The Awakening Process
If the ego is indeed a distorted lens of your (self)perception - one with short term benefits but long term problems – than you might want to get rid of it.
This is usually called 'ego awakening'. It has nothing to do with abilities to explore higher dimensions or other supernatural skills.
Ego awakening is just a waking up from a hypnotic thought-pattern that is making it more difficult to follow your intuition – the path of who you're naturally inclined to be.
Video 3: "Undoing the ego habit – thinking more vs less"
“After awakening, you soon discover that you are able to continue with ordinary activities — to work and make decisions as ever, though somehow this is less of a drag. …
In the words of a Chinese Zen master: nothing is left at this moment but to have a good laugh.”
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~ Alan Watts
Video 4: "The Awakening roadmap"
How to.. use the mind for Ego Awakening?
Ego awakening can be achieved in many ways. While paths can be enhanced with all sorts of practices or substances, the main distinction is: Silencing the mind vs Using the mind.
As the ego is a product of excessive conceptual thinking, depriving the mind from conceptual stimulus – by long meditations – can break the egoic thought pattern.
Instead, for those individuals in which the tendency to think is too strong to go back to it's origin, the only way out is by turning conceptual thinking against itself.
Which path is best for you, depends on your personality and the culture – the conditioning – you grew up in.
The Awakening Process