Tara Brach - Meditation: Awareness and Flow

Episode Date: July 18, 2024

This guided practice awakens all the senses with an embodied presence, allowing an opening to the moment-to-moment changing flow of experience. We then relax back, resting as the changeless open awareness that is conscious of the flow, and includes all life.

The following meditation is led by Tara Brock. To access more of my meditations or join my email list, please visit tarabrock.com. I'd like to invite you to check your sitting posture. And by that I mean you might sit up a little taller because if you're upright, you'll find you're more alert. Find a sense of balance and stability in your seat. and then see in that upright, tall way of sitting what might want to let go a little so that you're relaxed, upright and relaxed. You might let the breathing deepen so that you can feel as if you're breathing in and out

of your heart. Let that help you be aware of the felt sense in the heart area. As you're listening and paying attention to the heart, you might ask yourself what your deepest intention is for being here right now, what it is your heart longs for, what really matters to you, just to ask, and then listen, listen to what feels most sincere inside you, what you really care about. It might be learning to relax more and touch more presence. touch some peace, to wake up your heart, to feel more at home than yourself, to be more free,

more to really realize your full potential. Let your senses be awake, listening, receptive, aware of the sounds in the room, the more distant sounds, and imagine and sense of sounds washing through you, also aware of visually, perhaps light and darkness, flickering in the lids. You might be aware of the sense of smell, fragrance, scent, and the space around you. You might be aware of the sense of touch, where your hands lightly touch your legs or each other,

the touch or the weight of your clothing, places of contact where you're sitting on your cushion or chair, your feet touch the floor, or sense is awake, receptive. And also open to the sense of your body from the inside out. Perhaps feeling the hands and softening a little and then softening again. Feeling the tingling and the vibrating, the space inside the hands. You might feel the shoulders from the inside out.

Letting awareness fill the shoulders. So whatever tightness or tension might be there can float in awareness, letting the throat fill the neck and feeling the awareness and the aliveness there from the inside out. My sense of openness at the chest and then feeling inside out, the area of the heart. Can you imagine and feel the sensations, pulses, tingling, pressing, flow, tightness, whatever is in the heart area. It might loosen the abdominal area some. Let this next breath be received in a softening belly.

This breath and now this one. And again, let the abdominal area, the belly be filled with awareness. feeling from the inside out the aliveness that's there in a similar way letting the awareness fill the pelvic region and becoming aware of sensation, vibration, warmth or cool, aliveness and the space that's happening in. Aware of the legs. My sense to length and the volume of the legs so you can feel from the inside out the energy there, the life that's there, letting the awareness fill the feet, feeling the tingling, the

vibrating there. See if you widen the lens, you can sense this body as a field of sensation. It happens if you don't stop anything or pose anything. Just letting the whole dance happen. Tingling, vibrating, pulsing. It's like points of light in the night sky, moving in the night sky. changing, including the sounds that appear, disappear. Sensing in the foreground this whole dance of aliveness and in the background, that which is

aware is the luminosity of knowing, the space of knowing, formless presence, relax back, resting in wakeful openness, resting as awareness. and letting the changing flow of aliveness be just as it is. It's very natural to get lost in the mental movies of the mind, time traveling into the future, past, the commentary. When there's a noticing of that, the practice is to relax open again, reconnect to the senses, to the sounds that are actually right here, relaxing and softening the body and feeling the aliveness of sensation that's right here.

You're listening to and feeling the changing flow and sensing in the background, that which is aware, wakeful openness, you might begin to sense the difference between any thought, sound bites and images of thinking. and this living presence, this alert inner stillness that's aware of the changing flow moment to moment. This poem is from Anamika Borst. Stop in your tracks. Stop for once and notice what is always here. Notice what is always present in all your experiences.

See that there is a constant stream of things coming and go. thoughts, feelings, sensations, people, happenings. They all have a beginning and an end constantly changing. Notice that there is something that notices the stream, something that is always here unchanging. This something is just here. It is always here. It is never not here.

always present. The one thing that is constant, it is so close and natural to us that we fail to notice it. It is like searching for our glasses while all the time we are looking through them. We are this timeless, always present awareness. We are this timeless, always present awareness.