that poses the more complex question, "Do we live to eat, or eat to
live?"
9a) Intelligence continues to hold the floor. "Let me summarize
our predicament," it says. "We all enjoy eating ice cream, even in ex
cess. We all hate the secondary consequences of this, you especially,
ego, being so vain about your figure. It seems to me we have a
choice-to eat it or not to eat it. That must be clear to us all." (Cog
nition+ choice)
lOa) Poor mind is utterly confused, as, in spite of its name, it does
not really have a mind of its own. It will run in any direction, like a
dog after a ball. Normally it lets ego give the orders, and ego is now
very upset. "I always eat ice cream when I'm tired after a long, hard
day. It's a great comfort to me. I owe it to myself. It's who I am."
lla) Intelligence, (who is also annoyed about the trousers, though
in its case it is more about the stupid waste of money) speaks up for
the last time. "For once I'm going to put my foot down (Will). I'm fed
up with the rut you two are in, always the same, day in, day out, and
then whining about the consequences, or dreaming about how good
things used to be or will be again one day. Nothing's going to change
unless we do (Challenge). Mind, please tell hand to move away from
the ice cream and shut the freezer door." Which it does.
12a) And next day they all felt better for the way things had turned
out. In fact ego was very smug and had quite persuaded itself that
leaving the ice cream had been its idea all along.
If we can train ourselves to compress all the steps from la to 12a
in this little story into a second and then we use them dozens of times
a day in every situation, then we will have a disciplined mind, a pliant
(i.e. not rigid) ego, an acute vibrant intelligence and, as a result, a
smoothly functioning, integrated consciousness. You may have noticed
that the example of getting out of bed to practice yogasana concerned
II K ' I\' I·. N 1; A I!