I'd like to begin tonight by sharing with you some of you might remember, I mentioned

an article that was written by a woman who had spent years pay lit of care working

with the dying and she wrote about the regrets that are most commonly voiced by the dying

and I thought these were really interesting and important and the main regrets were

that I really didn't live true to myself, that I let my life be pulled around by the expectations

of others in the world around me and related to that and this was more men than women

but women too, I work too hard, it's familiar, the third one I want to mention is I really

didn't let myself be happy and I think that's really interesting because it has in it

that sense that there's a choice, that the dying we're saying in some way I let myself

get pulled away from happiness, I got way laid from experiencing the playfulness and

aliveness and silliness and joy that's possible, I got pulled away because we do get grim, we

do think we've got a Havish, the poet says a thousand serious moves still to do, right?

So it's an interesting reflection for us just what gets between us and happiness, it's

a really, it's an important inquiry and then when we ask ourselves and this is something

to explore for yourself when you're really happy, what's going on, what's going on inside

you when you're really happy and you'll find there's two dimensions and one dimension is

that there's presence, when you're really happy there's a quality of your hear for what's

going on, the second dimension is aliveness and they're entirely intertwined, when you're

happy there's a sense of life flowing through you, they're intertwined, if you bring your

attention in an embodied way to the life that's here you'll find the sense of presence or

the space of presence that's aware and if you're really occupying presence you're going

to feel the flow of aliveness, so that's what I'd like to explore tonight is this twined

...