The Real Work:
A Weekly Sit for Working Stiffs
with Neil Carlson

This group is for anyone who has ever felt the gap between the life they’re living and the life they mean to live. You don’t need to be a meditator. You don’t need to believe anything in particular. You just need to be curious about what’s actually happening (in your mind, your work, your relationships) and willing to sit still long enough to look.

We meet for an hour of meditation and open conversation. We sit in silence, each of us observing our own minds, and then we talk about whatever came up. The format is simple:

• A few minutes to arrive and settle
• Brief meditation instruction: how does meditation work?
• 25 minutes of silent meditation
• Open discussion: what came up, what’s alive, what matters

The teaching is rooted in vipassana, or insight meditation, a Buddhist tradition that emphasizes the importance of “seeing things as they are” through our direct experience of meditation rather than belief, doctrine, or someone else’s interpretation. The Buddha once said that wise friendship—showing up honestly, practicing together, asking hard questions in good company—wasn’t half the path, it was the entirety of it. That’s what we’re building here.