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

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Few words about the practice.

One of the

fortunate and maybe sometimes unfortunate aspects of mindfulness practice is you bring yourself

along for it. I mean, you, and it's fortunate because who else can do it for you?

You know, you can't contract it out to someone else do your meditation.

You know, I really want to meditate.

I want to get far in my meditation.

And so I don't have time.

So I'm just going to pay for someone else to meditate.

That, you know, that's probably nice for that person, but it doesn't really do you any good.

So you have to bring yourself along. But then when we bring ourselves along, our relationship to our self can be complicated. And one way to bring ourselves along is to be the doer, the fixer, the one who's going to get something and apply oneself.

And there's a lot of self-concerned, self-preoccupation that comes along that can make meditation difficult.

And so you have to bring yourself along, but you also have to not get in your own way

and one way maybe not to get into your own way

is rather than have this idea that you're in the control tower

you're the one doing the practice you're the one applying attention

you're the one who's, you know, going to make

something happen. Rather than that, you're letting, what you're doing is making yourself available

for the meditation, make yourself available for something to happen, making yourself available.

And one of the ways to think of that is whatever comes into awareness,

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