Waking in this reality of reason and logic self reasoned itself to be king or ego. Believing in and thus experiencing separation as well as not feeling the oneness of all life, the ego self constantly lives in fear. Additionally, because the ego self believes it’s disconnected from other selves as well as from creator or spirit, its knowledge, which is always from the past, is always limited.

Initially, the ego personality structure knows nothing of the higher self. In a world of reason and logic, a Newtonian materialistic concept, the spiritual concept of a higher self is utterly meaningless. That’s why it’s almost impossible to communicate spiritual ideas to materialists; they’re fully immersed in their world and absolutely know that they’re right, so any other idea must be wrong.

Egotistical materialists have forgotten that all of life is phenomena and that all realities are first created by ideas of them and sustained by belief in them. Once one’s ego understands that it cannot possibly know more than the totality of that, which is both itself as well as all of all that IS or Spirit; it willingly relegates itself to the position of an adviser to higher self and no longer tries to control everything.

Only then will the ego personality begin to grasp the idea of higher self and thus reap the rewards and knowledge gained from such understanding. So really, there’s no competition between ego and higher self because they’re two different ideas. The ego is self serving in an exclusive way, while the higher self is self serving in an inclusive way. In other words, one serves the little me while the other serves the big me 8-)

Can we serve two Gods? Given that we cannot serve two Gods, the higher self is never in competition. The ego on the other hand is the foot stool of the higher self, and wants to take over the position of the higher self. So, this is why the ego uses its influences to distract us, and we sometimes listen to the ego, and make poor judgment. The ego is always competing with the higher self to take control.

I think when we begin to awaken spiritually there is a bit of a war taking place within between the old egoic perception and the new emerging one. I think this is why at times things seem to intensify or get worse before they get better.

Indubitably, the ego is generated and thrives on fear so when we begin to see the illusion that we've created based on this fear and inevitably start to change our mind and thus our perception, the ego begins to panic because it knows it is losing it's power and will pull out all the stops as it frantically fights for survival.

The more we can just observe or witness this ( no easy feat ) without buying into or feeding all those ploys of the ego, the quicker it will relinquish it's control to our higher self and become the implement in this human experience that it is supposed to be.

I think the ego makes up part of who we are as individuals and personalities in human form but unfortunately became so identified with it's own individuality that it sees itself as separate from the Whole.Since we are here as both human (physical) and being (spirit), I think ideally we have to integrate both.