In the age of the self, the title of this article may sound strange; in this day and age, we praise the self so much, seeing it as perfect and accepting all of its flaws as necessary and normal, so that when someone says something like “self-denial”, many tend to react with anger; to many people the notion of this sounds out of place, in this age of the self, when we are told that we are perfect just as we are…. Notwithstanding, deep down, as we work on self-discovery in our inner work, we know that we are not really so perfect, and that a serious effort is necessary if we are to progress towards the self-realization of the Being.

To deny the self is to deny the ego (the subconscious aspects such as anger, greed, lust, pride etc.), so that the consciousness can be awake and alive. If it is sleeping, then the ego is the one in control, maintaining its rule with the help of personality. The ego must die so that the consciousness may live awakened.

To deny the self, the ego, to eliminate it in the moment when it manifests, means that we will have to experience unpleasant sensations that are also created by the ego – sensations that come about when we deny the ego its food. And it is that very sensation that tends to be one of the greatest culprit for stopping people from delving deep into the mysteries of the inner work that leads towards Final Liberation, as this sensation of ego-disappointment is so unbearable for many people that ultimately they give in and do whatever the ego says they should be doing.

For example, when the ego of gluttony comes and creates a bait of a mental and/or emotional inner scenario, if we don’t give in and begin to eliminate that illusion and trickery, we will probably feel an unpleasant emotion – we have all experienced this. It is the same sensation appearing when we feel justified to react with anger or with pride, but instead we take another path and eliminate it right there and then. And it will also be the same with denying lust, jealousy, fear etc. All the egos create heaviness, no matter how pleasantly or unpleasantly we perceive them in the moment they manifest. They are always heavy, and their full force we begin to notice when we don’t go along with them and/or when we begin to eliminate them. If we are observant, we may also notice their strength if we indulge, but as most people are living their lives psychologically asleep and looking for immediate exit from the pain that indulgence brings through seeking more pleasure, they will not be truly aware of the workings of the ego.

When we deny the ego its dwelling within us, when we work on purging our inner house from all the thieves that have been living there for long, long time, stealing from us and living at our expense, then we truly begin to move towards the great mysteries of life, death, existence, non-existence, the Absolute, and beyond.

The elimination of the ego liberates the consciousness from the shackles of the materiality, and through the Path of initiations it prepares us for the wisdom and knowledge of our Being. The inner death is the first and last step on the Path of the Three Mountains, the path in which everything that is coarse, heavy, and muddy needs to be completely removed and the space in which this dirt has been, must be purified and prepared for the Being to come, through creation or activation of the spiritual bodies, so that we may move into further vistas of spiritual unfoldment, performing work beyond the elimination of the egos.

The mysteries are unveiled slowly, depending on our preparedness, the grade and age of our Being, and the initiation we are currently at on the Path. We are given everything that we can be given if we do what we can do; what we are meant to do.

The expansion of our knowledge of reality happens gradually, in dreams, conscious out-of-body experiences, through spiritual senses, and in our daily life. The death of the ego speeds up the process because it makes us ready for it, it increases the consciousness and with it its capacity to understands things of this world and of other worlds. It changes the way we see things and the dynamic of our mind. Everything is changed with the death of the ego, our consciousness, our senses, our body… It makes us aligned with a higher frequency, in which we feel more and see more.

The mysteries are revealed gradually within the context of the Path. The more we deny the ego, the more we will go through intense learning situations of life, and as reward we are given knowledge and understanding that can shake us.

Everything changes with the death of the ego.

HDP