This is the story of Ego from a spiritual (and mythical) perspective:
There is a Creator, a Source of Unconditional Love that created joy, peace, oneness and freedom, and created spiritual beings and a world in which to enjoy and extend this joy, peace and freedom.
Then there is the Ego, who wanted to create independently of the Source, to make up its own world of joy, peace and freedom. But creating independently of the Source of Love means that you create everything that the Source is not. So instead of creating an experience of Oneness and Unity, the Ego made a state of aloneness and separation.
The Ego needed an environment in which to experience this state of aloneness and separation so it made a world that was the mirror image of the Source's world of joy, peace and freedom. But because this world was separate from the world of the Source of Love, the Ego's world was a place of sorrow, war and restriction.
The Ego needed a vehicle through which to experience the world that was made, so the body was made for the Ego to experience the world. The vehicle had eyes - all the better for the Ego to see the world with. The vehicle had ears - all the better for the Ego to hear the world. The Ego's vehicle had a nose in order to smell its world and the Ego's vehicle had hands in order to feel and touch its world.
Because the Ego's world is a back-to-front, upside down version of the Source's world, things work in exactly the opposite way. Instead of looking inside to experience happiness, peace, power and freedom, the Ego has to look to physical things outside of itself to supply happiness, peace and freedom. Abundance and power is symbolised by money. Happiness is symbolised by conditional love and circumstances meeting conditional expectations. Instead of being and experiencing Love, the Ego has to try and get substitutes for Love to make up for the emptiness inside.
The Ego's goal is to be independent of the Source of Love. But to be independent of love is to be without love and to find yourself in a world of pain.
The Ego is the original rebel without a cause. Because the Original Cause is Love.