Ego Activity

But it's a vicious cycle, as you can see. The more you reject, the more there is contraction, the more frustrated you become. Then you want to do something that will release the frustration. But you do this by hoping for something in the future and rejecting the present, which creates more frustration, which makes you hope even more to release it. So you hope some more, you push, and more frustration is created. This cycle generates the personality, and it is the experience of the personality itself. This cycle is what we call ego activity. When you feel it, the actual substance of the personality is a feverishness, a lack of stillness, a lack of contentment. When you feel desire, it's that frustration, too. Part of the desire that we feel is a rejection of the present and a hope for something else, which brings frustration. The very movement of the personality is frustration, and the existence of the personality is that movement. The very existence of the personality is that reactivity. It's a reaction, not a spontaneous action. (Diamond Heart Book 3, pg 179)

Some teachings see ego in terms of its activity, which is primarily desire for future pleasure. This desire for pleasure, which entails avoidance of pain, involves rejecting the present situation and hoping for a better one. The cycle of ego activity is thus rejection, hope and desire; it is based on memories of past experience, and is directed towards the future. Thus ego, which here is an activity which resists the present moment, is clearly antithetical to the perception of the nature of reality, which involves being in the moment. (The Pearl Beyond Price, pg 20)

By pitting yourself against what is, you are acting according to the delusion that you have a separate will and that you can have your own way, different from what is happening. This is one of the principles of ego: that you have a separate will and that you have choice. Even when you believe that you are helpless and can't do things, there is the implicit belief that if it weren't for your helplessness, you could have your own way. From this egoic perspective, it seems obvious that you need to tinker with things, both inwardly and outwardly. This manifests externally as manipulating other people to make them conform to how you think they need to be for you, and internally as constantly evaluating your experience to see whether it is "right" or not, and trying to change it if it doesn't match your ideas of how you think you should be. "What state am I in? Oh, no! I'm being reactive -- that's no good -- I should be just being. Now I'm being. Good, good. I should stabilize that," and so on, as if it were up to you to make your state become this or that. If you contemplate your experience, you will see this constant activity. The moment you are identified with your ego, you are involved in this activity of trying to make yourself feel better, and not scared or unhappy or empty. All ego defenses are based on this principle of changing your experience to make it conform to how you think it should be. (Facets of Unity, pg 129)

Reality and ego

The I, the ego, is engaged in continual activity: rejecting, wanting, justifying, judging, discriminating. This activity itself is suffering, and is the source of the point of view which believes in its separateness. As long as you are engaged in any desire to change things inside you, to want something to be different, you're coming from ego and identified with that point of view. You cannot perceive reality as long as you are looking at the world from the perspective of ego. To act from that point of view means to perpetuate it. The moment you think of change, of fundamental transformation, of enlightenment, you are speaking from the point of view of the ego. (Diamond Heart Book 2, page 140)