Resources

Here's a selection of resources for each stage in the process of ego awakening that we consider useful.

(Un)important notice: You can't really do anything to achieve awakening, is awakening means to wake up from the false belief there is a doer who's in control. The moment any of the tools becomes important to you, it's no longer useful for awakening, as it reinforces the idea of importance that originates from ego. Then, the most useful practice would be to contemplate on this sensation of importance.

Stage 1. Resources for a yes/no decision about non-duality

As said before, you first need to decide if you buy into the idea of non-duality, ego and awakening. There are many books with interesting arguments, such as the finding in neuroscientific experiments that our brain can be tricked into identifying with fake body parts.

Richard van der Linde collected all these arguments from the works of Alan Watts, Sam Harris and several others, stripped them from any dogmatic claim that it proves non-duality is true (none of the arguments prove that) and bundled them in a book.

The first version of this book, titled "Making up Your Mind about Waking up Your Mind", contains all the arguments.

The second version of this book, titled "Considering Non-Duality", contains only a selection of the arguments and is about half the size of the first version.

Both versions are available as paperback and as e-book.

Stage 2. Resources for Initial awakening

If you embark on a quest for ego awakening, your first challenge is to overcome the tendency to conceptualize ego awakening. This is a paradigm shift when it happens. After the first time, it doesn't instantly become easy to do so in every instance, but at least you know you're capable of it and you (kind of) know that your ideas about it from the egoic perspective are false. You can compare it to the process of learning the backflip.

The process of initial ego awakening is like finding an opening for the job you always dreamed about and hearing at the interview that the job is yours if you can figure out a way not to be anxious anymore to get the job. Neither trying not wanting to have the job nor not trying anything will help. It's a paradox, seemingly...

Regardless of the path or resource you choose, the main advise here is to emerge yourself in the process for a few weeks or at least days, as technically you're bypassing your conditioning in order to create a new neural pathway. The moment you interrupt your process, the (egoic) conditioning reasserts itself and you have to start from scratch. Just like with video games from the 1980s, where you always had to start at the first level. Or, like how an egg doesn't get boiled from turning the gas on for only brief moments.

Resources people successfully use for emerging in non-duality are:

Books (here's a varied selection of suggestions)
Free Youtube content (Alan Watts) (Rupert Spira) (Waking up) (Surprise)
Online courses (Turning into Nothing)

Our Alan Watts Workshop evolved from the private ego awakening retreats we've been running since 2017. These workshops are a very budget friendly way to any ego awakening journey, but initial awakening is usually more effective when combined with private sessions or other efforts.

Stage 3. Resources for Integration

Once you've gone through the gateless gate (it's not really a gate from the other side of the... gate) – the initial awakening experience – it becomes a matter of repetition and application of the new perspective.

You'll find that a lot of your beliefs hinge on the assumption of the voice in your head really being you. One by one, those beliefs start to change, which leads to new ideas, new interests and even new choices.

You'll also notice that many of your memories were formed from the perspective of the ego. As a result of this noticing, some of those (bad) memories will start to lose their importance and thereby their effect on your mood and your abilities.

This process also might, at some stages, involve the release of bodily tensions as some memories had the effect of leading to chronic tension (which is why some awakening disciplines work by actively releasing tension).

Gradually, your mind becomes unconditioned from the egoic thought-pattern and forms new neural pathways. Events in your life are perceived through a different lens. After ego awakening, the following elements usually mark your perception:

The universe is you, is inherently helpful and therefor any circumstance is beneficial.
There's no right or wrong, just authentic of inauthentic. The more one does from the egoic point of view, the stronger the universe will nudge you back to the authentic path.
Despite a preference of comfort, following the authentic path – a surrender to the intuitive drive and being aware of it – is the most fulfilling path.
Surrender to intuition always leads to the most optimal path and can never go wrong
Unpleasant behavior of others happens to you for a reason – either as a mirror or as a means to learn to recognize their true nature, mindset and drives (i.e. compassion).
While each person has a personal purpose, full awakening is both the only real purpose and isn't important at the same time.

You can use techniques such as Method Acting to look from this perspective even before it has become your default, enhancing the process of making this your default mode of perception.

Stage 4. After the Meta-Insight

At some point, you've gone back and forth between the egoic and the awakened perspective so many times, that you have an insight by which the two states merge.

After this experience, your practice becomes informal in a sense that most of your day is a meditation in which you loop in and out of the non-egoic state.

Tools such as books, youtube videos or courses aren't really that interesting anymore. Instead, it becomes more interesting to refine your perspective through interacting with the world – to see it for what it really is, without the egoic distortion and entirely accept it as it is.

Living among people with the egoic illusion still in place can feel like being an ex-alcoholic still living in a bar with only alcoholics. How do you deal with drink offers or drunk people? It takes a little while until you have unlearned all the patterns from the time you were one of the alcoholics.

We plan to offer weekly workshops in the future with a focus on navigating social challenges of the awakened perspective in an unawake society. We are not aware anything of the like exists but it sounds like a lot of fun.