There are two types of consciousness, external consciousness and internal consciousness.

You are standing in a room and there is another person there. He/She is behind you and very quiet and you are unaware of their presence. You turn and see the person behind you. This is external consciousness. External consciousness is being aware of the someone or something because we can see it, hear it, smell it or have some other means of knowing it is there.

This brings us to a problem. How do we know of our existence as a person if there is no way of seeing who we are? We might be aware of our physical existence but who are we?

To give even the most basic answer to that question requires some way of seeing within. We need a mirror so we can see ourselves from within. We need a mirror to see ourselves.

It has been accepted for many years that each of us has a dual person within. Freud invented the term soul and ego to describe the duality in each of us, but the concept has been around since the ancient Greeks. It is this duality of nature of our nature that gives us the internal mirror that allows us to see ourselves from within.

If we did not have a Soul and an Ego we could never know ourselves as an individual. We would be nothing more than a physical entity whose only consciousness the ability to react to external stimulus like Pavlov's dog Natasha. We would live a half-life with no ability to feel or make decisions, and do all the other things that is to be human.

Unfortunately the internal mirror is cracked. If the mirror was not cracked we would not be aware of the existence of the Soul and the Ego because both would be seen as identical, a pair of identical twins that could know themselves by seeing the other.

With our cracked mirror we can see ourselves from within and know we exist as an individual but we do not see ourselves as we are. It is a distorted self that we see.

While our Soul and Ego do not match each other our internal consciousness is a consciousness of conflict. It is like two siblings fighting over nothing at all and creating conflict from nothing.

Both the soul and the Ego are us. If they cannot agree we are fighting with ourselves. Take one away and we are comatose.

The idea of busting ego that comes through in many spiritual teachings misses the point of consciousness. If we bust ego we are just blown in the wind. Without ego we have no internal consciousness and no ability to make decisions or decide what we want. Without ego we are an empty shell.

So how do we deal with Ego? First of all by doing away with calling one entity Soul and the other Ego. This implies a judgment of hierarchy that one is better than the other. Really what the system of internal consciousness requires is twin souls. Twin souls that can see themselves by seeing the other and know themselves by each other.

We only know we have two identities within because of the conflict within. While we have internal conflict everything we create externally will be conflict.

Look at the world we have created. Everything is conflict. Wars have been a continuous feature of the human race for six and a half thousand years. We have a commerce system built on conflict. We call it 'competition' but it is just conflict.

Look anywhere you want in human affairs and you will find conflict.

The conflict in the world is a mirror of what goes on within. We cannot have peace without and war within, and the key to creating a world without conflict is to first look within and cure our internal conflict.

It is rarely stated in self-help and personal growth that ending internal conflict is the whole purpose of doing it. If you are without internal conflict why are you reading this article?

To cure the internal conflict we need to find a way of bringing the Soul and the Ego into line. They need to be on the same page.

How this can be done will be different for each person. We all have our own internal war and how to negotiate a peace between our Soul and our Ego depends on what we are fighting with ourselves about. The one thing I can say is that declaring war on our Ego is not the way to go because that will be declaring war on an essential part of our self.

Ego is not a dirty word. It is half of our being. The secret is to find ways of making our two half's match and become one complete person. The first step is to be clear on why you are following this path and what it is you want to achieve.

I am taking a guess that internal peace will be a high priority.