What The Spiritual Community Gets Wrong About the Ego [E31]

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What’s the difference between ego and intuition in Human Design—and how do you know if you're stuck in a loop or actually evolving?

In this episode, we explore:

• Ego vs. Intuition through the lens of Human Design
• The circle vs. spiral metaphor and how it impacts business decisions
• The truth about the Heart (Will) Center vs. the Spleen Center
• How spiritual clichés around “ego death” can actually keep you stuck
• How to tell if you’re spiraling upward, circling in place, or spiraling down
• The problem with fake vulnerability and overused self-help tropes in online business

Whether you have a defined or undefined Heart Center, this episode helps you understand how intuition and ego function differently—and how to work with both to move forward instead of spinning your wheels.

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Welcome back to Clear Signal. I gotta warn you up front, this episode is gonna feel like you're going in a circle or a spiral, and that is part of the point. We finish it up the end, but in the middle you're gonna feel like you're in a spiral. That is sometimes what the unscripted path feels like.

And that was the name of the prior. Podcast. I think this episode originally dropped when it was called the Unscripted Path, so that was a little bit more of a spiritual, esoteric, flavored podcast. And so that is when this dropped in. And we have two completely different concepts in this podcast that are combined into one.

One of this. One of them is the notion of spiral versus circle. Are you or you are you going in a circle? Or are you going in a spiral? And in surface spirituality, they would say that a spiral in a circle is the same. It's not. And I explain why the second part of this episode is [00:01:00] I use this as a jumping off point to talk about the Ego Center.

The Ego Center is otherwise known as the heart center, otherwise known as the will center in Human Design. This is one of my foundational series where I go into some of the key centers that I believe affect entrepreneurs. I got another episode on the head center. I got one on the root center that is dropping in 2026.

Depending when you hear this, that may have dropped or not. And I've got an episode on the head center. I have an episode on the sacral center because most listeners to my podcast are sacral beings, Generator, Manifesting Generator, and I talk about the.

Intuition Center, a lot that is known as the Splenic Center. Let's call it the Intuition Center. I also have a deep dive on the emotion center now that it covers a lot of the centers. I don't cover every single center because this is not a Human Design teaching podcast, but that is a context for this.

Take the concept, a spiral circle. Take the concept of intuition versus ego. [00:02:00] That is this episode. In one spiral together in a nonlinear format. The spiral circle inspired by a Facebook graphic I saw in February of 2025. Had a conversation with a client summer of 2025, and that was the genesis for me, adding to that original episode and then dropping it in here.

I hope that makes sense, and if it doesn't, don't worry about it. Just listen and absorb.

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A graphic I saw on Facebook that had a comparison between intuition and ego, and it didn't really sit with me. I recorded an episode about it.

I put it on my hard drive. Client comes to me and mentions something and then I mention something and I said, , I've recorded an episode about this. She's like, , why don't you send it to me? And I said, , I'll do you better. I'll put it up in the feed. So that's what I did, and that's what this [00:03:00] is.

This ties in to the last few episodes we've done, which were a little bit more esoteric and spiritual.

Numerology was brought in. We brought in this notion of magnetism through nature, working with the moon, working with nature cycles, your intuition, right? So this ties into the intuition series that I just did, and then the episode that came right before this, was building something your way.

The heart center is very much associated with doing it your way and what makes sense for you. And the episode after this is about brand evolution and brand evolution is spiral in a different way. When you are evolving your brand, you're gonna evolve and change and pivot as you get further and further up the spiral of the journey you're on.

You are going to be further on your journey in terms of what you are doing and what you're working on and who you attract, and that is going to make people in your world no longer resonate with [00:04:00] you,

Marker

the graphic showed a symbol of a circle and it showed a symbol of a spiral.

We think we're going round and round, like we think we're running a track, like a high school track and going nowhere as in a circle, but we're actually inching.

Forward. We just don't see it often in a spiral. , , the coils are so tight that you're spiraling upwards but you don't see it. And , of course in life we can spiral downwards. And I've done that more times than I'd like to count. , And that's not a good thing. This is the different version.

