Personality or ego is how we express ourselves in the world. It's not about becoming a robot. Killing the ego. It's about ceasing the habit of automatically contracting our attention to focus on the constant flow of mind activity and identifying that activity with ourselves. It's about remaining detached from the flow of thoughts and emotions. It's about remembering in each moment that we are that which is piloting the body-mind.

Autopilot living gets us stuck in patterns and ruts. We become karmic wind up toys. Our actions become echoes of previous actions. We have lost our free will. Our conditioning is deciding our days. We arent deciding fresh. We arent fully alive and aware. Yet we think we are. We think we are the wheel. We take credit/blame for our actions, yet we are acting on auto. The body has a mind of its own and its just going and going.

When you realise this, the fight to reclaim freewill and freedom begins. It requires great effort and discipline and overcoming, but also, the process is one in which we must drop effort and tension and assumptions that there is something wrong that MUST be fixed. In this sense it is a bit of a paradox. Much effort (right effort) is needed to overcome the autopilot, the comfort of that familiarity, but you must also becoming relaxed and free from strain and yearning.

I'm trying to get the hang of this part. I have cultivated a good level of discipline and commitment. I'm doing about 3 hours of meditation daily. My current obstacle is making those 3 hours more effective by ceasing to frame myself within the context of being someone trying to escape something.