The following talk was given at the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, California.

Please visit our website at audioderma.org. So hello for this fifth talk on mindfulness of thinking and one of the benefits that I've received from my meditation practice and especially from

mindfulness practice. And practice and I will

is that I have a friendly relationship with my thinking.

My thinking and I get along just fine and sometimes I will often know what I'm thinking about and

if that doesn't seem to be the important thing or the valuable thing or the

beneficial thing to be thinking about it's relatively easy for me to change how I

think.

And so I've, so in that way it's easier to be friends

with my thinking because I'm not obsessed by them. I'm not obsessed by them.

I'm not, they're not forcing themselves on me or I don't live under the weight.

And I'm friendly with them and I respect them and give time for my thoughts.

Sometimes I, when I exercise or go for walks in the hills, I give my thoughts of free reign, just completely let them think

whatever they want to think. And in a way that I don't in meditation, because then I'm kind of just

sitting and being present.

And that full presence to experience

means I'm not kind of traveling along with the thoughts,

being the thoughts.

But to give freedom to thinking when exercise or when I go for hikes, it's fascinating

because it shows me sometimes, you know, something, what's going on for me or what's what I'm really

concerned about or it shows me some some deeper place of some deeper kind of unfolding that might be going on and thinking about

something reflecting on something. So I give myself time in my days to give kind of unfettered freedom to my thinking to think as it wishes.

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