I think I spent like maybe many of you a considerable portion of life abandoning,

brushing aside, inconvenient emotions, perhaps the period of my life that most leaps out, amongst many,

9-11 in New York.

Having witnessed it, I was at a safe distance, but the impression it

left completely eroded any sense of purpose or point in my life and I remember subsequently in the months that followed

trudging into work and feeling each day this holiness, this heaviness in my step, the sadness behind, well almost

tears behind my eyes, a sense of dread for the work day that would follow a complete lack of any sense of point, I should say that I was at that time working in advertising.

So, of course, this was an accurate appraisal.

But after 9-11, it really seems just so overwhelmingly meaningless.

And as I would get to the building on 49th Street and trudge into the elevators to the fourth or fifth floor and I would paste on this sort of what I thought was an appropriate expression to indicate some

form of enthusiasm and when people would ask how I was, I would say,

well, every internal experience was screaming,

no, I would say, fine, I'm okay, how are you?

That was the point that led to everything

becoming unglued because the discrepancy

between what I was presenting to others and what I was actually experiencing became such

a divide that it was no longer tenable and thankfully I had a complete nervous breakdown.

Thankfully, I had been for a long time

as a Buddhist practitioner, I was surrounded by a sanga so I had the support and the people

available to help me and that's why I would like to present a tool that I've found to be extremely beneficial in my practice,

especially when it comes to working with emotions.

By which I mean especially those times when the mind inexplicably brings back again and again attention to a past memory or to an external

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