Tara Brach - 2015-01-28 - Meditation: Living Presence

Episode Date: January 30, 2015

2015-01-28 - Meditation: Living Presence

The following meditation is led by Tara Brock, meditation teacher, psychologist, and author. Closing your eyes and feeling the sitting posture from the inside out, meaning just sense if there's a quality of sitting upright and also quality of ease. It takes some moments just to let go a little. Notice if there's any areas of obvious tightness or tension. bring a gentle listening kind of attention to the heart area and just notice the state of your heart right now and for some this might be the first time you've really checked in with yourself

today or in the last week or whatever so really listen and sense whatever mood whatever quality of wanting or fearing openness, closeness, numb, sensitive. How's your heart right now? You might deepen that listening and sense what your intention is for tonight, your intention for this meditation.

You're sensing into where you feel most sincere, where there's perhaps a longing, a sense of what really matters. One of the most direct portals to presence is awakening and relaxing through this body. You might begin by feeling the area of the eyes and the brow and just softening the eyes, letting the brow be smooth.

You might even sense a smile spreading through the eyes, lifting the corners of the eyes a bit, receptive, present, relaxed. Feeling the mouth relaxed, the jaw unhinged. See if you can relax deep into the root of the tongue. You might again sense a slight smile forming at the mouth, the inside of the mouth smiling, widening the attention just to feel the face,

tingling, vibrating, just the aliveness of the face. Feeling the back of the head, the scalp and skull, and the tingling, vibrating aliveness. You might imagine and sense the throat filling the neck area. Just feel from the inside of the inside, out, the sensations and aliveness in the neck. Letting the shoulders fall away from the neck, relaxing back and down a bit,

bringing the awareness inside the shoulders. See if you can feel the shoulders from the inside out. The moving sensation, places of tightness or squeezing, heat, vibrating, just letting whatever you feel inside the shoulders float a bit. in awareness. Going inside the arms right down into the hands, making sure the hands are resting in a very easy, effortless way, softening the hands and feeling the hands from the inside out.

You might experiment and relax the hands even a little bit more and see if you can notice with an even more intimate attention, the aliveness that's there, letting there be an openness to the chest, letting the awareness fill the chest area. Explore what happens when you feel the heart from the inside out, sensing the space that fills the heart area, sensations and aliveness that unfold the whole play of energy, scanning down the body, relaxing and loosening the abdominal area, letting this next breath be received in the softening belly.

This breath, and now this one, and again, letting the awareness fill the belly, feeling the space and the play of aliveness that's there, bringing the attention deep into the torso, feeling into the whole pelvic region, the hips, buttocks, genitals, and again, letting the awareness fill that area so you can feel from the inside out this play of aliveness. Continuing to scan down the body, feeling the legs from the inside out, down into the feet, feeling the feet from the inside out, tingling, the vibrating sensation there, and then widening the lens and feeling this whole body, simultaneous,

as a field of sensation, not stopping anything or posing anything, just letting this changing flow of experience live through you. It includes sounds, it's a play of sounds. So you're listening not just with your ears but with your whole awareness. So you're listening to and feeling the whole moment you might sense this change. playing of sound and sensation feelings in the foreground, in the background, in the background, that alert inner stillness, space of awareness that everything's happening in. It's quite natural that the mind will leave this living presence and go into thought forms,

remembering, planning, commentary. And the practice is when we notice, just to appreciate that as a moment of waking up again. Just to notice thinking. And then to pause and re-relax open, perhaps listening again to the sounds that are actually right here. So we shift from the sounds of the thoughts and words in our mind to the actual changing sounds, moment to moment, right here. and to reopen our sensitivity in the body, feeling again from the inside out, this play of aliveness, coming back to our senses, to the life that's right here. For some, if it helps to stabilize the attention in the present moment with the breath,

you might feel the particular sensations of the inflow and the outflow as a kind of anchor. Or for others, your anchor might be the field of body. bodily sensations as a whole. Just know that you're here, right here. Coming back again and again to this heerness with the senses awake or relaxed presence. You can begin fresh in any moment. You notice you've been in a trance of thinking just to re-relax open, relax back into your senses so that you're listening to and feeling this moment right here, noticing the difference between any thought and the vividness and mystery of this living presence,

closing this meditation by bringing that sense of living presence to the heart area, to sensing how living presence is experienced in the domain of life. heart and taking these moments to offer whatever wish or blessing you'd like to your own being, whatever resonates. And then sensing all beings as part of this heart space, sending your prayer to all beings everywhere.