The ego can be likened to the eddies that occur in a river as it flows toward the ocean. Moving water creates turbulence, like the circular patterns of thought and emotions create a vortex of identity.
When we look, we can notice that the ego is not constant. It gets bigger sometimes and smaller sometimes. And there are moments when the ego is not there at all, like in moments of deep meditation or being fully present in nature or when our attention is fully absorbed in any activity. In those moments, there are no thoughts of “me and my story”, just absorption in one’s experience — just being.
One could say then, that the ego is more of a tendency, almost like a behavior. In this sense it’s more like a verb than a noun — ego-ing. Oops! Pardon me, I was ego-ing again!
When the ego is believed to be some entity, whether superior or inferior, thoughts and behaviors get constellated around that core belief and difficulty soon follows.
But the vortexes of water are never separate from the river. Which is to say, our true nature is like the river of life, eddies form and disperse and the water flows to the ocean of infinity.