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

Namaste.

There's a story of a family at the beach, father and two sons, and the four-year-old

gets really excited and grabs his father's hand and pulls him to the shoreline where

there's a dead seagull and he said, what happened?

What's wrong?

And his father in a very reassuring voice said, you know, he died and he went to heaven.

And the boy looked puzzled and he said, so did God throw him out?

Did He throw him back?

And I love that just that little vignette because, you know, in a way, it's cute, but what

it points to is how, you know, we move through our day and we have a, instead of direct

reality, we have these different stories and ideas and beliefs that are in a way the

veil between us and the living mystery that's here.

And so a very integral part of any path of waking up is really examining those veils.

Really sensing is this real?

What's happening here?

There's a beautiful little set of lines from Hell the Guard of Bingen.

The right's, we cannot live in a world that is not our own, in a world that's interpreted

for us by others.

An interpreted world is not a home.

Part of the tears to take back our own listening, to use our own voice, to see our own light.

So there's something about this sense of an interpreted world that really rings true

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