Tara Brach - Meditation: Aliveness, Space and Awareness (2015-12-16)

Episode Date: December 17, 2015

This practice includes a body scan that opens into experience of continuous space, filled with the light of awareness. Free download of Tara’s new 10 min meditation: “Mindful Breathing: Finding Calm and Ease” when you join her email list.

Greetings. I'm Tara Brock, and I'd like to welcome you to these podcasts. While the talks and meditations are offered freely, we'd very much appreciate your support. To make a donation or learn more about my schedule, please visit tarabrock.com and our imcw.org. Thank you. The simplest guidelines for sitting posture are to sit in a way where you're alert, you're sitting upright, you can be wakeful. so feel that uprightness and also at ease. So right from the start, sense what it means to relax a bit.

Again with the eyes close, let the attention go inward and will open with a simple reflection just to ask yourself what is your intention for this practice, for this sitting. What is it that you most hope for? Sensing what matters to your heart. Is it arriving in presence? Learning to touch some peace in your life.

Being more open-hearted. Realizing truth, the truth of what you really are, your full potential. Intrinsic to this practice of meditation is our aspiration, remembering what really is. matters. One of the most direct portals to presence is awakening our awareness within the body. You might feel the top of the head and just feel whatever sensations are there, letting the attention flow forward over the forehead. See if you can soften the eyes and let the brow be smooth,

relaxing and feeling the aliveness in that region. Let the jaw be unhinged. Slight smile at the mouth. You might sense the inside of the mouth smiling. Let the tongue be relaxed, relaxing down to the root of the tongue. And feeling all the sensations in the area of the mouth, relaxing the shoulders back and down. Let the awareness fill the shoulders from the inside out, feeling the sensations that are there.

And if you notice the sensations of the sensations of the sensations of tightness, of tangliness, of noddedness. Just let that float in awareness. Sense the length and the volume of the arms. And let the hands rest in a very easy and effortless way. Consciously softening the hands. And then feeling the aliveness from the inside out. softening again, sensing the awareness, the tingling, the vibrating, inside the hands.

Just as a cup is filled with water, this whole body is filled with awareness, let there be an openness to the chest. And again, feeling the life of the chest, the heart, that whole region from the inside out. You're sensing space, aliveness, awareness within the body, loosening in the abdominal area and letting this next breath be received in a softening belly. This breath and again and again sensing awareness from the inside out, the body, the aliveness in the area of the belly. It helps to keep softening in the belly because that's an area where conditioned

to tense to tighten as a way of protecting and armoring softening and feeling the aliveness from the inside out the awareness filled the whole pelvic region again feeling the life from the inside out the whole dance of sensation

of the length the volume of the legs placing the awareness fully in the feet so you can feel the tingling and vibrating there again softening the hands and as you soften the hands feel the life there and then sensing the vibrating and aliveness it fills the whole body

the whole body filled with awareness space and aliveness imagining and sensing space extending in front of you further than the most distant stars space and awareness Imagine space, awareness extending behind you further than the most distant stars.

Imagine space and awareness extending out to either side further than the most distant stars. Imagine space and awareness extending above you and below you, above you and below you, further than the most distant stars. Imagine this vastness of space what seems external and inner space are actually continuous. Continuous space,

filled with the light of awareness. Just rest as continuous awake awareness, a wakefulness. That includes the whole play of sensation, sound, feelings. When you become aware of drifting in thoughts, gently re-arrive in this aliveness of the senses of sound, sensation, feelings. They're in the background of that alert, inner stillness,

that continuous space filled with the light of awareness, resting again as awareness, to thinking into a virtual reality. The body tightens also So you might see if it's possible to re-relax, to let go just a little bit more right now, perhaps softening the shoulders, softening the hands, relaxing through the belly, relaxing your heart, just opening to the aliveness right here, letting all your senses be awake, where of sensations, flickering of light, dark,

and sensing the vastness of space, the openness that everything's happening in, sensing the silence that's listening to thoughts, resting as awake awareness, letting this life be just as it is, radical non-doing presence, relaxing back into what is.