Tara Brach - Heart Meditation: Awakening Loving Presence (2016-12-31)

Episode Date: January 12, 2017

Heart Meditation: Awakening Loving Presence (2016-12-31) ~ We each have an intrinsic capacity for loving presence, and there are powerful ways of paying attention that bring this potential alive. This meditation uses the image and felt sense of a smile to bring a relaxed receptivity to the body. We then engage with our future self (our Being when our heart is fully awake) and explore what it means to embody the fullness of that wisdom and love. (given on the last afternoon of the 2016 IMCW 5-day New Year's silent retreat)

The following meditation is led by Tara Brock. To access more of my meditations or join my email list, please visit tarabrock.com. I thought I'd begin by saying that in my own experience, the deepest truths are often the ones that we forget. And one of them is that if we can't hold and regard the life within us, ourselves with love, it's very difficult to love life, others in this whole of the life. When we talk about loving the life within, loving ourselves, really it's that quality

of profound allowing and acceptance and tenderness. I thought I'd read to you one of my favorite passages from a teacher that's had a big impact on me, Srinar Sargadata. He says that all you need is already within you. Only you must approach yourself with reverence and love. Self-condemnation and self-distrust are grievous errors. Your constant flight from pain and search for pleasure is a sign of love you bear for yourself. All I plead with you is this.

Make love of yourself perfect. All I plead with you is this. Make love of yourself perfect. Deny yourself nothing. Give yourself infinity and eternity and discover that you do not need them. You are beyond." When he says, make love of yourself perfect, what is it that we're love and the Buddhists say, well, there's no self here. But what Srinor Sargadata is referring

to is really loving the life that we experience that's right here. These feelings and sensations, these thoughts, this sense of our beingness, to really approach with reverence and hold with tenderness this life right here. One of the ways to make ourselves more available to loving presence is to recognize that we're often contracted in a kind of defendedness. And one of the simple practices that really helps us embody love is using the image of a smile. So we'll begin there and then move into another guided practice that helps us to begin to deepen that offering of love to our own being. So I invite you to imagine a great, open, bright sky, vast, extending in all directions

and imagine that it is filled with the curve of a smile, an upward curve of a smile, all that openness and brightness of a smile, filling space. And just let your mind merge with that open, vast space of the sky. Your mind is filled with a smile. Just feel how the uplift of a smile brightens, warms the mind. You can actually imagine and feel the smile spreading through your eyes. The outside corners of your eyes slightly lifted up. So there's a genuine smile in the eyes.

The brow is smooth. There's a receptivity. And feel that slight smile, smile of the Buddha at the mouth. And you can imagine and sense the inside of the mouth smiling. This has been shown in research to directly soothe and calm down the sympathetic nervous system, to bring more ease, well-being to the whole body. The eyes are smiling. Imagine that you're smiling into the heart

and let that curve of a smile spread through the heart and chest area, visualizing and feeling it. Not to cover over, but really to make space for what's here. Open, receptive, tender space. Checking back, softening the eyes. The eyes are smiling. the mouth and the heart. I sense a kind of widening rings of ease spreading out from the heart through the chest

and shoulders, relaxing the shoulders, the arms, the hands soft. You can feel the radiance and ripples of the smile through the upper torso, visualizing and feeling a smile at the belly, spreading through the navel in the belly area, and visualizing, Visualizing that curve and feeling, allowing for more space, allowing the breath to be more full and deep. Again, checking the eyes, letting eyes smile, the mouth, and the heart, the belly, energy and the aliveness and openness of a smile in the pelvic region, the belly, softening, open, the heart, smiling. Just feel a smile at the mouth, the eyes, the whole mind filled with a smile, and sensing that energy and aliveness of a smile extending outward in all directions.

So you can feel your energy body, the space around you, vibrating and open, receptive, fully here. as we move into this next part of the practice. This is a guided journey where you'll be encountering, engaging with your own awakened heart. And some people find it very helpful to think of this as your future self.

The potentials right here of this awakened heart It's your future self in the sense of this is who you are when you're fully inhabiting and expressing your most awake, wise heart. This is a journey to meet your future self, more evolved, more awakened. And you might begin by imagining yourself, oh, 20 years from now. And if you're older, 10 years, whatever. You can figure out what's a good time length. Just to imagine yourself down the road.

And this is your being as you've become more wise and mature spiritually. Your heart's really awake. Your awakened hearts living through your body mind in a realized way. And just imagine where you're living. Get real concrete here. Where are you living? Because you're going to be visiting your future self. So sense where you're living and even what spot you're in, if you're inside or outside.

And if for some reason the notion of a future self doesn't match for you, just think of it. This is your being with your heart awake, filled with Bodichita. So you're sensing where you are, where you're living. And imagine what you look like. I sense what you're wearing, the expression on your face, the look in your eyes. Imagine that you're walking into the house or walking to where your future self is and that your future self is greeting you and just sense the kind of open-hearted welcome, the quality of calm or kindness or humor, aliveness that emanates from your future self.

