Tara Brach - Guided Meditation: Into the Stillness

Episode Date: August 18, 2013

2007-09-26 - Guided Meditation: Into the Stillness

Let yourself come into the stillness, the quietness, by simply noticing your experience. Feel the breath as it moves in and out, open to the sounds around you. Aware of the quality of heerness, of the experience of the sensations and aliveness, the presence that's here right now. in this location, in this moment. From this sense of presence, let yourself be aware of your intention

for this evening. You might explore establishing your intention with a soft mental whisper of a prayer, just feeling the sincerity of what matters for tonight. We let our chanting together of the mantra, to om, be a way of really bringing our caring, our intention, our sense of connection alive with each other, with all beings.

So if you'd like to bring the palms together and really feel yourself centering at the heart, feel the sincerity of your heart. We'll chant three times. Please inhale deeply. taking some moments to really allow yourself to sit down into your body. You might let the shoulders down a little. Let the chest be open and the belly soft, aware of your hands, just feeling them from the inside out.

One of the places of contact where you're sitting, where you're sitting on your cushion or chair, where your hands are touching each other or your legs, where your feet are touching the floor. Sensing your contact with the earth. Places of pressure or hardness, warmth. Where of the body is a field of sensation. Notice what happens when there's no resistance.

Just letting the play of sensations unfold. Tingling and vibrating, hard or soft. cool or warm, pleasant or unpleasant. Just letting be with the same receptivity listening to sounds, listening to the sounds in the space around you. Just letting them wash through you so that you're listening with your whole body's awareness, sensing the skin as an envelope around your body.

listen to the sounds right outside the skin listen to and feel the space outside the skin notice what happens when you listen to and feel the space behind you imagine and listen and feel into the space behind you to the sides in front above and below listen to and feel the sensations inside the skin completely open and receptive. Listening to and feeling the whole moment,

just be the silence that's listening, the still open space that's aware. The mind will over and over again contract away from presence, hitch to a thought, future, the past. When there's awareness of that, without any judgment, let that be an invitation to pause, to arrive again in sacred presence right here, listening, feeling the sounds that are here,

these sensations, this moment-to-moment experience of aliveness. Nothing is pushed away if a strong emotion arises, restlessness or fear, sorrow, excitement. Completely allow that weather system to live through you. Honor the life that arises, whether it's pleasant or unpleasant, feeling directly the experience right here, noticing how it changes when there's no resistance, just staying with what's here.

if difficult bodily sensations arise. In a similar way, bring a soft and gentle presence to let them be right here as they are. What really matters in meditation is attitude. Is there a willingness to just let life be as it is, an interest in what's happening, a care? If you've been lost in thought,

because of us right now, And just notice the difference between any thought and the vividness of being here. These sounds, these physical sensations, this mood that might be here in the heart, listening to and feeling this moment-to-moment experience. And notice what happens when you let everything be just as, it is. And she'll be hearing the sound of the gong. And see if you can include that sound

with the same presence, the sensation of opening your eyes, of looking around, receiving the images, the shapes, the colors. So that rather than ending meditation, it continues in a different form, still really here.

awake, open, present.