Tara Brach - Guided Meditation: Openhearted Presence (2020-08-05)

Episode Date: August 6, 2020

Guided Meditation: Openhearted Presence (2020-08-05) - This meditation guides us to arouse mindfulness through attention to our senses, and to rest in that wakefulness with a receptive and tender presence.  

The following meditation is led by Tara Brock. To access more of my meditations or join my email list, please visit tarabrock.com. We start each week, as we will, this time, with a guided meditation. I'd like to invite you to find a posture, most likely sitting. It could be standing or lying down, but a posture that allows you to be really relaxed and yet wakeful. So take some moments to set yourself.

And once you're in that posture, to close your eyes and then again make whatever subtle adjustments that allow you to feel most balanced and at ease. As you settle now, take some moments to sense your intention for this practice. Your intention towards presence. starts being right here, awake, open, relating with kindness to your inner experience. And in that spirit of relating with a gentle heart, you might visualize the image of a smile and sense wide open space, a great sky, a great blue endless sky, and that that smile is spreading through the sky. And then allow your mind to merge with that great sky.

And sense a smile filling your mind. Feeling the uplift of that, the receptivity of a smile. And as you do, you might soften your eyes and sense a smile spreading through your eyes, lifting up the outer edges of your eyes. let the brow be smooth and just feel the openness the tingling vibrating in that whole region of the eyes perhaps a sense of flickering of light and dark you're becoming more sensitive more here you might bring a slight smile to the mouth and see if you can feel the inside of the mouth smiling

and let the tongue fill the lower palate relaxing right down to the root of the tongue widening the attention so you can feel your whole mouth's filled with sensation the gums teeth tongue lips letting that awareness spread through the whole face letting all the micro muscles of the face relax open gilling the shoulders and letting the shoulders fall away from the neck and then feeling the shoulders from the inside out relaxing softening you might imagine a melting of ice to water and then water to gas noticing as you feel inside the shoulders if there's any tightness or tension holding on that it can float in awareness a soft gentle attention and let the hands rest in an easy and effortless way

and then bringing the attention inside the hands inside the fingers softening and then softening again and opening to the dance of sensation inside the hands the tingling and vibrating the movement of energy still aware of the hands soft and awake, you might again soften the eyes, sense the smile in the eyes, a slight smile

at the mouth, and then visualized and have the felt sense of a smile spreading through the chest, filling the heart, sense this presence of a smile that creates the space for whatever is here, that awareness can hold with a benign, presence, the life that's in the heart area, scanning down the body, letting this next breath be received in a softening belly. This breath, now this one. And again, feeling the awareness filling the belly, still with a soft belly, breathing, feeling the aliveness, the energy, deep in the torso, relaxing, softening, opening through the pelvic region.

Aware of your legs, the length and volume and weight of the legs. Feeling from the inside out, the feet and the toes. Feeling the movement of energy, the tingling, the vibrating there. And sense that you can feel through the feet down into the earth, a sense of that rootedness, that belonging, And if you open your attention, just sense how this earth energy can rise up and fill your whole body with a full awareness, awakeness, aliveness. Feeling every part of your body, this whole dance of sensation, not stopping anything, not resisting anything. And including in the dance of aliveness the changing sounds.

sounds in the space around you, the most distant sounds you can detect, sensing the vastness that includes the most distant sounds, and resting in that openness that's listening to and feeling the whole moment, as if you could sense in the foreground, this changing flow of sound and sensation, feelings, thoughts, and in the background, that vast wakefulness that's witnessing, experiencing, aware, moment to moment, resting and open awareness, noticing the in flow, the inflow and the outflow of the breath, play of sensation, the sounds, and this awake space of awareness that

everything's happening. It's natural to get distracted, to move off into thoughts. The pathway back home to this awake presence is a relaxing back when the mind's inside thoughts. Relax open and listen again. Re-relax the body, softening the shoulders, softening the hands and feeling again that aliveness in the hands, smiling into the heart and sensing the heart space that can include the life that's here. Sense that you can relax back in any moment to open-hearted presence, an awake heart space that can relate with kindness and clarity. to whatever's arising. If the mind has drifted,

explore the pathway back to open-hearted presence, relaxing the attention open to listen, receptively, listening to sounds, listening into your body and sense what wants to let go right now, sensing the possibility of smiling, the eyes soft and smiling, the mouth, smiling into the heart, aware of the changing sounds and sensations, feelings and thoughts. And in the background, this is an open heart space, undefended heart space,

letting life be just as it is, holding this life with a tender presence. And as a way of closing this meditation, you might listen into your human heart, and sense whatever prayer, whatever wish for your own well-being you'd like to offer in this moment, and you might gently put your hand on your heart and really send that wish with a deep quality of caring. And then sense that you're placing your hand on the heart of the world, that the whole world is in your heart and taking these last few moments to offer whatever prayer you'd like to our world, to all the beings in our world.