Tara Brach - 2015-04-22 - Meditation - Letting Life Be, Just As It Is

Episode Date: April 26, 2015

2015-04-22 - Meditation - Letting Life Be, Just As It Is - from morning instructions at the IMCW 2015 Spring Retreat

The following meditation is led by Tara Brock, meditation teacher, psychologist, and author. Take some moments to feel your sitting posture from the inside out, making any subtle adjustments so that you feel yourself aligned and balanced, upright and relaxed. You might scan through the body and notice if there's any areas of habitual tightness, see if there might be a natural softening or letting go, let your senses be awake, opening the attention to listening, of the close-in sounds, background sounds in the room,

sounds of this space right here, sounds like my voice, noticing the spaces between sounds, detecting more distant sounds, sensing the space that includes even the most distant sounds, you're resting in that openness, fully receptive, noticing that with listening, there's nothing to do. You can't go after a sound, focus in on a sound, rather they're received, known by awareness. Sense that you're listening, not just with your ears, but with your whole awareness. It's with this same openness and receptivity that sounds are known, that you can receive the aliveness and sensations of the body.

See if you can listen to and feel the sensations at the surface of the body, face, back of the head, the arms. And then listening to and feeling the sensations from the interior, the interior within the head, the aliveness there, receiving, listening to feeling sensations inside the shoulders, inside the hands, listening to and feeling the aliveness inside the chest, the belly, the pelvic region, feeling the volume of the legs,

listening to and receiving sensations in the legs, and the feet, the interior of the feet, listening to and feeling the sensations in life of the body, this whole energy body. And with that same receptivity, quality of listening and feeling, might receive the sensations of the brain, breath, listening to and feeling the breath, a very light, kind of delicate, intimate, close-in

attention, continuing to listen to and feel your moment-to-moment experience, feeling the breath, if that's your anchor, whatever your primary place of attention is, receptive, intimate, contactful, right here. And then if some other experience arises that calls your attention, letting the home base or anchor fade back some, letting that experience. Be right in the center, in the foreground, listening to and feeling with a full presence,

what's right here, a moment. Thus far, the instructions have been, to bring your attention to the home base, to the anchor, and then when something calls to open to that, when it's no longer calling, arriving back in the anchor. You're also invited if the mind is quieter

and you feel inclined to simply let the attention be with whatever sensory experience is predominant. It means you might hear some sounds and open to and listen to, experience that. And then notice the sensations of the breath. Let that be in the foreground. And then notice that your hands are tingling. Feeling that.

And maybe feel a kind of clutching or surge of anxiety or fear. Breathing, feeling that. Perhaps that takes a bit longer. staying, staying. Then another sound comes up, the tension goes there. This way, the practice

is really resting in an awareness that opens to whatever is predominant with a receptivity, with a gentleness, with a clarity of seeing what's right here moment to moment.

moment, listening to and feeling what's happening inside you, right here, right now, and recognizing that part of what we notice is the way we're relating to predominant experience. There's what's happening and often in the background a sense of either aversiveness, not liking, wanting this different, wanting something else. else to be happening, a kind of striving towards something. See if you can include in mindfulness the attitude, the atmosphere in the background, the way the mind's relating to what's going on. In the moments that you recognize, there's something in the background that wants it different, in that moment of recognizing there's less identification with that, more freedom, more presence.

With the simple intention of presence, you might experiment in these last few minutes with letting go of all doing, just simply letting life be just as it is. You notice the contracting and wanting to make something happen, wanting to direct the meditation. In that noticing, just relax back again. Letting life be just as it is.