Ego death – what is it really?
Is it necessary for spiritual advancement? Is it a patriarchal construct? Is it, in fact, harmful?
Lately I’ve seen a lot of really great arguments about how ego death is, in fact, destructive despite the history of hundreds of years of great spiritual traditions espousing it.
And I agree. Sort of.
I spent a minute in this no ego death ever camp. The ego is an important component of the human makeup. Killing it seems to be a patriarchal construct. At least this idea that we’ve seen in the modern versions of the spiritual traditions that espouse ego death.
These traditions currently seem to argue that the ego is bad and should be killed, after which you should live your life in a better way egoless.
I believe that this is, in fact, a patriarchal construct on top of the spiritual practice and philosophy.
On the other hand, the idea that the ego should never die, never be killed is also a patriarchal construct. This comes from the non-integration of the Dark Feminine, the death aspect of the goddess.
When we look at what nature teaches us, from an animist perspective, we see something different.
If we collectively are an organism (think Gaia) then it is only through the deaths of some parts of our collective organism that there is room for further growth, both literally, and these deaths feed the components of the organism who still live, or who are born from these deaths.
Yes, the ego should die. And it should be reborn.
We are truly not meant to be egoless. But refusing to let the ego die when it should is to encourage a psychological cancer. Cancer is defined by the cells involved becoming immortal when they should still be constrained by their cyclical death and rebirth.
We often talk about the butterfly as the metaphor for spiritual awakening. For the butterfly to be, first the caterpillar must die. No, the constituent cells do not die, they simply rearrange, but the caterpillar itself must necessarily die in order for the imaginal cells to be formed into a butterfly.
It’s a complex, conflict ridden, and presumably painful experience for the caterpillar and their cells. This is what ego death often looks like.
Our egos adopt so much programming in order to protect us, to fit in with the society in which we live. That’s not bad in itself, but as we grow beyond that, the ego panics. For us to live in a different way the ego must be killed as it cannot be adequately retrained.
The ego dies and its component parts reform to build… yes, a new ego. An ego that now is more free from outside programming, an ego that is more Self and less not-self than the last incarnation.
This is, in fact, one of the things we are talking about when we discuss the shamanic type initiation journey where the spirit worker dies and is reborn in order to occupy their new place in society.
Embrace the death of your ego. Kill it, again and again. Mercy kill it to allow its daughter to arise, just like the Phoenix you are.