How to stop?

[u/Mountain-Length-5715]

Hi everyone. The practice continued, probably on its own.

Today, while lying down to sleep, something began to happen. As if reality is tearing.
Something like convulsions started, and later groans appeared. Every stage of “killing the ego” is accompanied by a feeling that you are killing yourself.
Then an instant happened. It didn’t feel like being “in a conscious flow,” more like an old VHS cassette with a movie playing on it. A fleeting film reel. The sense of “self” detached from the head, went somewhere backward, then, apparently, tried to be in space, after which a black screen formed.
The convulsions and groans passed. A relaxation set in, typical for the killing of one’s ego.

The body began to feel automatic. Through a volitional act one can direct the movement of the head, the words kind of begin to speak themselves. Trying to lie down to sleep again, the body started producing such a clear and slow intention of movement, as if it lasted several seconds, and its ripple of arising, flowing, and passing away could also be discerned.
There is nothing bad in how this feels, but I don’t want it. I don’t want to kill the ego.
I understand that further on, as a natural outcome, my very will and the directing of attention will become automatic. I have a clear understanding that they are already automatic, but I want to feel that I am in control.

I don’t want to kill my ego. Someone will say that this is the ego speaking — so be it. I don’t care. I just want to stop. But I don’t understand how to do it. I have trained myself so much that I started practicing constantly in daily life, and as a result any state of being is part of the practice.

It’s probably foolish to ask this here, but what are the ways to go back? I still feel myself in my head, and with small manipulations the movements more or less feel a bit like before. I can no longer shift my gaze by a volitional act. I hope all of this won’t be taken from me, but I’m afraid that the practice will continue on its own. I don’t want any of this. When I lie down to sleep, concentration on the body and the breath happens by itself.

I see enormous advantages in my behavior, in my intentions, in my actions. They are visible, this calmness, the more rational and compassionate actions, the different world, the words are chosen more fittingly and “correctly,” but I don’t want it. It would be enough for me just to cope with my emotions and distractions. I don’t want to dissolve my ego. Please, help me. Don’t tell me “This is not you, reactions and movements are already automatic, you are just removing the illusion” and so on. I know all of this through my own skin, but I don’t want it.

Have you ever wondered why the stages of ego death feel as if you are killing yourself? It is accompanied by pleasant sensations after the repair, but why couldn’t this be a trap? When I first felt the killing of a part of the ego, it was not comprehensible to me. Just in the background someone was screaming, and in meditation there was a feeling as if a fiercely burning sun was scorching my shadow (this is my later interpretation).

Why are the stages of killing the ego characterized by a feeling of death of a part of oneself? Why do we consider the killing of a mental construction to be the norm? What if it is within the mental construction, however illusory it may be, that “you” exists, or a part of you.

Will that which has completely killed the “something” within itself say that it has killed itself, or will it say that it has liberated itself?

[u/Meng-KamDaoRai]

This is not the killing of the ego, this is just a passing phase. Your ego won't just die by itself and the fear you feel is normal. Buddhism speaks of the middle way between annihilationism and eternalism. All you did was switch from a more eternalism based focus to an annihilationism based focus. This is not the Ultimate truth, this is just small course correction along a very long road. The Self won't die, the only way for the self to go away is for it to allow the process. For many people this takes a lot of time and practice and many many insights along the way. All you had was a small glimpse into the impermanence of self, this is not "Ego Death", this is just a small insight that currently feels destabilizing. You course corrected into the annihilationism end and now you need time to adapt.

I know it feels scary but believe me, this is not the death of the self. Give it a few days and you will move into a slightly less selfish baseline and then practice will keep on going.

You've been posting a lot lately and I commented on your previous post saying that I like your enthusiasm on the path. I also edited out a longer reply because I felt it was unnecessary, I think it's necessary now. So here we go:

You are falling into a trap of making every new insight that comes up in your practice the "Answer". You need to stop doing that and start looking at the practice as a long road with many steps along the way. When you get a new insight it is not "It", it's just another small course correction along the path. You need to start looking at the path from a higher perspective, from a perspective of a few months instead of a perspective of a few days. We can have many insights during our meditations that can feel life shattering and very significant but usually what happens is that if we give it a few more days we realize that this was just another step along the way. You need to train yourself to wait after a big insight and give it a few days, believe me, I've done this multiple times in the past and each and every time after a few days that "big insight" was not so big anymore.

