Last week I wrote about the essential work of navigating the ego as an activist and now I’m here to talk about ego death. What is an ego death? I just had a quick read on wikipedia and an ego death has slightly different meanings based on the culture or religion. I’m planning on doing more research on this in the coming months. These are a few phrases copied from wiki that resonate with my experience of an ego death

• self-surrender

• Stanislav Grof (1988) defines it as "a sense of total annihilation [...] This experience of "ego death" seems to entail an instant merciless destruction of all previous reference points in the life of the individual [...]

• Catholic: According to Merkur, the conceptualisation of mystical union as the death of the ego, while the soul remains the sole bearer of the self, and its replacement by God's consciousness.

• According to Ventegodt and Merrick, the Jungian term "psychic death" is a synonym for "ego death": In order to radically improve global quality of life, it seems necessary to have a fundamental transformation of the psyche. Such a shift in personality has been labeled an "ego death" in Buddhism or a psychic death by Jung, because it implies a shift back to the existential position of the natural self, i.e., living the true purpose of life. The problem of healing and improving the global quality of life seems strongly connected to the unpleasantness of the ego-death experience.

P.S. I know people hate on wikipedia, personally, I love it as a first reference point when beginning an inquiry into a topic.

All of these descriptions are giving the mmm sound of Aum right? A reminder that the universal sound Om or Aum is made up of three sounds

1. aaa = Creation

2. ooo = preservation of Creation

3. mmm = Destruction.

The mmm sound, Destruction, occurs and it is followed by the aaa sound, Creation. Destruction makes space for Creation. Creation follows Destruction. This is how I would describe my ego death. I think that I experienced an extended period of significant Destruction in my external and internal world, that lasted a good few years, beginning in 2021. I remember drawing The Tower for the first time from my tarot deck and feeling a sense of dread of what was to come. I grew to be fearful of The Tower because of what was to follow.

Please note that I have since pulled The Tower card many times in readings including for us in this Teacups series, talking tarot, and I have experienced no where near as much Destruction to my internal world. I think when I first pulled The Tower it was alongside multiple Destructive things already happening in my life. I didn’t really need to pull The Tower card to know that my world as I currently knew it was falling apart. I just wanted to share this perspective just in case someone pulls The Tower and thinks it’s inevitable they’re due an ego death. I don’t think that’s how tarot works necessarily. At the time, however, and still now I like to draw that connection as it was significant for my understanding of what I experienced.

I feel like at some point in 2023 I felt like something shifted. I look back and note that this was my transition to Creation, a phoenix rising from the ashes, a tiny sprout making its way to sunlight from the soil. Experiencing an ego death does not mean that I now no longer have an ego - far from it. I hear her. However, it’s like she’s a different identity residing with me. An unhealed part of myself that desires, needs and wants things that are not in alignment with how I wish to live my life and how I dream of growing spiritually.

Prior to my ego death her voice was front and centre, the main character, her volume turned all the way up. I wasn’t aware that she was there, I thought that this voice was me. I identified with this voice. Since my ego death which coincides with practising spirituality (I began with tarot) I feel like I created space in my consciousness to notice that she’s only an element of my being. She is only an expression of my and our collective consciousness. I became an Observer of her, rather than unconsciously handing her the controls of my actions and life. And don’t get me wrong she tries her best to get her airtime and I feel I have the tools I need to redirect her needs and reassure her that aligning with my more healed self is the better option.

In one of the wiki quote’s above they share that when part of the ego dies it is replaced by God’s consciousness. I resonate with that. I think that the spaciousness I created in my being is spiritual and magical. This space is existential and wild. Grounded and expansive. It’s the part of me that feels like there’s no separation between me and the chair I’m sitting on or the little bug that makes a soft landing on my knee. I think that it is this space that I may, one day, maybe in a different lifetime, join with Purusha (collective consciousness).

Yoga philosophy would not necessarily say that my ego was ‘replaced’ by God’s consciousness, it would say that this consciousness has always been there, resting in my being, waiting patiently for me to create the space needed to notice. And that goes the same for everyone, everything and in nothing. I genuinely believe that we all have access to this in our being and it will depend on SO many factors whether or not it is something we access in this lifetime.

In terms of a classical yoga description it is like the ego death allowed for me to clear all of the rubbish in the lake and treat the water with care so that it remains clean and fresh. I might now have a chance of seeing the bottom of the lake, which is Purusha, collective consciousness. When I speak of the space that I’ve created in my being I see that as clearing out the rubbish in the lake and purifying the polluted water. It’s a step toward joining with Purusha.

I’d like to think a little more about this quote from wiki:

• The problem of healing and improving the global quality of life seems strongly connected to the unpleasantness of the ego-death experience.

