Tara Brach - Meditation: Being Here for Life (2021-05-08)

Episode Date: May 13, 2021

Meditation: Being Here for Life (2021-05-08) - It's easy to race through our seasons and miss the mystery and preciousness of unfolding moments. This meditation invites us into an embodied, openhearted presence and includes a poem by Pat Schneider called "Instructions for the Journey."   

The following meditation is led by Tara Brock. To access more of my meditations or join my email list, please visit tarabrock.com. Take some moments, whatever it is for you to find a posture that most will support you, finding some way of being that allows you to feel awake, and alert, and also at ease, grounded, safe, And as you come into stillness to start noticing what's going on inside you as a way of collecting our attention, we'll begin with that simple practice of breathing together.

So I invite you now with your in-breath to lengthen it. You might count to four or five, a long, deep in-breath, and then a slow-out breath. and see if you can feel the sensations of releasing the breath. Inhaling deeply again, filling the chest in the lungs. Slow, even, smooth out breath. Feel a sense of letting go, letting go, letting go. And again, breathing in, nice long, deep in breath, filling the chest, filling the lungs.

And that slow out breath. See if you can sense a softening down the lungs. length of your body, letting go, relaxing outward. Then let the breath resume in its natural rhythm. And sense yourself just observing, experiencing the breath as it is naturally. You might gently scan the body with your awareness, noticing places of tightness or tension, relaxing so you can feel life in a more direct way. Whenever there's tension in the body and some, way we're tensing against the life that's here. I often begin with the area of the brow, just letting the brow be smooth, softening those little micro muscles around the eyes.

You see if you can just open to the sensations in that region. You might also sense the flickering of dark and lightness at the lids, any tingling or vibrating, letting the jaw instead of being clenched, really being relaxed, you can let your tongue just fill the lower palate. Maybe sensing the tongue at the behind the tip of the teeth, the tip of the teeth, and then relaxing down to the root of the tongue, opening the attention.

So you can feel all the sensations in the mouth, gums, teeth, tongue, and the lips, allowing the shoulders to fall away from the neck, and then fill the shoulders with awareness, sense it evenly on both sides. And notice if there's areas of tightness that you can let them float in awareness, see if they naturally soften and dissolve a bit,

bringing intimate, gentle attention to the life inside the shoulders, being aware of the flow of energy down through the arms, So you feel the arms from the inside out and explore softening your hands. So they're resting in a very easy, effortless way and then softening again. And feeling them from the inside out, notice how much aliveness you can feel as you keep softening. Relaxing lets us get more intimate with the life that's here. You might sense an openness at the chest.

You might feel the gentle rising and falling of the breath and let that bring your attention to the region of the heart. Feeling from the inside out, the life that's there, the energy that's there. So you're listening to and feeling the state of your heart, perhaps physically, emotionally, energetically. is breathing with what's here, with interest, a gentle attention, and widening now to sense the upper back, think if it's possible to release and relax tension there, scanning down,

letting this next breath be received in a softening belly, and this breath, and again. so the experience of the torso from the inside out is increasingly alive, feeling into the pelvic region, receptive, open, present. And you might sense how deeply you can feel the breath in your body and intimate attention. The legs, the length, the weight, the volume. And notice what happens when you place the awareness inside the feet, receptive to the tingling and the vibrating there.

And if you widen the attention to sense the whole earth body, the energy of the earth body just flowing through you, that you are earth expressed in this form, vibrating and alive, just letting that life live through you, not opposing anything, not stopping anything. You can sense this form as really a field of sensation. And letting that field include sounds, the close-in sounds, the more distant sounds,

so that there's a resting in that receptive, open field of awareness that's listening to and feeling, this unfolding moment. Attention narrows into a cloud of thought. and you notice just to widen again, resting again in that great open field that's listening, listening and feeling the life moment to moment, noticing the quality of hereness being right here. You might even mentally whisper the word here and relax into that field that's listening to and feeling the unfolding moment. You can start fresh in any moment,

letting go of any judgment, it's relaxing the attention open, listening, feeling, and relaxing with exactly what's here. This poem is called Instructions for the Journey by Pat Snyder. The Self you leave behind is only a skill, you have outgrown. Don't grieve for it. Look to the wet, raw, unfinished self, the one you are becoming. The world too sheds its skin. Politicians, cataclysms, ordinary days. It's easy to

lose this tenderly unfolding moment. Look for it. Look for it as if it were the first green blade after a long winter. Listen for it as if it were the first clear tone in a place where dawn is heralded by bells. And if all that fails, wash your own dishes, rinse them, stand in your kitchen at your sink. Let cold water run between your fingers. Feel it. It's easy to lose this tenderly. unfolding moment. It's easy to lose this tenderly unfolding moment. Look for it as if it were

the first green blade after a long winter. Listen for it as if it were the first clear tone in a place where dawn is heralded by bells.