Tara Brach - Guided Meditation for Times of Pandemic: "Calling on Your Awakened Heart"

Episode Date: March 19, 2020

Guided Meditation for Times of Pandemic: "Calling on Your Awakened Heart" (2020-03-18) - In the midst of difficulty we need access to our deepest wisdom and love. This guided meditation calls forth this loving presence by opening to the heart and spirit of whatever being in our life we most experience as calm, wise and compassionate (offered online via livestream). Your support enables us to continue to offer these talks and meditations freely. If you value them, I hope you will consider offering a donation at this time at www.tarabrach.com/donation/. With gratitude and love, Tara

The following meditation is led by Tara Brock. To access more of my meditations or join my email list, please visit tarabrock.com. Welcome, my friends, and namaste. And I'm really glad for us to be together, and we're going to start right in this evening with a guided meditation. And the title of this guided meditation is calling on your awakened heart. So you might keep that in mind as, we begin together. I'd like to invite you to close your eyes and settle in. Take some moments to

make yourself comfortable wherever you are. Find the sitting posture that most supports you so you're sitting upright. You can be alert, but also at ease, relaxed. Invite yourself to be right here, sense this whole meditation as a sacred pause, an opportunity to come home to yourself. In that spirit, you might take a few full breaths, gathering and collecting the attention, inhaling deeply, filling the lungs, and exhale. Let the out breath be slow, releasing, letting go. And again, nice deep, full in-breath and a slow out-breath. Letting go. Letting go. And again, filling the chest and the lungs, breathing in. And with the out-breath, sense of relaxing outward or releasing, a letting go. And then as you allow your breath to resume

and its natural rhythm. Just notice the quality of presence that's here. Let your senses be awake. So there's listening to the sounds around you, listening to the quietness, the space that's here, and an inward listening so that you begin to listen to and feel into the state of your heart right now. Notice how you are. You might sense these last days or weeks and all that might be contributing to just this moment the way your heart and your body and your mind are being experienced. So what is the state of your heart right now? Perhaps there's a numbness. Perhaps there's an agitation, contraction. Let whatever you feel be here. For some there may be grief,

vulnerability, there might be other emotions, sense of sadness, anxiety. Maybe there's excitement, maybe there's hopefulness, maybe there's anger, listening and feeling the state of your heart, and sense as you do that you can hold and touch all that's present in this presence inviting forward whatever Deeper levels of vulnerability or fear might want to be felt or known, a very receptive listening presence. As you open to what's here and as you sense our world right now and all that we're living through, let yourself remember, let yourself picture being who's the calmest, wisest, most compassionate being you can possibly imagine or that you've ever met.

It might be someone you know, perhaps a teacher, healer. It might be someone you have never met but admire like the Dalai Lama. Perhaps a spiritual figure, the bodhisattva of compassion, the divine mother, Kuan Yin. Might be an indigenous healer. Or perhaps you might choose to call on directly, bring to mind your future self or what you might call your high self, your own awakened heart in its full manifestation and flowering. Sense who comes forward, who you naturally call on.

As you envision this being of wisdom, of great heart, feel that you're in their presence, that you with all the state of your heart, just as it is now in these times, you're in this being's presence. And notice what their presence is like. Their vast understanding, their wisdom of how this world is an ever-changing flow of seasons, of joys and sorrows, losses, and how they have this steady, wise heart in the midst. Sense that this being of wisdom, of love, is gazing at you right now with the profound tenderness. Just imagine those eyes and sense the tenderness,

the care coming through them to you. And sense that through their gaze and caring heart, that their spirit, their courage and love, love can bathe you, actually can fill you and allow yourself to let in fully that loving presence. Notice what it feels like to experience this spirit, this energy in a cellular way, letting that wisdom and love and energy pour into you and sensing the effect on your body. How does your body feel? What's the effect on your heart? What's the effect on your heart? heart, your mind, your spirit, sensing the love and presence of this being filling you fully.

She's looking through the eyes of wisdom and feeling the world with the heart of compassion. Now sense a kind of dissolving. So you are not other than this beingness. You're one with this luminous, empty, beautiful awareness. sense how you can allow the stream of natural emotions, the tears and fears and sorrows of our times to move through a vast heart space and sense who you are in the midst of all this. Now become aware of the movement of your breath. And sense the particulars of your body sitting here, breathing.

Become aware of the space you're in. and with a kind of openness and receptivity, open to receive, sense that this wise being that you've embodied that you've felt so intimately is now going to offer you a message that can in some way help guide you in the days to come. So in this quiet, in this openness, listen and receive. It may be words or maybe an image, maybe a felt sense. Take some moments to receive the message and let it into your body, your heart, and your spirit. Now for these next few minutes will be resting, resting and feeling the heart space that's present right here.

Make yourself at home in the changing flow of sensations, sounds, the movement of the breath, sensing an open awareness, a tender awareness, so that whatever arises can be met with compassion. noticing where your attention is and if the mind has drifted let this be an opportunity to gently relax open to listen again to the sounds that are right here to listen to and feel the state of your heart to sense the possibility of relaxing what's here with a wakeful and kind presence. In these final moments, I invite you to reflect again, to again bring to mind the image, the being that you considered just recently, the being of wisdom and compassion, and then consider that you can only imagine a being of loving presence because this

This is the nature of who you already are and that this entire path is coming to realize and trust that. That the wisdom and compassion is already here and our path is just to wake up to its presence. So as you feel right now that presence, the aliveness in the body, the tenderness and the tenderness of the heart as you sense a quietness in the mind and a listening you might take in these words from the poet Lynn Unger when your body has become still reach out with your heart know that we are connected in ways that are terrifying and beautiful you could hardly deny it now know that our

lives are in one another's hands. Surely that has become clear. Do not reach out your hands. Reach out your heart. Reach out your words. Reach out all the tendrils of compassion that move invisibly where we cannot touch. Promise this world your love for better or for worse in sickness and in health so long as we all shall live promise this world your love for better or for worse in sickness and in health so long as we all shall live blessings and thank you for your presence