Here’s an amusingly apt description of the ego, courtesy of Helen Wambach’s Reliving Past Lives:
I visualize the ego as a little guy in a gray flannel suit and tight necktie. His job is to get you safely through your working day, to make sure that you pay your electric bill and don’t offend the boss. He keeps up a constant chatter, telling you to do this or that, and insisting that you pay attention to what’s happening in the world around you. He takes occasional coffee breaks, like when you’ve driven down a familiar road and realize when you arrive home that you have no memory of the trip. The ego has taken time out, figuring you can get home on automatic pilot. He’s grateful when you finally retire for the night. He’s got you in a safe place — your bedroom — where nothing is likely to happen to you. He pops up again in the morning, when you "wake down" from your wider experiences in the sleep state. He’s the character who makes you look at the clock ("time" only exists in its usual sense when the ego is on the job) and nags you into getting out of bed and on your way to work. Jealous of the time you spend in your right brain [i.e., the right cerebral hemisphere], he likes to insist he’s been around all the time. He hates to admit that his job isn’t all there is to your experience, so he makes sure you forget your dreams. He’s especially good at pretending he’s never off the job. "I wasn’t asleep, or not paying attention. I was just resting my eyes. I heard everything you said," he insists indignantly when you catch him at one of his coffee breaks, such as when you are wool-gathering, sleeping, or under hypnosis. [p. 79]