Death of the Ego

The way to achieve spiritual enlightenment is to kill the 'Ego'.

The Ego is how we construct the reality of this world.

But the Ego is an illusion that is the root of every human misery. Without the ego there would be no pain, no suffering, no war, no disease.

To reach true enlightenment we must look inward, not outward, and figuratively 'kill' the Ego. To accept that this is all an illusion, and the Ego is a false master. That we spend our lives in a false world, in a false self, tricked by the Ego into thinking that this is it.

To kill the Ego we must spend hours, in 'awareness watching awareness' mode. Where we lie down and watch our true self, watching.

Nothing else.

I meditate and believe that it is important, but this 'Killing of the Ego' scared me.

If we lost all of our 'self' then what is left but an empty shell? What is the point of going outside, making friends, embarking upon relationships, travelling, going to the cinema, reading, going for a walk in nature? After all these are just an illusion created by the Ego to divert us away from our true nature.

The point of this 'awareness watching awareness' is to realise our true essence. The 'Ego' that we think is real is not real. Nothing is real. So why bother? Let's just stay in a room all day in a meditative trance, reach enlightenment and never have to go through the endless cycle of birth, death, rebirth ever again

(The book would say that what is now speaking is my Ego, which has been frightened that it has been discovered, and is trying to stop me from killing it)