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

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Okay, so welcome. Welcome to our third day on talking about or working with Inner Critic.

And today I'm going to start. I just want to talk a little bit about thoughts.

And in the guided meditation we're going to turn towards thoughts, we're going to work with thoughts and I'll talk about it some more in the

darmet afterwards and there's this way in which if we turn towards thoughts,

instead of just saying, like, oh, this thing is annoying,

get out of here, I'm trying to meditate,

which, let's face it, sometimes that is our attitude.

We have this like, oh, shoot, why are you here? You know, there's this tone of them not being

welcome. But when we are willing to turn towards thoughts, acknowledge them, and something like, okay, come on in, you might as well be part of the mindfulness practice because you're here anyway. If we have that kind of like you know turning towards them

and inviting them in there's this way in which that we are honoring thoughts we are

respecting thoughts. We are being inclusive, but when we bring awareness to this common everyday experience of thoughts and we all know it's such a big part of our experience.

But there's this way in which we are honoring its nature or somehow dignifying their presence because they are here and it becomes a gateway to our immediate experience.

There's just another thing we can become aware of,

and in that way you can just highlight the present moment experience and no longer be lost by them, no longer be pushed around by them.

So there's this way in which we can just invite in our awareness or maybe I should say the word receive the thoughts because they are already there.

We don't have to try to make our experience be different than how it is.

And there's this way in just shifting our attitude, our thoughts is enormously powerful.

Just shifting our attitude from, please get away to like to like oh hello there you are come on in right it's very

different so there's lots of instructions that we often give on meditation retreats or here at 7 a.m. or you know if we're going to do some teaching of the introduction to mindfulness.

But maybe right here I'll say there's two different ways in which we can think

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