Q: What is the ego? What is around me, and what should I do with it all?
A: The only thing that was created by the Creator is called Adam Ha Rishon (the First Man), the collective soul, the creature, Malchut. The Partzuf of Adam Ha Rishon was created and then broken in order to correct creation.
This shattering mixed the attribute of the creature—to enjoy - with the attribute of the Creator – to delight. There was, in fact, a kind of blast that caused the attributes of the Creator to penetrate the attributes of the creature.
The parts of Man were shattered and separated. That is why there is a spark of the First Man in each of us. Within that spark exist Reshimot (recollections) of all our future situations, from the beginning of the spiritual path to the end of correction. That is because Adam HaRishon fell from the highest state, so the “documentation” of the upper situations and all other states is already within us in a form of Reshimot (recorded, programmed data).
That chain of Reshimot perpetually evolves within each and every one of us, but we feel only the outermost Reshimo (singular of Reshimot), the lowest. We feel it as an order to get something, and operate accordingly. In that sense, we are nothing more than robots.
Some people want quiet lives. Others want to grow and search for fame and fortune. Everything that distinguishes one person from another is embedded in the Reshimot, like the biological genes.
Everything that happens to us depends on the currently active Reshimot. Therefore, it is impossible to demand spirituality of a person if one’s outer Reshimot give only the desire to rule, for example. Our purpose is to prepare everything that is needed for the implementation of spiritual desires in a person whose Reshimot of spiritual development are already active.
The only possibility at our disposal is to speed up the pace of the passage from one Reshimo to the next, along the entire chain of Reshimot, from beginning to end. We cannot change anything but the pace of the correction.
That is why we should think only about the present moment, and what we must internally correct right now.