the concept of the ego is interesting.

i view it as an extension of our awareness of other people. it's a tool designed for drawing conclusions about the behaviour of other humans, applied to oneself.

we have less access to the workings of our own minds than we think. we receive information on the physical state of our body and the levels of certain brain chemicals. we are also aware of sensory thinking, such as our inner voices, hearing music in our heads, picturing things, etc.

as for non-verbal cognition? that's less transparent. we make numerous decisions without using reason, and when asked to explain them, we basically just reason about why we might've made them after the fact. numerous psychology experiments have shown this. we remember what we felt in addition to that, of course, so that gives us a bit more info than an outsider would have, but not much.

the ego is basically the life narrative of a person, and this person happens to be you. narratives aren't set in stone. we will often misremember this narrative or change it to suit ourselves.

this isn't necessarily a bad thing. a negative story can be flipped to a positive one by a change of perspective. it's possible to do that by persistently telling yourself a new narrative. granted that reality will support this new narrative as well as or better than the former, it will gradually begin to stick.

the most liberating thing, though, is to remove as much of that narrative as possible. focus less inward and more outward. the brain is an organ designed to control muscles (any interaction with the world is a muscle movement). if it's allowed to perform that task, i.e. execute on goals, it will feel satisfied. this is why you will find that people who stay busy are generally happier than people who don't.