Words Are Not It

How do we wake up out of the ego into our true self?

Seeing the activity of the our ego is a part of it. 

There is the ego and there is the awareness that sees the ego.

Any thought we have is conditioned by the past - all thinking comes from the past - so there's another hint as to what is ego and what is not. 

Simply put, ego is any "thing" that our awareness encounters and our true self is the spacious stillness in which things occur. 

It is one of those paradoxical, hard to grasp things because the true self is beyond thought. Thought cannot capture it, otherwise we could read a book about it and "learn" it. 

I always wanted to "figure it out" by using thought, but that only got me so far. In one way, there is no way to "find" our true self because our true self already "is". There is only slowing down, letting go of clinging to thought and being aware of the space around everything - especially thought. 

That's kind of what meditation is for me.

Words are not it.