Tara Brach - Guided Meditation: A Listening Presence

Episode Date: January 24, 2014

2014-01-22 - Guided Meditation - A Listening Presence

Part of arriving is to feel your sitting posture, and even with your eyes closed, just making those subtle adjustments so that you can feel a quality of sitting upright and tall, letting the posture actually be conducive to the mind state of alertness, sitting tall, and yet also at ease, so there's not an unnecessary stiffness or tension. Let your senses be. awake so you're aware of what you're hearing, you're aware of the kind of sensations going

on in your body right now, and with that kind of an inner listening, sensing into the state of your heart right now. You might not have checked in for a while. Just that simple inquiry of really, what is it like from my heart's point of view? What is my mood? Is there an openness, a tightness, sadness, gratitude, numbness? See if you can notice without adding any judgment, just with some interest, quality of your heart. Still listening to your heart, just sensing what your heart's intention is for tonight. So you're sensing what's important to you.

you, what really brings you. Just listen in for what feels most sincere to you. Perhaps it's that longing to be more present and awake, or perhaps to be open-hearted, more calm, to sense what matters to. We open together as a community of heart by feeling that quality of care. and chanting this simple, universal sound current of om. If you'd like to bring the palms together as a way of really connecting with your own heart and that quality of devotion, please do so. We'll chant three times.

So please inhale deeply. As you relax your arms down and you come into that stillness, see if it's possible just to scan through your body you notice if there's any areas of real obvious holding or tension. You might sense the shoulders, perhaps. And just soften. See if you can let go a little.

Softening the shoulders, perhaps letting the hands be soft, the belly. Wherever you feel a tightness, just bringing the awareness there and see if there can be a natural untangling, releasing. It's a way to support the relaxing. The image of a smile can be really helpful and powerful just to imagine a great open blue sky

filled with the curve of a smile. The sense that openness and expansiveness and receptivity, can imagine the mind merging with that open sky. So the mind's vast, open, bright. right, receptive. And coming into a state of listening. You're listening to the sounds in the room. You're listening to these words,

the spaces that are between words, listening outside, to the furthest away sounds you can detect. Listening not only with your ears, but with your whole awareness. See if you can listen in a kind of global way so that everything's taken in evenly. Just let it wash through you. Wide open sky like mine, receptive, listening,

letting the sounds wash through you, listening to the sounds and the silence. See what it feels like in your being to come into a state of listening. So you're not trying to do it right or reach a goal. In fact, there's nothing to do. You'll notice there are sounds, the feeling of sounds. Sense the space in the room.

You can feel space. Sense the underlying silence in the midst of sound. If you can let yourself feel that, silence, sound, space around your body. See if you can notice the surface contact area between the skin, between the skin and outside the body. Between the skin and outside the body. So you're still listening as you feel this contact area

between the skin and what's outside of you. I'm still listening. See if you can listen to your inner environment to what's inside the skin. Not trying to change anything. anything, control anything. Just this listening presence that receives and perceives the play of sensation. Sometimes this listening awareness will be drawn to particular areas of sensation or it might take in sensation in a more global way.

Listening to sound, listening to sensation. Absolute, open, receptive presence. engaged and yet totally allowing listening to this play of sounds, sensations, just letting everything happen, letting life be just as it is, resting, just being this listening presence. It's quite natural that you'll discover along the way that the mind's been consumed inside a thought form.

Moments of waking up from thought are particularly valuable. Just to appreciate, ah, okay, waking up. And again, just let the mind relax open into that listening, noticing the difference between being inside a thought form and listening to the actual sounds and experience of the moment. the vividness and immediacy and mystery of this changing river of experience right now. You might notice in the state of listening, there's more spaciousness, more openness. Just notice that openness, this openness of listening, the mind starts to relax into its natural state.

You might sense if it's possible to relax, let go just a little bit of listening. little more. Just sense that sky-like mind, sounds, sensations washing through, and this openness that everything's happening in. In this openness, you can rest more and more. Discover that it's filled with the light of awareness. It's like awake space, listening to, feeling the whole changing flow and is gone. In any moment you can relax back into your natural state by simply listening, listening to the sounds, the sensations, listening with your heart and your whole awareness.