The ego is based on not wanting to see all of reality. The ego is always based on dissociation and splitting. If the ego sees all of reality, it won’t exist any more. Ego continues to exist because it believes its own perception. Ego is part of the mind, and the mind has a great capacity for self-deception. The mind can be lied to; Being cannot be deceived. So in the beginning the mind deceives itself, and it continues to believe that deception, taking it to be reality. But the moment it recognizes that something is not the truth, it cannot hold on to it. In a sense, the mind is very honest, very sincere. It is honest and sincere, but it is not completely knowledgeable or intelligent. But the moment it sees the truth, it cannot pretend that things are any other way. The mind continues to believe the false only because it thinks that it is the truth. The moment you show it that something is false, the mind will let go of it. So the moment the mind sees the whole totality of the truth, it will let go of the false, and the ego will go. One way of going about this is seeing the complete relationship. If you really see, acknowledge, and live a complete relationship, you will have to live as a real human being, not as an ego, not as a mental structure. A mental structure—which is a self-image—persists because you keep engaging in mental relationships, which are split relationships, unreal relationships. When a relationship is complete and real, you have to be complete and real. – Diamond Heart Book Four: Indestructible Innocence, ch.11
When the ego defines everything about who we are, we don’t have our hands off the situations of our lives; it is more like our hands are gripping them, holding them in a fixed position so they can’t change.
Many of us cannot envision the possibility that our identity can actually change. It seems impossible to us that our experience can be so different that the person we have known ourselves to be becomes like a stranger. Can you imagine not even being able to relate to that person, finding it difficult to remember who you were—or how you used to feel?
It is possible. – The Unfolding Now: Realizing Your True Nature through the Practice of Presence, Ch. 14
The ego tries to bring the Divine life to earth and actualize it; but it uses ways which don’t work. The usual result is a personal life which is an imitation of the true one. The ego can imitate only because, at some level, it knows what the real life would be. It is an imitation only because an original exists. It can’t be that we are born to become enlightened and disappear; if we were already pure, why come and suffer, and return to what we were before. What is the point of that? – A. H. Almaas, Diamond Heart Book Two: The Freedom to Be, pg. 198