I have been grappling with an "ego-death" I have experienced and would like to compare it with others. It's common to describe it as the death of the self but I think we should break up the totality of an ego-death into its parts based on our experiences. What have you lost of who you are during the psychedelic experience, amounting up to the death of the Ego?

I feel as the so called “ego-death” can be experienced in multiple variations and isn’t fine-tuned to one definition so I will expand on my own instance. Basically my “identity” that everyone knows me as and even I knew me as was shed through the deconditioning process (which was moments of sheer madness). This had a lot to do with my personal name and even what I thought others thought of who I am. It became apparent that my entire life was a massive story (or illusion) that I finally woke out of. During the trip I fully believed that I was never to return to my old life again and that it was time to move on. Just to expand on that, fully accepting that you are gone forever is such an organic perspective that I don't think anyone else will ever know or come to imagine what it's like until they endure it. Anyways, To my best ability of describing an aspect of an ego-death would be to mention the “mass-mind.” I was no longer observing through my own bias/prejudice that had a major influence on who I thought I was. I tapped into an elevated or collective consciousness of sorts, one that has no single identity. It’s as if the mass-mind is a matrix that our ego can find its footing within. So in a way an ego-death may not just be the shedding of self but the shedding of understandings that the self has taken on and used for adaptation and survival during a lifetime. I think memories play an important role within an ego-death. Memories are evolutionary and adaptive traits as they signal for us when circumstances are dangerous, safe, and so on. We also hold onto our past as if it's physically with us in a way in order to make our life story more "real." During an intense mushroom trip of mine I was shown that my entire past is nothing but information that I hold onto, and has no real physical placement in the current moment besides giving an identity to my mind's being. The Ego.

There are more aspects to this, and I'd like to hear your thoughts.