And then sensing something you'd like to share with your future self where you get stuck, some part of your life, your current life, where the pattern of the conditioning gets you caught. and it could be some place where you turn on yourself where you're not able to accept yourself or forgive yourself or where you get reactive with another person and you don't like the way you react. It's a sense of a place in your life right now that you'd like to have more insight

and caring, surround that you'd like to bring to your future self. Imagine conveying. what's important about this. Perhaps sensing where you get most stuck, if you're watching a movie, the frame in the movie where you get most hooked and you're turned on yourself,

you can't stomach or tolerate how you are some way it brings up disgust or anger or self-judgment or the frame in the movie where you're most reactive towards another person, angry, feeling hate, jealousy, aggression. So conveying where you get stuck to your future self. See how real you can be and feel in your body where the stuck place is. So you're really being transparent, revealing this to this more awake part of your being. And again, turn the attention to your future self, to your expression of yourself with your

heart awake and sense how that future self is taking in what you've said, the look in their eyes, the expression in their face. And then just in a very receptive way, listen. for whatever message or response your future self wants to offer. Sense what energy comes from your future self to you. It's the quality of heart energy that gets transmitted to you. How does your future self respond directly to that most stuck place inside you? Let yourself receive from that awakened heart

the care or forgiveness or acceptance that's needed? What's it like to feel the loving presence of your future self, washing through you, bathing the wounded place or the stuck place? Can you receive that? Listening and sensing what message, what wisdom, what reminder your future self might offer to help guide you and really opening yourself now to sense merging with the energy, the awake heart of your future self, letting it fill you in a cellular way, the spaces between the cells, your whole being filled with that bodicita, the awakened heart of your future self,

imagining you can bring yourself right into the situation that you're, you get stuck in and have access to this vast perspective, this tender heart, this clarity and loving presence. Just notice what it reveals in the situation. And letting all ideas of a situation melt away, just feel the quality of beingness right here. Feel your heart. This heart space. If there's any judgments or evaluations of how your journey went, just to hold them with kindness, sense your capacity to notice what's going on right here and bring a gentleness to the moment. As we more and more develop this loving present,

in relating to our inner life, we're able to bring others to mind and they're naturally included in our awakening heart. So you've practiced a lot these last days. It's a beautiful opportunity to bring to mind someone who's dear to you and bring some healing, loving energy to them. So letting someone come to mind and bring them close in. so that you can see their face and their eyes, viewing and witnessing and beholding them

from your most awake being, your future self, your being when your bodichita is really awake right here, viewing this being, sensing this being's sadness or sorrow or disappointment, fear, just feeling your tenderness, and sensing this being's goodness and taking some moments to remind yourself of what it is you really love about this being, their aliveness, what they look like when they're happy, how they express their love, what most touches you. Imagine them closing their eyes and imagine just gently. offering your blessing by either I sometimes imagine kissing someone on the brow or gently

touching their cheek and whispering your love. Let them know. You might simply say I love you and whisper their name mentally and feel how that further awakens Bodichita by saying the words I love you and whispering their name. and bringing to mind someone else who's dear to you in the same way, bringing them close in, beholding from your perspective and sensitivity of your awakened heart, its future self, awakened being. It's beholding this being's humanity and difficulties that they're having and beholding their goodness.

see the light in their eyes, the sparkle when they're feeling alive and happy, ways that they've shown their care for you. Again, just imagine offering your blessing. It could be a gesture as with a kiss on the brow or the slight touch of the cheek and mentally whispering your love and their name. And sensing the very visceral quality of the... of tenderness, the heart space where there's no separation. Sensing it is a limitless space, boundless, open, tender.

So you can feel how all those that are sitting here floating in that space, all those you know and don't know, all is included, this wide open, awake heart space. This is from the Radiant Sutras. There's a place in the heart where everything meets. Go there if you want to find me. Mind, senses, soul, eternity, all are there. Are you there? Enter the bowl of vastness that is the heart.

Give yourself to it with total abandon. Quiet ecstasy is there and a steady regal sense of. of resting in a perfect spot. Once you know the way, the nature of attention will call you to return again and again and be saturated with knowing, I belong here. I am at home here. Once you know the way, the nature of attention will call you to return again and again and be saturated with knowing, I belong here. I am at home here. As a simple way of closing,

you might gently put your hands on your heart, feel the touch, the tenderness, the warm, and sense the aspiration in your own words to make love of this life perfect, to live from kindness and care, to offer this loving presence, the life within, us to all beings. Know that when we're inhabiting loving presence, we are truly at home. Namaste and thank you for playing, participating. I just want to make a slight comment on the future self-practice. As I mentioned, it doesn't matter what you call it.

So if that the idea of through time, the temporal notion throws your, off, you can drop it, but for many people it's very helpful to sense, really this is taking refuge in our own Buddha nature and our awakened heart and the more you turn in that direction, the more easy it becomes to find that as being your true home. So enjoy playing with that if that serves you. Thank you.