the ego-death. What happened the rest of your trip. How you went about your life after the trip. What did you change and what on that trip made you want to change?
 
/You sound like a very perceptive individual. It seems like you've already made your plan and decided on what you're going to do, so I can't add anything in that regard. I'm impressed by your efforts and commitment to making a change but your post is a bit sad, too. What I get is that you want to commit psychic suicide because you have a deep hatred for what you believe you are, and you believe it's possible to somehow erase what you believe you are but then still exist in a 'better' form.
/Maybe it's possible and I'd be curious to know how you get on with your experiment.

I think I may have come off wrong. I am very happy with myself. When I first started tripping, I was afraid I might be suicidal because of my ever-growing fascination with death. I didn't want to die but I was so interested in what death was. I thought I was depressed. But after a while, I realized I was just tripping. I love myself. I am content with who I am and all that I am. But it's not what I want to be. I want to be better. The reason I want to be better is for this thing that I'm dealing with. I have goals in life and it's clear I won't achieve them as who I am. I have always been an advocate for being who you want to be when you want to be it. One of my favorite things to say is, "All the things I could've been" because with just a few little tweaks in my personality and who I am, I could be those things. That or the paths I've taken in life, and the paths I could've taken based on my personality make me realize that if I had taken those paths, with who I am, I would have been a different person than I am now. Because of this revelation I've had, I came to the conclusion that if the path that I am taking is my destined path, and I can't change that, then what I am destined for must be already there. However, I have also come to the realization that if everything is destined and each decision you make you were meant to make in order to achieve your destiny, then the very act of deciding to be not who I am is contributing to my path of destiny. I have a goal. I can't achieve my goals without achieving this goal. This is silly because this particular goal is not necessarily needed to achieve these goals. However, all that I have gone through because of this goal, if I don't achieve it, I don't care about any of my other goals. It's going to be like my 'fuck you' to the universe for doing all of that to me for no reason. And then maybe my destiny will be shitty and not what I think it should be, I will then fall back on the many other things I could be. Maybe that thing is my destiny, maybe not. But all I know is I won't care. But that's why I'm doing this. Because I care a lot. And I figure that the reason I cannot obtain this goal is because of who I am. I may not be able to change my path but my decisions contribute to the path. And changing who I am is a contribution. And if it works, if this decision was one I needed to take, then I will obtain my goal as it was destined. If not, then I will not.

I will not, not achieve my goal because of my path, but I will also not, not achieve my goal because of me. But I don't want to spend my life knowing that I didn't even try with the one shot I had. I can't change the path but I can change my decisions. And if I never tried, then I will live a life that has less meaning. I will live a life where I will ultimately settle for less. And that's not something I want.
 
Ego death doesn't magically turn you into the person you want to be. It shatters your current sense of who you are and you have to rebuild it from scratch, which isn't a quick and easy process.
 
@ killbrook
oy!
when you want to launch space ships to mars, you have to start with something simple, and explore that extensively before making your final architectural drawings and specifications of the ship.

there is no "a" jumps to "z" in this.
 
well. Like I said, good luck. But the type of results you're trying to obtain were abandoned through such methods by the CIA because erasing a person basically doesn't work even if you keep them k'd up playing tape loops at them for months on end in isolation. If you can manage to affect a real deep level change with less, please document it. Two points: 1. I am w/xOrkoth, the term "ego-death" is often misused and may be misunderstood here. There is never an end or termination of the self except death, "ego death", truly, is just a blip in its function. It's dramatic in terms of normal consciousness, but after spending ... well, years, sadly... at or near said state the self has this really ... sticky.. way of just coming on back. I used to joke that I finally accepted reality because it was what kept coalescing out of the universal jelly mass I constantly threw myself at with wild abandon. 2. AFter all the iboga, acid, yoga, meditation, deemsters, kambo, dissociatives ... just so many years of absolutely macerating my brain/consciousness seeing how far I could go, trying to get away, or trying to make something new - -- I just got tired. physically, psychically, mentally - and I really started getting better and being how I wanted to be when I took ahold of myself and started seriously pursuing martial arts, philosophy etc. etc. It was just like : damn, after all that all I had to do was this free breathing/movement crap ;) i dont understand why some of my posts have no newline function
 
i dont understand why some of my posts have no newline function

Try pressing <enter> ;)

But yeah, I liked your post. The pursuit of ego death can become in itself an ego-based pursuit quite readily.
 
I am content with who I am and all that I am. But it's not what I want to be. I want to be better.

That sounds like a contradiction to me... maybe I misunderstood it?

Anyway, I think your commitment to being self aware and wanting to improve is admirable, and the lengths you're willing to go are courageous. All the best with it (and I mean that in a genuine way). Let us know how you go.

But when people say ego death, they usually mean that they went into such a deep place that they retained little grasp on their personal identity, and instead experience a sense of unity with everything.

Thanks, Xorkoth, for expanding on the notion of ego death. Actually, I have very similar experiences to those you mentioned and would tend to agree with your explanation. I just thought it was a good idea to try and pin down - at least from one person's perspective - what 'ego death' means, because I feel like the term gets used a lot and has possibly lost tangible meaning.

It was just like : damn, after all that all I had to do was this free breathing/movement crap

cdin: I can relate somewhat to your experience too, having also exhausted myself mentally through use of psychedelic agents and also thought exercises. I just wanted to ask: Do you think you would have found the success you've had with 'free breathing/movement' if you had not had the numerous trips beforehand?
 
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maybe 'free breathing/movement' means exactly that, and exactly that is all we really want.
like a brand new well oiled android.
beam me up!
 
As far as whether or not I would have gotten to this place without all the exhaustion - I'm not sure if I can really answer that. I mean, the people in my life that have not gone through such extensive mental gymnastics generally speaking are pretty stuck/at the mercy of patterned behavior/threatened by change - but that's general. Then there's my kung-fu teacher, who's 70 and can beat this whole thread up with his hands tied, he NEVER did that crap and is in WAY better shape physically, mentally and developmentally. I suppose I believe this: I may have achieved the ends MODERATELY faster, but, the price paid in body/mind taxation, in the end, makes me wish I had stuck simply to traditional methods. It has taken me 2 decades to get to a place where I can admit that freely.
 
Thanks, Xorkoth, for expanding on the notion of ego death. Actually, I have very similar experiences to those you mentioned and would tend to agree with your explanation. I just thought it was a good idea to try and pin down - at least from one person's perspective - what 'ego death' means, because I feel like the term gets used a lot and has possibly lost tangible meaning.

Yeah I agree, it's like the term "K-hole"... people just bandy both of them about. Many people seem to fail to understand what Shulgin's +4 means too, and use it to describe a really strong trip (which is not what it means, I had a my first +4 on 1.75 grams of mushrooms, it was about the nature of the experience, the fact that it was special, life-changing, unique). I think in general people tend to use these terms to mean "really strong" and this causes their meaning to be lost or muddied.
 
I think that part of this comes with the fact that the life changing aspect is imprinting, which is separate and independent of ego death. Yet many individuals tend think that they are one and the same.
 
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