The following talk is given by Tara Brock, meditation teacher, psychologist and author. Thank you. I'd like to begin this session by inviting you to do a reflection that will bring us into our theme for the evening.

So if you'll close your eyes.

Okay, you're walking in the woods

right now. So imagine that. And there's a loud speaker that's broadcasting the thoughts

of any trees you go by. So each tree is having a running commentary or a running narrative about itself. So you're hearing things like how favorable or not it is compared to other trees.

There's one with a, that's very kind of machismo with a big trunk feeling good about that,

and another's kind of feeling bad that, you know, her bark is all wrinkled and others have smoother bark and

some are preoccupied with bad weather forecasts and some with threats of invading beetles

hear one tree talking about how another one's blocking at sunlight of course another one's

envious of the big one over there, attracting more birds, but

at least no woodpeckers for this one.

And it goes on and on that as you keep walking, each tree in some way is running a story

about it and its life and what's wrong and what it needs.

And you can take a big breath and with the exhale be glad that when you walk through

the woods that's not actually what you experience, right?

And yet when we walk through our life and feel free to open your eyes if you'd like,

we know it that we live in a home video that stars Mois, right? We know that. And the key feature

is that there's an incessant inner dialogue.

And we're often lost in that movie, and when we're lost,

it takes over our entire experience of who we are and it defines our world.

So what happens is we start to meditate,

and one of the first things we discover is what's

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