Brian

Just to sound exasperatingly picky, we shouldn't actually "fight" the ego, we should blend with it and then use it's haughtiness against it in order to quell it without doing ourselves too much mental harm, since O-sensei made aikido an art of peace/love/harmony/etc.
We, in this instance, could be considered uke, since we're blending with the metaphorical attack that our ego does to our character, and we don't want to hurt uke/ourselves, and....

Sorry, just brushing up on my 'Annoying Randori.' Anywho, I'm very aware that an ego shouldn't be cultivated, I just wasn't aware there was an ego to fight against. You'll note that I said "It's not the competition, it's the competitor," after referring to the common "It's not the martial art, it's the martial artist." Everything about the latter saying could be applied to the former. You shouldn't learn a martial art so you can bully other people, or feel like an invincible warrior, but so you can (insert philosophical goal of said martial art here). Likewise, in Tomiki aikido, we don't compete so we can beat other people and get nice neat shiny trophies, but so we can test our skills to a certain extent (emphasis on the certain extent), or so we can see what we need to improve, or (get this) maybe even just to have fun. And there are dozens of other motives, good and bad. But, when I say "It's not the competition, it's the competitor," I say that in support of the good ones.