Tara Brach - Heart Meditation with Instructions: Taking in the Goodness (2016-11-05)

Episode Date: December 27, 2016

Heart Meditation with Instructions: Taking in the Goodness (2016-11-05) - previously published without lead-in instructions. ~ from the IMCW Fall retreat Rumi said, "Whenever some kindness comes to you, turn that way – toward the source of kindness." This meditation guides us to look for the source of loving and to turn in that direction. It begins with a lovingkindness practice that spreads the image of a smile into the body, then continues with a practice of seeing the goodness of ourselves and others. "What's it like when you communicate your appreciation of goodness to another person?"

The following meditation is led by Tara Brock. To access more of my meditations or join my email list, please visit tarabrock.com. Before starting today's guided heart meditation, I'd like to set a little context about how we offer these. In a broad way, these heart practices are a totally integral part of waking up. We often describe the bird with two wings that flies to freedom and the wings are the wings of understanding, you know, through mindfulness and love, the heartfulness.

We really can't see clearly what's in the moment if our heart's not receptive and tender. There'll be some resisting. There are many pathways for these heart practices. It's really an inner exploration of what works. What works to help this particular heart right here feel more soft, more tender, more open, more connected. There are certain basic ways of paying attention that generally seem to help us wake up and one is paying attention to the reality of goodness, where the goodness is in ourselves and others. The more that we attend to the beauty, the generosity, the dearness, the creativity, the humor, the love within ourselves and others, the more that wakes up a sense of loving. Another pathway is to

attend to this shared human vulnerability that's here. And in the moments that we can see that others are struggling, our sense that we ourselves are having a hard time we get more tender. compassion. So the different pathways. And so one is to reflect on, let's say, the goodness, and then another piece is to in some way express it. And if we're doing a meditation, it would be in the form of a wish or a prayer. And that actually activates the part of the brain, this neural net that has to do with empathy and love. So it's not just seeing the goodness, but the act of expressing further wakes up and activates the experience of love. As you experiment with the practice, it's valuable to use all the sense modalities. It's helpful to have words, to sense

the kinesthetic qualities in the body, visual imagery. So again, I want to invite you to to really make it on inquiry. And the inquiry is really, what is it that, wakes up loving in this moment. What helps to open to quality of softness or tenderness? I thought I'd share a story that is a beautiful example of how it needs to be customized. And this is shared by Gil Franzdale and a book that he describes different experiences in a monastery where there's a very wise abbess. And in this one, an engineer goes to the monastery. He's been practicing for a lot of years. Practice makes sense to him. He's a pragmatic guy. He thinks it might help him overcome his chronic unhappiness and deeply pain. But he tries

all these different practices of paying attention of trying to collect and samadhi and notice and recognize and nothing's working. He keeps encountering this kind of wall of suffering and he keeps trying to think his way out. So he's addicted to his mind. So after many rounds, the abbess decides to go a different route and she gives them a special practice which he has to do outside the monastery. And he goes for two years and then when he's completed that he can come back. So she says he has to go and volunteer 10 hours a day at a maternity ward at a hospital holding babies that are born prematurely. That's his practice. Without contact, they don't grow healthily.

So he plunges in and he's holding these fragile beings ever so carefully and he watches every breath, the danger that they'll stop breathing. And what he finds most effective to care is just to hold them against his chest. After about six months he starts feeling something new. A little spot of warmth and softness

in the center of his being. It's foreign. It doesn't fit his idea's self. but, you know, he ignores it, not thinking it out, good. He doesn't want to interfere with what's going on. But over the months, the warmth expands. It starts filling his whole body, and gradually it starts dissolving that dark, hardened wall around his heart. Completes his time goes back to the monastery, the Abbas sees he's transformed, no longer desperate, no longer trying to fit everything into a conceptual framework.

no longer really trying to figure out his life. So she gives new instructions. When you meditate, don't think about what is happening. Rather, let your awareness be seated in the tender warmth you feel in your body. If you do this, any meditation practice you do will be fruitful. And the man found this to be true. In these heart practices, we're really moving from this realm of thinking, conceptual to the heart and keeping the heart in the body as a center of awareness as a way of homecoming. It has to be kinesthetic. This particular practice today will be really emphasizing goodness. Because of our negativity bias, we don't really immerse and take in and sense the feeling of what it's like to observe goodness in ourselves or others.

and with ourselves we rarely acknowledge it. We're so organized around what's wrong. So that's where we'll pay attention today. Rumi says, whenever some kindness comes to you, turn that way toward the source of kindness. So we'll be looking for the source of loving and turning in that direction, finding a posture that allows you to be alert, sitting upright, and also at ease. This is a way of initially collecting your attention. You might take a nice full deep in-breath and then a slow-out breath, slow enough so you

can feel the sensations leaving the nostrils and then another nice long deep in-breath. Slow-out breath, letting go, letting go one more time, deep, full in-breath and a slow-out breath, relaxing outward, letting the breath resume in its natural rhythm, noticing the quality of presence it's right here from that space of presence, sensing your most sincere intention for this practice. As a way of creating a receptivity and openness in the body, I like to do a classical pre-meta-practice in a way it's a body metta practice of the smile down. Just begin by sensing a great smile spreading through the sky. Just vast, that great sky that's out there, just spreading through it, the uplift of a smile.

