ego's suicide?

The learned spiritual teacher who gave a talk to an elite audience yesterday said that most of the problems and agonies of individuals arise only from their ego. The ‘I’ and ‘mine’, have to be got rid off. Eliminating the ‘I’ is the purpose of spiritualism so as to prepare oneself to approach divinity.
I have been hearing this too often. The ego, the culprit, has to be killed! It seems to be there in all the spiritual texts. It looked to me as a sort of extortion to commit suicide! The saying itself is traditional, and by repetition it has almost become a cliché that nobody pays much attention to, as if it is a saying taken for granted in any spiritual talk or discussion.
But for the understanding of the present day minds, there is a slightly different approach to the same idea or fact, which appeals to me. The EGO can never be eliminated. It can only be quieted. Elimination of the ego is suicide. Only when the person dies the ego gets eliminated from the body. Here what is meant by the EGO is the constant feeling of ‘I’ and not the boosting of the ‘I’ with self importance.
‘I’ is necessary in day to day life. Like the mind, and being a creature of the mind, ‘I’ is a useful tool that can be used positively and constructively. Here the user is also ‘I’, activated and identified by the underlying reality.
‘I’ is quiet in real meditation, may be even for a few moments only. But on coming out of meditation, ‘I’ becomes as active and as virulent as ever, unless the ‘I’ is understood while in meditation or otherwise. Every aspect of ‘I’ has to be directly perceived and understood before it can become quiet. When the ego is quiet one can go ‘beyond’ it. Or at least try to feel what is behind it illumining it. Direct perception of the ego in meditation eliminates its virulent negativity and allows itself to be quiet even on coming out of the state of meditation. Attention to all passing thoughts, images, visions, emotions, regression incidents etc. help to perceive and understand the ego allowing itself to be totally quiet until evoked for use.
As an example let us take the ego’s fear of death. Fear of death is part of the ego, the ‘I’. In meditation you either feel or perceive as an outsider, the nature of the fear of death with all the accompanying symbols, images, noises and visions. You notice the underlying fear and understand that there is actually only ‘fear’ underneath and not ‘fear of death’ in particular’ It is the one fear as a single emotion that is projected as fear of death, fear of disease, fear of losing one’s job, etc., etc. On understanding this, the fear, losing its identification with death, becomes quiet. That part of the ego is then quiet even after coming out of meditation, because the knowledge of the nature of fear remains with the ego. Simple fear as a dormant emotion may still be there because of one’s physical chemistry, but its intensity slowly fades.