I have been reading a lot about DMT. I have not tried it yet but look forward to soon. One thing I see is that some people would say it kicks your egos ass? I will certainly be one to tell you that in the past I have been very egotistical and it's something I have been working on through mediation and meaning.

Could someone elaborate on that? Perhaps share their experience.

I have yet to try it too, so this might help or might not. The why i see ego is, that your ego is your "self"(inner) and when you do dmt your ego dies, kicked on its ass but the point is that it shows or makes you feel one with all and not your ego self.

After copious amounts of spice i completely lost my sense of identity. Its slightly frightening but i believe that in some way its constructive. I can only speak for myself but i feel that my ego is brutally beaten to death by the idea that i am only one small piece in an infinitely large puzzle. While I'm on a trip any illusion of control is met with discomfort. The only way i can exist in hyperspace is to be completely submissive.

Like i said, this is only my experience but i hope it helps.

Here are my ibogaine flash backs related to ego:

My first flash back was seeing my ego as a pulsating and throbbing chuu chuu train.

My second flashback is the Side view of a dude smiling smugly and a woman trying not to laugh. Followed by a side view of the same dude warm and open with the also women warm and open.

My third flashback is thinking "why did god create ego?" I'm agnostic by the way

My fourth flashback was seeing an old man on a cross with a spike through his chest a santa hat and a crown of thorns looking at a static tv set in terror. Ibogaine's head popped up in red light and he had devil horns as he told me this was a cosmic joke followed by him laughing.

The last flashback is ibogaine chanting "i am you, you are me" I try and remember this when I talk to people

Oh and life would be boring if it was perfect.

Ego loss/ego death is pretty amazing, and it's a sliding scale. You could do too little of a psychedelic (most, not just DMT have this effect) and experience no ego loss, you could have some moderate ego loss, you could have near complete ego loss, and complete ego loss.

Shrooms being more easily dosed, I found that the ones I ate most often, 3 grams would give "near complete" ego loss.

So... my attempt to explain it?

For the sake of this explanation, your Ego is your sense of identity. It's the part of your consciousness telling you who you are, and explaining why you do the things you do in whatever way possible to prevent cognitive dissonance (conflicting beliefs).

If you believe violence is wrong, and you deck someone for upsetting you for whatever reason, your Ego is the part of you that says "Violence is wrong, but what I did was ok because X Y and Z". The stronger one's Ego in day to day life, generally the less humble you are. You're right, if someone disagrees with you, they're wrong, and whatever rationalization needed to make it that way is used.

My ego was never very strong to begin with, but ego loss has definitely helped me overcome some of my deeper seated issues.

The stronger the level of ego loss experienced, the more you forget "who you are" in a manner of speaking, and the less you defend the actions that don't follow what you believe to be the "correct" way to act.

I've found that the best "personality modification" happens for me at near complete ego loss on shrooms at 3 grams. I essentially look at myself as if I were another person, but still know it's me, and go "why the fuck do I do that, that's stupid... I should change that". No excuses, no rationalizations... just pure realization of the perceived fault as such, with a desire to correct it.

The one time I did 4 grams I don't have complete ego loss yet, but I'm too blissed out to care. The two times I've done 6 grams... there is no I, Me, Myself... just awe, amazement, love for everyone and everything.

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Now, in reference to DMT... honestly the ego loss there seems far less useful in a therapeutic personality modifying sense... but it does give a very spiritual feeling. The breakthroughs I've had, the only concept of myself was the fact that I was witnessing something so incredibly amazing that nothing else mattered. I was insignificant... but blessed that even as such, was where I was at. Best way I can describe it for DMT.

incredibly insightful posts thanks all.

Here's the deal with the ego for me. So many people (not just here at the Nexus, and not just psychedelic users) look to destroy their ego and be done with it like it's some kind of cancer you have to shed. I believe it's more about balance. Among other things, the ego is what narrates your life. Largely through language, it identifies individual parts of the whole and attempts to make some meaning out of it. Part of the problem is that the ego will try to do this even when it perhaps shouldn't be done. This is where the balance comes in. You see, without the ego, your psychedelic experiences would be meaningless. The whole concept of integration is about taking your psychedelic experience which may have momentarily transcended the ego, and then letting your ego take the whole experience and start breaking it down into more "workable" understandable parts. Without the ego there would be no insights to glean (or you wouldn't be able to take them back with you at the least) and no regular memory of it either.

In an ego-death experience, the concept of subject/object dissipates and all that is left is the experience. You become one with whatever is presented to "you" in the experience. So if you're having an ego-death experience and you find yourself in some archaic temple, you are that temple. As the intensity of the experience begins to wane, the ego, like the phoenix, progressively but somewhat rapidly is reborn (whether you like it or not). The key is to allow it to do its job just enough. You want your ego to come up with the balanced narrative where it can discern a substantial amount of information from the experience you had without going overboard.

So let's take an example. In a bout of ego-death, you find yourself in (one with ) something akin to a psychedelic circus. The ego not doing enough (upon its return) will leave you utterly confused with no descriptions (and likely memory) to inform you of what just transpired. If the ego does too much, it may try to lead you to believe something like the circus was the dwelling of some terrorists in hyperspace, whereas a balanced ego will leave you with adequate memory of the experience and a reasonable explanation of the circus elements and their appropriate relevance to your own life problems, etc...

Yea, I agree with this and know what he's saying, absolutely. We just find ourselves placed in the situations we're in, almost like fish in aquariums, the fish get to swim around but their container, well, that's chosen by the pet store, then the owners, etc etc.

We just move from one experience to the next.

It's like, we're helping the universe blow up, and more and more of us come to this side to help aid in destruction and torment, maybe we're not just a virus on earth ravaging the seas and forests maybe we're a virus accross the entire universe, infecting worlds with language and causing instability whereever we go, all accross the stary galaxy.

we are not designed for this environment, ego

Some excellent posts here. My take on things is that the purpose of the ego really should be to help us to survive and live in peace with one another. However, since man has lived, man has encountered many problems along the way and because his ego wants him to be protected, man has become overdefensive to all these happenings. Look at our history of wars, and evil atrocities, and you will realise why man's ego would feel like this.
When you take a powerful psychadelic, you leave your earthly realms and ego far behind, and can see them for what they are: A survival and living instinct base, that we have added to unnnecessarily due to excessive fearfulness because we let situations get to us because we spent too much time "in the thick of it", and didn't seperate ourselves enough from it.

Like the above posters have mentioned, i think what we want is to be able to learn that what we need is just the right amount of "natural baseline" ego, and we want to get rid of the excess, which is the bit that causes us problems. I think Buddha did this when he learnt of the "middle path". It is said that we are divine spirits acting out as human beings. I think this is a nice way of putting it. I think that our spiritual happiness is based on realising that we are one, and that the only thing that makes us human is our pure ego. The problem for us humans is when we add to that basic fundamental ego, and start to build our own ignorance that we know better than it, and start to seperate ourselves from the basic truth that we are spiritual beings. Whilst a full on DMT experience may be mindblowing, a moderate shroom dose may be more educational, since it can be easily integrated with the ego as Art Rimor said.

When we say we want to destroy the ego, we really mean the junk that does not serve us. We don't mean our natural baseline ego. To destroy that would be death.