In the words of Carlos Castaneda, from The Art of Dreaming, concerning the Loss of Ego:

Don Juan insisted that the sorcerers’ way is the best means to oil, so to speak, the wheels of energy redeployment, and that of all the items in the sorceress’ way, the most effective is “losing self-importance.” He was of the opinion that self-importance is not only the sorceress’ supreme enemy but the nemesis of mankind.

Don Juan’s argument was that most of our energy goes into upholding our importance. This is most obvious in our endless worry about the presentation of the self, about whether or not we are admired or liked or acknowledged. He reasoned that if we were capable of losing some of that importance, two extraordinary things would happen to us:

• One, would free out energy from trying to maintain the illusory idea of our grandeur;
• And two, we would provide ourselves with enough energy to enter into the second attention to catch a glimpse of the actual grandeur of the universe.

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