Tara Brach - 2015-04-20 - Meditation: Vipassana witih Instruction (from retreat)

Episode Date: May 2, 2015

2015-04-20 - Meditation: Vipassana witih Instruction - Morning guided meditation and instruction from the 2015 IMCW Spring Retreat

The following meditation is led by Tara Brock, meditation teacher, psychologist, and author. You might be mindful of the process of arriving. Sensing yourself here, aware of the posture, making perhaps those subtle adjustments that allow you to sit in a way that feels that most supports an alert attention. and also a relaxed quality of mind. Be aware of your intention, your aspiration for the sitting, sensing in a very sincere way what matters to,

letting the senses be awake. You might be aware of listening for a few moments, receptive, open. Noticing that with listening there's nothing to do, The sounds just happen and are spontaneously known. You might bring that same open, receptive presence to the play of sensations in your body. Taking some moments to scan and be aware if there's areas of particular tightness or tension that draw your attention.

See if it's possible as you bring awareness to those areas. there's to be a natural loosening or softening. It's usually helpful to sense the eyes. There's a lot of unconscious tightening around the eyes, especially when we're thinking a lot, softening, letting the jaw be unhinged. See if you can relax down at the root of the tongue, dealing the shoulders from the inside out.

sense if it's possible for a little letting go there, feeling the awareness inside the hands, softening, and just sensing what you can feel. What is the felt sense as you relax the hands? Feeling the awareness filling the chest area. Again, receptive from the inside out, feeling the life just as it is. You might soften a bit in the belly, feeling the life there, and through the pelvic region, feeling the feet, places of contact, pressure, warmth, perhaps from the interior, very receptive, the aliveness there.

Explore widening the lens, sensing in a simultaneous way this whole body energetically. There's living, vibrating sensation. Not stopping anything, not opposing anything. Just letting this life live through you and discovering in the midst of this dance of sensation, your anchor, your home base, still receptive, as if you could listen to and feel the movement of the breath or the sensations in other parts of the body if that's where your anchor is. So it's an intimate, close-in attention and yet entirely receptive. Thus far in the instructions we've been emphasizing, establishing this anchor for presence.

And when we find we've been distracted, pausing and reconnecting with the life that's here, and gently coming back to rest with the anchor. is a way of expanding the instructions. This is the essence of Vipassana. The encouragement is to let the anchor be in the foreground, but if some other strong experience arises, some strong emotion, some strong sensations, we let the anchor home base receipts,

and let whatever's calling for attention be the place we rest our awareness. So if a strong sensation arises, you might name it, burning, stinging, twisting, cool, squeezing, whatever it is. It may be vibrating in a very delicious, pleasant way, and you can name pleasant, or it may be unpleasant, you can name unpleasant. But using the mental noting, if you find it helpful, to bring the attention more fully to the actual experience, feeling it fully from the inside out,

noticing how it changes, gets stronger, or dissipates. When it no longer calls the attention, and come back to rest with the movement of the breath, or the breast and the hands, or whatever you've chosen as your primary anchor. In this way, there's no pushing away of experience. Rather, when something arises and wants our attention, it's included with a clear and gentle presence.

In a similar way, if a strong emotion arises, fear, sadness, anger. You might first notice if there's a storyline, often there is, and as we've been practicing, to simply come into the body and feel, where is it expressing, how is it expressing? To check the throat, the chest, the belly. It helps to breathe with the emotion, to breathe with it.

Sometimes the breath can help you stay more connected with the experience. But the intention being to say yes to what arises. This too, it's okay to let whatever guests arise, whatever weather systems appear, be here. To bring a curiosity and a kindness to the experience. So again, you can name it if that helps, fear, anger, sorrow, excitement, happiness, and let the naming be a way of connecting more fully with the felt sense of the experience. If you find it's a very difficult, intense emotion, you can intentionally add some loving kindness, some compassion, even a gesture of kindness,

help create a softening that allows for more full presence. And as with sensations, when the emotion no longer calls your attention, then to come back and rest with your anchor moment to moment right here with just what's going on. You might notice where your attention is. If you find the mind has drifted, then to just appreciate and acknowledge this is a moment of awakening, you'll notice when we're in the thinking trance, we're not so aware of the senses in the moment. There's not a sense of the sounds that are right here.

So you can reopen or reawaken the senses. reawakening and reopening in the body a bit, softening where there might be tightness. You can re-relax your heart. And as we arrive back from thinking, if the thought isn't a particularly sticky one, then it's quite natural to come back into resting with the primary anchor. But you'll notice as you wake up from thoughts, if you've been thinking one of the top ten that has some charge, that as you reawaken into your senses, that underneath the thinking there can be some emotional activity in the body.

So rather than coming back to the breath, for instance, you might find that that's what's predominant, sense of fear, anxiety, anger in the body. This is the case, then it's quite skillful to directly connect with whatever emotion is calling you, whatever sensations in the body are calling you. If we skip over that and try to come back to our anchor, we'll find that we're immediately catapulted again into thinking. to go into the roots underneath the thinking that live in the body. And again, bringing these two wings of seeing what's happening.

Oh, okay, fear, fear. And allowing it to be there with a very gentle presence, breathing with and feeling what's here. And when it no longer seems to have a compelling quality to it, we come back to the breath or our primary anchor. The two questions that support presence, what is happening inside me right now? And can I be with this? Or can I let this be?

Sensing what your experience is right now. If there's anything difficult, anything you're in some way wanting to pull away from, see how possible it is to say yes energetically. to recognize and deeply allow the life that's here.