Ego Death: How to Say Goodbye to Parts of the Self

Death of Self. There I said it. In all of its glory I bask in the word death. A word that modern society has placed such a dark and dirty connotation on. Ego death is a glorious, liberating and albeit oftentimes painful process of letting go. A rebirthing process. But what is the ego anyway?

The ego is a self constructed sense of identity that we have created (and still are creating as we read this article) throughout out lives. A false belief system that has been downloaded from our experiences. Beliefs such as: "I am ugly", "I am unlovable", "I fail at everything I do", "I'll never be good enough" are all false conclusions we have led ourselves to believe as true. These "I" statements are ways in which the ego can play dress-up and hide what our truth really is.

When we continue to feed these falsehoods about our self or identity it fuels the ego. As we go through life and live through experiences that, through the lens of the ego further prove these "truths", we believe them more and more; thus, the ego grows stronger and has a more ferocious appetite.

Until we hit a breaking point.

This can come in many forms. A bad breakup, chronic illness, some sort of life tragedy or jarring incident that forces us to wake up out of haze of illusion. We start to ask ourselves the big questions about life and death; and ultimately what our purpose is. Are we really only here to take jobs we hate to pay for things we don't need to impress people we don't like and binge on reality tv? We start to seek answers. We go inward truly examining ourselves; an inventory of the self. Who am I and what kind of person do I want to be? What is my place in this world?

Asking these questions at first seems so liberating - so full of hope. And they are! They also can be super scary when we realize how little we actually know ourselves. The Dark Night of the Soul - it sounds ominous. Parts of it are but this is where we truly start to shed our skin. This is where all of our old wounds and emotional gunk starts to come to the surface. Old wounds of unworthiness, doubt, guilt and shame leave us feeling hollow, broken and depressed. We oftentimes feel so alone and in so much pain that we feel that we need to withdraw to insulate ourselves - kind of like a caterpillar going into a cocoon. This period of suffering is transformational - but we can also become addicted to the suffering.

The suffering in Dark Night of the Soul can become such a familiar place it almost feels like home. Especially if we have had abusive parents, partners, past trauma, etc. Part of our survival mechanism has been to become best friends with suffering because we believe that is what we deserve. This is a trap that we need to be cautious of because it can become a cycle of never-ending suffering. A trap of the ego! It knows that it is dying and is trying so hard to cling to any bit of life it can so it will start to tell us things like "I deserve to suffer". This is a trap. It is incredibly tempting to set up camp in the tunnel of suffering because oftentimes, we are so blinded by our pain we are unable to see we are almost on the other side of it.

If you haven't done so already, this is when it becomes important to seek alternative healing modalities to ease the suffering. Whether it be meditation, shamanic healing, yoga, trauma therapy, reiki, etc. it is necessary to help to alleviate the suffering in a healthy way. Oftentimes, we carry so much emotional baggage with us we need help to offload it during these life shifts. It helps our emotional state and fuels our spiritual growth as we start to surrender to the process.

When we do this deep healing work, we start to have momentary spurts of enlightenment. Things that seemed clouded before now have clarity. We start to make peace with our past; old wounds start to heal. We start to feel better and have a new found vitality that was lacking before. Perhaps we have made changes to our routine, relationships, occupations - which have all felt scary in the moment but now seem so natural; as if this is where we always were meant to be.

We can start to reflect on our progress and truly value the work that was put into this reconstruction of the self. We are no longer feel triggered or offended by others because the actions of others aren't reflections of ourselves. We no longer feel the need to engage in old patterns of behavior such as gossip, judgement, anger or belittling others. We no longer put so much emphasis on what others think as we slip into our own authenticity - the highest form of self love.

Ego death is hard. It is painful. It downright sucks. You will have days when you mourn your old life. The comfort of it. Yet, you know in your heart you cannot go back there. You've simply put in too much work at this point. The sleepless nights, tears shed and entire life purges were all worth it go get to this point. When you look back on that old version of yourself, at times, you won't even be able to recognize that person; and that's a good thing! You've grown! You now live authentically; completely honoring yourself and your spirit.

Shine bright loves.