Tara Brach - Meditation: Awaken to HeartSpace (2015-12-23)

Episode Date: December 25, 2015

Meditation: Awaken to HeartSpace (2015-12-23) - Awaken to HeartSpace, the open awareness that is intrinsically tender and wakeful, and discover how to experience this life from the domain of heart.

The following meditation is led by Tara Brock. To access more of my meditations or join my email list, please visit tarabrock.com. The best guidelines on sitting posture that I know are to let the posture embody the qualities you want to cultivate, which is being alert. So you want to sit upright,

sitting tall, step and then at ease. So see in that tallness if you can relax a bit of the muscles, the arms, the shoulders, the hands, coming into stillness and letting the attention come gently to the area of the heart. You might just notice the state of your heart right now. It might be the first time you've checked in with your heart in an hour or a day, or a week, just to notice, so what's the mood or quality of heart right now? A gentle, accepting attention. Just noticing if you've been tight or clenched or numb or if there's a tenderness or an

excitement or an anxiety there, maybe real open, easy. And as you continue listening inward, you might sense your intention. or your aspiration? What feels strongest to you right now for this time of meditating, practicing? What most matters to you? Listen with fresh attention and sense what feels most sincerely true to you.

What are the qualities of heart or presence that matter to you? One of the images that is most conducive for open-hearted presence is that of a smile. I'd like to invite you to imagine a great, wide, open sky, vast, boundless. Imagine and sense the curve of a smile spreading through that sky. You can sense an atmosphere of openness, benevolence, letting your mind just merge with that openness, the open sky of mind, filled with that receptivity of a smile,

letting the image and sense of a smile spread through the eyes. You might sense the outer corners of the eyes lifted up a bit, let the brow be smooth, just softening the flesh around the eyes, feeling all the vibration and aliveness in the region of the eyes, just floating in space, floating in awareness. The eyes are smiling,

A slight smile at the mouth and you might sense the inside of the mouth smiling feeling the tingling and vibration in the tongue feeling the awareness inside the tongue relaxing down to the root of the tongue feeling sensations in the gums the teeth the lips

this whole region of sensation is floating in awareness filled with space and aliveness imagining and sensing the curve of a smile spreading through the throat, letting the throat fill the neck, relaxed, open, and feeling that region as sensation floating in awareness, space and aliveness, sense the awareness that fills the area of the shoulders, feeling from the inside out, so you can sense the space and aliveness inside the shoulders.

I'd imagine and sense letting go a little in the shoulders and feeling even more fully that aliveness. Dance of sensation moving through and floating in awareness. The awareness filling the hands and softening the hands. So you can feel directly from the inside out a sense of space and aliveness inside the hands, tingling, vibrating, floating in awareness, knowing the image and the felt sense of a smile to spread through the heart and the chest area. This is not to cover over what's there, but to connect us with the space that has room

for whatever is moving through us, filling into the heart, awareness and aliveness that fills that region, visualizing and sensing the curve. of a smile spreading through the whole naval area, the belly. You might loosen the belly a bit and let this next breath be received in a softening belly. This breath and now this one and again, you're feeling from the inside out, letting the whole belly area be filled with awareness, sensations floating in awareness, and visualizing and feeling the curve and sense of a smile, spreading through the whole pelvic region,

letting that area fill with awareness and the space and aliveness that's there, sensing the length and the volume of the legs, placing the awareness inside the feet, and feeling the space and aliveness that's there, sensing the vast space and aliveness of this whole earth body, letting it flow through your feet, enlivening, filling, moving through your whole body. Sensation, aliveness, floating in space, floating in awareness, sensing the space that extends in front of you outward and outward beyond the most distant stars, and sensing the space that extends behind you outward and outward beyond the most distant stars.

And sensing the space that extends out to either side. Outward and outward. Beyond the most distant stars. Sensing the space that extends above you and below you, outward and outward, beyond the most distant stars. Sensing and imagining how this boundless outer space, this inner space, our continuous space, continuous space, and that this continuous space is filled with the light of awareness,

discovering how the heart experiences this luminous continuous space, perceiving from the dimension of heart, continuous space, sensing how all beings, all hearts, experience this heart space, the same continuous, luminous, tender space. In the silence now resting as heart space, perceiving this changing world from the luminous, empty, awake heart. Mind drifts just gently arriving here, sensing how this tender, awake heart space is experiencing the moment. From the radiant sutras, there is 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 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.