This is the spiraling upwards, and the person had equated the circle to the ego. , The spiraling upwards to the inter intuition. And I was gonna read both of those posts out, but number one, I don't know who wrote them. And I have no way to, give credit for that. And also it didn't [00:05:00] really make sense to me, so I don't think the ego is a bad thing.

Ego often gets a bad rap, but to me it's a part of being human. It's what helps us set boundaries. It's what's helped us define ourselves in relation to others and when it's in balance, ego is what makes us feel confident and empowered. In Human Design, there is a center known as the Ego Center. It's also known as the Heart Center.

It's known as the Will Center. It is the center that is least likely to be defined in folks. I happen to have it defined. And you probably can feel that if you understand Human Design and because it is the least likely to be defined, the majority of the population, probably about 75% if the math is right.

Has it undefined if the Ego Center has to do with worth. That includes on the money plane, but in general, an inherent self of self-worth, an inherent sense of boundaries, [00:06:00] an inherent self of I'm gonna do this my way, and an inherent sense of confidence. And I don't think that the world is built for that, and I don't think it's built for women having that.

And I don't think it's built for people of color having that. And I don't think it's built for. Women of color are having that. And so the world is used to most people, having to prove themselves to have an inherent sense of confidence. And I

come from. , A certain situation, if you look at my background and you've read my background, you'd think I came from a very, , polished, comfortable situation and I never missed a meal. , I have great parents. My father's no longer with us, but I had great parents. Not perfect, and no immigrant. , Child relationship is perfect,

But I grew up in a white community in the seventies, and for everyone who loves to talk about how [00:07:00] liberal New England is, from a political and academic perspective, it is top 1% of the country. It's a lot of firsts actually, in terms of race, gender, , even like decriminalization of marijuana, , stuff you wouldn't expect the state.

But it also has a really conservative backbone and underbelly.

So when I was young, I had a lot of problems in this area. I don't really talk to a lot of people from where I'm from, but they're surprised when I say that because people are very blissfully ignorant. Unless they're subject to stuff. , If you guys read those school buses, the old school buses where they had one seat that a half seat at the back.

I think it's because the, I think maybe 'cause the tire had to be there. I don't quite remember. Obviously it's been a minute since I've rode a yellow school bus and that used to be my seat. . And I used to sit there and there was this, , I don't know why, but I was one of the first people that got on the bus.

It might've been just [00:08:00] where my lived relative to the route. And there was this other girl who wanted to always take that seat for me, and I don't really remember how this happened. Again, this happened I think when I was like five years old and I'm 47, and so the longest story short of it is I got in a physical fight with this person.

And was like, not gonna give up my seat. So I've always been a little bit of a feisty bitch always. I just came out that way and I could give you, astrological reasons for that. I could give you, Human Design reasons for that. It's not in my upbringing 'cause , a family of immigrants and first generation immigrants usually just put their head down to get the job done. They're not really here to make waves, at least back then, right? Because there was, there weren't very many of them around, so you didn't really wanna stand out and,

I think that's the defined ego. When I look back at my life in certain situations I've been in, where I just stood up for myself and had no real reason to have that kind of level of confidence. To me, [00:09:00] that's the defined ego, and I say that because I think the ego is a good thing. I think it's how, like I said, it's boundaries.

It's how we relate to the world, and I only think that when it's out of balance is when it gets in a negative way. A lot of people use ego as the reason that they stay stuck. , And that relates to that diagram of the circle. So is your ego keeping you trapped in a circle? And that could be, you are too proud to ask for help if you feel like you're spiraling downward and you don't wanna ask for help.

Or is it that it's keeping you trapped in a situation that, you're afraid to leave. Or you don't wanna leave. I've heard people, , describe ego as they were afraid to give up a title or give up a job, or this or that. I don't think that's ego. I think that's, fear of what other people are gonna think or fear of what's gonna happen when they quit that job or fear what's gonna happen.

