The subject seems challenging enough for me to come up with my own point of view.
What is ego? Is it separate from us?
Ego is the sum of all the conditioning, patterns, memories and wounds created by your mind. (Eckhart Tolle goes as far as to say that it's created by collective human pain, I neither agree nor disagree with this - I just don't know either way.) Ego is a vital part of my mind, and therefore it is not me. It is one of my tools. It contains my whole life story, the temporary identity, the concept of me as a person. It also contains some less useless stuff like deriving sense of self from material possessions and thought forms. Ego is a part of mind, and therefore it is separate from who I really am. It's quite useful, but very pesky if not used sporadically.
Ralph
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