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

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Okay folks, so welcome.

So, welcome.

Um,

so on a moment, well,'ll sit, but just to say that a lot of different ways we can break down sitting,

but illuminate the different facets of what is entailed by meditation.

But one distinction that feels important to me is we're learning to train the attention, that kind of

of attention spotlight. And we're learning to stay open to not let the awareness collapse even when

intensity is running through our system through body and mind.

And we can get over-identified with the attentional facet of practice, of focus, this breaths, the kind of

stillness, seclusion. But part of why we do that actually is to strengthen the capacity just to stay

uncolapsed amidst intensity.

And we study collapse at a kind of micro level.

It may not happen in some major meltdown during a sit,

but there's a little micro meltdowns where something, even just the urge to, you know,

to scratch an inch is a subtle kind of meltdown that we pay attention to.

Okay, how did that happen? How did we get kind of overrun?

And we pay attention to those little micro collapses because

they happen in more significant ways in our lives.

So what does it mean to actually stay

stay open even as the kind of channels, the affective emotional channels are stimulated and might lead us to the kind of awareness collapsing into that intensity.

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