You can imagine the mind in the sky emerging so that the mind is filled with that uplift, curve, that openness of a smile, letting the smile spread through the eyes, lifting the outer corners of the eyes, softening the eyes, letting the brow be smooth. Sensing the mouth, a slight smile. This directly helps to quiet the sympathetic nervous system, bring a sense of benevolence, ease. You might even sense the inside of the mouth smiling. Then let a smile spread through the heart area, smiling into the heart. It's not to cover over what's there but rather to create that space and receptivity for the life that's here. Visualizing and feeling the smile spreading through the heart area.

And just sensing that that energy of a smile can now radiate out in all directions through your body. So that even in a cellular way, spaces between the heart. the cells, there's that quality of receptivity, tenderness, openness, and bringing to mind someone in your life who's dear to you that's very easy to feel love with, where it's not complex. It could be an adult or child. You can be somebody that's no longer alive. You can be a pet. I sense this person close in or there's being close in so you can be reminded of what you love.

Sensing the goodness spirit that shines through in the way it gets expressed. I mean, imagine this being gazing at you. The way they show affection. sensing this being's humor and brightness, the way they look when they're alive, really fully alive and happy, and whatever's most special to you about them. Sensing this being communicating care to you and sense yourself communicating care to this being. You might imagine it through touch, through words, simply saying.

saying or whispering their name, saying thank you or I love you and again from their heart with your heart and sense the quality of warmth and aliveness in your own heart area and just let it be as big as it can be as it naturally could be this feeling of loving appreciation and allow yourself to sense the goodness of this to whatever degree this heart space is activated tenderized. So you're really now turning to sense the goodness of this being right here, your own being, the goodness of the love that's here. And sensing that goodness and sensing whatever else in this moment you sense you're appreciating about your own being, about the life that's here. It might be your honesty, might be your intention and longing to

to wake up, to be more real, more open-hearted, more living in truth. And if you find it at all difficult to reflect on your own goodness, to look through the eyes of one who loves you, to sense your own sincerity, your own care, the way goodness expresses. And as you reflect, as you bear witness to your own goodness, you might find it helps to put your hand on your heart. And sense that you're with yourself, let the touch itself communicate presence and appreciation and gentleness, beholding your own being. And sense whatever prayer or blessing or wish most resonates right in this moment to offer

yourself. You might whisper that prayer blessing again with the depths of sincerity and sense the experience of loving presence that's here. And it's from that heart space of caring that we widen the field a bit and bring to mind another being who you care about. And as you do, sense that you're seeing them for the first time. You're not allowing yourself to be influenced by your past knowledge or experience of them. It's for the first time, bringing this being right close in. Just look for the things in them that you may have missed because of familiarity. Anthony de Mello says you cannot love what you cannot see afresh.

You cannot love what you are not constantly. and discovering anew, taking these precious moments to discover afresh the goodness in a being who's dear to you. And as you sense what you care about, that being's creativity or vibrancy or way of showing love, quirkiness, mischievousness, humor, whatever it is, just feel that place in the heart where there may be some expression of warmth or light, feel it viscerally. And from that place, from that heart space, offer your blessing, your prayer of care, a mental whisper from your heart to that being's heart.

And imagine them receiving it. Imagine the look on their face and the energetic expression as they feel and receive your care and continuing to practice with seeing the goodness, choosing someone else in your life that you'd like to feel that sense of connection and intimacy with through appreciation, just to bring that person close in right here in the room, just seeing them, seeing them and remembering what they're like when they're happy, curious, feeling love, engaged. again feeling that appreciation in a felt sense way in the heart and letting them know what you appreciate expressing along with your blessing

sense how that's received what's it like when you communicate your appreciation of goodness to another person what happens and coming back again to sense the warmth and light that's right here and if as you've been practicing you feel felt cut off or numb or sleepy, are just not there with warmth and light, to bring a very gentle witnessing presence to that, to let that be okay. Part of the way of holding yourself dear is to know we have seasons in the heart. You can completely forgive and allow whatever season is here. from that heart space that forgives and allows and has its seasons of light and warmth that

we widen out and sense all of us sitting here. I'm sensing that a collective goodness of our intention to awaken our hearts. The preciousness of that. And imagining and sensing this field of heart space as infinite in all directions so that together our collective heart space is really holding the earth, our mother, in our laps, this earth that needs our care and our tenderness and our love so much. This collective heart space is holding all beings. Thomas Merritton writes,

Then it was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depth of their hearts were neither sin. nor knowledge could reach, the core of reality, the person that each one is in the eyes of the divine. If only they could see themselves as they really are, if only we could see each other that way all the time, there would be no more need for war, for hatred, for greed, for cruelty. I suppose the big problem would be that we would fall down and worship. each other, in these last few moments, sensing the presence that's right here and allowing whatever arises to be held in the tenderness of your heart.