Soul versus Ego

A spiritual aspirant sits in his living room surfing the web and suddenly, inspired by one of the adds he sees, feels the temptation creeping up in him to get a penis enlargement done. Immediately a voice pops up in his head "I am not this body" it shouts. Another voice pops up "Well, I don't know about that, but I am pretty sure that I am the one who is aware of the voices in my head".

You have probably read as many books about the soul versus the ego theme as I have. I do not want to say that we don't have a soul. What I want to question though, is whether this distinction is really as helpful to you as you think it is. I am sure that you would agree with our spiritual aspirant that his body fantasies are part of his ego and hardly a soul demand, right? But what if I had changed the story by saying that a spiritual aspirant suddenly felt the desire to drop his current job and start an ashram instead, or to build hospitals in Africa? I am sure that he will now think that this is his true mission in life, one that has been dictated by his soul. But how does he know that? Perhaps our spiritual aspirant succumbs to the same desire to be special and to be admired independent of whether he has a perceived holy outlet or a not-so-holy one like the above mentioned body fantasy. Either way, the "I" wants to be admired, the latter only seems more meaningful to our society, but it's the same egoistic drive.

Fact of the matter seems to be that you don't know what drives you, but as long as you feel a drive to be somewhere where you think that you are currently not, you at least can be sure that you are the one who monitors this problem statement, as well as the one who has to make the choice about what to do next.