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

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So good morning, good morning everybody or good afternoon, good day, whatever time it is where you are.

So I'm continuing on this theme of this inner critic, this inner voice or constellation of experiences or structure or dynamic. I don't really know exactly which word to use. or feel like we're inadequate in so many different ways and in so many different situations.

This was a negativity of, somehow like blaming ourselves in some kind of way. It might be in an obvious way, you like very particular thoughts that we hear like, oh, you're no good or something terrible like that. Or maybe it's just a sense that things aren't quite right. But it comes with a sense of shame and shame for how we are or who we are and this harshness.

And there's this feeling of inadequacy that comes with this, that somehow who I am or how I am is not enough.

And so there's, wow, so much pain can be like caught up in this.

I have to cough here.

Excuse me.

Excuse me, sorry about this. I mean to cough that. So I want to spend just a little bit this morning talking about how the inner critic works. Not the complete everything like unpack it,

but just point to something that might not be noticed

and that can be enormously helpful when it is noticed.

And that is the inner critic, it finds, let's say, a fault with a particular thing,

like one specific thing, and then opens that up

and globalizes it into an entire assessment of how we are as a person, like the entirety of how we are a person.

It goes from one specific little incident and says, therefore it means that you're no good.

Like for example, there might be a way in which, for example, you might meditate

before hearing this talk and there might be instance where you find your mind wandering off and you know not to put the meditation any longer.

This is what minds do, right? This is why meditation is a practice where we kind of have to train the mind to keep on coming back to the anchor and that meditation that I guided us and it was the anchor was

saying phrases directed towards different parts of the body and maybe you found the mind chattering away things you need to do or thinking like,

oh this is silly, why am I doing this, then realize like, oh yeah, oh yeah, I'm supposed to be meditating and coming back to the

anchor I don't know maybe there's a that might have happened once or twice while you

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