Ego Death.

Ego death. An interesting topic to write about on tumblr if you ask me. But buckle yourself up, since this is going to be a whimsical and redundant rambling on your behalf.

To begin with, what is an "ego"? The term ego, amongst the id and super ego, was first proposed by Sigmund Freud in 1923. He compared the ego to a horse rider who makes decisions, and the horse the id, which holds the power to move and drive. The super ego bothers itself with personal ideals, outer perfection, and desires. I like to compare it to a pedant teacher supervising the horse rider. Yet, this interpretation no longer applies to modern implications of the word ego, as it often carries a negative meaning. It includes any form of sense of self, such as possessions, work, and social relationships. Ego dissolution is most commonly reached through psychedelics. The classic hallucinogens used are Lysergic acid diethylamide, psilocybin, mescaline, and n-dimethyltryptamine (complicated names, I know). Other times, dissociative anesthetics such as ketamine are used. Scientists are still unsure of exactly how these drugs cause ego death. A leading explanation is that these drugs cut the connection between you and your DMN, which is the part of your brain that allows you to refer back to the past or think about the future, which is a quality most animals lack. For those with anxiety, your DMN is usually more active than others. I won't get into the neuroscience aspect of ego death, as I'm more of a philosophy girl.

The concept of "self" is wholly subjective. You can rarely experience two selves and remember both experiences, unless perhaps in cases of multiplicity. This is similar to love, in that you cannot be sure whether the love you describe and feel is the same as the feeling other people talk about. I, personally (how ironic), feel like I have dissociated myself already. Sure, I have ideas of what interests me, what issues I care about, yet I feel like I am part of a more significant matter, such as this world we live in. This isn't exactly ego death, as ego death usually refers to the complete loss of identity, being stripped naked of your sense and idea of self. This is caused by separating yourself completely from your past experiences. In this state, one can discover who they truly are, and not who they were in the past or the idea one has of themself.

In my opinion, ego dissolution is mostly pointless, as I believe a person is created solely from subjective views, like the ideas they have of who they might be. Because in a sense, "you" are both the horse rider and the judge: the ego, and the super-ego.

i think love is about wanting to take the time to know someone completely. the horrifying, the humbling, the beautiful, the boring. i love you is just a phrase. its what we say when we just get a feeling that its the right thing to say. because when we say “you”, you need to be referring to their whole self, their everything. but when i start to know someone more, i begin to love them less. as far as words and feelings go, it’s a labyrinth. and love isnt just limited to lovers in that case. we always have the need to separate love into “platonic” or “familial” or “romantic”, but maybe we don’t need to. maybe love is meant to be simple. there probably isn’t even a meaning to it. i don’t know.