Tara Brach - Meditation: Awakening Through the Animal-Headed Deities (2020-04-15)

Episode Date: April 27, 2020

Meditation: Awakening Through the Animal-Headed Deities (2020-04-15) - This short meditation guides us in engaging with challenging emotions with presence and compassion. By opening to the "deities" we discover an open heartspace that can hold and respond to our hurting world (from the closing meditation of "Sheltering in Love - Part 4").

The following meditation is led by Tara Brock. To access more of my meditations or join my email list, please visit tarabrock.com. Times of pandemic, they really highlight both our primitive psyche where we're identified as this separate self that needs to fight and defend and conquer others and power over to this full potential of heart where we can serve the greater good. we know our togetherness.

And if we take a moment right now and just sense ourselves and our society, we can see both. And the inquiry tonight's really for each of us. When we're stressed, are we going to return to our habits of reacting from fear, blaming ourselves, blaming others,

some way shutting down? Are, can be, we learn to pause, can we honor the experience that's come up? And here's the challenging part. Agree to feel it. Feel the feelings. And in some way, call on love. Because as we do, as we change our relationship to fear and call on love, it reveals a larger truth. what we come to see and this is really the key to the whole transformation

this path we're on is that the changing stories the reactions the fears the animal-headed goddesses are not who you are it's like there are waves in the ocean

but you are the loving awareness that's holding all the experiences and the more you take refuge and presence and the more you relate with love, the more you'll trust that who you are is the loving awareness. And then you can respond. You can respond to your own fears and you can respond to other people who are vulnerable with a really intimate presence because you know, you know how to stay, you know how to be there. We're going to close with a

with the practice, just taking these steps and putting it together. It's really one form of sheltering in love. But first, I want to say that we call this sheltering in love and yet there's this understanding that in our actual sheltering, there's such differences. This pandemic is affecting us in so many different ways. And it's as unequal as the society. It's something. It's such a little. It's self. So part of this dedication to sheltering in love is to really open our hearts to those who are not just inconvenienced or those who are not feeling anxiety and fear, but those who are most likely to contract the virus, to die from it, to be financially devastated. Those are the those people who are economically disadvantaged to start with, those of color, those in prisons,

those in camps. I bring this up because we're going to be practicing and then widening the circles to include not just our own fears, but really the struggle of so many in our hearts. Find a way of sitting that you're comfortable, alert, close your eyes. This practice is really called awakening through the animal-headed deities. And we begin by scanning, just sensing in your life any place where you're encountering painful emotions

that are hard to be with. Let whatever situation comes to mind be right close in for you so you can sense what it's triggering what you're afraid of, what's most distressing. And you might notice how you've been relating to the emotions that come up. Have you felt like they were wrong or bad or wished they would go away, tried to ignore them? What has your relationship been with the animal-headed deities that arise, these limbic energies?

So often we think there's something wrong with us for feeling them. and yet they're universal. Letting yourself pause and exploring the possibility that these emotions are really a portal to awakening, that they are the pathway. As one teacher puts it, I think it's Tikna Khan, no mud, no lotus. That this is what's calling your attention to help you wake up.

It's not a mistake. So we begin by just honoring that, offering a respectful attention to whatever emotions are coming up, moving from any thoughts that might be catching your attention right to the body. And you might ask the question, what most wants my attention? Just sensing this animal-headed deity's calling for your attention. Well, what most wants my attention? It's similar to that question, what am I unwilling to feel? Just feel into your body.

Your throat, your chest, your belly. You might even put your hand where you feel emotions, where that energy of the animal-headed deity lives in your body, the fear, the anger, the shame. Just let your hand help you keep contact. And you might sense for yourself, what does it mean to meet my edge and soften, to allow, to be intimate with the feelings that are right here. Let your breath

help to keep your attention, right where the feelings and emotions are most vulnerable. Meeting your edge and softening, deepening that presence by offering care. Thank you for trying to protect me. I'm here with you. I love you. I'm not leaving. Or perhaps calling on some source of loving, a friend, a healer, teacher, and sense their compassion, their light and warmth, just washing through you, going right to that place of vulnerability. When these energies are held with presence and love, what's the sense of who you are? Can you sense how your being is occupying a wider field of consciousness? that there's more tenderness, there's more space.

Movement of awakening is to a wider field of consciousness, a shared heart space. And I invite you to send into that now to imagine and sense how so many of us right now are practicing together, sincerely bringing our attention to the challenging places, awakening through these universal energies, to that heart space.

feel us all around the globe, a shared heart space that can hold and respond to our hurting world and together now to feel our prayer that this heart space can hold those who are most vulnerable with care. That we invite forward in our minds,

perhaps one group of people that are particularly challenged to let ourselves be. touched, feel tenderness towards, care towards these people, to know them as part of our heart, to sense we hold each other and all beings in our hearts, to sense our shared prayer that all beings everywhere might know their deepest nature as loving presence, that we might live from loving presence, serve from loving presence, savor from loving presence, that all beings might touch a great and natural peace, that there's peace on earth, may there be peace

on earth, may there be peace everywhere, may all beings everywhere be healed, be awakened, be free.