Tara Brach - Meditation: Befriending Our Experience

Episode Date: November 3, 2022

Meditation: Befriending Our Experience - We begin the meditation with a sense of befriending our experience - with an intention towards gentleness and kindness as the attention goes inward. We scan the body, opening to sounds and the senses, resting in the awareness that includes this changing life. When the mind drifts, as it naturally does, we notice, then relax back into a receptive, listening presence. There's nothing to do, simply letting life be as it is. Resting in the freedom of awake, open awareness.

The following meditation is led by Tara Brock. To access more of my meditations or join my email list, please visit tarabrock.com. You might begin with just a simple sense of befriending your experience, just beginning the evening with an intention towards gentleness, kindness. So as attention goes inward some, you might take a few full breaths. Let the breaths be long and deep and conscious so they help to collect your attention right here.

Let your senses be open and awake so that you're aware of the sounds in the room. Just a kind of a listening, receptive, and a listening and a feeling into the body, aware of the sensations of sitting here, and listening to your own heart, whatever mood or energies in the heart, so that as you attend to your heart you can reflect on your aspiration for the evening. The inquiry is really what matters to you,

what brings you here in a deep way, what is your intention, and feeling our shared intention, our collective intention, that our time of reflecting and meditating and prayer, be of benefit to our world, serve awakening, serve healing, serve freedom. And with that we chant together, we'll chant the syllable of ah, the sound current ah which is a sound current of letting go, of opening, connecting. And when you run out of breath just start again until we end collectively.

Feel free to harmonize. Let's begin by inhaling deeply. some moments to relax any areas of obvious tension can be helpful to soften the eyes consciously, relax the jaw, might sense a slight smile, the half-smile, but also a smile on the inside of the mouth, let the shoulders down, soften the hands. You might sense an openness at the chest and then a relaxing and a loosening and a softening through the belly. Relax down through the legs. Feel the feet from the inside.

Loosing and relaxing and feeling the aliveness there. You might be aware of the touch points where you contact your chair or cushion, a sense of pressure, warmth, where your hands touch your legs or each other, where the feet touch the floor. and then widening the lens. See if you can feel the whole field of sensation at once. Just a changing dance of tingling and vibrating.

Places of pressure or openness, tight are flowing, heat or cool. It may be pleasant or unpleasant. Just notice what happens when you totally let be and just have this dance of sensations received an awareness, including the appearing and disappearing of sounds, so that you're listening not just with your ears, but your whole awareness, a global kind of listening, listening to the sound of these words and aware of the spaces between sounds, the sounds in the space of this room and the sounds

way beyond the room, resting in an awareness that includes the most distant sounds perceived, noticing how with listening there's nothing to do, sounds are known spontaneously. Notice how with the same receptivity of listening to sounds, you can listen to and feel the sensations in the body, that you can listen to and feel the entire moment, just recognizing and allowing this whole dance of life to live through you, sensing this aliveness in the foreground and in the background the very presence itself that's aware.

Can you sense your own presence? can you sense this alert, inner stillness, space of awakeness? It's the habit of mind to drift, to leave presence. So there's no need to judge that. Rather, when there's awareness of being in thought, that's an opportunity for waking up, for pausing, for listening again to the sounds that are right here,

for re-relaxing and sensing the vibrations, tingling sensations that are right here. We're relaxing the heart and listening to the life of the heart, right in this moment. So we arrive again in this kind of intimate presence, listening to and feeling the moment. And if the moment is difficult, there's some intensity of, of discomfort, to recognize that with kindness, to see if it's possible to soften and say yes to whatever's arising, if it's helpful to let the breath be in the foreground as a way to stay connected with presence, letting your practice be very simple, to just notice when there's a drifting into the trance of thought and a gentle pausing and arriving right.

right here in this next in-breath or out-breath, right here with these sound, listening to and feeling this moment fully. You can deepen presence by asking what is happening inside me right now. And then can I be with this? Can I let this be just as it is? last few moments just to see if it's possible to relax a little bit more and to relax with whatever life is arising within you.