Ego is always trying to help. It just has a limited understanding, a limited vocabulary, a limited menu of strategies for helping.
Ego is like a frightened child, a toddler that wants very much to make everything right, kind, comfortable, peaceful - but just doesn’t know how best to do it. It’s sweet and innocent and just in need of a little parenting.
Inquiry offers me a way to parent this innocent, beloved child that’s working so hard to help me. It’s a way to say to ego, “I see that you’re trying to help. And thank you. And notice: Is it true? Do you see what happens to us when I believe this thought? And do you see who we would be if you didn’t offer it?”
When I’m not busy attacking ego for trying to help, when I show it that I know we’re on the same side, it clings a little less tightly to its perspective and allows me to guide it in the interest of our common peace. When we’re on the same side, ego can witness the answer to inquiry’s question #3 (“How do you react, what happens, when you believe the thought?”) without trying to defend itself. When it sees the effects of its “help” without fearing me as its enemy, it can recognize how well it’s serving me as its ally. When it sees its “help” is not so helpful - and that THAT’S OKAY WITH ME, that I’m not going to punish it or try to destroy it for trying to help - ego goes, “Oh shit! I’m sorry. I see that’s not helpful! My bad!” and naturally drops the thought as a strategy for helping. It takes no effort.
When I fight ego, it fights harder. It thinks I don’t get it and that it needs to shout to get through to me and save our life. When ego knows I’m listening, that I’m not tearing it down, that I respect it as my ALLY, I give ego no reason to dig in and fight to be heard. When ego is not threatened, it’s free to sit calmly in awareness and notice what helps and what doesn’t. It’s free to catch up to what‘s best for us, which is all it wants. When it catches up, it’s automatic: Ego, which only ever wants to help, does what’s most helpful: dropping the thought.
Which allows me to recognize ego as the ally it has always been instead of fighting it as my enemy.
So now anytime I experience a stressful thought, I pick up the sweet little ego who offered it and sit it on my lap. I hold it close and we look at it together. “Thank you so much, ego. You’re so kind to try to help us by offering this thought. And notice: Is it true? See how we react when we believe it? See who we’d be if you never offered that thought? Which is better? Do you see it? Want to turn this thought around to its opposite and try it on?”
And so, with my help, ego’s shoulders drop, its breath steadies, its head rests on my chest and it releases into me. When it does, we go together. And as we do, we both learn and grow and mature, getting better and better at helping each other.
And then one day, I find myself challenged and rather than offering a stressful thought, ego offers a peaceful thought. What?! Whoa! I start to notice that peaceful thoughts arise where only stressful thoughts had before. Ego has caught up. It suddenly laughs where it used to cry, opens up where it used to shut down and in a miracle reversal, starts offering me the calming influence I once had to patiently offer it.
Until another stressful thought arises, which I now recognize as nothing more than Ego’s innocent attempt to help where it hasn’t yet learned the truth, a truth I now see we can always find together.