Tara Brach - Meditation: Aliveness and Presence (2018-05-30)

Episode Date: May 31, 2018

Meditation: Aliveness and Presence (2018-05-30) - This meditation includes a body scan, using the imagery of a smile, and establishing the senses as a portal to presence. The more we open into the aliveness of the senses, the more we discover the alert inner stillness that is our true home. Your support enables us to continue to offer these talks and meditations freely. If you value them, I hope you will consider offering a donation at this time at www.tarabrach.com/donation/. With gratitude and love, Tara

The following meditation is led by Tara Brock. To access more of my meditations or join my email list, please visit tarabrock.com. The most direct portal to awake awareness is through the senses. We can scan through our body and wake up the senses. The attitude that supports it as one of real friendliness and interest. So in that spirit you might visualize a smile, the curve of a smile spreading through space. You might imagine a great blue vast, endlessly vast sky filled with the curve of a smile

sense the openness, the receptivity, and then let your mind merge with that open sky of awareness. So your whole mind is filled with the brightness, the welcome, the openness of a smile. Might soften the eyes and sense the smile spreading right through the eyes, lifting up the outer corners, the brow smooth. You might sense the slight smile at the mouth. You might imagine the inside of the mouth smiling. And opening to the sensations in the mouth by relaxing. relaxing the tongue, letting it fill the lower palate, relaxing right down to the root of the tongue,

opening to the sensations to fill the whole mouth, the gums, the teeth, the lips, the tongue, sensing the whole face alive with sensation. Still sensing that smile at the eyes, soft eyes, smile at the mouth, vibrating, warmth, pulsing. You might visualize and feel the curve of a smile through the throat area, let the throat fill the neck, just sense the vibration, aliveness, sensation there, from the inside out.

And you might visualize and feel a smile spreading through the chest, the heart area, not to paper over, but to really make room for what's right here, dispensing that space of aliveness, widening outward and outward, so that the shoulders are free to relax, to drop away from the ears, and then feeling from the inside out the shoulders. Perhaps you can imagine ice to water melting, ice to water and water to gas. Feeling from the inside out the life, just as it is inside the shoulders, where the energy moving up and down the arms and filling the hands, letting the hands rest in a completely easy, effortless way.

What happens when you soften the hands now? What do you notice? Softening them again. Receptive presence. Feeling the hands from the inside out. Can you receive sensation in awareness? Again, aware of the smile, in the eyes, soft eyes, the mouth, the throat, the heart,

aware of the aliveness and sensation that fills the whole chest area, then visualizing and sensing that curve of a smile spreading through the belly. See if you can let this next breath be received in a softening belly, sensing that smile, that openness. And now this breath, received in a softening belly. received in a softening belly, and again, feeling the life inside you, in the inside out and the belly, continuing scanning down, visualizing and sensing the curve of a smile, spreading through the pelvic region, receiving the aliveness, sensation, vibration, and awareness.

From the inside out, you might visualize and sense the curve of smile at the base of the base of the spine as if your spine ascended right in the middle of a vase, energy from the earth flowing through it into your body, imagining and sensing the vastness of her energy flowing upward. So your whole body, your feet, your legs, your arms, your hands, open to this flow of trauma of energy, not stopping anything, just sensing this whole body as a field of sensation, noticing how it's all changing moment by moment, vibration, sensation, tingling, cool heat, just relaxing back and letting go into that changing flow, sensing the sounds that come

and go in the stame, a live dance of energy. as the close-in sounds right here in the room or the more distant sounds and sensation all received in awareness, received in wakeful openness. There's a realization that the mind's drifted into thoughts, just to notice thinking and then relax open again. There are the sounds that are actually right here and this play of sensation in the body Coming back home again and again to the awareness that includes the senses, moment to moment. And if it helps to steady your attention to have in the foreground, the movement of the breath,

that's quite fine. To know you're here, right here, and sensing the mystery of this heerness here in here in the center of now, it's helpful to purposefully notice, okay, so where's the attention right now? And if you recognize you've been often a trance of thinking, to be grateful to see that because that's a moment of waking up, that you can then relax open the attention, because thoughts are always a form of contraction, relax open the attention to the sound. that are here, listening, reopen and re-relax the body some. You might relax the shoulders a little, soften the hands, loosen the belly,

sense the friendliness of the smile. You notice in the foreground sounds, sensations, the aliveness here, and in the background, that alert, inner stillness, our true home. Know that you're here. We close by bringing the attention to the heart for a simple prayer. And if you'd like to bring your hands to your heart, either one hand over the other on your heart

or in prayer posture with the palms together, that's fine. Letting yourself inhabit your most awake or high self, offering whatever blessing, whatever prayer you'd like that most resonates right in this moment to yourself. What do you most wish for yourself? And sensing the nature of this heart space as boundless and inclusive that you belong to and hold the world in your heart, sense whatever prayer or blessing you'd like to offer to all beings.