So are there any tips on how to accept your ego death? Because it always sends me on a horrible trip.
Just don't fight it. It can't hurt you. It may feel dangerous, but its not. Crossing the road, whilst much less frightening, is more dangerous then ego-death.
The way I see it now (which is bound to change with more experience), "ego death" doesn't start with the sense of self disappearing -- I think that the "self" itself disappears, and then the loss of sense of self is just an observation of the fact. When you experience ego death, YOU temporarily don't exist.
And before you tell me that YOU can't experience something if YOU don't exist, that's just a confusion of the real message with semantic silliness. When I say that "YOU" don't exist, I'm not really referring to you in the conventional sense (your body). I'm just referring to the psychological processes that are sensed as "me"!
An excellent description mate, as usual.
You've described perfectly what many of us have done very clumsily...thanks.
As for the excellent question posed by the thread topic, I don't think so. I think that pain, at least of the psychological and not physical sort, almost always originates from the self intending for something to happen, and failing to find it. In other words, psychological pain comes from wanting something you can't have. If there is no "I" which desires, then nothing is desired, and failure is impossible. That's why experienced psychonauts will often advise new trippers not to have any expectations, and to "let go", "let everything flow through you", "don't fight it", etc. These are words intended to make the tripper stop wanting things. You see, if the tripper has no desire, this is one great step towards complete dissolution of the ego.
I'm not sure I completely agree here. I would say that ego-dissolution can be frightening, and I'm sure many bad trips have resulted from unwillingness to let go of delusional thinking. However, if we consider that the SELF has dissolved, this does not require the actual
sense of self to dissolve too. Like a phantome limb, the self may recede and yet there is still a mechanical, physical structure in the mind attempting to use that sense as a kind of lens. A limb is removed, and yet the purely physical parts of the mind still sense it, and as it does not conform to reality (ie. the limb is clearly no longer there), a degree of negativity/fear ensues. The same thing can happen to the mind in an extreme psychedelic state. People who are in this state may be persistently asking whether the experience is real, they may believe they have died or are going to die, they may act confused, ideas that are normally trivial may take on great significance, perhaps because these notions and sensations are generally blanketed by the sense of self, or idea of self, or ego, and now that the doors-of-perception (!!) are open, one cannot hide behind any defense as the defense has ceased to exist.
In truth, I don't think that the "self" is what feels/experiences human desires, fears, predjudices, etc. because it doesn't receive undiluted information, but receives biased data as fed by the sense of self input (or filtered through the sense of self lens). The editing is what stops when psychedelic ego dissolution occurrs.
If one goes physically blind, the structures involved in vision don't neccesarily cease existence.
This experience can be intenself euphoric though, because for many people, the removing of filters and blinkers is desired and welcomed. People may constantly be seeking such a state, because it might be seen as more 'real' then the usual blinded side of perception.
perating system::soul:user. To elaborate on the case of the "soul" not being part of the mind, is that one could conceive of a mind, as a product of the brain as per my analogy, that does not have a "soul" connected to it. It's uncertain how this would affect its functionality. Without any available scientific data, being forced to rely on reason alone, the most one could say is at least aware of the presence of the "soul" at some level, for it is able to produce thoughts relating to it, as I'm doing here in fact. If the lack of a "soul" does have a significant impact on the mind, "mind" should then include the property of having a "soul" connected to it, and a mind without a "soul" should be its own separate concept. Otherwise, "mind" and "soul" should be separate concepts.
