The following talk is given by Tara Brock, meditation teacher, psychologist and author.

The following talk is given by Tara Brock, meditation teacher, psychologist and author.

Greetings and Namaste.

I'd like to begin this class with a story written by Bruce Rogers.

When he was very young, he waved his arms, gnashed the teeth of his massive jaws and trumped around the house so that the dishes trembled in the China cabinet.

Over goodness sake, as Mother said, you're not a dinosaur. You're a human being.

And since he was not a dinosaur, he thought for a time he might be a pirate.

Seriously, his father said at some point, what do you want to be? A fireman then, or a policeman, or a soldier, some kind of hero?

But in high school, they gave him tests and told him he would be very good with numbers. Perhaps he'd like to be a math teacher.

That was respectable, or a tax accountant.

He could make a lot of money doing that. It seemed a good idea to make money, what with falling in love and thinking about raising a family.

So he was a tax accountant, even though he sometimes regretted that it made him feel, well, small.

And he felt he was smaller when he was no longer a tax accountant, but a retired tax accountant.

And still worse, a retired tax accountant who forgot things.

He forgot to take the garbage to the curb, he forgot to take his pills, forgot to turn his hearing aid back on.

Every day it seemed to you had forgotten more things, important things, like which of his children lived in San Francisco, which of his children were married or divorced.

Then one day, when he was out for a walk by the lake, he forgot what his mother had told him.

He forgot that he was not a dinosaur.

He stood blinking his dinosaur eyes in the bright sunlight, feeling the familiar warmth on his dinosaur skin,

watching drag and flies flitting among the horse tails at the water's edge.

So I began with that, because I find it a beautiful, employment story, really shining a light a bit on how we have these views of ourselves,

these ideas about who we should be and what we need to do in living a life that end up very much shaping our life experience,

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