It's not ego in my opinion.[00:10:00] 

I guess it depends if you define ego as identity is your identity. Attached to that title. But I think ego is part of the human experience. It's part of your it, it's just part of your brain. And I don't think it's a bad thing. I think it's only a bad thing when it prevents you from leaving the circle.

And the diagram had showed intuition as being the other side of the coin where it's this like spiral and , you're taking a step forward and you're spiraling. And you're not going in a circle. You're going in the right direction, but you're taking a step forward each step. I would agree with that.

I don't think they're mutually exclusive. I think the intuition is one part of your brain and your body and your human being, and the ego is another part of your being. And in balance, they're great and out of balance. Not so good. And there is a reason why they are two [00:11:00] completely different centers in the Human Design system.

There's the Ego Center known as the will center, and then there's the splenic center. And the splenic center is the seed of intuition and or fear. High side intuition, low side fear,

When we take a step forward with intuition, we take a step forward. Slowly, slowly, slowly. We inch towards our goal, and depending on who we are, depending on our pace, depending on our level of expectation, we're gonna look like we're going in a circle, because in my experience, I move very slowly and I've gone on so many twists and turns in my life.

I couldn't even tell you if I stayed on this podcast for two hours. I share a fraction of my life on this podcast 'cause I share what's I think relevant to you and maybe is going to articulate any points that I wanna share that are gonna illustrate it. I don't just share to share. So[00:12:00] 

there are times that I've just been meandering. And there are times where I have been getting towards something, but it looks like I'm going in a circle, but I'm actually spiraling upwards. So I guess , the message here is both ego and intuition are useful.

I don't think they're mutually exclusive. I think they work together. There are a lot of psychedelics that will cause ego death, and I've done a lot of them and there are people that have taken them and have gone nuts for a year. And it's not because it affected part of their brain chemistry or anything like that, it's that I don't think we as humans are meant to go to an egoless place because without an ego, we don't have an identity.

And I don't mean identity like head of fucking operations or whatever the hell title you wanna call yourself. , Identity is like a human. Like where do we fit in the cosmos? Where do we fit on earth? And I think without that it can be very destabilizing. So [00:13:00] the ego is there to keep boundaries in a good way and is works against you when it prevents you from listening to people or taking advice that you know you should take, or it causes you to dismiss people that you might benefit from.

Getting information from, , and I struggle with this a lot online. I struggle with this a lot online and I'm gonna be spending less and less time with this online. 'cause I found that the more, I spent a lot of time on social media in 20, 25, way more than I ever have in the past. And I have not found that it's been useful for my productivity and brain That's.

I have an undefined head. , I don't feel like it's really adding to my, , understanding of anything and or really moving me forward towards where I wanna go. But it's also identified for me where I don't wanna go, where I don't belong, where I don't wanna plant my tree. And so in that sense, you could say, , you went round in a circle and ended up at the ba, same place.

But maybe [00:14:00] I'm up a notch. It's just not obvious. 'cause maybe I haven't made any progress on. The places I do wanna plant my tree, but I am up a notch from maybe where I was three or four months ago. That's how I see it. So the circle versus spiral is not gonna be obvious to other people. It has to be something that you feel, it has to be something that you recognize.

And you also have to be willing to recognize at some point, am I going in a circle? Am I spiraling downwards, right? They're spiraling up at whatever pace you want that's gonna be unique to you and your goals and what you want for your life, your objectives, your desires.

Then there's your going round and round in a circle, and then there's your spiraling downward. Spiraling downward means after a while, you need help. Spiraling in a circle means at some point. You stay or stuck or [00:15:00] you bypass the ego, I guess you'd call it, to get advice, to get help, to figure out a way to get out of that.

And then you find a way to spiral upwards, and you can do all of that on your own. You don't have to do it on your own if you don't want to, but you can also do it on your own. If you're intuitive enough in are self-aware enough to know, okay, I need to take this step. I'm gonna do this. And then maybe you slowly spiral upwards and then you work with someone and you accelerate even faster.

