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Inspiration

Ego Death Explained: Who Are You Beyond Your Labels?

Saqib Rizvi
Saqib Rizvi
Nov 7, 2022
3 min read

Picture a name badge clipped to a blazer, a diploma framed on a wall, a business card with a job title printed in neat type. In a single minute of video, Saqib Rizvi takes that inventory apart. His point is that ego death, as he describes it, is not a dramatic annihilation but a spiritual awakening: the moment we see that the identities we carry were handed to us from outside, and feel that they are not our true identity.

Read · 2 sections

Why does Rizvi say our labels are not who we are?

His argument is built from ordinary parts. "Our name was given to us by our parents," he says in the video. "The University degree was given to us by the University. The job title was given to us by the company." From there he generalizes: "so all these labels are kind of given to us." The step he takes next is the one that defines the teaching. Once we see that these labels arrived from the external world, "this is not really who I am," he says, and the question becomes the real one: "who am I really?"

It is worth being precise about what the clip claims. It does not argue that degrees or job titles are worthless, or that a person should discard their name. Its claim is narrower and, in its way, more demanding: none of these labels answers the question of identity. Rizvi describes the awakening as a process in which we "realize this deeply," which suggests the recognition arrives slowly and cannot be reached by simply deciding it.

The video's description adds a second idea that the spoken excerpt does not reach. It states that "the Ego doesn't have to be destroyed. It has to be transformed: From an unhealthy one to a healthy one." Read alongside the clip, that reframes the whole subject. Ego death, in this framing, is less about erasing the self than about loosening its grip on the labels that were never ours to begin with. The description also promises a breakdown of seven types of ego tied to the chakra system, a framework the 59-second clip itself does not get to.

Where to go from here

This short is an opening question rather than a full answer. For Rizvi's fuller teachings, including the chakra-based account of ego types mentioned in the description, start with his channel and the offerings page linked there: linktr.ee/saqibrizvi. Watch the clip once for the labels, then ask yourself which of your own identities you would still be if every one of them were taken away.

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Transcript

[0:01] but when ego death happens it's a process of  Spiritual Awakening in which we realize that  

[0:08] all these identities labels are just things  that are given to us by the external world  

[0:16] it is not who I am really because if you  think about it our name was given to us  

[0:24] by our parents you know the University  degree was given to us by the University  

[0:31] the job title was given to us by the company  so all these labels are kind of given to us  

[0:37] this is not really who I am right these are  just labels but the question is who I am  

[0:43] who am I really so when we realize this  we go through a process of Awakening  

[0:51] in which we we realize this deeply and  we feel that this is not my true identity

Saqib Rizvi
ArtistSaqib Rizvi

Saqib Rizvi is a Vancouver-based meditation teacher who brings science and spirit together, guiding people on inner journeys toward awakening.

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Ego-deathSpiritual-awakeningIdentity-labelsEgo-transformationSelf-inquiry

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Frequently Asked Questions

In this video, Rizvi describes ego death as a process of spiritual awakening in which we realize that the identities and labels given to us by the external world are not our true identity. The video's description adds that the ego does not have to be destroyed but transformed from an unhealthy form into a healthy one.
Rizvi points out that a name was given by our parents, a university degree by the university, and a job title by the company. Because these labels come from outside, he argues they are not who we are, and the real question becomes who we are beneath them.
According to the video's description, no. It says the ego 'doesn't have to be destroyed. It has to be transformed,' moving from an unhealthy form to a healthy one. The spoken clip itself focuses on recognizing labels rather than eliminating the self.

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