Tara Brach - Guided Meditation: Resting As Awareness

Episode Date: August 23, 2013

2013-08-21 - Guided Meditation: Resting As Awareness

So we begin tonight in a simple way of arriving just to close your eyes and gently bring your attention to your breath so that you begin with a very long and deep in breath, inhaling, and a slow conscious out breath. So you can feel the sensations of releasing your breath. And again, nice full deep in breath and a slow releasing of the breath. Letting go, letting go.

Feeling the sensations of letting go. And again, inhaling deeply, filling the lungs. You might hold the breath when the chest is full. Hold the breath, stretch up a little taller, let the shoulders relax back and down, and then a slow out breath. Letting go, letting go. Letting go.

the breath resume its natural rhythm, keeping the attention gently resting with the breath, so that there's a relaxing as the breath comes in, and opening to receive, and a softening and releasing with the out breath. Noticing the quality of your presence right now, after collecting just a bit, feeling yourself right here.

Let the senses be open, so you can include sounds, including the whole field of sensation, the whole experience of your body sitting here, and feeling the area of the heart, sensing whatever mood or emotion might be predominant, without any judgment, just noticing the state of your heart right now,

listening to your heart and sensing your intention for tonight, what brings you here, what matters to you. So if you can connect with your intentions, so you feel it in a really sincere way, what you really wish for, what your heart longs for. And we bring our voices together chanting the mantra, Om, we'll chant three times. And if you'd like to let the hands come together in prayer pose,

that light touching of the palms at the heart, beck and deep in the sense of connection and of reverence, inhaling deeply. So we continue to awaken presence. by bringing a full attention inside the body. You might soften the eyes and let the brow be smooth, perhaps sensing a smile spreading through the eyes, a slight smile at the mouth, relaxing the jaw.

You might sense even that smile inside the mouth. This helps all the little micro-muscles in the face to soften. It actually deactivates a bit of the fight-flight habit. So eyes soft and smiling, the mouth, smiling. You can even imagine and feel that curve of a smile in the heart area spreading through the chest, not to paper over anything, but really to make space, openness for what's right here. eyes, soft, smiling, the mouth, the heart.

You can even loosen at the belly area and sense a smile there so that as you breathe the breath is received in a softening belly and bringing the attention deep into the torso, sensing the awareness spreading outward so that you can feel the shoulders and arms and imagine you can bring the awareness fully inside the shoulders. Just feel the life that's inside the shoulders. You might imagine a kind of melting or dissolving and sense the movement there.

You might sense tension or tightness, but you can also sense space and aliveness, ice to water and water to gas, letting the hands rest in a very effortless way very easy and then softening the hands, letting the attention and awareness be inside the hands so you can feel the life that's there. Perhaps a very subtle sense of tingling or vibrating.

Maybe you feel heat or cool. Just notice where your attention is right now. You sense the possibility of arriving yet again. Just feeling this body from the inside out, these hands, arms, shoulders, feeling an openness in the torso, softening the belly. You might feel the places of contact where you're sitting on your cushion or chair, pressure, warmth, where your hands touch each other or your legs, where the feet contact the floor. And then from the inside out, if you widen the lens, just to feel this entire body,

simultaneously as a field of energy, of aliveness, of sensation. Notice what it's like when you let everything happen, not resisting, this whole living dance of sensation, including the sounds around you, so that you're listening to and feeling this entire changing flow moment to moment, noticing that in the foreground, there's this dance of sounds appearing, disappearing, sensations, bubbling up, moving, changing, perhaps the felt sense of a mood or emotion, the inner weather. And in the background, that alert inner stillness, that interior space of awakeness, or beingness, it simply is aware.

Just notice what it's like to recognize. your own presence, the awareness that's here, is to relax back and rest as that awareness, being the awareness, that silence that's listening. If you find the mind as busy and distracted, you might choose an anchor for your attention to help you collect again and again, perhaps the inflow, outflow of the breath, the feeling of all the body sensations in the sitting posture or sounds so that you know that you're here. Choosing presence by waking up out of thoughts again and again just to notice the thought. Oh okay, planning, worrying, commentary and choosing to relax back into this immediacy of

aliveness that's right here. And if the mind is not so busy, tonight you might explore non-doing, simply resting as awareness, as the silence or stillness that's here. Just letting everything happen, letting it all be as it is. And when you notice you've drifted

just to gently arrive again, aware of the play of sound and sensation, sensation and aware in the background of this alert inner stillness, the formless dimension, that's our original expression of being. If you let everything be just as it is in a very deep way, lax receptivity. I'd ask yourself if it's possible to let go just a little bit more right now, seeing what's happening, laxing and letting be this changing. world of sound and sensation, feelings, thoughts.