Ego & Soul: What I Mean by Them

Before going much further, I think it is important to get clear about terminology.

Words like ego and soul carry enormous baggage. Religion, psychology, philosophy, spirituality, and popular culture have all given them different meanings. Two people can use the same word while talking about completely different things.

So when I use these words throughout my writings, I am not claiming that my definitions are scientifically proven, metaphysically true, or the only correct definitions.

I am simply establishing a language—a framework that helps me make sense of what I observe within myself.

What I Mean by Ego

When I use the word ego, I am talking about the part of me that experiences itself as the individual person called Scott.

It knows my name.

My history.

My relationships.

My successes and failures.

It remembers what happened yesterday and worries about what might happen tomorrow.

It plans.

It compares.

It evaluates.

It protects.

It wants approval and dislikes rejection. It wants security and becomes uncomfortable with uncertainty. It develops opinions about how life should unfold and can become frustrated when reality refuses to cooperate.

My ego is not bad.

In fact, I need it.

It helps me drive a car, run a business, make appointments, solve problems, recognize danger, maintain relationships, write these words, and function in the physical world.

The ego is an extraordinary tool for navigating human life.

Problems begin when I forget that it is a tool.

When I completely identify with my ego, every threat to my identity can begin to feel like a threat to me.

Someone disagrees with me, and I feel the need to defend myself.

Someone rejects me, and I wonder what is wrong with me.

Someone succeeds, and I compare their life with mine.

Something does not go according to plan, and I become angry because reality is refusing to cooperate with the story in my head.

I explore two sides of that process in The Meaning We Give Things and The Space Between What Happens and What We Think Happened.

The ego continually asks questions such as:

Am I safe?

Am I important?

Am I loved?

Am I successful?

What do other people think of me?

Am I right?

What happens next?

Those are not necessarily bad questions.

They are useful questions for a human being trying to survive, function, belong, and make his way through the world.

They simply come from a particular perspective.

What I Mean by Soul

When I use the word soul, I mean something quieter and more difficult to define.

I notice something interesting when I become still enough to observe my own mind.

If I can watch my thoughts, what is doing the watching?

If I can notice fear arising within me, there seems to be something capable of observing the fear without completely becoming the fear.

If I can watch my ego become defensive, jealous, excited, disappointed, angry, or afraid, there appears to be a perspective from which I can observe those reactions rather than simply act them out.

I have chosen to call that deeper awareness soul.

Someone else might call it consciousness, awareness, presence, the observer, the deeper self, metacognition, or something entirely different.

The label matters less to me than the experience.

I know that I can sometimes step back from the immediate story in my head and observe it.

And when I do, life often looks different.

The urgency decreases.

My perspective expands.

I become less interested in winning and more interested in understanding.

Less interested in controlling and more interested in experiencing.

Less interested in defending my identity and more interested in discovering what might actually be true.

I do not know exactly what this deeper awareness ultimately is.

Perhaps it is simply something the human brain is capable of doing.

Perhaps it is consciousness.

Perhaps it is something spiritual.

Perhaps it is something I do not yet have language to describe.

I do not need to solve that mystery in order to find the perspective useful.

The Wave and the Ocean

One metaphor has helped me understand the distinction.

Imagine consciousness as an enormous ocean and an individual human life as a wave.

The wave has a recognizable form. It has a beginning, a shape, movement, and eventually an ending.

From the wave’s perspective, it appears separate.

That is something like ego.

I am this wave.

This is my body.

My name.

My history.

My possessions.

My relationships.

My accomplishments.

My problems.

My life.

But the wave has never actually been separate from the ocean.

It is the ocean temporarily expressing itself as a wave.

That is closer to what I mean by soul.

The ego says:

I am this wave.

The soul quietly suggests:

Perhaps I am also the ocean.

That word perhaps matters.

I cannot prove that consciousness is an ocean or that an individual consciousness continues beyond the body. I do not know where consciousness ultimately comes from or what happens to it when the wave disappears.

Those remain mysteries.

But as a metaphor for my experience, the ocean and the wave have become extremely useful.

They remind me that the individual character I call Scott may be real and important without necessarily being the entirety of what I am. Whether the metaphor must be literally true to remain useful is a question I explore in Does It Have to Be Real?.

The Ego Is Not the Enemy

This distinction matters because spiritual discussions sometimes make the ego sound like something we should destroy.

I do not see it that way.

Trying to eliminate the ego can easily become another ego project:

Look how spiritual I am. I have conquered my ego.

There is something almost comical about that.

I would rather think in terms of cooperation.

The ego is remarkably good at navigating the world.

What I call the soul may be better at providing perspective on why and where I want to go.

The ego can build the boat.

The soul can help choose the direction.

The ego can pursue success.

The soul can ask what success actually means—a question at the heart of What Does the Soul Call Success?.

The ego can protect me from danger. The soul can help me question whether there is actually danger. I experienced that distinction very directly in When the Ego Gets Loud, when fear began turning responsibility into a need for control.

The ego can help me create a life.

The soul can remind me to experience it—something I felt unexpectedly one quiet morning and explored in Through My Own Eyes.

The ego can become angry when something goes wrong.

The soul can ask what the anger is trying to accomplish, which I consider more directly in Is Anger a Tool or a Weapon?.

The ego can demand an answer.

The soul can sometimes remain comfortable with the mystery.

Neither perspective makes the other unnecessary.

The soul does not defeat the ego. It gives the ego a larger context.

Two Perspectives, One Human Being

Throughout these writings, I will sometimes say things like:

My ego became afraid.

My soul became still.

My ego wanted to defend itself.

My soul wanted to understand.

I am not suggesting that two separate beings live inside me.

I am describing two perspectives I recognize within one human experience.

Perhaps the simplest definitions are these:

Ego is my name for the part of me navigating the human experience.

Soul is my name for the deeper awareness from which I can observe that experience.

I know both perspectives experientially.

I do not know what the deeper awareness ultimately is.

Fortunately, I do not need to know in order to make use of it.

When I am completely absorbed in the ego, I tend to experience myself from inside the story.

This is happening to me.

I need to fix this.

I need to defend myself.

I need to know.

I need to win.

When I step into what I call soul, something changes.

I can notice the story.

I can question it.

I can recognize the fear beneath it.

I can consider another person’s perspective.

I can become curious about what I do not know.

And most importantly, I can create a little space between what I am experiencing and what I choose to do next.

That space between reaction and response becomes especially important in The Ripple of Choice, where I explore how even small choices can continue outward into consequences I may never fully see.

That space may be one of the most valuable things this entire framework gives me.

The ego plans, protects, compares, remembers, accomplishes, and acts.

The soul—or deeper awareness—steps back, widens the view, questions the story, and reminds me that whatever I am experiencing in this moment is not necessarily the whole of what I am.

The soul provides perspective.

The ego provides capability.

Awareness helps me recognize what is happening.

Choice determines what I do next.

Neither needs to defeat the other.

Perhaps maturity is simply learning how to let them work together.

And somewhere within that cooperation, I get to experience the strange, difficult, mysterious, and beautiful adventure of being human.