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

In this class, as I mentioned, there will be the opportunity to ask whatever questions are coming up for you about this practice and about bringing the practice into errors in your life that might be challenging.

In some way, all of our questions come around to the same deep question of how in any moment can I really come home to my heart and to awareness.

You get the moments are different and they get complex.

So the ground of awareness training, as you've been finding for those of you that have been practicing for a while, is that we're learning to wake up out of the thoughts that keep us in some small reality.

The thoughts that keep telling us that we're less than who we are, that others are other, that there's something wrong.

We're starting to get the nag of, okay, that's the thought and it's just a thought and I don't have to believe it.

That's the first freedom that comes. I don't have to believe it.

And then coming back to this living aliveness of our bodies and our hearts, what sometimes call the felt sense of experience.

We just keep learning to come back and come back.

It is our portal to wholeness. To be able to feel your body and your breath and the aliveness that's here will give you access to the full measure of your intelligence and your heart.

And in Buddhism, this awareness of the body and the senses is called the first foundation of mindfulness because every other experience we have, whatever's going on in your life, whether it's obsessive thinking or whether it's being really hijacked by strong anxiety or fear.

Underneath that's a constellation of sensations that in some way we're trying to control.

So what meditation training does is it begins to de-condition the ways we're trying to control things.

We're always in some way rigged to get away from unpleasant sensations and to create more pleasant sensations.

And if that's going on, our lives are always in some way being hijacked. We're not going to be able to come to any real healing or awakening.

There's a story I love about a hermit that was a real recluse, live way out in the wilderness. And people would go to visit him and get his wisdom, but in order to do so they had a really track through challenging terrain.

They get there and they'd sit together with him. And then he'd invite their questions, but he'd say, you have to promise not to tell anyone.

And then they'd make the promise and he'd share one piece of wisdom that was life changing. And he said, and it was really a question which is, what are you unwilling to pay attention to?

And you might sense that as you begin to feel different areas that you're stuck in your life, where you're wanting to know, well, how can meditation help me with dada-dada, fill in the blank?

What am I unwilling to pay attention to?

For all of us, the process of healing and of waking up is to be able to kind of cut through the habitual thoughts and discover we're not paying attention to.

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