Tara Brach - Guided Meditation: Being Presence

Episode Date: October 11, 2013

2013-10-09 - Guided Meditation: Being Presence

Finding a sitting posture that lets you be upright enough so you feel that the quality of alert. Let the posture support that awakeness and also at ease. And as you come into stillness, bring the attention to the breath. We begin with some very full breath and unusually full in breath, inhaling deeply. Let's fill the chest and the lungs. And then a slow out breath, slow enough that you can feel the sensations of releasing the breath, the sensations of letting go. And then again, inhaling deeply.

Slow out breath. Just feel yourself relaxing, releasing, letting go. And then once again, inhale deeply. Hold the breath for a moment. You might feel stretching across the chest, the shoulders back and down a bit. tuck the chin in and a slow out breath, letting go, letting go, and then letting the breath in a natural way continue and sense the possibility of relaxing with the breath. It's as if when the breath comes in you could feel yourself relaxing open, inflating like a balloon

and with the out breath, settling, releasing, letting go. noticing also how in just a few moments there's an increased quality of presence. Let the senses be awake, listening, feeling the aliveness, sensations throughout the body and then bringing a careful attention to the heart area and just notice the mood of the heart, whatever emotions might be there, there, whether there's a quality of openness or closeness, numb, sensitive, anxious, at ease. No judging, just to notice. Part of becoming intimate with our experience is simply noticing.

How is it right now? As you're listening to your heart, sense what your intention is for tonight, what it is that really brings you here in feeling our shared intention to wake up these hearts and minds to be of benefit to our world. We gently bring our palms together, feel that heart presence, and we'll chant the simple mantra, oh, this sound current of connectedness. We'll chant three times.

Please inhale. A mindful attention has really two qualities. One is to be awake and notice what's here, and there's a quality of heart. of friendliness or kindness towards what we experience. We can begin to awaken those qualities with the image of a smile. So I'd like to invite you to imagine, in contrast to tonight's sky, a great open blue sky that has been filled with the curve of a smile,

that it spreads through that sky. So you see the curve and the openness of a smile, a smile spreading through the sky. Just visualizing that and sensing that your mind can merge with that sky so your mind can be filled with the curve of a smile. And with the quality of openness, receptivity, you can let that smile spread through the eyes so that you feel the corners of the eyes slightly up, softening the eyes, letting the brow be smooth. eyes are smiling and sense the relaxation and sensitivity around the eyes just awake

gentle attention, slight smile at the mouth, sometimes called the half-smile of the Buddha. It's considered smile yoga because you're actually sending a message to the nervous system to shift from fight-flight-freeze to attend and befriend. Let the smile be in the inside of the mouth, jaw relax. Again, sensing a quality of openness and wakefulness in the mouth, aliveness, and letting the smile spread through the heart and chest area. You can smile into the heart. See if you can sense the space in the heart area, the openness, letting that openness spread outward and outward so that the shoulders are free to relax back and down. See if you and bring the awareness inside the shoulders and just feel the aliveness that's there.

You might sense a bit of a melting from ice to water as you just simply bring awareness to that area, ice to water and water to vapor or gas. So you can actually sense particles of energy, aliveness moving inside the shoulders rather than a solid block. in a similar way explore bringing the awareness inside the hands. Let them rest in a very easy and effortless way and see what happens if you soften the hands and just feel them from the inside out. Do you notice how they come alive that you can begin to receive the tingling, the pulsing,

the flow of energy? Again, coming to the chest, sensing an openness at the chest. sensing the chest from the inside out, the movement of energy, and then extending the attention downward, you might sense a smiling into the navel area, sensing that same curve of a smile in the navel, letting this next breath be received in a softening belly. This breath, and now this one, and again,

you begin to wake up deep in the torso, see if you can sense it. energy moving in the belly, the aliveness deep down into the hips, buttocks, and the genitals, noticing the places of contact where you're sitting on your chair, where your feet are on the floor, or if you're on your cushion. So just sensing pressure, warmth, feeling the feet from the inside. Very receptive, can you feel the tingling and vibrating there? Imagining that smile spreading outward again into space

so you can feel your whole body as a field of sensation in an open, smiling environment, just letting everything happen. The tingling, the places of pressure, the flow, heat or cool, pleasant or unpleasant, letting the sounds come and go, close in sounds, more distant, ones, just letting everything happen so that you're listening to and feeling this whole

moment. Can you notice in the foreground this changing play of sensations, perhaps feelings, sounds? And in the background, this presence that's aware, an alert, inner stillness that doesn't oppose anything that simply knows, knows moment to moment, awakeful openness. Relax back, just let yourself be that presence. Presence will notice at some point that the mind has drifted into thought forms, has kind of left the aliveness of what's right here and gone into a virtual reality, future, past, commentary. So when there's a noticing, just be appreciative that that's a moment of waking up from the trance and gently reopen the attention, listening to the sounds that are right here, let them wash through. Again, sensing that smile and softening, the eyes smiling, the mouth,

the heart. When these shoulders relax, the hands relax, feeling that inflow and outflow of the breath. And just know that you're back here again. Except for the rest of the time as we sit, the practice is quite simple. There's a noticing that we've gone off into thought and then a gentle re-arriving, relaxing back into this wakeful presence.

And if it helps you to rest in the inflow, outflow of the breath as a way of staying more tethered to the moment, to the moment, that's a skillful thing to do. But if the mind's quiet, you might just simply rest in presence with the intention of not doing anything, just being, being the presence. Give yourself permission to start fresh in any moment. It doesn't matter what's been going on in the mind.

Just relax the attention open again and discover the vividness, and mystery of what's right here, this changing flow of sound, sensations, feelings in the heart, and this background of presence that's aware. These last few minutes, very consciously choosing presence and interested, friendly attention, relaxing and letting go fully into the changing flow.