What’s the role of intuition and ego in our personal evolution? Have you stopped to think about how each one is serving you or not? Consider this a primer on ego and intuition.

As a kid, my only understanding of ego was someone with a lot of pride. Pride was a sin within the culture I grew up in, and as one of the “seven deadly sins,” I think the general population thinks of pride in similar ways. I never distinguished between pride and ego. However, I now have a bigger idea of what ego is.

On the other hand, I understand intuition as a deep knowing or the ability to think thoughts that seem to appear magically in your head. Intuition is a deep body and soul level knowing. Intuition is a fantastic guide when learning to differentiate between ego and intuition.

I’ve said before to feel your feelings, trust yourself, and go inward to see what your tuition is saying. It’s solid advice until we get our ego confused with intuition. What happens when we mistake ego for intuition?

Your ego doesn’t have your best interest at heart.

After years of searching and trying to understand this concept, here’s how I think of our ego. The ego is a nonphysical part of you that thinks it exists to protect and guide us to the best path.

The problem is that the ego is incredibly deceptive, and its role is not to guide us on the best path. The way it protects us is usually not in the best interest of us or others. The ego is your past experiences, fears, feelings, emotional life, and our limiting beliefs, struggles, shame, and guilt. The ego only knows the past.

Think of your ego as a shield around you that we mistake as protection. (Our ego wants us to see it as our protector.) It stores our entire past within this shield. It’s constantly trying to communicate with you.

Outside of the ego is another protective layer which is your intuition. Your intuition does have your best interest at heart. Your intuition comes from a source, which some people would call divine. Some people would call it God. Some people would call it source. Some people would call it the universe. What you call it doesn’t matter. What’s important is to know your intuition has a direct line to all of that. Your intuition is also trying to communicate to you.

Sometimes there are cracks in your ego shield, and your intuition gets through. In those moments, your intuition can communicate a compelling, impactful message that will align with the highest and purest form of good for all.

Whereas ego will feed you thoughts it thinks will protect you, intuition will guide you to the highest good for all, including yourself.

Trust yourself and know yourself.

Trusting your intuition is a skill you practice and develop. You have to learn to hear your intuition, understand, believe, and trust. But you also must know yourself intimately, including your ego.

Often people think their intuition is talking to them, but it’s their ego. They haven’t done the work of dismantling their ego so that intuition can flow through. They haven’t done the work of reversing past assumptions, releasing old emotions, or dismantling limiting beliefs. All of those things exist in your ego and block your intuition.

Until you start to do the work of dismantling your ego, it’s hard to hear your intuition. We’re not trying to kill the ego. We’re not trying to ignore the ego. If you ignore it, you haven’t dealt with it. You have to deal with what’s in your ego to keep it from leading you somewhere that isn’t best for you.

You have to trust your intuition, but you have to know your ego to do that. As we heal ourselves, we’re quick to think our “evolved” thoughts are intuition when it’s actually our ego recycling old thoughts in new ways. If the thought doesn’t cause you to evolve or isn’t in the best interest of all, it’s still your ego.

Recognize the ego and intuition.

The first thing you have to do is recognize that you have an intuition and an ego. Your intuition and your ego are two very different things. If you don’t learn to separate them, you’ll often mistake one for the other.

You’ll listen to your ego, taking its terrible advice but believing it is intuition. When something terrible happens, as a result, you’ll doubt your intuition. (The ego is so manipulative.)

Instead of doubting your intuition, you need to recognize your ego. It’s a process to tell the difference but what I’ve found is that intuition will give you what is for the highest good of all. The ego will provide you with what it thinks you need to protect yourself.

The protection ego provides is based on past experiences. Intuition includes all experiences. The ego bases that protection on what you know, so it will see any new situation or opportunity as a threat. It’s operating on past limiting beliefs, fear, and failures. Ego remembers it all and raises a red flag.

Intuition, in comparison, is going to help you move into the future and evolve.

There is a lot to unpack when learning to trust your intuition and know your ego. One has the highest good in mind, and one does not.

My challenge is to question whether what you’re hearing is intuition or ego. Becoming consciously aware starts a growth process that will help you develop the skillset of deciphering ego versus intuition.