Spirituality and Enlightenment

Ego Death is When You ‘Check Out’

But you’re still here somehow.

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Many of us often wonder why we’re here. There seems to be no obvious answer or reason. And as life gives us unwanted surprises to deal with, we’re hoping for some way to escape the hardships of this existence. We don’t want to die, we just wonder why life should be so heavy.

We want to figure out a way to avoid suffering. And the good news is that there is a way! It’s a method that’s been known to humans for as long as they’ve existed called reaching enlightenment, also known as ego death. It’s when you stop attaching so much to the outcomes and expectations of things and let it all be.

Life is like the Hotel California: you can check out but you can never leave.

What Is Ego Death?

I really don’t love the term. Ego “death” makes it sound so dramatic. Plus, you need your ego. In order to be a person, we must all have egos. Otherwise, we would not be individuals. We would be boundless spirits without localization and identity. (That surely would be cool to experience, though. We all have experienced it but don’t recall.)

Ego death, to me, is the shedding of attachments instead of the shedding of your ego. Your ego is attached to desires, outcomes, beliefs, judgments, and your perceived identity. But it doesn’t need to be. You can be the driver in your journey of life and refuse to be set on any of these things. Instead, you can observe them rising and falling away with the stream of thoughts in your mind — like the waves in an ocean.

Checking Out

When you decide to let things go and stop investing energy in all of your attachments, then you’ve checked out. You may not be dead, but you feel like you’ve let something die. It’s liberating. The death of the attachments frees you to truly enjoy life.

When you no longer expect, want, pine after, or get stressed by things, life is pretty great.

For instance, some friends of mine and I have recently become very tired of dating. But why are we…