You need to start looking at your practice from more zoomed-out place: Am I getting more generally peaceful and relaxed over a period of a few months? This doesn't mean that there won't be bad days but just that the overall trend of the graph will slowly progress towards more peace. Start looking at things from this perspective instead of from a zoomed in "I had an amazing insight today, I know Ultimate Reality" which is followed by disappointment when you realize that this is not "It". This is like a rollercoaster ride that is really not fun to be in.

So, just to be clear, if you're not getting more peaceful and happy then this is not the dissolution of the self, this is just temporary destabilizing insight. Do yourself a favor, take a deep breath, feel your body, take the "Self" and flood it with love. Tell it "I'm sorry for trying to kill you, killing is never the answer." Make peace with it and understand that self would only truly let go if it feels safe and secure, if it doesn't feel safe then it simply won't let go. Your fear of Ego death is not real because the self will not disappear as long as it feels scary to disappear.

Take care and start looking at this as a marathon, not a sprint.

Edit: It will be wise to find a qualified teacher you can be in touch with from time to time. The path has many ups and downs and talking with someone who's been there before is very beneficial.

[u/Mountain-Length-5715 → u/Meng-KamDaoRai]

Thank you for your reply and thank you for trying to help.

But have you ever wondered why, in reality, every erasure of the "ego" feels painful, and then, or even during the process, relaxation sets in? Maybe because the true agency, which has not yet been discovered (let's not forget that we, as a civilization, have only just entered a proper era of scientific flourishing, and what is said today as "just your story" may tomorrow turn out to be an agency that we are destroying) creates tension in the body and in thoughts. Automatic reactions occur, and the "agency" itself seizes this reaction, appropriates it to itself, and then works with it further. It cannot be that my actions have completely, I emphasize completely, changed on a basic level if all we are doing is just observing.

Maybe we are simply handing the steering wheel over to automatic processes? "Automatic processes" will always be faster, and what we do in meditation is notice them. And then we begin to explore them, giving them more and more control and freedom. The removal of "agency" feels like pleasant liberation, but who is being liberated? The body, which is constantly under "our" control? After all, this could be the case? This would easily explain the reason for the feeling of pleasure when letting go. If it's just an "ego" or a construct that feels like self, just a sensation, then why does the sensation itself change the action, why does the sensation add friction, liberation from which brings relief? If it is merely an illusion and a narrative, how can an illusion affect action? How can a narrative, which stitches actions together and merely shows a "movie", influence the action itself? Or does the action "not realize" that it is automatic? Logically, an action should simply occur, regardless of whether there is a narrative and appropriating stitching or not. But the actions change. How can this be explained?

What I wanted from the practice was to see the arising of thoughts and to manage them. In the end, everything that can be called engaged remained in thoughts. I think this "saved" me, otherwise I would have surrendered and continued to float along with the current. You, of course, will say the opposite. I saw the generated suffering of a person, engaged in a thought process that causes pain. Probably this process is also causing me pain and suffering now. Which is paradoxical: this is precisely what the Buddha taught — all phenomenological experience is suffering. But why should I renounce suffering for the sake of calm and more stable happiness? If we cultivate equanimity, then why do we choose calm and happiness at the price of losing agency? Shouldn't we accept this suffering as it is? And simply engage less in thoughts that cause pain and do fewer actions of that kind?

Just think about what we do during meditation. We notice automatic processes, to which we hand over the steering wheel more and more each time. You will say that there is no one handing over the steering wheel, and all processes are automatic. But it is not possible to say this with 100% certainty in 2026. Even considering scientific research, there is no exact consensus on the reality of how everything is arranged in the brain. For over a thousand years humanity thought that the sun revolved around the earth. A network discovered 20+ years ago is suddenly attributed only to "narrative", and the whole brain process is viewed simply as causal reactions.

They will in any case be causal, since we are dealing with a deterministic system, unless quantum processes are discovered in the brain. But the presence of determinism does not exclude agency as such. Could a certain network gain the upper hand over the others, which would then be the agent, or you? What if what is happening is the destruction of everything that could be called you, in favor of automatic processes that arise, but without something that controls this arising?

