Ego Death – The Holy Grail

Ego death is what happens when someone who loves you cheats on you (spouse, parent). Imagine the world is incredibly complicated and you only see a small part of it. Your understanding is based on making assumptions about things and simplifying those assumptions. So when you trust someone, you massively reduce their complexity. Let's say we were married, then there are a whole range of ways you will behave that are more simplistic. So in a way I can tolerate being around you because you are not everything at once. These simplifying structures are hierarchical and some of them are far more important than others.

Breach of Trust

Trust is one of them, especially trust in loved ones and family members. That's why betrayal by a family member is really catastrophic. Because it destabilizes your past, all your memories, it destabilizes your present and it destabilizes your future. It shakes your faith in humanity, including yourself, and everything collapses and that is the death of the ego. Underneath the ego for Jung was another structure that he called the self. And the self is what remains constant across the death of the ego, but it is deeper and less personal, it is archetypal. It is what the ego collapses into when it collapses and then what the ego rebuilds over time.

Voluntary - Involuntary

There are two types of it because you can have a voluntary or involuntary ego death. A voluntary ego death is when you have learned a lot and are ready to let go, so that would be your own imitation. It's like lighting a phoenix and setting yourself on fire, that's a much better idea, even though it can still be very hard. Involuntary ego death is very hard on people. People will do almost anything to prevent that, which is partly why they fight to maintain their group-promoted axiomatic simplifications. This is not surprising, because you would lose yourself. Ego death is a trip to the underworld or a fall into chaos, and that is less bad if you do it intentionally.

Pinocchio

But in the Pinocchio story, for example, this is illustrated by Pinocchio descending into the depths to save his father from the whale. He does this voluntarily, but it almost kills him. He barely gets out of the whale, drowns and dies, but he comes back to life. So even if you do it voluntarily, it is still very hard, but it is better than doing it involuntarily, which is the other alternative.