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Kominka Life Japan's avatar

Right on!

No longer driving the bus, it has taken a back seat on the bus.

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Karl Stott's avatar

“Through experiences of deep suffering precipitated by intense feelings of separation and alienation from the whole...”. This is how my ego death occurred, and it was wonderful, but it came back with a vengeance, which lead to years of “dark night of the soul” and endless seeking. I’m not sure how to define what I’m experiencing now, I can only call it “normal life”, whatever normal is

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John Tyrrell's avatar

Thanks Shiv. Always a pleasure to read your thoughts on “things “.

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Arun's avatar

Excuse me for all the questions. I feel like nobody has spoken like this to me before. Thank you for your words and to whatever is giving you this clarity, this fountain of meaning.

Is suffering necessary for ego death? Is there anything else that you would qualify as necessary?

I am reading your words to mean that ego is a necessary instrument to develop Awareness. That seems logical. So is being Awake discernible only in contrast with what I know as ego? If the ego never develops, can you wake up?

By extension early childhood stages before the ego develops cannot be considered as Aware. And the same for animals, presumably because their egos are rudimentary at best.

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Martin Frischknecht's avatar

By its very nature language in the use of words is bound to the limitations of distinctions, opposites and boundaries. Yet when you are writing, Shiv, you seem to stretch this game far beyond its limitations, stretching the wings of your readers and let the imagination fly way beyond the charted territory of the mind – thank you!

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Segun's avatar

Thanks Shiv. This is insightful.

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Dave Markowitz's avatar

You wrote, “This is why meditating on the breath for an extended period of time is hard. Because our breath doesn’t need our attention!”

So, when trying to meditate, is there anything that does require our attention?

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Shiv Sengupta's avatar

Turn your attention to attention itself

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Myq Kaplan's avatar

dear shiv,

i love this piece. so many beautiful points.

like this wonderful analogy:

"when you ask questions like:

'Will I cease to care about my family and others after an ego death?'

…it is like a fetus asking:

'Will I still be loved by mother when the umbilical cord is cut?'"

"And just like a fetus can never know what it feels like to be a human child, no matter how many stories it overhears from beyond the walls of its mother’s womb, an ego can never know what the experience of what lies beyond its own death (rebirth) will be like, no matter how many spiritual teachings it has heard or how many scriptures it has read."

wonderfully put.

the whole piece is powerful and also, these lines are particularly resonant!:

"The nature of awareness is to become unaware of that which is already whole, integrated and does not require its attention."

"What if all you lost was your story, not your life?"

"All the dots that animated this life remain. Only the imaginary lines I once used to connect those dots have faded."

thank you for sharing all of the dots that you share!

love

myq

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Zippy's avatar

Please find two references.

The first one is about ego-death, the second is about the stages of evolutionary growth of the human being.

http://beezone.com/current/current/egodeathchaosexperience.html

http://beezone.com/current/fiveevolutionarystatesoftrueman.html

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