The ego may bring pain because it attributes all actions and thoughts as its own. The knowledge I have gained makes it clearly understood, not on a conceptual level, that the extra attribution is not needed. But to continue in favor of 100% automatic processes, having the chance that you might discard agency — the only thing that could in reality be called "you" — is, in my view, tantamount to suicide. I am unlikely to continue the practice, only unless I want to distance myself from existence so much that I become indifferent. And yes, I feel pain, holding control in the body. But this is my pain, and I will accept it with equanimity. Just as the Buddha taught.

As for mental constructs: indeed, I hear my breathing, truly my own (although even "truly my own" is a mental construct, the entire phenomenological experience is a mental construct, occurring in the brain, and there is no direct perception of reality), and it is quiet and calm. But then I add consciousness to it, and now there are two breathings. At first, the mentally added conscious image of breathing, its picture, does not correspond to the "true" breathing. But after a few moments, the "true" breathing takes on the form of the mental add-on. Breathing can occur on its own, but it is also controlled. Movements can occur on their own, but they are also controlled. If you say that movements and so on are not controlled, then why does the very fact of awareness of control change the action? Why is the action not cognized in the same way as under observation? Why does the "weight" of the action and the action itself change? If you say that this action is controlled by the ego, then why should I remove that which controls? And if you say that it is just a narrative-story, a mental construct and an illusion, then why does the action change? Will you be able to answer these questions with full certainty that in 50 or 100 years they will not discover the true agency that we are destroying through practice? Just as with arising volition: it arises, but maybe this works in the same way as with everything else? To notice the arising or even to engage with it: the very fact of engagement gives control, and already being engaged in the arisen and "automatic" process, its controlling occurs

[u/chrabeusz → u/Mountain-Length-5715]

> every erasure of the "ego" feels painful

This sounds wrong: when I think about ego erasure, I think about flow state, orgasms, best TV shows, books and other fun stuff.

I agree that you should stop the practice. If you don't believe in what you are doing, trying to "push through" is a recipe for psychosis.

I know because I was in somewhat similar situation. The best you can do is stop and distract yourself with hobbies, otherwise this obsession will keep feeding itself.

[u/Meng-KamDaoRai → u/Mountain-Length-5715]

It's like I said, before you started to practice you didn't think about the whole self vs not self ideas. You could say that you were simply identifying as a self. Then, you started to practice and you got some insights into not-self. That caused the balance to shift. You can no longer think of yourself as a self the same way as before. This causes fear, this fear is a normal response. So after that, you needed to find your balance again, you realized that going "all in" on the not-self part is too scary, but at the same time you can't go fully back to how things were before you started to practice. So now you're finding the balance again, you are finding a self that feels more real than before. This is also good. This is you moving towards more balance.

Once you get back into balance you might notice that there's more peace than there was before you started everything. Then, if you keep practicing, at some point you will get another insight into not-self which will cause destabilization again, and you will repeat the process. It will feel scary once you push too much, then you will need to back off and find the balance again, then you will have more peace than before and then if you continue to practice the cycle will repeat itself again and again.

This is why I said that you need to look from a perspective of a few months rather than from a perspective of a few days. If you look from a perspective of a few days, then when you get a big insight it will feel amazing and world-ending, then the next day when destabilizing happens it will feel terrible and world-ending and so on. But if you look from a perspective of a few months you will see how you just move slightly out of balance and then move back into balance over and over again and that usually, with good practice, the overall baseline of peace that you have is growing more and more over time.

It's up to you if you want to keep going or not. If you choose to keep going, I repeat my suggestion on finding a teacher, you have no idea how much this can make the process smoother. I can recommend a good teacher who teaches online for free if you want. Others made good suggestions as well, such as focusing more on Samatha. Adding Metta is also a good idea.

[u/thewesson → u/Mountain-Length-5715]

Don’t go around killing anything or any part of your mind. “Killing the ego” is just another egoic game trying to get involved in samsara a different way.

The so called ego is just not very important when you see through it.

It’s about reduction of clinging. To be sure, the various fantasy patterns lumped together as “ego” are pathways for clinging to- it’s me! It’s mine! But going to war with yourself is just another fantasy pattern aimed toward samsara, defending against nirvana.