Ego resides in both pleasure and pain. It is an illusion that ego has created that it (ego) is not there in pain. Infact ego is more intense in pain. The more the pain the more ego is working on peak.
Till one doesn’t observe this dance of ego in pain one gets drowned into pain to the extreme of the extreme and this ego takes one into the deepest shrinking feeling which one may terms as depression or the extreme DEEP-RESSION.
When one finds pleasure in something one wants to repeat it to have more of such experiences and this having more itself is nothing but the action of ego.
But when it comes to pain one doesn’t want more pain, one wants to get rid of the pain and one tries everything to get rid of it. One does every effort to reduce and eradicate the pain. Then the question arises where is ego in it?
The very action of getting rid of pain, itself, is the subtle form of ego and this is the reason, the more one tries to get rid of the pain the more one feels the pain.
Pain increases with more efforts to get rid of it. Its like a war between you and pain. And overtime when pain wins over you it increases and you are more in pain.
From here you want more of such fights and such wars and this very act of having more wars, fights is the subtle form of ego. This is the most dangerous form of ego because it can take one to the peak of killing oneself or killing others.
Therefore this also creates a deceleration that suicide is also an egoist act, the way murder, rape, insulting, arrogance, boasting, even fear and anger etc. are acts of ego only.
So this ego is everywhere, in various forms both gross and subtle and have many layers. When one breaks one layer then ego will work on to build another layer. And ego also works in sleep so it is more dangerous because one third of our life goes in sleeping only.
During sleep ego has the easiest way to work because at that time ego has liberty to work more faster because you are sleeping. On yes there is a difference between you and ego.
You are not ego at all. Yes you do HAVE ego. It doesn’t mean you are ego. Its like you have car, you have cloths, ornaments they all are tangible and in the same way it is with ego, the only difference is that ego is intangible.
Yet ego have the power to become tangible which we have observed in walks of people, various postures, expressions etc.
So pain is also a form of ego. One wants more happiness which means ego is active here therefore with more happiness one slowly leads to ego as this having more craving is ego itself. In the same way sadness also leads to ego only.
Pleasure is ego and pain is also ego.