I just hesitate to say that because I feel like we've gotten ourselves into a situation where , you have to hire someone for everything now or you're not working on yourself, and that's never the message of this podcast. ,

I originally recorded this and then I. Removed this part from the episode and I never do well when I remove things. 'cause the first round is always what people need to hear. But as I've spent a lot of time on social media, I've seen a lot of, storytelling through written content or fake storytelling as I like to see it. I see it as fake storytelling. A lot [00:16:00] of it is, , for relatability. It's not what I just did where I shared a story with you. That's just literally a story that I just pulled outta my ass just now. It's real. But I had no intention of saying it.

It was not package, it was not put in a framework. It was not trying to then, relate it to something I'm gonna sell to you. It was just a absolute truth from my life that hopefully illustrates what it looks like maybe to be born with a defined will center.

What I see it now is it's very packaged and it's very like,

I had a moment when I was vulnerable too. I was sitting there and I didn't know what to do. It's just like a hook line story to like, I don't know, develop relatability and then sell you. And my attitude is. I don't need you to have gone through what I have gone through to work with you.

I don't need to like you really, I don't need to be your friend. I don't need you to be my friend to work with me when I work with someone. It's that I think that they have a solution to a problem I have or an answer to a [00:17:00] desire I have. It's that I think they're a good person, that I feel they have integrity.

And I feel that they have the credibility to offer that solution and that credibility is gonna look very different to different people. Coming from a formal business background, I look at people with , more experience than me, but in other areas it could just be, I don't know. And that's my design. I can see talent in people, but it doesn't have to be formal things. It's just this understanding like, there's something about you I find credible and I feel like you're the solution to my problems.

And that's what people buy. I think that also is to do with intuition versus ego. Intuition is, , are you buying into the solutions and are you making choices in your business in line with what's best for you? And ego can be like, oh, I wanna work with this particular coach [00:18:00] because everyone wants to work with her. Or, I don't know. I wanna work with this ma. I wanna be in this mastermind because it means I've made it.

That's another way with ego can work against you, just bring it back to business. . . Ego versus Intuition. To summarize it for you, ego is like this notion of you're going round and round in a circle to going back to the inspiration for this episode, which was the graphic.

When are you going round and round in a circle, repeating the same patterns and not getting any further? Is it your ego? Is it your fear of asking for help? And spiraling is actually your intuition of play, but it's a step-by-step process. You're just not seeing the progress yet, but it's there. And I talked about that in the Alchemy episode where I talked about the four stages of alchemy and when is it spiraling versus just circling, right?

And ego versus intuition. Think about that for yourself. Think about where are you bypassing your intuition out of [00:19:00] ego, I don't really know if I see the connection between those two, but. This whole podcast was inspired by that graphic.

So let's go with that and think about, are you spiraling downward? Are you spiraling upward? Are you in a circle? Do you have a way of knowing what's what?

So that was that podcast. It was recorded in February, if you can believe it. And I thought I'd bring it back based on my client. What we were talking about that triggered that conversation is, I was sharing with her because she has a lot of undefined centers that she's gonna feel sometimes a lot of waffling in. Her choices and a Human Design [00:20:00] answer is, it's your centers. And then I said, and I'm gonna play generic business coach now and say, oh, it's because you wanna stay stuck, right? Because that's what everyone's coach's answer is to everything. You wanna stay stuck, you don't wanna move forward.

I don't like blanket stuff because it diminishes the nuances of a situation. And she said, oh, I think it's my ego. And I said, I don't think it's your ego. And that triggered this whole conversation. And to elaborate further on this, because this podcast episode was recorded about. A long time ago.

And to make it even clearer for you is that because the Ego Center is different than the Intuition Center in Human Design, they're actually on opposite sides of the body graph. They are related, they are polarities. , I don't think it's the same thing. I think the high side of intuition is intuition and the low side of intuition is fear.[00:21:00] 

So when I think we're not taking a step forward, I think it's fear. Fear of what other people will think. Fear of failure. Fear of the past, fear of the future. Fear that we're not, we don't know enough fear of what's gonna happen financially. Big thing with entrepreneurs makes it different from other walks of life.

