All Egos express themselves differently but all Egos actually want the same thing. As such you can use this tool to help you understand your ego and the egos of those around you. 1. All Egos ultimately desire comfortability. When the Ego is in their comfort zone they define that as GOOD. Whatever niche, or habit the Ego has carved out it will desire to stay in there unless some condition puts pressure on it to act/move differently. 2. All Egos desire Mastery, which is rooted in their desire for control. Egos desire to have respect, importance, and control. As such they want to be great at everything they touch, as this will give them complete control/autonomy. 3. All Egos desire attention of some kind, this is rooted in the Egos desire to share their accumulated experiences with an OTHER. Egos love to feel connected. 4. All Egos desire leaving a legacy or mark of some kind. The Egos greatest fear is to die and be forgotten, this is why it moves to reproduce it self in some way whether through invention, teaching, or sexual reproduction it desires to spread its influence in some fashion to exist long after it does. Now even though these are the Ego's desire it does not mean that the Ego will express its desire for these above mentioned categories in a functional way. If the Ego is afraid it will actually deny sometimes it has these desires which causes it to secretly try to obtain these desires through the expression of their Shadow. For instance an Ego will claim it wants to be alone and doesn't want any form of attention, yet it will unconsciously still seek it and deny that is what it is doing.  Egos desire for comfort is why habits are so hard to break. Egos desire for mastery is why it is sensitive to criticism and it either becomes a perfectionist, or a jaded nihilist. Egos desire for attention is why it will bully, troll, or take on the role of hero  and defend against this. Every Ego wants to look powerful and this is why they keep secrets, and are only transparent when it feeds the image of them being noble and virtuous. Every Ego believes it is the most important Ego. Egos love to say "I'm different, I'm not like everyone else" and it looks for features or characteristics that can make it stand out. Egos take pride in being different, they fear being the SAME/ONENESS and this is the cause of all conflicts ultimately. It's why even in close functional relationships the Ego will eventually say it feels like it is "Losing itself" in the relationship and will seek some form of differentiation.  If you notice all these desires are well-meaning, which is proof the Ego isn't evil it is focused on surviving the best way it can. The issue is when said Ego is ignorant it will respond in dysfunctional ways to get its needs met. So what is Ego? The Ego is the totality of everything associated with your Avatar. The strongest aspect of that being your memory. We can divide it into two types of memories. Your psychological memory of your life story and all it entails, and your biological memory/body.  Enlightenment does not rid you of ego, it rids the ego of controlling your actions. When you become Enlightened you will still respond to the Name of your character. When Enlightened you will still need to eat food. All these are egoic actions, all these actions still create conflict of interest. So what's the difference? An Enlightened person is not very attached to survival. So they are okay with the bare minimum needed to survive. As such they are more authentic and express themselves freely regardless of the opinions of others. Because an Enlightened person has complete Self-Acceptance...they don't care whether they live or die because they know....what you call life and death are imaginary.  You can summarize everything I said above in one fell swoop with this one phrase. The Ego seeks to be all powerful, eternal, to explore the totality of what it is in experience, and then share all that with an other. Sound familiar?