What is the endgame of being human? Where are we all heading? What’s the point of life? Our goal is always one thing: to become our Real Self. All the many teachings from the Pathwork Guide are approaching this same task, each coming at it from a different angle. As we work in this direction, it will help if we understand how our inner self, or Real Self, differs from our outer self, or ego. What is the relationship between these two? For many of us, having heard various conflicting theories, we’re in confusion about the function of the ego.

Some postulate the ego is essentially negative and therefore undesirable. So then the goal of spirituality is to get rid of it, right? Other theories—particularly from a psychological point of view—say our ego is important, for we cannot be mentally healthy without an ego.

Which of these viewpoints is correct? Let’s find out. For if our vision on this is not clear, it will be difficult to reach our all-important goal of self-realization.

First, let’s clarify the Real Self and its essence. This is our inner self and it is an integral aspect of nature. As such, we are bound to the laws of nature. And nature is something we can trust. It’s not reasonable then, to not trust ourselves—to not trust our innermost selves. If it seems to us that nature is our enemy, this is only because we don’t understand the natural laws that nature is following.

So our inner self is nature. Our Real Self is life. We are creation. This is a better way to say it than to say we are “a part” of nature, or part of creation. Our Real Self and nature are one and the same thing.

Whenever we function from our Real Self, we are in truth and we are joyful. Our most constructive and creative contributions to life arise from our inner self. So everything that expands life—everything wise and beautiful and generous—comes from here. This is worth contemplating, as it cannot be emphasized too much. It’s essential we understand this truth, not only with our mind—we need to feel this.

If this is so, then what is the function of our outer personality—our ego? This is the part of us that operates on a level we have direct access to. Since we are directly, or consciously, aware of our ego, this is our conscious awareness. This is the part of us that thinks, acts, sorts and makes decisions.

If we have a weak ego, we’ll have a hard time coping with life. If we have an overgrown ego, we’ll be lost from our Real Self. In other words, both extremes of ego-weakness and ego-inflation will result in separation from our inner essence. And this essentially is our problem. All our conflicts in life stem from having too big an ego, or too small an ego.

Most often, it’s not that one person has a big ego and another has too small an ego. Rather, it's that both have an imbalance within themselves. We’re underdeveloped in one area of our personality and overdeveloped in another. So nature will take its course and try to reestablish a balance. Overdevelopment of our ego, then, may be nature’s way of straightening out the disturbance caused by having a weak ego in another area of our lives.

Listen and learn more.

Read this chapter online: The Function of the Ego in Relationship to the Real Self

Our attempts to find ourselves—to understand who we are, where we belong in the world, and how we can fulfill ourselves—require a certain amount of insight and strength. Whether we lead meaningful and fulfilling lives also depends entirely on the relationship between our ego and our Real Self. If this relationship is in balance, everything falls nicely into place. All of these teachings from the Pathwork Guide are pointing to this same thing. They're prying at it from a multitude of directions to help us open to this truth as our personal experience.

We can also call our Real Self the universal life principle, which manifests in each and every one of us. It is life itself. For it is unending consciousness in both the deepest and the highest sense. It is pleasure supreme and infinite movement all rolled into one. Since it is life, it can never die. It’s the very essence of everything that moves and breathes. It is eternal vibration. It knows everything and since it can only be true to its own nature, it is constantly creating and furthering itself.

Each person—each individual consciousness—is this universal consciousness. We’re not just part of it, for that would imply we are just a little drop of it. No, we actually are universal consciousness. And this original consciousness, or creative life principle, can take many forms. When we each incarnate as those various forms, we forget our connection with the origin. At that point, a disconnection occurs. We continue to exist and we still contain the universal consciousness, but we become oblivious to our own nature. We lose track of basic spiritual laws and we lose sight of our potential. This, in a nutshell, describes the general state of human consciousness.

When we start becoming aware of this Real Self, we realize that in fact it’s always been there. We just haven’t noticed it because we were under the impression we were cut off from it. So it’s not quite right to say our Real Self “manifests.” More correctly, we begin to notice it. We may pick up on its energy or its self-directing consciousness. Of course our separated ego also comes bundled with energy and consciousness, but the intelligence of the ego alone is far inferior to the universal intelligence at our disposal. The same is true for the energy.

These two things—consciousness and energy—are not separate aspects of the Real Self. They are one. But some of us tend to be more receptive to consciousness while others are more receptive to energy. Nonetheless, they are both part of the experience of self-realization.

Listen and learn more.

Read: What Blocks the Ego from Connecting with the Real Self

As we make our way along our path of self-realization, these words can act like a spiritual bulldozer for each obstruction we encounter in our psyche. For at some point, we will come to a crossroads. What we are now facing is a very old inner landscape that is littered with our fears: fear of death, fear of life, fear of pleasure, fear of feelings, fear of giving up control, fear of being real, and the like. It’s already taken some genuine fortitude to come this far and see that this is what we’ve been covering up. Such fears have been hiding all along in the darkness of our psyche.

To our surprise and dismay, this is where we’re at. And now that we’re more aware of our many fears, we automatically start to feel the effect they are having on our life: What they make us do and how they make us pull back from life. No wonder we have this vague feeling we’re missing out on life. We are. We literally fear the creative process of living and therefore we miss out on it.

It’s time we find the common denominator behind all our fears so we can start unwinding the unnecessary cycles of fear, frustration and pain. If we have embarked on a path of self-discovery but haven’t yet found our fears, don’t worry, it will happen. It must. Then, when we see how we’ve been hiding from life because of our fears, we can apply these words retroactively to smooth the way. Let them plant a seed now that will bear fruit when the whole of your being is ready to see and resolve the problems in your life. And make no mistake, coping with our fears is the main problem we all face in life.

The nature of all our fears is that we misunderstand the function of our ego and how it relates to our Real Self. The problem we face in sorting out this relationship is that it’s extremely subtle and therefore hard to put into words. What’s more, as with all truths in life, it’s chock full of apparent contradictions. That is, at least as long as we are steeped in duality. Once we get over the hump of thinking and living in a dualistic way, then two opposites can become equally true. And as we’ll see, this applies to the ego and its relationship to the Real Self.

For example, it’s true to say that the ego’s exaggerated strength is the biggest hurdle to living a productive life. It’s also true to say that a weak ego can’t possibly create a healthy life. These are not opposites, people. They are both true.

Listen and learn more.

Read: The Ego’s Cooperation With or Obstruction of the Real Self