Why the stakes are higher and all of that. You can see how that is related to the ego, but it's not because in Human Design, the ego is like boundaries, sense of worthiness, validation, external validation. It's a different energy related but different. So I'm probably belabored this to death, but I wanted to talk through it from different angles.

And this was [00:22:00] inspired not only from that graphic I saw on Facebook, but it was inspired by a Oracle deck that I have. Sometimes in Oracle decks, they pick one card as like the main card, and they use that card as the cover for all of the cards. In this particular deck, there is this image of a shell, like a conch shell, which is a spiral or it's a circle, and.

Those two graphics got imprinted into my mind. So it was this notion of ego versus intuition, which we talked about, but it was also this notion of when are we going in a circle and when are we going in a spiral, which has nothing to do with intuition and ego. , That could be for any area of life that we're in.

When are [00:23:00] we stuck and when does it look like we stuck? But we are just. Need to get a bigger perspective because when you take a step back from a spiral and you look at it from the side, there's actually progress being made. If you look at it from the top, it looks like you're going in a circle and just to go backwards, to go forwards.

The shape of shells. And of snails and of that spiral is known as the Fibonacci sequence that is mathematically the Fibonacci sequence, which is related to the Fibonacci sequence that I talked about in the Venus episode.

And by the way, that episode has been listened to by a fuck ton of people. So that was clearly something you guys needed to hear. Whole episode has this very spiraly circle element to it. It's not lost on me. It's almost like we're demonstrating it in an episode, which is cool to me.

Just to go full circle back to what my client was talking about when [00:24:00] she brought it up, there's this notion of ego versus intuition, which is the graphic and there's notion of circle versus spiral and the notion of the Ego Center in Human Design, which is all well and good, but what my client was used to hearing,

it is something you guys probably are used to hearing a lot, which is this notion of ego in the spiritual space. Now, I come from the business world and I come from Eastern philosophy, so I wasn't raised in a lot of Western religions that then apply pop spirituality to blah blah, blah to blah, blah, blah.

This podcast is for business owners. I don't care if you are a spiritual business owner or you are just in it to maximize through funnels,

you're here to make money. And so this big thing in the spiritual community as well, you want to be detached, you wanna be detached, and you wanna be not attached to the. Money and you don't wanna be attached to [00:25:00] material possessions and you just wanna be free and you wanna be in service and you wanna serve humanity.

And I'm just like, whatever. Like that shit isn't paying anybody's bills. No one owes anybody anything. And this whole notion of spiritualists are martyrs to serve isn't the the game I play. , It's not the world I live in. It's not what I recommend to other people. It is a philosophy that is taking a lot of weird belief systems and warping them and serving their own weird purposes, and it's very undefined heart and I just. Dismiss the whole thing. It's performative. It keeps people small, it keeps people [00:26:00] broke, and I don't think it has anything to do with real life. The ego to me is boundaries, self-worth, self validation versus external validation. And yes. Things can go awry with material possessions and, everything is how you look to, other people and all that.

, That's messed up. But I don't think that's what the spiritual community is saying often. They're really just saying . The less ego you have, the closer you are to God or the closer you are to Spirit. Sometimes spirit comes through you and you have to surrender, but is the part of you that is like holding on and it's like, no, I'm not gonna surrender.

I wanna have control. [00:27:00] Is that ego or is that just you as a human wanting to control? It's the label that I have problems with humans want to control because we want to be able to predict the outcome of things we don't like change. That is based in the subconscious mind, that is based in the creature brain.

and that's spiral versus circle versus ego versus intuition versus ego in the Human Design community versus ego in the generic spiritual community. I don't think you'll ever look at those terms the same way again, and people never look tend to look at anything the same way again, after entering my world what I do

Now we're gonna get into brand evolution and we think about what brand evolution is. It is a desire to stay stuck in an old identity, out of fear of losing what you built or losing the people who have embraced what you've already done.

And that is a way to stay stagnant, and that's [00:28:00] what we're gonna talk about in brand evolution Next.