Ok. The milk got sour pretty fast when outside the fridge, put it in, corrected. In a bigger sense, more complex decisions can be made when patterns keep repeating, until dealt with. Self-control. No one else involved, and control issues isn't an issue.

So.. interactions with others, where others are involved. You see something as wrong, how do you guys go about it, and what's the reasoning?

That sounds about right to me Spooky, with R's point about listening to the higher self as the key.

It's still a very tough one in practice, when faced with a real scenario. Buddhism tends to see these things in terms of compassion and wisdom. In other words compassion provides the loving motivation, or the intention to help the other. Wisdom though (which is partly life experience, partly intellect, partly higher intuition) is necessary to do this in a manner that delivers an outcome genuinely representative of the highest good.

It is as Doc says easy to overdo the ego thing to the point that we paralyse ourselves fretting about the possibility of doing wrong. This mind you is probably the result of a misinterpretation of teaching rather than what's intended. But it's so damn hard sometimes to get our view intellectually calibrated, and that's only the start before going on to make it representative of what we are.

One thing that is clear though is that the transcendence of ego produces a person who tends intuitively to know what's wisest given their own abilities, and the situation. (i.e. there's no single answer that's right for all, even in the same circumstances) The result is little or no navel gazing, rather an easy and intuitive engagement in the 'flow' of any  situation.

I've encountered a few highly trained Tibetan lamas that were mind boggling in terms of their output, energy and ease, as well as possessed of an amazing ability to size up complex scenarios. Are they realised - i.e. have they transcended ego? I don't know for sure, but it's clear that mediation and the related training produces remarkable people.

That said ego is so tricky. It can be so hard to separate higher knowing and the promptings of ego. It can get so subtle. For example a parent with a kid that's not applying himself at education. When the parent pushes the kid is he doing what's right for him, or is he in fact trying to realise his own ambitions through his kids by societally acceptable means. May he even be driving the kid into a life path he's highly unsuited to, with the result that he's condemning him to a life of misery?

Is the Mother driving her child to every sort of lesson and event imaginable just salving her own conscience, or is she truly doing what's best for the kid?

Do we ever know the answer to some of these questions until the fat lady has sung?

The idea of ego as effectively an encoded urge to self preservation is a perfectly valid view it seems to me R. I for example can't say for sure that ego is some other sort of reality, certainly not at the level of say this time space reality. The likes of ACIM and Buddhism suggest that this entire relative reality (samsara, or the realm of suffering in Tibetan Buddhism) is its creation, and that selfhood is no more than the result of the sort of perception brought about by it's belief in separation.

As a an explanatory framework it's very powerful, maybe to the point that it's as good as any - but i can't from personal experience or knowing say it's true. What i do seem to be able to say is that it's possible in moments of peak experience for our awareness to separate from the body and the thinking intellect......