I learned that trying to explain this topic to others is like forbidden fruit. Unless asked for. But I am going to write some anyways, because this why we are at this forum anyways.
There is no thing like ego, its not somebody. That's the problem itself. Its just your mind, which is forgotten that its just your tool given to you to put it to good use. And than there is something else behind it, that comes first. That perceives the output of the mind. Emotions, memories, all kinds of perceptions, everything.
After reading a lot of stuff, not particularly mindfulness but about anything, it really changed how i view the world. And i feel like it really comes down to the level of awareness you have about your inner working as a human.
One great example I experienced and got me speechless, more than once or twice:
Little children, who barely able to talk, just about 3 or 4 years old, got a question about about who did something bad in the past? And they are going to say their name. And the "adults" in the room are going to laugh, because it sounds funny to them. But the child did not intended it to be a joke, that`s obvious. Its that they does not yet identified themselves with their memories. And the adults laughed because its so obvious for them to say: "I did it". But its really just a memory at that point.
Spoiler alert: The whole realization is that the entire concept of you is artificial. The idea that there is an ever-present unchanging thing called "you" is fairly straightforward for the uninitiated to grasp. The idea that there is no "you" separate from "me" is harder— by a lot.
What attracted me to it was how well it blended in with our modern ideas in physics. Not just the idea that a wavefunction never dies to zero (unless there is a truly infinite potential somewhere), and that we are part of a large many-body system. But also the idea of the big-bang at the universes (re-?)conception: That spacetime itself started at a point and expanded. It is one thing- a big blob of clay- out of which lumps are formed. One is you and one is me. But we are connected. Your existence would be different if I didn't exist.
To kill the ego is to come to an intuitive understanding of this- by being aware and present.
My daily night routine includes looking at a picture of dinosaurs, and a high resolution picture of the hubble telescope[1] and realize that there is something that drove the making of all of this, the process of evolving, of galaxies, bacteries, dinosaurs, so on...being huge and getting big, as dinosaurs, galaxies, humans did. And the variety of those, and so on...None of those made any conscious decision of, for example growing a wing in the future, or the shape, or the structure, or the color if it. But yet it did happen.
So there is that thing that drove the making and changing of everything. And that there is no I or you, there is just this thing of making without knowing or being able to direct any of it. And this is the point where the we cant really describe it anymore precisely. Its everything you can not think of. The opposite of what the brain is capable of comprehending.
If I can keep this point of "worldview" so to say, before actually falling asleep, I get the best sleep anyone can wish for.
I learned that trying to explain this topic to others is like forbidden fruit. Unless asked for. But I am going to write some anyways, because this why we are at this forum anyways.
There is no thing like ego, its not somebody. That's the problem itself. Its just your mind, which is forgotten that its just your tool given to you to put it to good use. And than there is something else behind it, that comes first. That perceives the output of the mind. Emotions, memories, all kinds of perceptions, everything.
After reading a lot of stuff, not particularly mindfulness but about anything, it really changed how i view the world. And i feel like it really comes down to the level of awareness you have about your inner working as a human.
One great example I experienced and got me speechless, more than once or twice: Little children, who barely able to talk, just about 3 or 4 years old, got a question about about who did something bad in the past? And they are going to say their name. And the "adults" in the room are going to laugh, because it sounds funny to them. But the child did not intended it to be a joke, that`s obvious. Its that they does not yet identified themselves with their memories. And the adults laughed because its so obvious for them to say: "I did it". But its really just a memory at that point.