Hello, welcome to another episode of Mindfulness Plus. My name is Thomas Mconki. Thank you for listening. So I am working out a little something in my

respiratory system. I spent a weekend, a long weekend in a conference center with highly

air-conditioned and recirculated air, and my lungs are irritated. So you'll hear that in my voice hopefully this dropping

of yet another octave is in service of your meditation practice that is my wish and my intention so

i want to share a parable with you to help illuminate meditation and awareness practice.

And after the short parable, we will get into some practice as we do each week here on

Mindfulness Plus.

So I am a desert boy.

I grew up primarily in Salt Lake City.

There is no ocean anywhere near. Although when the Mormon pioneers landed here, I think they mistook the Great Salt Lake for an extension

of the ocean. And I think they were probably sorely disappointed when they realized that it was a

stanchy swamp land. But that's not what

this episode is about. I moved to L.A. in 2008. I was there for about a year before I relocated

to Shanghai. I had a pretty sweet setup where you hear about the nightmare commute in L.A.

But I was in West L.A.

Living just a block away from the Venice Beach Pier, if any of you know where that is,

had a short run to my office.

It took about 20 minutes just on surface streets in my car, so I never got caught in traffic.

And I was so excited to be this close to

the ocean I grew up in the desert I grew up in the rocky mountain so I know that landscape but the

ocean scape was just so exciting to me so I wanted to really take advantage of it I would get home

from work every day immediately throw on a wetsuit,

...