There is a scene in Independence Day, where they nuke Houston to destroy the alien spacecraft. At first they think they have succeeded, until the visuals come back online, and they realise they haven't even dented it.
The ego is a bit like that. It's amazing how it can totally destroy my life, as it did during my drinking and came close to doing on a number of other occasions sober, and the only thing left intact is it, the ego.
What's really extraordinary is how I will continue to side with it, in a perverse version of Stockholm Syndrome, and continue to uphold its perceptions, its interpretations, its stories, its demands, its resentments, its fears, its attacks, as wholly right, proper, and coherent. All the step work in the world will not destroy it, if I remain loyal to it. My loyalty is an extremely powerful shield.
God appears to be polite and to be disinclined to intervene against my will. I have to decide against ego. Only then is there any hope of seeing through it. And only if I see through it is there any hope of transcending it.