The ego must relate to the Self with deference and respect, while holding its own. If the ego becomes too entranced with the Self and the inner world, it can fall into the fiery center and get burned up, or fall off the island into an ocean of feeling or dissolve in the Greater Self. For example, you can see that the ego has lost its identity and position in reality for a person who thinks he or she is Jesus Christ, or who is fervent with idealism at the cost of personal relationships. Also, the ego must be independent enough to identify the False Self-addictions, cravings, or inflated feelings of impor-tance that draw you toward abusive and destructive situations. The ego must veto the False Self to see what you really want and
— Karen A. Signell
Signell is describing a navigation problem, not a spiritual one — though the spiritual frame is exactly what makes it hard to see clearly. The soul has a center, and that center is magnetic. The trouble is that magnetism does not distinguish between genuine orientation and dissolution: both feel like contact, both carry the charge of significance, both can present as devotion. The person who believes they are Jesus Christ and the person consumed by idealism at the cost of every actual relationship are not making opposite errors. They are making the same one, differently dressed.
What gets lost is not the Self — that remains, pulling. What gets lost is the one who can say no. Signell's word "veto" is precise: it implies a governing structure where two things have standing, not just one. The ego isn't being asked to renounce the center or treat it with suspicion; it's being asked to remain, in the presence of something far more powerful than itself, recognizably itself. That is the harder instruction. Transcendence, surrender, dissolution — these are relief. Holding your own while the center pulls is the structural difficulty that no elevation of the Self-concept will resolve. The craving Signell names as "False Self" is frequently just the next available version of that relief, dressed in the idiom of depth.
Karen A. Signell·Wisdom of the Heart: Working with Womens Dreams·1991