Or:  On the Care and Feeding of the Recalcitrant Ego

Dear Mr. New Age Dude:

We can talk all day about the evils of the Ego, and the transcending thereof, but at the end of that day, your Ego is like your stomach - still there, and still hungry.

Dude, you are never getting rid of your Ego - you are stuck with it, and it's not going away.  You can (and from the looks of you, probably should) take a vacation from it now and again - turn down the volume of Radio Me a little, at least - but like your stomach, it's built in. 

What's more:  The Ego drives art and literature, and the development of culture generally.  As George Carlin said of comedy, the name of the game is "Dig me!"  History would be a prolonged yawn without Ego-driven people doing Ego-gratifying, Ego-sustaining, and Ego-defending things.  No Ego, no action.

The completely selfless person (sustainable only under laboratory conditions, and rarely for very long) is potentially like a satisfied junkie - passive, unmotivated, and rather dull.  At any rate, it's not happening to you any time soon - just look at how much pride you take in being selfless!

Like the stomach, the Ego needs to be fed to avoid becoming an annoyance and a distraction.  Consider Breatharians and anorexics - by trying to suppress the stomach, they make it the center of their lives, their activity, and their identity.  Ultimately, their spurned and abused god consumes and destroys them.  (It's like a character in Carrie Fisher's Postcards from the Edge said about twelve-step program members - "All they do is not take drugs!")  A healthier approach to the stomach and Ego is to respect that you have them, as structural features of who and what you are, to learn to manage them, and to remember not to identify with them - and to take them out for a nice dinner now and again.

So care for it and try to keep it off other people's lawns, and maybe toss it a bone now and again, because it likes treats. 

(Just don't mistake it for a soul.)