Voices

This is my question. Whose voice do I listen to? How do we tell the difference between the voice of guidance or higher self and the ego or personality strategy? Sometimes I want to scream"shut -up in there and let the real truth step forward." I used to think if I just meditated enough the voice of my guidance would ring clear and true and all of my actions would flow perfectly from the voice of my guidance. What a crock. My ego likes that one because it is based on the idea that I am doing something wrong by not medtitating enough. My ego's core message is that I am doing someting wrong. Of course no matter how hard I try, or howevermuch I do, that is always wrong. When I discovered that whatever I am doing is my ego's definition of what doing it wrong is, it brought me great freedom. Since whatever I am doing is doing it wrong then I might as well do what I want. If doing what I think I should do is as likely to feel like I am doing it wrong as what I want to do, why not do what I want?
O.K. what do I want? I want to listen to my inner guidance, intuition, higher self. That brings me back to my question. How do I tell the difference between guidance and the voice of my ego? The ego's goal is to "protect " us by maintaining the illusion that the world is a scary place and we are separate from all other people. It supports us in maintaining our personality or mask to "protect" us from expressing who we really are and getting hurt. It tells us that safety comes from pretending to be something we are not because letting who we really are out will be dangerous. Meanwhile our essential selves are hanging out waiting for us to notice that we are more than we think ourselves to be.
One way to tell the difference between ego based guidance and essence based guidance is to listen carefully. Is the voice blaming, demanding or commanding or asking you to sacrifice, or inducing guilt? Inner guidance, does none of these. Do you feel more joyful and energized even though what you are doing might be scary and unfamiliar? Or do you feel drowsy and enervated? Does the peace you feel come from resolving the problem or denying it? Really the answer to the question of how do I tell who to listen to is to act and see. Every action probably has some component of ego. By acting, and noticing our results we can begin to discern what works and what doesn't. We can question our habitual responses and begin to peel away our conditioning and see our lives with fresher eyes. In this way I begin to recognize that doing what I've always done and expecting different results is the definition of insanity. Maybe sanity starts with adopting a "don't know mind " Maybe realizing I don't know is the first step toward knowing that comes from my guidance rather than my ego. What do you think?