Tara Brach - Meditation: Being the Ocean and Opening to the Waves (2018-12-31)

Episode Date: January 3, 2019

Meditation: Being the Ocean and Opening to the Waves (2018-12-31) (retreat) - We can't truly open to the waves of life unless we recognize our Oceanness, the formless awareness that is our source. This meditation begins with awakening the senses and then invites us to discover the spacious presence in the background of all experience (from the 2018 IMCW New Year's Retreat).

The following meditation is led by Tara Brock. To access more of my meditations or join my email list, please visit tarabrock.com. As part of arriving this morning, you might sense your heart's intention towards presence, allowing the awareness to really fill the body, becoming aware of places that might be tight or tense and see if there's some natural letting go that's possible.

You might bring the half-smile of the Buddha to your lips, let the eyes be soft, and perhaps smiling into the heart. So there's that receptivity and openness to the life that's here. You might allow the attention to be brought to sounds, listening not just with your ears, but with your whole awareness, a global kind of listening. Noticing with listening, there's nothing to do. Sounds are known spontaneously by awareness,

listening to the close-in sounds, the soft background sounds, listening to the most distant sounds you can detect, and sensing the vastness of awareness, that includes sound. It's with the same quality of receptivity of listening to sound that you can listen to and feel the changing sensations in the body, completely receptive,

sensing that alert, inner stillness that receives sensation and aliveness. Letting the senses be wide open, aware of the sounds, flow of energy and the aliveness of sensation, and in the background, that awake openness of awareness. Continuing with a receptive presence, you might rest for a while with your anchor in the foreground, resting with the waves or movement of the breath, or perhaps your home base or anchor is sound, listening moment to the appearing and disappearing of sound. Or your anchor may be the play of sensation.

There can be an intimate, receptive presence with your anchor so that you're listening to and feeling the whole moment. At some point there'll be a noticing that the mind has drifted. It can be a subtle veil of thoughts or commentary or a more dramatic train of thought. How you arrive again plants the seeds for whatever's next. So you might notice in the waking up from thoughts, the possibility of relaxing open, the kind of interest, reawakening the senses, listening to the sounds that are actually right here rather than the sound bites of thoughts, softening

and relaxing in the body so that you can receive sensation, softening around the heart so that you can be aware of the tenderness or vulnerability that's there. senses wide open, noticing the difference between being inside a thought, being inside that concept, our idea, and this fluid and mysterious presence moment to moment. Sensing our practice as a kind of a continual reawakening from the staticness of our virtual reality of thoughts. Back into this living flow of experience, you'll notice if the thought form was charged with a lot of wanting or fearing.

Then you'll come back and then very, very quickly pop back into the thinking. So if you're waking up from a charged thought, you can very intentionally come into the body and just feel into what the roots are in the body, the emotions driving the thought, bringing a very clear and kind presence to that more vulnerable place in the body when it no longer is calling your attention. You can gently come back to your anchor, to the breath or sounds. If the mind is quieter, resting in natural awareness, aware of the changing flow of moment-to-moment experience.

It's valuable to periodically check the quality of presence that's here. You can ask, am I dreaming? Often it's subtle. We don't know that we're drifting until we shine that light of awareness on it. The mind has been contracted into thought forms to let this be a moment of re-awakening your senses. What is happening right now? And can I be with this? How can I be with us?

That most serves presence. Noticing in the foreground, the sounds, the sensations and the liveliness in the body, feelings, movement of thoughts, and also aware in the background of that alert, inner stillness, that which is aware. You might sense the silence that's listening to sound, the openness within which all sound and sensation appear. And if you want to let go of attending to a particular anchor or home base, you might explore and reflect on this phrase. Utterly awake, senses wide open, utterly open, non-fixating awareness. Senses wide open, utterly open, non-fixating awareness.