Great thread
To me this really is the 'heart' of the issue.
We can study all the aliens, conspiracies, new age teachings, religious and spiritual teachings and continue the search for truth endlessly, but as Jesus continually said: you must be reborn to enter the kingdom of heaven (enlightened consciousness) that is at hand here and Now inside of you.
The core issue, the heart of the issue, is that we are not our ego and until we have let the ego die, then we will be trapped in the lower sense of identity and there will be 'weeping and nasshing of teeth' and we will remain in a state of suffering as Gautama Buddha pointed out.
The goal for the spiritual pioneers, those who will lead the way into the Golden age and in all reality 'save the world' is to be reborn into the reality of who we are in the eternal Now, rather than the illusion of who we are in the matrix.
When we give all we have to the higher consciousness within, when we surrender the ego, we are reborn into the higher consciousness within us, the kingdom of heaven within us. It is then we will do the works that Jesus did, only greater works than these we will do.
We will be in this world (in 3d), but not of it (our consciousness will be in 6d, 7d or higher). We will be beyond the illusions of duality.
A key understanding for me, is that the ego is not actually our individuality, rather it is our
false sense of individuality.
We do not disappear when the ego is surrendered, we are reborn into the reality of who we are as a being that is in Oneness with the whole, that clearly sees it comes from something bigger (the hiearchy of the infinite), and clearly sees that all life is interconnected rather than separate.
First we give up our false sense of identity based on separation, and then we are reborn into the reality that we are interconnected, we are all One, we are individualization's of the infinite, co-creators with it.
When you have overcome your ego and I have overcome mine, we will clearly see we are connected, but you will still be you and I will still be me. We will be in Oneness and together we will be More, but the "I" remains in both of us.
We will no longer focus on figuring out who we are, because we will be in a state of constant transcendence, of constantly becoming More. We will no longer be trapped in the illusion of time, we will be in the Now. We will no longer focus on comparing ourselves to others, we will instead focus on shining our light on others. We will no longer focus on seeking outside of ourselves, we will be focused on creating from within ourselves.
We will be the body of God below.
To transmute the ego, I believe one great approach is simply to observe it. When you 'catch it' through observation, you realize that YOU are the observer, not the thinker, not the rambling voice in the head, not the story and with the simple act of observing it, you transmute it... until one day, the hot air balloon that the ego is, pops and fizzles and you are left with the real, pure, infinite spiritual being that you truly are.