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

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Thank you. So, last week I gave a talk on the sense of self, and the stronger the sense of self is I believe or I suggest that the less

we're in our senses and that one of the switches that happened when we meditate is we begin

becoming embodied more and more in our senses, our physical senses, the sense of being in a body, embodied in a body,

connected in the body, and to the degree to which the sense of self is related to thinking, ideas, stories, memories, and all that kinds of stuff,

it's very easy for people to identify

their self as connected to thinking and we have his famous expression that comes

from friendship. I think therefore I am that a French philosopher came up with and the Buddhist if

they read the Buddhist we're going to use the same three words.

They probably would say, I am, therefore I think.

And the, you the enness comes first and thinking is just kind of like an appendage or addition and top of it.

And that the thinking world can be and support for us, it augments the fuller way of

we being in the world, but it doesn't take predominance. And for some of us there are times in our lives, probably some of you,

where the thinking takes the lead.

We're living into thinking moving forward.

The momentum, the pressure to think, the forward directionality,

the addiction to thinking, the magnetism of thinking and engaging in thoughts,

becomes a little bit like having the cart in front of the horse. It has a little bit like having,

the thoughts are ahead and the body is following along.

The body is the appendage to thinking

and there's so much thinking going on and jumping around from one to the thought to the other to what our plans or what to do, figuring everything out.

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