An Audience With Ego

An inspection of introspection has brought me here. A heretofore unknown doorway to the meditative state. It is dark here, no...more than that...it has a darkness that is complete in a way night can never be. Devoid of luminescence this place is impossibly black.

Fear...I may be feeling...perhaps back in my body my heart falters. Here though, curiosity is at the wheel and very much in charge. I walk forward for a time with a smoothness born from the absence of fear or doubt. I cover a lot of ground I guess, it's quite hard to tell.

Eventually I arrive. There is a pillar, cylindrical, white. It stretches from the ground, where it is a perfect circle of white, upwards to infinity. From down here it seems to curve and had I a body the vertigo would have knocked me flat. It is not stone, it is light. A light without radiance that compliments the perfect blackness that surrounds it. To hear it described you may think it a spindly thing, surrounded as it is by nothingness, but it dominates here.

I approach but am stopped at the sound of a low chuckle that comes from all directions at once.
-"Are you lost Andrew?" the voice enquires.
-"I don't believe so, was wandering I guess, do I know you?" the voice does not feel familiar.
-"It is enough that I know you...we haven't spoken like this that much is true."

The ambiguity of the response creates a longish silence as I wait for more details. The voice however does not seem phased by the awkwardness.

I am first to crack..."who are you then, if you don't mind my asking?"
-"hmmm I think you should guess..."
It sounds bored...am I boring it? "You are a pillar of light in darkness, are you god?" I ask.
All around the chuckle reemerges, not bored then...coy...I can work with coy.
-"No. In some ways I am an anathema to the very idea of a god, though I have guided the hands that created them."
-"You must be old."
-"No. Not in the context of this world, nor it's surroundings. I am as old as man."
Frustrated now an edge creeps into my voice: "well what can I call you then, do you even have a name?!"
-"You want a name?"
There is an edge here too, I may have overstepped. The pillar, impossibly, seems whiter. The darkness around blacker.
"Four thousand years ago they called me Hubris! I was reviled as something that stood on the toes of divinity. But I am not Hubris. I was Inspiration during the Renaissance. My work and victories attributed to a mortal muse or genius. I am not inspiration. During the industrial revolution too I was footnoted as Innovation, but I am NOT these things...I will tell you now what I am and then you will leave...I am the voice that tells you that you are worthy. That pushes you past endurance to achieve. I am the part of you that snaps and says enough is enough. I say that you alone will win, you alone deserve to win. I am behind all of mankind's greatest moments! I am behind their darkest deeds! I am NOT the deeds themselves. Those are yours alone...I am just the voice that says you can. I am the power you are the will. You, who are so desperate for my name, can call me Ego! now begone!
I am done with you!"