This is a tough one for me because I don’t wish my experience on anyone, including myself, and yet it was my portal into becoming the person I am today. Holding this duality is tricky and still often has my tummy churning. Spiritual elders will tell us that it’s important we find the lessons in the struggles that we experience. Buddhism is a religion that accepts that suffering is a part of our existence and from my limited understanding of the religion Buddha shares that suffering is our portal toward enlightenment. Many of the people and ways of thinkings that I look up to say that suffering makes space for these awakenings. I hear that.

I guess where my tummy churns is all the unnecessary harm that occurs to folks like a genocide for example. And if I apply the narrative above, it means that something transformation will come out of a genocide. I find this hard to hold. After such Destruction comes Creation. I do not believe that this needs to happen at all in order to access transformation.

I would like to live in a world where the only Destruction that we experience is through grief when we lose our loved ones or ruptures in friendships that we know we can resolve as a community. I hope that one day Death is the only thing that causes suffering in this world. The Death card in tarot represents transformation, a shedding of skin and I kept drawing this card for pretty much the whole year I was experiencing Destruction.

I think about Palestine and the Destruction Israel is committing. It is heartbreaking in every sense. I have also seen since the beginning of this genocide, one and half years ago, a magnificent raise in global consciousness about Israel’s colonial actions. I have seen, including myself, people become awakened to the ever present colonial violence. We’ve joined up the dots across the world of folks who are experiencing a manifestation of the same colonial violence for example from the occupation in Palestine to the French imperialists in Burkino Faso. The commitment we made in our manifesto for Story of the Changing has in roots in our learning around empire being the root cause of the violence we see today

We are a commitment to healing ourselves and our communities in service to stewarding the Change necessary in order to build a liberated future where empire is obsolete.

One of the reasons we chose to explicitly use empire in our commitment and be unapologetic about that is because of the learnings we gained from the activists and people of Palestine sharing their lived experience and rightfully demanding us to care and use our privilege to share their truth.

I think for moments like these I must embody holding multiple truths. I hold that both I never wish violence on myself or anyone and that transformation tends to occur from Destructive events. I think that for folks who have experienced Destruction in some way may have a deep knowing of what it’s like to hold this uncomfortable truth that I stumbled across in my young adulthood.

I wrote a poem which is framed as a letter to Lord Shiva, the God of Destruction:

Lord Shiva,
You tell me to listen to the flames
Stay close to Death
Here is where I’m told I’ll learn
New shoots rise from the ashes

I sit beside the fire
The wood burning
Destructing
Right in front of my eyes
Lovingly keeping me warm
This what you mean when you say you’re the God of Destruction, right?
Not the countless lives lost in genocide
Not the children dying of hunger
Lord Shiva?

Surely, Lord Shiva, you don’t mean that this type of destruction is required for a new world to emerge
If you do, I’m not sure I want to chant your invocation.
om shivaya namah
The vibrations churning my tummy.

Shiva,
God of Destruction
Kindly explain to me
Please tell me what you long for
I’d like to understand
I long for liberation
I long for communities centred in love and acceptance
We are harmonious
Including with you
No separation.

Lord Shiva, to me, respectfully,
You feel like a threat.
Imagine we reach our dreams for a liberated world.
What will be your role?
Will you be satisfied when you burn the wood to keep me warm?
Will you want more destruction?
Is the death of my loved ones and our more-than-human life not enough?

Lord Shiva,
I have so many questions
Therefore I will chant
I will bow to Shiva
Om Shivaya Namah
I invoke the God of Destruction.

I definitely feel uncomfortable writing these truths about Destruction and I know it’s an important conversation to have in the context of ego death. I wonder if people can have an ego death without having to go through such Destruction? I wonder if ego deaths can occur through simply existing in the trauma of capitalism? I imagine the answers to these questions are far from a binary and will most likely depend on the context for each individual person. It may depend on their intergenerational trauma, past lifetimes, like everything that has come before in a person’s lineage that goes beyond biological Ancestors.

The fact humans have an ego that often is the source of Destruction itself makes me question why we even have an ego to begin with? The fact that many folks, over thousands of years, have spent and continue to spend their entire lives dedicated to spiritual practice to quieten this ego with the aim of moving us toward collective liberation leaves me pondering.

I might be going a little off track here but in the West it is believed that survival of the fittest is how we have evolved. I was led to believe therefore the most strong being or the animal that could kill the best is the animal that will contribute to the evolution of our lineage. In Raja or Jnana Yoga (apologies I can’t remember which) Swami Vivekananda shares that we evolve when we align ourselves with spiritual ways of being. For example evolution occurs when we are less aligned with our desires of the ego, when we are more committed to concepts like Ubuntu which is a term with its roots with the ancient Bantu people. Ubuntu means I am because you are. We have the chant so on our inhale and hum on our exhale in our minds to integrate its meaning: I am that. I am all that is external to my perceived Self.

