0:00:00.1 April Pride: Hey, welcome to the High guide. I’m your host, April Pride, and I have a confession, today’s episode isn’t about an entheogen, but by definition, a couple that we’ve covered in this series haven’t been either… No, today isn’t about a specific medicine, but rather the desired effect, non-ordinary states of consciousness have on our psyche by way of our brain, and before we get into the word of the week, I have a favor to ask, consider the episodes you’ve listened to of the High Guide recently. My guess is you have at least two friends who may appreciate what we’re sharing, in fact, I bet you have at least one friend who’s gonna be tripping soon and would really appreciate one of our original audio journeys that aired in November, December and January to listen to as they drift into a non-ordinary state of consciousness, think of the gift this will be seriously. Now, with these friends in mind, please scroll through the High Guide feed and find one to share with each of them, definitely an easy request to satisfy and certainly a win-win. Okay, that was business in the front, onto the party. Today’s word of the week, ‘Ego death.’ The temporary loss of attachment to the sense of oneself, also known as Death of the ego, ego loss and ego dissolution.
0:01:25.9 April Pride: Ego death is a young-ian psychology term, fundamental and a transformation of the psyche, it is a phase of self-surrender, transition and a loss of self-identity, a feeling of being part of something larger than oneself, a feeling of wholeness enlightment… We are born with processing tools within the mind that filter through our sensory inputs, absorbing the information it deems necessary to our survival. This is the main purpose of the ego to protect our body. In fact, fight-or-flight is born out of this purpose, it is not a question of, is ego death, good or bad, but more a curiosity about what we can learn about ourselves when we remove the ego, even just temporarily. Although it is possible to enter the state of consciousness through meditation or spending time in nature, psychedelic substances such as LSD, psilocybin, ketamine and DMT disable the default mode network or the DMN as I’ll refer to it, moving forward, with psychedelics an overactive DMN is quieted and most significantly looped tapes of negative self-talk are disrupted, [chuckle] so we can separate our true self from the stories we’ve embodied as our minds coping and reactionary Center, the DMN is where we surrender to our ego or surrender our ego.
0:02:57.9 April Pride: The temporary suppression of our ego that occurs when we met our mind with psychedelics effectively allows us to reboot our mainframe, free from clutter and glitches, we are more readily available to tap into consciousness and increase our capacity to see and appreciate the truth of reality regardless of our conditioned perception. Ego death helps us understand why psychedelic substances have such a profound ability to help individuals heal and overcome addiction and other mental illnesses. If you wanna learn a little bit more about ego death, we have some resources for you to check out. And you can find these in our show notes for this episode, is ego death good or bad? Well, while psychedelics can support our quest to lose our ego and find ourselves, there is such a thing as too much fun, so before strapping yourself in for a super psyched life, you should check out an article from vice that we’ve linked to in the show notes about people that really take ego death way too far, or I should say, searching for ego death too far.
0:04:07.9 April Pride: There’s a song called Ego Death by Ty Dolla $ign featuring Kanye West, FK twig and Skrillex. That’s not so bad. I think you check that out too… I like the video. You can check it out on YouTube, again, it’s called Ego Death. And I thought, this was like, I don’t know, 2014, Russell Brand came out with a documentary called Brand: A second coming, and this is when he was like… His marriage to Kate E. Perry was falling apart because he had become sober and more spiritual, and definitely his ego had subsided quite a bit, and he was just over all the fame shit, and it was really interesting to watch how he reacted to his own wife and the life that they had chose together at one point, as his ego again, was diminishing and the focus was less on himself and more on the collective and the well-being of the collective, and I think it very clearly presents the revolution that occurs in one’s life with the devolution of one’s ego. A quote that I found that I think it just says it all, from Eckhart Tolle is, “Ego implies unawareness. Awareness and ego cannot co-exist.
0:05:29.2 April Pride: Thank you for listening to this episode of the High Guide. I’m your host, April Pride. Please tune in next week as we air the trailer for season three starting on March 18th. Please check out our show notes for more information on this episode, and where to find us on social. Check out our website, thehigh.guide for more information on cannabis and psychedelics, and remember to rate and review the show wherever you listen to the podcasts. It really does help more people find us.
0:05:57.3 April Pride: Have a great weekend.
