Foreigner
Bluelighter
It does not seem like suffering is an illusion, only the story attached to it. Pain is real and can last a long time, but even if it lasts for 10,000 years it's still temporary. When it goes away it takes all the narratives with it, if there were any. It's just the experience of the present moment.
Ego death has a two-fold nature, if it can be put that way. The first is an experience that obliterates the ego so that it goes silent for a period of time, like suffering or other irrevocable proof, which then reveals the true presence it was obscuring. For me this happened through intense pain and agony, so much so that I broke through the pain and discovered stillness. "I" was hurting so much that "I" imploded and then dissolved. The fear of death is really the fear of being nothing, but the irony is that the physical body survives ego death even though the grasping nature of ego makes it seem like you will truly die the true death if you ever relinquish it.
The second nature is that, after the experience, ego may arise again, and it may assert its usual stories, but the underlying presence never fully buys into it anymore. Ego can appear, even dysfunctionally, but there is an awareness that it can be dropped.
The third quality seems to be that there is no real distinction between egoism and egolessness, because both are conceptual mind games within a seamless ticker tape of a reality that is endlessly doing itself -- a reality that "I" am not making happen. It is truly without a story. It goes very deep.
Ego death has a two-fold nature, if it can be put that way. The first is an experience that obliterates the ego so that it goes silent for a period of time, like suffering or other irrevocable proof, which then reveals the true presence it was obscuring. For me this happened through intense pain and agony, so much so that I broke through the pain and discovered stillness. "I" was hurting so much that "I" imploded and then dissolved. The fear of death is really the fear of being nothing, but the irony is that the physical body survives ego death even though the grasping nature of ego makes it seem like you will truly die the true death if you ever relinquish it.
The second nature is that, after the experience, ego may arise again, and it may assert its usual stories, but the underlying presence never fully buys into it anymore. Ego can appear, even dysfunctionally, but there is an awareness that it can be dropped.
The third quality seems to be that there is no real distinction between egoism and egolessness, because both are conceptual mind games within a seamless ticker tape of a reality that is endlessly doing itself -- a reality that "I" am not making happen. It is truly without a story. It goes very deep.