Inhale so
Exhale hum

It is through these concepts rooted in interconnectedness, care and community, love and respect, that leads to our evolution, not the people who are the most successful at hunting. In this day and age, hunting can be reframed as: the desire to colonise, the desire to consume, to be greedy and have more than you need. These are characteristics that align with the survival of the fittest theory. These ways of beings could be seen as involutions.

Evolution is also probably not as binary as this and it’ll of course be a mix of all different things that has meant our evolution and survival. I do love, however, de-centring the hugely problematic Charles Darwin’s survival of the fittest theory and centering our ancient ways of loving, being and seeing more-than-human life as an extension of ourselves, as our magical theory of evolution.

This doesn’t necessarily address why we have an ego. It does address the importance of learning to quieten the ego as a means to support humankind in our journey in becoming enlightened or reaching collective liberation. I think if I knew everything about ego death before experiencing one I wonder if through spiritual practice I could learn to identify her voice and gradually de-centre her? Maybe there is no need for such Destruction to uncover the Creation underneath. If you haven’t experienced an ego death of the sorts, how could you begin to de-centre your ego and create enough space in your being to centre the collective and to that which connects us all? I think that is what I am doing now, it’s just the ego death was the catalyst that helped me realise this.

As many of you know I embody the fractal approach which is a concept shared by adrienne marie brown in her sacred book emergent strategy. I believe that small scale is large scale work. Therefore applying this to the ego: doing small scale work on de-centring the ego without one big Destructive event is equal to the aftereffects of an ego death. In activism I strive to hold that there is no hierarchy of action. Folks who take large scale action like breaking into arms factories to stop the production of weapons on route to Israel are no better than a person who sends an email to their MP from their bed because small scale is large scale. The actions that happen on the small scale are replicated on the large scale. The actions that happen on the large scale are the small scale. And so, applying this to ego work I have now convinced myself that you do not need to experience such Destruction to learn to de-centre the ego.

Here’s a poem I wrote about the ego and The Devil tarot card:

The Devil

Her ego is alive
Thriving even
The ego misguides
With threats of imagined humiliation
If she doesn’t fulfil its desires

She looks up at The Devil
And blames him for her misfortune
He is keeping her there
He is holding her hostage
She wallows in self-pity
Begging for freedom

Her gut disrupts
Gas awkwardly passing through her body
A gentle force presses down on her heart
Her ribcage about to crack
There’s a lump in her throat
She clenches her jaw
And her shoulders tense up

The Devil Tarot card
Depicts two people with chains around their necks
Controlled by The Devil
Yet, little do they know
These chains are loose
If they only realise
They can be removed

Patience
She turns to scripture
The scriptures say to look within
The chains are heavy
She sits down and meditates
The pain worsens
Chronic headaches
Drowsiness
Nausea
Until one day
She realises
Like a butterfly emerging from Chrysalis
The chains are loose

Time heals
And she forgives The Devil
It’s taken a lifetime to understand
She stopped the blame
And the shame
And for the first time
In that moment before her last breath
She had a taste for freedom.

I haven’t really shared what actually happened during my ego death, I guess it may seem quite abstract without knowing what this can look like in practice. I also have never got into the details myself because, as I learned in my recent supervision, sometimes reflection can undo us more than is necessary. I think that going back there to reflect is not currently that helpful for my healing.

In brief though, multiple external traumatic things were going on in my life which led to what folks used to call a ‘mental breakdown’, which I could probably replace with spiritual collapse, autistic burnout, a combination of them all. During this period I slept for almost 2 months. I then questioned all that I knew, things started to shift in ways that was really disorientating. It was like dissociating from everything I believed and knew about myself and the world around me. It was a very visceral experience. This all happened before I truly connected to yoga. My ego separated itself from my true essence and I could now be an Observer of her.

This discovery of my true essence made me re-think my life decisions and deeply consider how I can align myself in as many ways as possible to this true essence. It felt like something beyond just me and beyond anything I could even articulate with words. It began with noticing shifts in energy and feeling and I didn’t really have the words to describe it. My senses were somehow sharpened to the world around me that I started to see beauty in the smallest of things. Magic unfolding in front of my eyes. It is here that the mmm sound, Destruction, transformed into aaa, Creation. It was now time to create my life that emerged from the Destruction. And this is where I leaned on yoga as my guide.

A prayer

Together may we spend time contemplating Destruction and its role in our dreams for a liberated world where empire is obsolete. May we hold our folks who are experiencing a period of Destruction with patience. Their Creation awaits. We do not wish Destruction on any being in any realm. Their Creation awaits. Lokah samastah sukino bhavantu. May all beings in all realms experience joy, happiness and freedom from suffering.

In solidarity with love & care

Amy