Ego - "My Own Small Self"

In "Who Is This?", a poem oft-quoted by spiritual teacher and author, Wayne Dyer, the great Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore faces down the ego, calling it "my own small self":

Who is This?
I came out alone on my way to my tryst.
But who is this that follows me in the silent dark?
I move aside to avoid his presence but I escape him not.
He makes the dust rise from the earth with his swagger;
he adds his loud voice to every word that I utter.
He is my own little self, my lord, he knows no shame;
but I am ashamed to come to thy door in his company. 

 "Who Is This? is from Tagore's "Gitanjali", an unparalleled collection of poems and odes to man's higher self, the "Friend", or God.  Tagore won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913 for the "Gitanjali", the first writer from the Indian sub-continent to do so.  William Butler Yeats, the great Irish poet, wrote an introduction to Tagore's renowned collection of poems. Wayne Dyer's interpretation of "Who Is This?" can be found in his book, Wisdom of the Ages60 Dys to Enlightenment, a wonderful collection of essays for the spiritual seeker.