In my related essay https://medium.com/know-thyself-heal-thyself/the-human-spirit-duality-e456c0729e99 , I write: "My highest power has pointed out to me that there would be times when the needs of my soul and the needs of my human/animus would conflict. I am choosing the terms animus and human over the term ego because of the tendency among people on a spiritual journey not to think in terms of dualities, fall into the binary/label trap, and deride the ego and thus aver that the soul is always correct. What do you think?"

I arrived at this conclusion: "the goals of the human and the goals of the soul may be, from the human perspective, irreconcilable. Humans want nothing but happiness but perhaps the soul came here to experience the opposite so that it can learn to guide other humans when it is not incarnated and is assigned as a spirit guide or to some other work in heaven."