Ego - Shadow self - Pain body

Hi Emilia - great questions, great to explore. And let me begin by saying, I believe such definitions are vitally important, because they can point to an experience we each might be having inside. So we may consider them a "framework for inquiry", to point to experiences, so that we may then step into our own unique formlessness.

1. So firstly the ego: in the Openhand Philosophy, the authentic personality is one's soul-ray-harmonic - the aligned configuration of your soul. WE could call it "Trues Self" but sometimes that term might get confused with "The One" - pure presence from where the soul flows into being.

As the soul flows down from the source - from pure presence - inside of you, and before full self-realisation, then it will begin to identify with different experiences it has, like in the mind for example. And so the soul notionally fragments (it actually doesn't break up, but that is the effect). These 'fragments' of soul created fixed loops of conditioned behaviourisms based on perceived needs. Essentially it's where the soul 'forgets' it's connection to, and expression of, The One. These loops of behaviourisms congeal over time until they form the false self ego.

2. The pain body: I felt to deal with this one next. I believe it's a term some people use (like Echart Tolle) which relates to the causal body. This is in the fourth density and contains ones lower dimensional karma - the reason for the soul manifesting here in the first place. The soul is working to become fully self-realised - that's it's natural path. What gets in the way, is where it identifies with reality in the ways described in 1. And so the soul will naturally confront the karma contained in the pain body (as long as the false self is not resisting in denial or avoidance - a big one!). So it's like the soul shines down through the dimensions, through the filtering of the karma in the fourth density, which then manifests reflections of these karmic convolutions in the lower physical realm. The design being to then witness what we've manifested, so we can work toward greater soul integration by processing our karma. So this is the nature of the pain body - or causal body.

3. The Shadow Self: this is a misnomer, and needs to be redefined so as to be more specific. Of course words carry meaning and different people will have different perceptions, and often not be so accurate in expressing the energy of the feelings through words. To me, when I hear this term, it relates to two things (hence the need for redefinition): (1) When most people use it, they're actually probably referring to the false self ego described above. (2) It also likely refers to "Shadow Identities", which people confront when they've gone through full kundalini activation - where there's no more 'lower self' and 'higher self'.
So, after kundalini activation, the soul is now flowing freely down from the source. Kundalini facilitates the integration of lower self and higher self, so the ego has now been dissolved. But there's still plenty of karma to work through in the causal body. This is the next task of the soul. It doesn't fragment anymore, but instead, shines much more subtle distortions into the outer world.

These tend to be karmic filters of a particular soul ray. So for example, where we might be expressing compassion through ray 2, that might get distorted as subtly accepting anything goes. Or if we're expressing the wonder of divine magic through the ray 7, we might subtly disconnect from we the need to manifest in the physical. These would be karmic filters that create shadow identities.
Some call them "Imposters of the Soul". It's like the imposter knows how the soul should be, and so acts accordingly - crucially though - not with the natural spontaneity of the soul. There's still a subtle degree of control. The imposter of the soul might be considered as an 'echo of the soul', which gets a touch retarded in the flow.

The Shadow Identities are by far the most difficult to resolve. Because you might feel you're being totally authentic - the soul is flowing from the source. It just gets subtly coloured as it comes through the causal body. They take a great deal of work and commitment to resolve out.
I've gone into a lot of detail on this in Gateway 4 of the Book 5GATEWAYS

Namaste

Open