Does being aware of the ego dissolve it ? Or does just resting as “ Awareness” dissolve it , I’ve heard both “ techniques”?

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It is you that dissolves, not ego. You can be dissolved in ego, or you can be dissolved in Presence. You can even be dissolved in both. Dissolving self in Presence is a decision that must be made, and it must keep be being made for as long as you want to do it, as a deliberate act of will.

Awareness of ego does not dissolve it, it just gives you more tools to make the decision with. You can be perfectly aware of all the motivations that lie behind your actions but you can still manage to choose not to change your actions. Awareness only informs will, you still have to choose.

When a person’s will identifies with the ego, and that’s how we choose to be controlled by it. It is true that while meditating on ego one is not held by it, but that is because you’re dissolved in the meditative presence of insight. As soon as you stop meditating, you’re no longer dissolved in Presence! Meditation is an act of will, and all conscious acts of will bring you away from ego-bound experiencing and towards the Presence.

Ego is a pattern. When you perceive certain things, you react in predictable ways. By meditating on this, you can illuminate the patterns. And then you can choose to act differently than the pattern. At least in the beginning, it matters not how you choose to act as opposed to the pattern.

When addicts are finally detoxed and therefore not physically addicted to the substance anymore, they still find the patterns of addiction hard to break. It’s hard to not go take that five minute smoke break every hour. What matters isn’t that you use that five minutes productively or healthily or anything like that, it just matters that you don’t smoke. That’s what it takes to break the pattern of ego. Identify the pattern, then choose something else, and do it consistently.

If this sounds hard, take heart, there will always be something new for you to learn how to do imperfectly, yet consistently. Struggling with ego isn’t as hard as struggling with addiction. The practice I’ve written about recently, remembering practice, is somewhat easier than overcoming ego, but you have to know how. Our minds are set up to want to wipe it all out at once through some imagined secret hack, but we get the best and fastest results out of simple, regular practice that gets switched out every now and again to keep it fresh.

There’s a knowledge barrier to overcome as well. With addiction, it’s often needed for a person to go as far as they can possibly go with the addiction before one can countenance living without it. The knowledge that one cannot really function with the substance needs to be rammed home. Ego is similar, one simply cannot grasp just how deeply it takes root in being. Once you do, then you can make purchase on the problem, and eventually come out of it in control of your own mind. Remembering practice requires you to grasp just how forgetful and flighty attention is. As I came to the awareness, I tailored my practice to my weak points, and found myself with a mind that doesn’t just exist in the present or in ego, but can roam all over time and space.

Things to achieve in life are simple, but hard. Few interventions, but done appropriately, and more importantly, consistently.